What's Mine, Is Mine

I was born in1952, went to primary school in 1959, and to secondary school in 1965. Then I went to Singapore Polytechnic in 1969 and graduated in 1973 (repeated one year because I slept through some classes). I couldn't get a job until June 1974 when I joined the RSAF as an instructor, with a 3-year contract. After the military stint which ended in June 1977, I bummed around and visited Perth from April 1978 to Sept 1978.. Came back to Singapore and got a job with United Engineers which was then located at River Valley Road/Clemenceau Ave junction, where now sits UE2.
My brother-in-law knew the engineer there and convinced him to take me on although they never had a female assistant engineer before. It didn't work out well because a lot of male workers there apparently never seen a female in their field and everywhere I go, I disrupt work. These men would stop whatever they were doing and stared and even once when I was in the radio room, they found all kinds of excuse to go in to look.. My work involved the installation, service and repair of radio equipments much like the HAM radios but much bigger and more powerful. It was at UE that I met my husband to be - I was the asst. engineer and he was the technician. At first we were just colleagues but when I left, we started dating and soon enough we got married after an extremely short time.. I joined UE in Aug 1979, left mid-Oct 1979, and we were married in Feb 1980.
He proposed the same way that most people do then - "let's go apply for HDB flat". Then I worked at the Singapore Experience for a while and soon found myself pregnant. My mother insisted that we go through the traditional wedding although we were already legally married. Becauses of this traditional wedding which put us into debt and because HDB flats suddenly became expensive (a 4-room unit which was about $18,000 then, went up to $45,000 - much too much for us), we decided to make do with the 3-room unit that hubby co-owned with his father.
Hubby lost his job with UE and got a low-paying job at Singapore Slipway and I found myself pregnant again. We struggled for nearly 3 years and he was laid off when the economy went bad. For the next 6 months, he was jobless and I was contemplating joining the work force again.. We had to borrow from my father and my brother... Fortunately hubby found a job at a hotel and things got better.. I didn't go back to work... Hubby had said to me: "You stay home and look after the house and the kids, I will work, even get two jobs if I have to." or something to that effect.

He did get two jobs - while working for the hotel as a technician, he also had a part-time job doing maintenance for a group of condo units. For a while it was okay but one day the company paid with a bad cheque and that was the last we heard of them.. By this time, he was paid more at his hotel job and he went from technician to supervisor and then to assistant chief engineer.. The money situation improved and we cleared our debts... All this time I handled the finances and kept house and brought up the girls.. I spend money wisely and do splurge once in a while but always within limits.
After 10 years with the hotel, hubby changed jobs and now works for a very large (in terms of money) property developer/group and he travels a lot, all over the world to check on the various buildings. This year hubby turned 55 years old and got part of his CPF - it wasn't millions but the amount is substantial that we didn't have to worry about our daughter WAR's university fees and living expenses but that doesn't mean we could foolishly splurge.. At the moment, we have applied to have CMW be the co-owner of my father's HDB flat, in case he should pass on, then at least we still get the house.. We need to pay up the full mortgage on the house if CMW is unemployed at the time of transfer. We need $50,000 for this..
A few months ago, CMW was about to leave for her holiday in Bali and she asked me for some cash. I told her I only got $150 in my purse and managed to borrow another $100 from my broither who was lunching with us then. Hubby took out some cash from his pocket and I told him he need not give her that. He replied : "It's my money, I worked, you didn't."

I thought we had an agreement all those years ago - I stay home to look after the kids and he go work to earn the money. What's this?? "What's mine, is mine"???

My job as a housekeeper (yah, lately that job hasn't been well done), a cook (nowadays we eat out more often because I hate when there are leftovers), a baby-sitter/nanny (when my kids were young), a tutor (my kids were taught more than what the schools could), a laundry-service and goodness know what else, entitles me to whatever he earned. He should thank the stars that I don't go for branded goods and such.. that I prefer home-made clothes (because they fit better and are more comfortable) and I also instilled in my kids that they don't need expensive things... Of course there's also value for money.. Sometimes you have to pay a lot for stuff that are good and lasting like well-fitting underwear..

