do you know that you are happy

only miss the sun when it starts to snow
only know you love her when you let her go
only know you've been high when you're feeling low
only hate the road when you're missing home

so goes the song playing softly in the background. it must be such a hard way to live your life, i ponder wistfully. never knowing the value of something and never appreciating it until it is gone. not that i am someone who knows myself in and out, left and right, through and through.

but to never being able to know the value of something until you no longer have it, happiness seem  forever out of reach. i know someone who says he is not sad, but neither is he happy. perhaps it is because he is not sad that he doesn't know that he is already happy. without one, he is unable to acknowledge the other. is that how others are also living their life?

the longest

june and july have been the longest months of this year. it started out with my nephew taking a break and staying over for 2 weeks after his final exams and the kids on a one week short break from school. it was a flurry of activities, despite the fact that my kids were going back to their finals after the break, and an orgasmic explosion of food for the visitor. japanese, korean, italian, malaysian, cantonese, western, teppanyaki, ipoh chicken rice, we tried it all for a varied palate. university and college visits to near and far, 1km fun run at the break of dawn (that was prior to the injury), baseball batting (who could ever forget that) and the subsequent pain, trauma and surgery.

then my brother and sister-in-law, who were bringing their daughter over to continue her high school,  came over for what was suppose to be a week, sans the soon-to-be college-attending daughter. there was a problem with the visa and she had to stay put in hong kong until everything was ironed out. that week was filled with nerve wrecking phone calls and fishing out contacts in the immigration to speed up the process because the school term was starting without her. it was also filled with another round of satiated food sampling; ipoh chicken rice, bak kut teh, more japanese, more korean, more local, more western and more italian. in between trying to resolve the visa issue and keeping the in laws entertained, whilst trying to juggle work and the kids, i had more than my handful.

at the end of that week, the father went home and in his place came my niece, along with her grandmother and aunty. more visitors. more entertaining. that week i was swamped with resolving the first day of school, opening bank account, sorting out phone cards and settling a teenager into a new home, new environment and new lifestyle. the visitors wanted to try (vomit) bak kut teh and ipoh chicken rice too. at one point in my life i had chicken rice every single day for lunch and i still could not get enough. that was definitely not now.

after another week of more food, stress, work, going nuts and a lot of driving, all the visitors have finally left. the girl is now settling into a new chapter of her life and we are all adjusting to having her around.