Archive for January 15th, 2009

Last evening while trying to get some sleep my mind wandered of to the family that I left back home in Malaysia. My father, my brother and his family and especially my mother. Oh how much I miss her!

It has been five years since she left us - going on 6. There would be times I find myself thinking about how she would look like when she laughed, how her voice sounded like, her smell, the softness of her hands, the sound of my name when she called it and so on. I try to commit everything in mind for as long as I could. We never had a video camera then. So everything has to be memorized instead. It is something like a practice for me so that I won’t forget those small things that I usually take for granted.

Life is never ever and ever the same without her.

Some people would say, “You do not need an occasion to give somebody a gift.” It is true. Giving presents without waiting for an occasion is a good practice. It sure would be nice to get a pleasant surprise at times. Nonetheless, it does not mean, you give presents on other days, you do not need to prepare a gift on special days. It  is still expected to give a gift on special occasions - Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentine’s day, etc.

My other half’s birthday is less than a week. However,  I have not got him anything yet. I had had a hard time thinking of what to give him for Christmas and have a hard time thinking of what to get him for his birthday (what to give to a guy who has everything he needs?). In fact gift ideas don’t really come quite easy to me. Often times I had to scrounge the internet for ideas and bought the gifts directly from the internet last year.

A website which I recently found interesting for gift searching is savebuckets.co.uk. It is not a web store, but actually more like a combination of price comparison and gift ideas site. Just brilliant.

You browse the website for ideas, once you have decided on a gift that you think might be just the right kind of gift for that special someone, click buy, and they will give you a lists of places where you can buy the item. You can compare the prices and choose the best bargain. Here is a price comparison for an ipod touch would look like:

Some of the stores recommended are well known ones like Amazon and Pixmania  (bought my creative zen from them).

I will continue to search for a gift for my husband. It seems like they also have a list of shops that will deliver flowers to destinations all over the world. I don’t need that for my husband I think. But I’d keep that in mind when I need to send a bouquet or two of flowers to family back home in Malaysia.

A few days ago we could take a deep breath thinking that the gas problem in Europe will soon end. But up to date gas is still blocked and people are still cold.

We are pretty lucky that we are in Hungary and not in other Eastern European countries. At least we still have gas reserves for now. Even enough to help others in the region.

Nevertheless, as the Malay saying goes, ” Prepare an umbrella before it rains”; prepare for the worse. So we may still have to buy an electric heater afterall just in case.