Today marks 4 years that I’ve been married to my dear wife Audrey Ooi Feng Ling aka Shorty. 4 years doesn’t feel that long considering we’ve been together for 7 years now but I feel so much has changed in our relationship.

Marriage, moving in together and having kids each are their own catalyst to a change in your relationship and Shorty and mine has evolved a lot in these past 7 years.

Before I got married, I used to hear a lot about how being married was like and to my surprise what I’ve experienced so far is really different. Here’s what.

1. You lose all your freedom when married.

This is the one thing I used to hear so much. My married friends would tell me to enjoy the freedom I had for once I got married all that will disappear. I didn’t find a big change in this department.

I mean if my freedom to go around and play single had disappeared, it disappeared not at the point of marriage but at the point I started a serious relationship with Shorty. Married or not we had a commitment and marriage was just a piece of paper that could in the first few years be annulled without too much of a trouble.

So I didn’t feel there was a huge jump here from single to marriage. Shorty and I are quite open too. Some nights she goes out and some nights I go out, although most nights you can find us both at home watching Netflix.

2. Your in-laws are going to stress you out.

The saying goes that you choose your wife but you don’t choose the family she comes with. So you’re bound to run into some conflict here and there.

I can understand how in-laws sometimes puts a strain on a marriage (and it works both ways) but in my experience I’ve found it quite manageable. I found it easier to understand when I remembered that it wasn’t just me that didn’t get to pick my wife’s family. My wife’s family too didn’t get to pick me.

I can’t predict the future neither do I want to jinx anything but I can happily say that we do get along really well now.

3. Your expenses go up

Yep this part is true. Even without kids I find that my expenses go up because I start paying for two in the household now but to be fair I was doing it even before we were married.

The good thing is that while I’m supporting four (back then it was just two) and it costs more, I happen to spend less on myself because I have less time for myself. Which brings me to the next point.

4. You have less time for yourself.

Yep. I do have less time for myself. Suddenly there is the commitment of spending time with your wife (eventually your kids), your family and your in-laws. But the truth is I don’t really feel it.  I don’t take it as less time for myself but just a different way of me spending time.

Plus it’s not like I stop doing anything for myself. I still do. Just less.

5. You’re going to wish you were single.

Not really. Well the truth is being married and having the support and company of a great wife more than makes up for the stuff my single friends can do. I won’t deny though that sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to be single again but when I do I fulfill it by hearing stories of my single friends and their adventures. It’s like I live vicariously through them.

So yeah overall… 4 years married and loving it.

Happy Anniversary Shorty!

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Taylor Swift but I did view her really positively. I liked how she was really down-to-earth, humble, treat her friends really nice, charitable and all those things that she portrays herself as.

This past week though I saw her entire image unravel.

In case you missed it, read this for a full account.  The TLDR version is that Kanye included some offensive lyrics in a recent rap. Offensive in many ways like referring to Taylor as a bitch and saying she would still have sex with him because he made her famous.

Taylor came out on the offense when those lyrics came out and very famously during this acceptance speech at the Grammys slamming people (which everyone understood was Kanye) for taking credit for her fame and success.

Now Kanye was like wtf? He said that he asked Taylor if he could include her in the song like that and she approved it. An allegation that Taylor strongly denied.

All was going well for Taylor until Kim Kardashian posted a video on her Snapchat of a phone conversation between Kanye and Taylor. That video tore apart Taylor’s initial story.

Since then Taylor has responded by posting a note on her Instagram that she didn’t approve of him referring to her as “bitch” in the video recording (which is a fair point) but didn’t address the rest of the video.

Taylor’s friends have also come up to her defense but instead of trying to argue the point at matter they seem to be arguing that people should be talking about other more important things in the world. .

There are more important things to talk about… Why can’t people use their voice for something that fucking matters?

— Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) July 18, 2016

Like Selena Gomez who was criticized then for saying this but not saying a word about Black Lives Matter. Beyond the social media war that is going on, the interesting thing is what’s happening with the media. Many articles now cover how they (just like many of us) have been believing the fake nice image that Taylor Swift has been giving us. They started to expose all the mean things that Taylor did to many people around (including her ex Calvin Harris) and holy crap once you read them all you begin to think maybe Kanye wasn’t exaggerating when he referred to her as a “bitch”.  Many articles have covered this but here’s one. I’ve never watched Hollywood celebrity news as much as I do now. Then over a conversation with Shorty today I realized why we were so captivated by this whole story. Yes it’s juicy and all, but if we look deep inside we realize that we all each have a “snake” (to borrow a word from Kim Kardashian) in our lives.

Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days! 🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍 — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) July 17, 2016

Someone who everyone loves because they portray a really nice, kind personality on the outside but you know deep inside is manipulative, cruel and uses people around them. “Snakes” in our lives more often than not tend to get away and it infuriates us. It infuriates us that nobody can see what we can see.

So some of us are following this whole saga not just for the juice but because it gives us hope. Hope that the Taylor Swifts in our own lives will one day be exposed for who he or she really is.

To everyone who has a snake in our lives, think of Camilla Belle. To give you a background on that Camilla Belle is an actress that like Calvin Harris, Kanye, Katy Perry and more have incurred the wrath of Taylor.

Here’s a quote from the Looper article I shared above that explains this best.

In Swift’s song, “Better Than Revenge,” the singer attacks a woman who she thinks stole her boyfriend. Rumor has it the song is about actress Camilla Belle allegedly stealing Swift’s ex, JoeJonas. Swift sings, “She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think / She’s an actress / She’s better known for the things that she does / On the mattress.”

Read More: http://www.looper.com/7466/shady-side-taylor-swift/?utm_campaign=clip

Since this whole saga erupted she posted this:

“No need for revenge. Just sit back & wait. Those who hurt you will eventually screw up themselves & if you’re lucky, God will let you watch”.

Well said Camilla!

In my many years I’ve always talked about the important people in my life. My father, my mother, my wife and now my kids. I just realized recently that the one person I haven’t really talked a lot about is my younger sister.

There are four kids in my family. My two eldest brothers who are close in age and then there’s my sister and I who share a 3 year gap in our age.

We grew up spending most of our time together. We found toys to play with together, we played computer games together and up until I turned 15, shared a room together.

This is an early picture of us from 1990.

Looking back at my record as a brother, I don’t think I was a very good one growing up.  I would hog the computer and play my games while she watched on. Then as my mom came home I would run and hide and leave her playing the game for all of the 30 seconds she would get until my mom saw her playing and scolded her for it.

I once asked her to close her eyes and led her face first into a pillar because I thought it would be funny. Turns out it was not… she went crying to mom and I got an earful… and boy just thinking about how bratty I was then makes me want to go back into the past and smack boy-Tim. If Fighter ever did anything like that to Penny I would go mental.

It’s instances like that which led to some of my regrets. That I wasn’t a better brother to my sister when we were kids. Rather than being a brother who took care of her, I was a brother who lived for himself and only played with her when I wanted to. To some extent I see a little of that in Fighter now and how he treats Penny.

Filling in my gap of not being the protective brother was my parents. Being the only girl in the family, my parents were always more protective of my sister, constantly worrying about her and whether she’ll be able to face life on the outside. What all of us never really noticed was that my sister was and is a lot stronger than we thought.

I got to know in my later years how she struggled through many personal struggles growing up but kept it all to herself and handled it. I sometimes ask myself if it’s because I wasn’t emotionally there for her enough that she was forced to be strong herself. If so then perhaps some good came out of the bad boy-Tim did.

Today my sister is a grown woman working in an advertising agency managing a team of her own. She’s totally unmaterialistic, lives a very simple life by choice and doesn’t demand for anything apart from a good glass of single malt whiskey every now and then.

