Winter makes me thankful

It’s a bitterly cold day in Adelaide, although I’m sure Northern Europeans or Canadians would love at my comment – knowing that I describe 12C as “bitterly cold”. Looking through the glass sliding door that overlooks my backyard and watching the cold rain droplets on the grapevines makes me thankful that I am living my ‘dream’. The cold and the seasonal changes remind us that we are not in Indonesia and that we do lead our lives ‘luar negri’ (overseas). I don’t believe in happenstance either – even before the concept of ‘living overseas’ materialised in my mind, God must have understood my unspoken desires.

Although I don’t earn as much money as I could had I stayed in Indonesia or in Singapore, nor achieved a high position and status had I persisted in the finance industry, I am grateful of my life – living abroad in a wonderful country like Australia. Don’t get me wrong, we do have our challenges too – living overseas is not just wines and roses. I wish we could have maids, a driver, somebody to help clean up the house and the backyard. 😀 Both Yani and I just have to make do by relying more on one another, rather than having a team of domestic helpers to assist us. It would be great to live close to our relatives, to see them more frequently and have a bigger support network. It’s a good life though – we are living our own dreams with its pluses and minuses. 🙂 I know that I should be thankful of my life, knowing how hard it is for some of my friends to migrate here.

I’m working from home today, marking a stack of exam papers that is pretty tedious to do especially when some students attempt to waffle their way out of the questions. I find myself having to take a break from time to time, there’s only a certain amount of waffling that I can take in! Billy Joel is keeping me company in the background while the sky is still menacingly grey. At least the wind has died down a bit – it was pretty wild and wooly a couple of hours ago. I’m not complaining though, living in the driest state in the driest continent means that I have to be thankful for every drop of water that we receive!

I’d better head back to my marking so I can at least finish the exam for one subject by the end of the day. Another stack is waiting for me to mark after this. Happy, happy, joy, joy! 😀