A few Wedding Photos

As most of you will know, Miae and I were married earlier in the year and I've decided to put a few photos up. There are another 100 or so on our wedding website and I have about 500 more other than those. If you want any for printing, please let me know and I can forward on better quality ones.

Happy Melbourne Cup Day

Sometimes the memories are worth the pain.

As Tall As Lions - Ghosts of York

I've been listening to this band so much lately. This isn't the official video but I really like it anyway.

Aside of the song, lots of travelling as always. I am in Melbourne again and seem to be spending about 25% of my life here right now...as a consequence I have seen quite a few TV shows. I've watched every episode of Suits, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad in the last month or so, and I have just started on The Mentalist. So, if you have any suggestions, please feel free to post them below!

Keep Safe

My Top Played Songs Over The Last 5 Years

My iTunes has just over 13,200 songs (I recently did a cull of a few thousand) and here are the top 10 most played songs over the last 5 years. Interestingly (or not) "Round Here" appeared twice more in the top 50, but different versions of the song.

Until a couple of years ago I could not play my iPhone in the car so I was reliant on Cds, so this may not be entirely accurate, but still a good idea.

Too much going on...

A lot of the time I do not bother updating my blog because I simply do not have too much to say, or there is not much going on. This time it is because so much has been going on that I simply didn't know where to start, so kept putting it off so, I'll break the ice with a few words...

Since getting back from Jakarta I have done a fair bit of travelling with work in Melbourne, Brisbane, and then Melbourne again. I took an 8 day holiday to Phuket and on the same day I got back I flew to Melbourne to work here again (yes, I am in Melbourne now). I fly home tomorrow for two days and then fly back to Melbourne on Sunday for another week. I suspect I will be down here quite a bit as I have just taken on another couple of staff down here, with one more to follow in the Sydney office in two weeks (so I will be there for training). Then back here again...

It goes without saying I am pretty exhausted, hence why I booked a holiday at short notice. I'll get some photos up soon.

Anyway, that has started the ball rolling so I will try and do more updates at the weekend or early next week.

Keep Safe.

Home, Sweet Home

Well, it's good to be back in Sydney. Unfortunately I am feeling the effects of the trip still and struggling to get to sleep. That's not entirely true, I fell asleep at about 10pm but woke up at 2:45am, and here I am. It reminds me of the bad old days with sleep, only this time I don't go all of the way through the night without any, and the prospect of going to see the sunrise with my loved one is gone. Bittersweet memories.

It was a fairly rough trip home from Jakarta with some of the worst turbulence that I have experienced. In the end I did come back business class so at least I had a bed, even if I only managed 30 minutes sleep (an upset stomach didn't help!).

I think I will go to Melbourne of Thursday, although hopefully up and down on the same day if possible. I only have three, possibly four interviews to do so it shouldn't be too bad.

Anyway, I am going to try and sleep again.

A touching passage...

NOTE: I have update this as it seems there are a couple of different versions of the story. I have replaced the first one with the original one that I read that touched me so much.

Marriage/Relationships:

When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man!

That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her!

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement that stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly.

Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce that had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage. This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that everyday for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.

I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully.

My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mummy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face and her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me.

On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mum out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad.

On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office…. jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore. She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other any more. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart. Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away.

At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, “I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us part”. That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed - dead.

My wife had been fighting cancer for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from a negative reaction from our son, in case we pushed through with the divorce — at least, in the eyes of our son — I'm a loving husband....

The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property or the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage! If you don’t share this, nothing will happen to you. If you do, you just might save a marriage. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.