She gets emotionally attached to the things she uses. She would use a mobile phone and never want to change it until it crashes and never comes to life again. Her old Honda looked like it had gone on a road trip through Syria but she refused to change it until my Dad bought her a new one.

She also has this really friendly personality that turns strangers into friends in five minutes. Once we went to a park and she disappeared for a while only to see her making friends with a group of strangers and talking about some handle bar stuff.

She also shares some similarities with my wife. She is the kind of person who won’t naturally know how to think about what to do for you but if she knows it, she will. Some sort like my wife really.  With that in mind I know that no matter what happens I know my sister will have my back.

As a more matured older brother now I’m trying to make up for lost years. Trying to be a better brother to her than I was growing up, doing as many things as I can for her. She’s also grown really close to my family, constantly making time to spend with Fighter.

Professionally too she’s doing great. I once saw her perform in a work setting and I was really impressed at how she presented an idea and how capable she was. I went home and told my parents that their little girl wasn’t a little girl anymore. The little girl in our family has grown up to be this strong woman now.

And that is the story of one of the most important people in my life.

For years I’ve heard many people talk about the Four Faced Buddha at the Erawan Shrine and its powers. The saying goes that if you go there and pray to the Four Face Buddha, your wish will be granted but once granted you have to return there to give thanks by buying some flowers and making an offering or things will start going badly for you.

I’ve never really found the reason to go because I’m a Christian so it’s not really aligned to my beliefs but my wife is Buddhist or more like a free-thinker and I respect her beliefs.

Anyway the backstory is that this year hasn’t been a great year for me in one particular respect. Something’s been going on pretty badly in my life and well I do what I do, just fight on and pray every night before I sleep.

Then just a month ago my wife revealed something to me. She said that last year she was in Bangkok and she went to the Erawan Shrine to pray for me at the Four Faced Buddha. The wish she made for me came true and things were really great for me towards the end of last year. If you follow the saying once something comes true you have to go back and give thanks but she hasn’t been back since. She thought maybe that’s why this year hasn’t been good for me.

So this week I’m in Bangkok for the Netccentric regional meeting and my wife asked me to go and give thanks on her (actually mine since the wish was for me) behalf. Ming tagged along.

When we got there the place was crowded with people and we didn’t know where to start. We started looking around the shrine and found a counter that sold dancers but didn’t find anyone that sold the joss ticks and flowers and all.

Ming ended up walking outside and we came across some roadside stalls. A lady motioned for us to go over to her stall and she asked if we were praying or giving thanks.

I said “giving thanks” (Ming said “praying”). So she started gathering a package of joss sticks and flowers and all for us and then asked Ming for THB2,000 and me THB2,800.

Ming and I looked at each other in a manner where I knew we were thinking the same thing. The package had joss sticks, some cigar sticks, small elephant figurines and flowers but even at THB2.8K that’s a lot of money.

I said to Ming “WAH SUPER HIGH MARGIN THIS ONE” but we both decided that we can’t negotiate on these kind of things without seeming insincere to the Four Faced Buddha so we just took it . This is what I got for THB2,800.

Upon paying, an assistant of the seller brought us around the Four-Faced Buddha and taught us what to do. Start from the front, then pray, then go counter clock wise.

Once we were done she brought us to another stall right outside the shrine where they were selling birds in a cage. She then asked us for another THB1,000 each so we ponied up the money. I couldn’t help but notice the woman selling the birds was an amputee (she had an arm but no hand) so I thought to myself I would give the money to her anyway.

We released the birds and then we were done.

As we walked away from the shrine Ming turned to me and said

“You know what… I’m very sure we just got swindled there”.

I nodded and said
“Yeah… but it’s hard to negotiate these things and if they’re using God’s name to cheat people then it’s their karma.”

I later started Googling around on how much I should have paid instead for what I got. The answer is about THB500 (as opposed to the total of almost THB4,000) that I paid.

So that’s how I got cheated at the Erawan Shrine. If you’re going there then I think this blog article here gives you a good idea of where to buy your stuff and what to do.