Things Women Can Learn from The Bachelor

So over here in sunny Perth, we have just concluded a season of The Bachelor Australia, where 25 heavily made-up girls compete for the affections of one tall, tanned piece of deep thinking, beach strolling muscle called Tim.

In a painfully typical ending, the final episode came down to two girls - the Blonde vs. the Brunette, the Sweet and giggly girl vs. the Sexy, seductive siren... Anna vs. Rochelle.

Anna eventually won.  And all the relationships gurus around the world gave a huge sigh of relief.

Now, what can we learn from Anna the victor?

1)  Men don't seem to mind a bit of chubbiness.  In Tim's case, he preferred it.  Anna's double chin featured quite a lot during the season.  She was obviously one of the bigger girls in bikini.  Other than shots of her chest deep in water, or running into the water, back to the audience, the camera didn't really love bikini-clad Anna.  Rochelle on the other hand, had the body of a super model.  Wait, isn't she a pageant winner?  Rochelle's body didn't sway The Bachelor Tim.  I guess his body would be enough for both of them.

2)   The saccharine sweet smiles where your eyes crinkle up at the edges and husky giggles while flipping hair in any random space actually works!  Doesn't matter if your usual face is quite serious, even mildly fierce, in the presence of you love, make sure you melt down in a serious of uncontrollable chuckles.  It doesn't matter how you are actually feeling, men absolutely love it when you hide honesty behind those ever enduring shy giggles.

3)  Never, never tell a man you love him unless he either 1. tells you he loves you, or 2. asks you to say it before he does.  Why you would want to be with no.2, I'm not sure.  Ask Anna.  She was indeed the last of the final three girls to tell Tim that she loves him, and she got the man.  Playing hard-to-get has never been better exemplified.  Men love the chase, even if it is obviously an illusion, as in The Bachelor.

4)  It is absolutely essential to stoke a man's ego.  However, you should only do it when absolutely can no longer stand it and starts pouting his lips and stomping his feet, demanding for a list of things you love about him.  In fact, go ahead and put every attribute you love about him on paper and present it to him along with point 3) of this list.  He will love it.  Doesn't matter if you thought at first that this was rather "superficial", especially after only knowing him a couple of hours a week for 13 weeks.  Just block out your intellect and do it anyway.  You will Win!

and finally,

5)  Declare and repeat your virginity loud and often.  Make him feel like the only one.  Constantly remind him that if he choses you, he would have gone where no other man was ever important enough to go.  Even if you've had ex-lovers, call them "guys", never use the term "boyfriend" in front of your love, unless you are referring to him.

So now you know how to win at True Love.

Read the news report here.

Parenting 101

Luna

Luna is our 7 week old Siberian Husky puppy.

We have had her for 3 nights and it was really a huge jolt into the reality of parenthood for Mr Bauer and I.  

Luna needs to be watched all the time.  Leave her a second and she is chewing at my slipper, the mat, the cables (big nono!)  Do my own thing for awhile and she has pee-ed on the carpet and poo-ed somewhere else.  The first two nights were a big adjustment for us and I don't think we realised exactly how closely she needed to be watched.  By the 3rd night though, I was well trained.  I began to observe her tell-tale potty signs - sniffing.  A couple of times I second guessed myself, especially since she didn't go even after putting her in the designated indoor potty place, but I turn my back for a couple of seconds, and lo-and-behold, she has gone where she's not supposed to.  

This is just the beginning, but at this stage, Luna is really teaching us more about parenting than I am house-training her, and it is all good.  Because when I look at her sleeping body, I forgive her all her wrong doings and feel that it is all worth it.  And isn't that what parents usually say?

*update:  Luna successfully whined for our attention, and did a No.1 and No.2 outside when we let her out!!!

Rust and Things

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I've been losing it  a bit too often this week.

I think it is a mix of hormones and having to make quick, varied and big decisions that's turning me into a nightmare.  I feel really sorry for Mr Bauer who has to put up with me and am leaning on his graciousness towards me and the grace of our Lord to forgive me.  

When they say "don't sweat the small stuff", they did not properly define "small" - and what used to be "small" stuff suddenly seems like the most important decisions we can make... what color to do the kitchen cabinet in, expensive stone top or cheaper True Form?  Which couch do we get - We will be looking at it for the next 10 years in our lives!  Which mattress to buy?  Do I judge my back by its ache now or do I judge it in 5 years time?  I feel so embarrassed with myself for stressing over something as superficial as aesthetics, but one thing I know I can't stand is a thoughtless home!  This is a real wake up call that despite constantly reminding myself not to, I am still building up treasures in earth!