But when it comes to things like a T-shirt, why pay $50 for one shirt when you can get 10 for $5 each? I do have some rather expensive cookware though.. One set cost $600 (bought when hubby's pay was $600 a month) and another set cost $2000 (this one came with a free refridgerator and washing machine, which cost about $1400).. This was a deal I could not resist.. Anyway, the first set was bought in 1981 and still cook well and the other set is now 8 years old.. Value for money...

Okay, I think I got carried away.. the point of all this is why did hubby suddenly talk like that about money?? Influence from the "boy-friend"?? I heard he complained when I asked him to tranfer $50,000 into my account the other day.. this is so that when we go to do the ownership transfer at the HDB on my father's house, and if hubby is not in Singapore, I would not have any problem.. He thinks I want the money for myself... Ha!

MONEY MONEY MONEY..

Infidelity

Rated PG : My 2 girls were conceived the natural way and they came into the world the natural way. They were not found in the drain or the dustbin.
Again, the Oprah show had me thinking about my relationship with my husband. On this particular episode, there was this guy who had cheated on his wife for 15 years and he finally admitted his infidelity. Still his wife stayed with him (which upset one younger woman in the audience who questioned her decision) and Oprah said that it was her choice given her other options which was to leave him and live the rest of her life without a soul-mate or find herself another man who might do the same. And since he admitted to the affair, he probably got tired of it anyway. Then there's another couple where the woman blamed herself for her husband straying, saying she neglected him over her career and her baby. But she doesn't care if he continued to have physical relationships outside of their marriage but not the emotional kind.
This brought to mind my relationship with my husband. If you have read the past few installments you might have gathered that I don't sleep in the same house as my husband these days. So you might ask what about the physical part. Well, I can only say that our bodies had been "conditioned". We got married in1980 and you know what they say ... that when you are a certain age you do it twice a day, then as you grow older it's once a day, then once every other day.. etc, etc.. In 1991 (after 10 years of marriage), we had gone through all those stages and were sort of at the once a week phase, when hubby was assigned overseas for one month, come back for a week and go again. That was tense but after a few months we were "conditioned". After about 3 years he was back in Singapore but we became a once a month couple.
Then hubby changed jobs and this time he was assigned overseas for 3 months at a time and we were "conditioned" yet again. After 6 years of that he came back but it doesn't even matter if we don't hold hands anymore. I don't know if he was ever unfaithful to me when he was overseas but it doesn't matter if he was.. He's there, miles away, if he needed relief then there shouldn't be any blame but if it was of the emotional kind, then that's another matter altogether.
Lately, hubby has found himself a "boy-friend" who he could talk to and I think they are not just talking about the weather and sports. This "boy-friend" is a twice divorce guy with 2 kids and he see my husband more than I do .Just the other day, hubby returned from an overseas trip. On the way home, he called me to ask if I can join him for lunch at the neighbourhood coffee-shop. He called me only because he know that the "boy-friend" is not available on Saturday. So I met hubby at 1p.m. for lunch, stayed till about 2.30p.m. (trapped by a heavy downpour) and then when the rain stopped, I went to tar-pow lunch for CMW. While waiting, hubby called the "b-f" and despite my telling him that I want to eat char kway teow later, he still made dinner plans. Hubby likes the char kway teow at Margaret Drive, but he prefer dinner with "b-f" although he did say that he ate the Penang version while overseas. Still...
At about 3p.m., hubby received a call from "b-f" and was leaving the house when I made a joking remark : "Wah, see me for less than 2 hours, now going to meet boy-friend, 3o'clock till dinner time!" He replied: "Jealous ah?"
JEALOUS?? Not me. If I was jealous, I wouldn't look the way I do. I would look like Cindy Crawford or Elle McPherson or maybe even Oprah. She was heavier than I ever was and now she looked great. I'm not jealous - just a bit upset and concerned.. that my husband prefer to spend time with a guy and I wondered what they talk about.. I've sensed some changes in hubby's attitute towards women and children.. he's been passing quite a few degrading remarks about women and refers to all women as bitches, forgetting that he has two daughters and a wife.. This is probably influence from the "b-f".. I could gripe and complain and it's getting worse.. now he has become obnoxious - an opinion I shared with CMW.. This could be grounds for divorce...irreconciliable differences.. But we are not headed that way.. I just couldn't be bothered..