Dear Peanut,

So tonight is our 2nd night in our new condo in Manila, Philippines. SC is sending requirements for the Wi-Fi installation while I’m writing a blog entry in Word Document.

Yes, no Wi-Fi yet, so this morning, I had to hang out at the condo lobby to connect and send emails. Setting up our new nest in a [technically not new] country takes some time.

A lot has happened in the past few weeks! Both exciting and stressful.

First off, after our Penang-Taiping trip in Malaysia, SC and I started packing our stuff in Malaysia for Philippines. The original plan was to get 90kg worth of baggage through Malaysia Airlines because we don’t want to deal with Air Asia for our coming home trip. But when we booked our flights, we couldn’t but extra 30kg baggage anymore. So, we were fucked.

How do you pack your entire life in Malaysia into 60kg worth of baggage???

The solution was to get storage in Malaysia for half a year. Since SC’s new job requires ASEAN travel, we thought (hope) his new company will send him to KL in the next six months so he can get the things we left there—like his 2 guitars, our ironing board, my collection of Archie Comics and Janet Evanovich books, new desktop printer, and more.

SC discovered this shipping company based in Kotaraya Mall (the Mothership, as we call it—in every country, there’s a mall where Filipinos abroad congregate and where the fucking ensaymada is always dry and 10 times more expensive.

First, we bought the biggest balikbayan box they sell. But after putting your stroller and crib, we quickly ran out of space. And since it was Hari Raya (one of Malaysia’s biggest holidays, like Christmas in PH), offices were closed for two days.

Thank God for Pinoys abroad! Tathy (the girl from Jolly-Bee) opened the office for us and we bought another XXL balikbayan box and packed whatever we could fit in there.

At this point, I’m already an expert in Tetris, so we were able to pack a lot, efficiently. Poor SC had to do 99.9 percent of the heavy lifting and cling wrapping because I’m not allowed to carry heavy items for now (preggy perks, hehe).

The Malay delivery boys picked up the two massive balikbayan boxes from our Malaysia condo at 10:30 AM, an hour before we had to leave for the airport. Thank you, Tathy for coordinating the early pick-up. We are so grateful to this Filipina in Kotaraya. When we go to MY again, we’ll bring her another Starbucks treat (just like we did when she opened the office for us on Hari Raya!).

But that’s not the most stressful part of our departure from Malaysia. We had to deal with 40kg worth of excess baggage at the airport! I’ll tell you all about it in the next entry.

xoxo,

 

Update (as of March 29, 2018): Changed my codename from Queen Bitch (QB) to Tiger Mom (TM).