Recently, Mr Bauer offered to buy me a bicycle so that I could cycle to school.  He always had a dream of being able to cycle to school, and I have many many fond memories of cycling around my neighborhood as a kid, so we were both very excited about it.  He told me to choose a bike I like and boy, I  must have spent at least 20 hours researching the difference between steel and alloy, and deciding between colors (damn colors!!) and wicker baskets.  I kept feeling like I had to make the best decision with our money, had to get the best bang for my buck, had to not get scammed, had to not have a bike that will break in 2 years, had to, had to, had to.  I asked myself - which will eventually give way to the dreaded rust?  The answer is steel apparently, but even with aluminum, the moderately priced bikes have mixed materials that it is not guaranteed rust-free.  And seriously, what am I even doing thinking that I can somehow beat the system and find a bicycle that can overcome the odds?  Everything we have will eventually decay.  

Everything will eventually be destroyed by rust and moth.  My lovely kitchen cabinets, that I've spent days and night thinking and rethinking about, my mattress that I chose after lying of more than 10 beds in 3 shops, my couch that I ok-ed only because Mr Bauer liked, even though it wasn't THE perfect one I envisioned.  And yes, even this bicycle I'm stressing about.

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  [Matthew 6:19-24]

Perhaps I'd better put my energy into enjoying this time of building our home with Mr Bauer.  I suspect it will bring a sweetness in years to come :)

Praying Together

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I was inspired to post this after reading The Power of Prayer.

It has been almost a year since Mr Bauer and I committed to praying together.  The road has not always been smooth but here are some reflections.  I hope it can encourage your in your own prayer journey, with or without a partner.

1) We started off by praying together during our daily quiet time.  I'll admit, it was very awkward for me at first, having never dated a Jesus-loving guy before this.  I felt terribly exposed and was worried about being judged for my prayer.  It was however, quite easy to be disciplined with our quiet time because we were both in different countries at that time and had committed to regular Skype sessions where we discussed the devotion material.  We used Moments Together and occasionally James Dobson. Both can be found on Crosswalk.

I feel that this season in our courtship was essential in helping us to recognize and embrace each other as God's choice for us.  I remember leaving each Skype chat in awe that this amazing guy I previously only dreamed about was actually real, that I could share my most intimate lover, Jesus, with him and not feel condemned, neglected, or preachy.  I squealed to Jesus several times about it :)

2) When we eventually found ourselves in the same country, we started to include mealtime prayers.  This was a lot harder to keep as neither one of us had previously been in the habit of saying grace aside from hurried and mumbled thank-yous. We forgot about this countless times and even gave up on it for a while. Sometimes, I would remember, but would be too self-conscious to remind him.  This was probably because I did not want to appear like an over zealous nag, and also because I was not personally convicted of praying over our food.  Through encouragement from scripture and our quiet time material, saying grace comes to us naturally these days and we rush to remind each other to ask God to bless our food, while lifting up any other concerns we have.  It is a good way to count our blessings and feel content.

3) Before, praying together was very much dependent on how we were as a couple.  If we were in love, it was so easy to pray, but whenever we were upset or hurt, it seemed like the most impossible task.  I'm so thankful to my partner for being steadfast towards prayer and leading us to pray even though we may be in the midst of a most terrible fight.  I can't imagine how difficult it must be for him, but we both testify to God's amazing grace that dissolves anger and resentment when we bow our heads in prayer together.

4) It has become much easier to pray.  We pray over anything.  When either one of us complain of a headache or a worry, we respond less with human words, and more with uplifting prayer.  Having a partner pray for me is the most comforting and intimate experience to me because I immediately look to Jesus and not to my partner for strength, answers and joy.

5) Before meeting Mr Bauer, my prayer walk was not great.  Praying together helps me to keep a better prayer life and gives me greater confidence in our relationship.  It increases my attraction for my partner and reminds me to pursue gentleness and purity.  

