Enjoy Life Part 3: Bucket Lists Galore

I'm not staying in Malaysia forever. There, I said it. I am not a PR. I am under a working permit. When your passport is issued by a foreign country, when your visa says you can only stay up to a certain date, you have to accept the fact that you have a point of expiry. Sure, you can always renew whatever visa you're holding. But you have to be aware that life can and will happen.

Quoting something I wrote somewhere else:

Visas, passes, contracts will end or get rejected. Boyfriends will propose, weddings will be celebrated, babies will get birthed out. You’ll have to plan and decide whether your kids will be home schooled, whether they will go to public school, or whether you will spend truckloads of cash to send them to an international school. Loved ones will get sick, loved ones will ask you to come back home, loved ones will ask you to stay there but in the end it is your heart that will realize it can’t spend another 12 months of separation.

You'll kick the bucket eventually. You'll go home or move somewhere else.

Thus my friends and I decided to write down our "Malaysian Bucket Lists" while eating at a burger joint in Petaling Jaya. We're solemn, like that. We each wrote down 20 items. Wait, was it 20 or 15? Anyway, my final list now contains 20.

Our items ranged from crazy to ordinary. One included "join a fashion show" on her list. I wrote cook 10 Filipino dishes (not in one go, but ugh, I haven't started this one yet). We simply wrote down everything we wanted to do in Malaysia while we were here, before we each went home or moved on to our next nations.

I've crossed three items out. Perform original songs onstage - check. Catch a live concert of a well known international artist - check-Ed-Sheeran-check! Go to a Chinese open house - well, I went to a Chinese Wedding (yes, I will write about this Peter, soon, when this series is over), so I'll say check to this one.

I've even managed to do something I never in a million years thought to even include in the list: get permanently inked. It wasn't something I had always wanted to do. It was something I did out of thoughtful, careful spontaneity (oxymoron, I know). I wanted to prove several things to myself and several things to others, too. One: I don't fit in a box. Two: Faith, hope, and love - especially love - should last forever, as in forever. Three: Too many times we're stuck with words and we never actually jump. I wanted to go from saying "Let's do it!" to actually doing it.

With that, I still have a lot of things left to do on my list. I've several lined up: join fun run, watch Hillsong live (not included in original list, must add it there ASAP), and cook one more Malaysian dish (I cooked two, but I used ready made mixes, lol). And then there are the 15 others (I know I'm messing up with your math).

Life's too short. We should seize the moments and make the days count. I'm determined to complete my list before my time in Malaysia runs out.

Let's enjoy life!

Post Ed Sheeran Concert. And, yes, I went on my own.