In the name of Allah, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful.
What’s up, guys?!
Today is prominently April Fool’s Day but luckily the Singapore government was not fooling us; the Singapore-Malaysia border has opened after two years of closure!
It is a cause for celebration for those who have been yearning for quick getaways.
As for myself, I have no plans to cross the border yet. Right now, my attention is on adjusting to my new lifestyle and my brand and businesses.
Working side-by-side with my husband in doing deliveries has been a roller coaster. Not every couple can stand spending every moment with each other. Fortunately, my husband and I have a few different interests that give us some breathing space when we need to. Most importantly, we love each other enough to withstand each other’s nonsense.
I have never been yelled at as much as I have been yelled at and I have never laughed as much as I have been laughing now.
In the end, I think, if you want to survive as a couple, you gotta take the hits from your partner without immediately reacting negatively. Hits here do not refer to physical altercations, of course. Hits here refer to the emotional missiles, verbal angry outbursts, snide remarks, etcetera. Then, when there is an opportunity to respond kindly to the hits, take the chance to express your unhappiness. At least, this is how I make my marriage work. For example, during our delivery, when I told my husband that we need to go towards a certain direction yet he chose to go a different route and caused us to be late, I held in my “I told you so” beration first. After completing half of our deliveries, when he got in a better mood and I judged that he would be able to accept criticism, then I let out my “See, never listen to me, right? I told you to go through my way, right? We could have reached here earlier. But you shout shout shout at me and made me sad.” Of course, I would pout a bit in order to express the unhappiness while doing away any intention of being mean. It helps a lot, man. He would always apologise and console me thereafter. A lot of people tend to pay more attention to good timing during the courtship period. By right, your sense of good timing should also last throughout the entirety of your partnership post-courtship. So please practise good timing and patience whenever your partner makes you upset. There really is no point in adding fuel to the fire. Even if you know you can win the argument, choose to lose first in order to win later on. So that when you cannot win the argument, you will still win your partner’s heart.
Now that I am mostly working on weekdays with my husband, I have more free time to work on Street MOB Clothing (SMC) and Smiling Greens.
Finally, we have taken a baby step forward with SMC. Managed to reserve the business name under Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, a Singapore statutory board. So now we have <120 days to complete the business registration, which is a fair amount of time to make the money for the registration fee. Its founder who is our good friend, Danial, entrusted me with the ownership of the business.
It took me a while before I realised how I have uncannily taken ownership of assets. I am a part-owner of my parents’ house, I am an owner of a car only my husband knows how to drive, and now I am a business owner. This is just crazy. I would have been more impressed with myself if I did not have to owe any money in owning all three. Alas, now my husband and I are living a “kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang” (make ends meet) lifestyle.
It is very challenging, of course. I am giving it three months. If it does not work out, I will need to get back to working on a permanent basis. It does not have to be full-time. Maybe part-time will do.
However, right now, we are happy to help Wild Boocha with their deliveries. Thanks to our good friend, Shike, for sharing with us a platform where ad-hoc delivery requests are posted and thanks to Danial for advertising on there and highly recommending us to his bosses for the job when we responded to his ad. Last week, when we started delivering for them, we only had a few orders each day. This week, we ended up with more each day! And we are so ever grateful to the Lord for his Providence and to Wild Boocha for entrusting us with their deliveries!
As for Smiling Greens, I will need to overhaul the concept a little bit. Since we are not able to operate as a microgreens provider, Shike and I agreed to scale it down to a blog. Once it is ready, I will shamelessly promote it here and I hope you can support it by reading the articles we post on it. Hehe.
Yeah, I remain hopeful that things will fall into place with good tidings and blessings from the Almighty.
April is going to be an amazing month with all the restarts and of course, RAMADAN IS COMING!!!
Let us be excited together!
It is going to be a challenging but fun month!
And Allah is Ar-Raafi’, The Exalter. – MM
Metropolitan Muslimah 