Praying together may be the single most important thing we have done as a couple and I am so grateful that I have someone to pray with every day.  I trust and believe that this simple act will transform our marriage to be more loving, forgiving, and victorious.  Try it and see if it works :)

God is So So Good

This is the story of how God provided a home for us.  It is a long and probably boring story, but I hope it will give you some insight into looking for a place in Perth

Since the last entry, it has been a journey of faith and prayer second guessing and desperate begging for God to help us!!

For the last three months, we had been spending every weekend going to Home Opens and every weekday searching for listed houses we might like. We had a budget that restricted us to certain parts of Perth and did not even bother looking at prime areas as that would just be much too expensive. 

Well, to be honest, I  didn't like any of the locations we had been searching around because I just found them much too ulu (deserted) for me.  Of course, this was only because I've only been here for  five months and am only familiar with areas around my university, my rented place, church, and town.  Any other part of Perth just seemed very foreign.  The two houses we put down offers on were also not in the ideal locations, to me, because it would take me ages to get to uni or town, but we thought that was all we could afford.

Thankfully (now), those offers got flatly rejected by the sellers.  Of course, when it happened then, we had to lick some small wounds and wonder if we should have increased our offer or go with what we believed was the value of the houses.  There was really a lot of self doubt and each time we made a decision, we had nothing really to go on except that we had committed this search to God and that He was smarter than us.

Neither of us had much experience in real estate, with me being a total foreigner, and Mr Bauer being practically a tourist himself, and while we did try our best to do some proper research googling, we could never be very sure if we knew what we were doing.  

Anyway, as mentioned in my previous post, we were on route to yet another disappointing Home Open (It was probably the worst one! They posted 2 bathrooms, but one of them was located OUTSIDE the house!!! ??!!) when we spotted a tiny sign showing a Home Open in the prestigious and sought after Murdoch Chase area.  We decided to just take a look for fun because we definitely could not afford something here.  It was very spacious, with large bedrooms and a huge back yard.  The only problem was that it was not furnished, but that was perfect for me because I would love to be able to design the interior myself!  (Mr Bauer would disagree, because he likes to be able to just move in.)  When Doug, the agent selling the house passed us the price guide, we were like meh.  It was completely out of our price range, as expected.  In fact, when Mr Bauer told him what we were prepared to pay, he almost had to scoff before telling us that that would probably not be considered by the owners.  Yes, house hunting in Perth is a very humbling experience.

I don't know what exactly happened in the next day, but somehow this much-too-expensive house was still on our minds and Mr Bauer, specifically, couldn't stop talking about it.  My practical side came out at this point and I just one-ear-in, one-ear-out to pacify him, but apparently, he had done some research on this area after seeing the house and told me excitedly that it was actually a VERY GOOD BUY in terms of value for money, location, investment etc. etc. and some other financial stuff that was too boring for me to remember. 

Anyway, the next day, we came up with a figure to offer.  It was about $50,000 less than what the owners expected, but that was really all we could afford.  The agent accepted our offer and told us that he will let us know what the owner thought.  We waited in agony for the next 48 hours before receiving a call from Doug, who annoyingly could not tell us over the phone but needed us to come down to his office the next day.  

We kept praying for God's will to be done.

The next day, while in the car, just before going to see Doug, we decided that if the owners counter-offered with an increase in $5000, we would be VERY HAPPY (jumping for joy type), if they increased by $10,000 we would not be jumping for joy, but we would still accept it.  And with heavy hearts, we promised each other that if it went any higher, we would both accept that it was not the house God wants for us and go back to hunting.

To our wonderful joy, Doug told us that the owners would like just $5000 more.  My jaw literally dropped.  I had to pull the offer papers towards us to make sure he was right.  Mr Bauer almost could not keep his poker face and flashed me a tiny smile.  

Being two people who were crazy in love, we thought that that was the end of it and the house would be ours once we got our finance approval sorted.  Having gone to many Home Opens and left our contact details in several places, we got approached by a Mortgage Broker who wanted to help us to find the best loan rates for the house.  We were probably too overjoyed that we naively and lazily went ahead with him without doing more research.  He presented us with the latest bank rates and told us that NAB was the lowest and that we should go with NAB.  He was also super confident that we would get the loan based on our stats and kept buttering us up saying the "banks would jump at us".    We really thought everything was alright and we would have no problems getting the requested loan amount approved.  He really made us believe that we did not have a thing to worry about.

