It’s been close to two weeks since I started work back at The Star, so I figured that if I don’t haul ass and get to this post, I never will.

Those who read my previous stories probably know of the one-year-ish depression I faced whilst taking a writing hiatus to dabble in real estate.

I left KL and returned to Penang, moved back in with my brother, signed up with a real estate agency and went to work brokering for the firm.

It sucked.

For two reasons:

  1. I was entering the market just as it had started to slow, so as a newcomer I had virtually NO luck getting any exclusive listings.
  2. As a 21 year old Chinese female, 8 out of 10 owners/buyers/lawyers/bankers would either try to buy me a drink or talk me down, which I wouldn’t really have minded if it wasn’t due solely to my demographic and not my work experience/qualification/ a hundred other VALID reasons to excuse me as a negotiator. But,
  3. That’s the world works, and evidently I’m supposed to “put up with it”

Disclaimer: To anyone currently reading this, I want to emphasize that that may be how SOME parts of the world work, and worse, but it doesn’t have to be.

  • It doesn’t have to be

I even put it up there ^ so you could read it again.

Thankfully, I had both

  1. Past experience working in another field where people were of the more intellectual variety, more empathetic, and actually treated their female co-workers like, you know, people, and
  2. A waiting opportunity to return (thanks, Ian)

So I came back.

I traded in lanes shadowed by branches and leaves, for highways where a wrong turn cost you an extra half-hour, beaches for storm drains, and street food for Maggie. But for the first time in a long while, I’m…actually happy. Well, not happy, more like content. And I have Alvin to thank for that.

He gave up his awful job at Maybank to follow me down. We packed up his dad’s Alza to the brim and took to the road for one last time (after driving up and down a previous 4 times to canvas for rent, jobs, etc.).

We packed up everything and sent the rest via lorry, courtesy of my parents’ guilt and renewed dedication to being better caregivers. Thanks mami, thanks papa. Despite everything that’s happened, I love you. And despite everything that’s happened, I know you really love me.

The new apartment belongs to my aunt, Dee Dee. (There’s a story behind that name that I can’t bother going through. Just know that it stands for “little brother” in Mandarin.) She struck up a deal with my parents: The apartment had ZERO fixtures, so, no fan, no lights, nada. If they could pass her RM10,000, she’d do the required renovations and count the 10k as our one year’s rent, which tallies up to, oh… Rm833 per month.

Considering that the average rent in the same building is RM1.5-Rm1.6k, we told her we’d look around for other offers and let her know if nothing turned up.

I’m totally bullshitting – we shat our pants at the proposal.

Literally. I’m guessing my parents’ response went something like this:

“Caaaaaaaaaaaan. No need to paiseh, we all family only mah *squirms as a visibly brown stain starts spreading*”

I’ll put up some pictures of the place down below, but first,

A little backstory:

Before KL, I was living in Puncak Erskine, on a sofa bed, in the living room. It was a low cost government project, so the rent was crazy cheap, but so was the construction and planning. Our halls looked like the backdrop of a Singaporean ghost movie, the living room as cast in eternal darkness because all the sunlight had been taken up by the two fan-less bedrooms, and our sink was an aluminium tub. All in all, the apartment took up roughly 500 square feet of space and was generally liveable most of the time, except when it wasn’t.

Nothing makes a girl realize how spoiled she is, more than crappy living conditions.

Then we moved in to this, which in comparison looks like my vision of heaven:

WINDOWS. IN THE
LIVING ROOM. WHAT IS THIS

AN ACTUAL STOVE TOP. AND DRAWERS. WHATTTT

THERE IS A HEATER. IN. MY. SHOWER.

I HAVE AIR CONDITIONING (???)



So now I bring you to the present. But this story does not have a happy ending. In between the move, and Alvin’s resignation, and my re-entrance into The Star, someone very dear to me was left behind.

At the very last second, and after a half-dozen contingency plans, my brother finally decided to stay put in Penang to work as a chef. This worries me to no end because

  1. He is clinically bipolar and needs hugs and kisses and a human punching bag to shout insults at every day
  2. The house is now bare of a lot of things, seeing as we had moved it all out in anticipation of terminating our contract with the landlady, and I get hives thinking about him alone in it
  3. He is not the best at tidying up

So, if you know who said brother is, please send good vibes. Drop a message. I’m looking at you, Jake.