OMG, a snake!

Just heard that one of Mr. Big's teaching colleagues found a baby cobra (seriously!) in their kitchen. Fortunately, nobody got bitten before the firemen came to deal with it.

(Check out this family's similar scary experience here in Brunei.)

This is not surprising considering how Brunei is basically an inhabited rainforest/jungle, but it's still really scary, especially since we're only a house away from the wild .

See the picture on the header? That's the view from our veranda. It's nice because we sometimes see monkeys swinging on the trees and we get visited by small reptiles, but having snakes in the house is a totally different matter, of course!

We're used to seeing this fellow around.

TGIF---especially in Brunei

Brunei is an Islamic country, and since Friday is a go-to-mosque day, it's also an off day for most public offices, hospitals, and schools. It's business as usual on Saturdays though.

It's still a bit strange for us that Mr. Big has Fridays off instead of Saturdays, but we're getting used to it. This means though that we can't have weekend trips somewhere. Fortunately, he gets a 2-week  break every  2 1/2 months.

The international school follows a Monday to Friday schedule though. At least, Big Girl and I get to sleep in a bit on weekends!

Home sweet home

We love our new house. It's spacious enough for all of us plus extra guests, but it's not too big that you can't possibly maintain it without a battalion of help. It's also in a quiet neighborhood, not far from Big Girl's school(but then most places in Brunei are quiet and it only takes 20 minutes to go anywhere in the city).

We were looking at several houses that are within the company's housing budget and we instantly took this house as soon as we found it. Some houses were so huge! Mr. Big thinks that we probably only think this way because we got used to the small apartments in Korea. He's probably right, but really, who needs 8 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms when you have 2 small children who still like to sleep with you sometimes? Plus, some of them looked really old, and the interiors were too ornate for our style. Elaborate ceiling paintings, velvet curtains, Baroque furniture...Nah...I don't have Imeldific delusions of grandeur. We wanted a house that is nice, homey, and comfortable and most importantly, child-friendly.

Blogging again

Welcome to my new blog!

It's been 5 years since I kept a blog when I was in South Korea. Of course, many things have changed since then. I am now a mother of two (a 4-year old girl and a 1-year old boy), my hips are much wider, and we now live in Brunei (a small, oil-rich country that is geographically sandwiched by Malaysia). We've only been here for 3 months, and so far, it's good. New place, new people, new language, new adventures/misadventures.

This blog is for those who miss me (yeah, all three of you!) and our family and for those who want to learn about life here in Brunei. But most of all, this blog is for the frustrated writer in me that has been itching to come out after it got buried under tons of kimchi, diapers, insanity pleas, and other self-concocted excuses.

Someday, I hope I'll be able to find the guts and the inspiration to actually write the stories that have been swimming in my head for years. But until then, I guess this blog will do.