FOUR days later, we got a call from this broker telling us the horrible news that NAB had rejected our loan application because of some inflexibility they had regarding documents needed.  We were obviously upset and thought that it was now over for us, that no bank would want us because we simply could not provide the required document.  My six sense only kicked in when the broker sent us a text saying "nothing can be done.  there is no other option.  so what are you going to do?"  I was quite taken aback by that text.  What do you mean "what are we going to do?"  Isn't it his job to give us more options?  Even if the major banks wouldn't lend us (yet to be proven at that point), surely you can find independent lenders or give us some other options???

I told Mr Bauer to screw him and we decided to look for our own lender.  But we didn't have much time.  According to Perth ruling, buyers only had about a couple of weeks to get finance approval before the house would be put up for offer again and it takes time to redo all the paper work, and wait for approval.  And that stupid agent had already wasted some of that time.  The next couple of days we were just emailing lenders and trolling forums to try and get some direction.  On top of this, both of us had final assignments to hand in!  It was quite a stressful time, but thank God, Mr Bauer managed to get a contact from Westpac who was willing to help us.

Not only did he give us a solution to our missing document problem, he revealed that Westpac's rates were MUCH lower than the NAB one that idiot broker offered!  He even threw in the Black Altitude Credit Card with 40,000 bonus points that could be used as Frequent Flyer miles!!!  When we were searching for a credit card, we could not even consider the Black because it was just way too expensive and we thought we did not meet the criteria.  Needless to say, we were very thankful and could only hope that Westpac would approve our loan in time for the offer and acceptance period.  

And...

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Just seven hours ago, we got a call from Westpac informing us that 

Hurray!! Our loan has been approved!!!  

 

Leaving things with God has helped us to get things we originally thought were impossible for our current position - a home in a fantastic location (It is a walk to Murdoch University!!!), a low low interest rate on the loan and a great credit card that can save us travel money!  We are absolutely thankful for his tender mercies to us, even though we had doubt in our hearts.  Indeed, Jesus is our Great High Priest who perfects our imperfect prayers to God the Father.  All we had to do was pray!

The Day Before Tomorrow

Last Saturday, we found the perfect future home for us.

It was a chance encounter.  We had just come from a disappointing Home Open, and were driving to the next one we had on our schedules when we saw this beautiful house that was having a Home Open just then.

It was way out of our intended budget, but was actually quite reasonable for what it offered in terms of land, location and potential returns. So... we put down an offer for it!!!!!

Tomorrow, we will finally know if it will be our future home. 

What is a Marriage Proposal?

Diamond rings, red roses, bended knees and sweet champagne.  That is the image of marriage proposals I have been surrounded with, growing up in Singapore.

Being in my late 20s, I have shared the joy of several marriage proposals from my friends, and have experienced two failed proposals myself.  One of them took place in the unbelievably romantic setting of the deck of a cruise liner, under the night sky.  The other took place on a bridge along Kallang where I was asked to "invest in a property together".  Haha.  What seemed so overwhelming and emotional then, now seems like a joke I chuckle at sometimes.

Some people believe the most important part of a marriage proposal is the element of surprise.  I think both of my previous suitors may have taken that too far, because on both occasions, I was so surprised that I vehemently, and quite violently, declined.  When I hear stories of my friends' proposals, they were certainly surprised; however, not by the intention of marriage, but by the proposal scene created lovingly by their boyfriends.  That is sweet, I think!

As for Mr Bauer, he has brought up the subject of marriage so many times that I've lost count.  The moment I agreed to try out a relationship with him, he wanted to confirm that I was ready for marriage.  After a week of being together, he asked me what I wanted in a husband.  Within a month of our long distance relationship, he asked me if I would consider marrying him, and this continued on for the next five months, with me always cheekily replying - you check with my parents first, then ask me!

To my surprise, that was just what he did, flying into Singapore for 12 days to spend time with my family and friends, and then asking my parents for my hand.  That was very sweet!

I really appreciate Mr Bauer for taking away the element of uncertainty and insecurity that can come with new relationships.  He made it clear right from the start what his intentions were, so that I could sit back, relax, and observe if he was indeed the one for me.  To me, that is the best kind of marriage proposal.  Of course, I am still waiting for my surprise proposal, which he promises will not be forgotten, but only because I want to have a good story to tell our child(ren) next time, not because I need it to believe his intentions.