Thursday, June 22, 2006
Am I being unreasonable??

Just imagine if you were in my position, having given up a job which pays like 2/3 of your husband's salary to be with him in an underdeveloped, boring and yucky place where communication is difficult and his travel schedule has been something like this for the the past mths since our wedding:


11 Mar - Our wedding
13 to 17 Mar - Our Honeymoon
20 Mar - Hubby went back to HCMC
24 Apr - I flew over to HCMC to join him on unpaid leave.

From the dates, you can see that it was more than a month before I saw my hubby again, bearing in mind that we are newly weds, not some old couple who has been married for donkey years.

27 Apr - Hubby left for Taiwan
1 May - I flew to Taiwan to join him
4 May - We flew back to HCMC together

This was probably the 1st and last time I can join him when he is travelling again cuz he travels too frequently and it's just not practical to be spending this type of money following him when he is purely on business. And one air tic from HCMC to Taiwan costs like a damn bloody USD$390 and it's on Vietnam/China airlines, mind you...not SQ or anything fantastic!

16 May - Hubby flew to Taiwan again
18 May - I flew back to Singapore cuz his Taiwan trip = 2 weeks
26 May - Hubby came back to HCMC
29 May - Hubby flew to BK
31 May - Hubby flew back to HCMC and I flew back to HCMC

Supposedly after this, his travelling would die down..but no...

7 Jun to 10 Jun - Hubby flew to Taiwan again!!!
19 Jun to 20 Jun - Hubby flew to BK!!

More travelling to come:
Today is 22 Jun and he just told me that he pushed away his boss's request for him to fly to Manila next week but if I m agreeable, he will go. Not forgetting to mention that he is expected to fly to Taiwan sometime in early to mid July.

What is this man? His boss thinks he is air steward, is it? Look at the frequency of his travel. I really dun wish to bring up the pay issue again cuz as I have analysed in my many past entries, it is totally not justifiable.

Then talk about family planning..how to have babies like this? If you dun already know, women are only fertile for a certain period of the entire menstrual cycle and this period can be as short as just 3 - 4 days, so if you miss it for that month, that's it. You won't be able to get pregnant. With such crazy travelling schedules, I really dunno when we are ever going to have a baby. Talk about family-friendly working environment, this definitely is not it!!!

Then my friends asked me what I m doing here when my hubby is travelling so frequently in HCMC. Aren't I better off in Spore, working and earning my own money when it's not like he is here all the time although I gave up everything just to be with him? Yeah that's certainly true, but if I were to be in Spore all these time, I probably wouldn't have seem him for the past 3 mths, considering that he has not returned to Spore since our honeymoon in March!!

And talk about expat benefits, I have none for being the spouse of a so-called expat. Air tickets are out of our own bloody pockets and if I were to fall sick here, it would be all at our own expense. And this damn bloody house we are staying in, although it's what people call a terraced house in Singapore, it sure doesn't give me the feeling of home. Every morning, at 6, 7 am in the morning, those construction workers will be hacking and drilling away at a house they are renovating nearby and it's totally crazy. You dun even need an alarm clock here, I tell you. The noise is sure to wake you up!

My friends asked me why in the first place did I ever agree to him coming here to work? It's not like I'm stupid right, if I knew it was like this in the first place, I would never have supported his decision to come here. Things are certainly not as rosy as what he had said when he was first considering taking up this job. Most of what was said certainly did not materialise and the situation now is NOTHING close to what was expected.

Yeah, I understand that he has his reasons for not leaving at the moment, "political" reasons, which I wouldn't say are totally non-justifiable. Just that I think that in about everything, you gotta always look at the big picture, what about me? What happens when my unpaid leave is up? I m supposed to go back and work on 1 Nov, but I' m quite sure that whatever is supposed to happen would not have happened by then. And then what? I go back to Singapore on my own? Afterall, some people would say that I have survived being separate from my hubby for more than half a year before I joined him here. But honestly, that wasn't at all in our plans. It's just that things kept getting delayed and things kept changing. The truth is I really dun wish to live separately from my hubby..Perhaps I'm a more practical and systematic person, I hate to "take things as it comes". I need to have some assurance, some plan, some promise of something more certain although I know that nothing's predictable in this damn world..

Perhaps some people may think that I m not being reasonable, but honestly, from the bottom of your hearts, for those of you in a relationship or married, how many of you would want to live separately from your partner in different countries? Some people can't even stand not meeting their partners once every week. It's always easy to comment and judge but when it comes to yourself, it's more difficult than you ever think it would be...

Kimmie scribbles
12:41 pm |

=-+-=