This is my first house. I remember buying it together with my husband in 2006. It has been 11 years since we officially became the owner of this house (although we still share its ownership with the bank).It isn't a big one like 2K square feet bungalow. But the feeling of a first-timer-house-buyer in that year was indescribable. My late father was very excited too I guess. He often visited us at least thrice a month to stay over during weekends and had intermittent long and short family conversations while enjoying meals or TV shows together. Sometimes in early morning or in the afternoon, he would sit on a wooden bench on the patio just to have some fresh air while watching cars on the main road not very far from our house. Many other times he would greet neighbours and passers-by on the pedestrian lane of the housing area next to the house fence to show his genuine countryside courtesy. Well, this house is located not exactly in the heart of the city but neither it is built in a small town or in a village. I prefer to call it a suburban area because it's located in between Kota Kinabalu city, the small town of Manggatal and Tobobon village. That's what I love most about this house.
This is the interior part of the house. I used to call it 'my centre of peace' since here is the section of the house where I meet my guests, friends and family members whenever they come to my house. Once, I really enjoyed accepting people to my house as if every day was an open house. Both expected or unexpected. Do you want to know why? Because my children were used to be an extrovert type of personalities when they were a little kid. They really enjoyed it when people came to our house. In Sabah, we call it "Aramaiti" which means "Lets party!". There were times when without asking or informing me, they surprised me innocently with the visits of the little angels imported from the house of our neighbour next door.Yet time has changed people, things and many situations. My dad passed away in 2015 and my children have grown up as teenagers. Well, you know teenagers in this cyber-era and smartphones invasion- they spend much of their time in their room either drawing, chit-chatting with friends over their smartphones or watching Japanese or Korean drama from the internet. My one and only boy was addicted to online games. They no longer take pleasure in the casual face to face conversations with friends or family members. Maybe I will write another entry about this next time. In this entry, I just want to focus on my home sweet home. At the moment of this writing, I am sitting in another living room of a different house. In fact, the living room is still the centre of my peace. When sitting alone in it, I used to have many ideas about life and future life. Another sweet home but with totally different situations. In shaa Allah, God allows, I will write another entry about my new centre of peace. Till the right time comes.
