Dear friends,

The measure of one year seems to be stretching with every newsletter! Well, we roughly made the annual mark, but not quite the Christmas/year-end deadline. Good thing Chinese New Year celebrations last fifteen days; this does get out in time to wish you a happy year of the rat! Here are some eventful excuses.

The day after arriving in the US after our South Africa trip, we were informed that we had to move into a two-bedroom apartment within the same university housing area…and this moving out of the old and moving into the new had to happen within 3 days! Having barely recovered from travel fatigue, the shock of the bitter New England winter weather, and the start of a new academic semester, this came as a big surprise to us. It’s just 300m from our previous digs, but we were reminded again of the amount of stuff one can accumulate in a small place in a short time. Our trappings are lean again. We thank God for this blessing.

Three days before moving, we returned from astounding Cape Town, South Africa, where we started writing this letter. Probably an apt place to start, looking back on 2007. It’s been an amazing experience for both of us. Hwok-Aun made his way to South Africa in October 2007, starting in Johannesburg for a dissertation field work visit. Jacqui joined him (with purely hedonistic intent) just before Christmas 2007. Hwok-Aun’s mum joined us shortly after and we spent 4 weeks traveling 5,600km through parts of Namibia, and the Western and Northern Capes of South Africa. Our experiences will be difficult to capture in just a few paragraphs, so here is a sampling (more on facebook).

Christmas lunch with the Elstons

Kolmanskop (aka Ghost Town), former diamond mining town

Cape of Good Hope, the most south-WESTERN point of Africa

Dead Vlei, site of spectacular sand dunes

Quiver tree (aka kokerboem), Augrabies National Park

The beauty and charm of the region are unlike any other and we look forward to returning again some day.

Noteworthies

• Hwok-Aun defended his prospectus in May and plunged into full time dissertation work
• Spring break with Hwok-Aun’s youngest brother in Toronto, Canada; Niagara Falls in the winter
  
• Said goodbye to many dear friends who have graduated and/or moved overseas or to another state. We’ve been graduate students long enough to have to face this sad inevitability, but it’s heartening to know that great people are touching lives in various corners of the world.
• Camping trip in the White Mountains in May
• Hwok-Aun spent most of his summer months (end May to October) in Malaysia unknotting red tape, but mostly doing research and frequenting kopitiams
• Appreciating how difficult it must be for many couples/families who have to live apart after living in different continents for 4 months while Hwok-Aun conducted his field research
• Opportunities to reconnect with friends in Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, South Africa and other parts of the world, including our 4^th ever visitor from Malaysia since coming here

Looking Ahead

2008 promises many exciting challenges and major life changes. Jacqui completes her final semester at UMass towards her graduation with MA in Speech Language Pathology at the end of May; Hwok-Aun is back in the solitary groove of dissertation writing, trying, in between asking why am I doing this?, to process a mound of data, notes and interview transcripts from the past eight months.

And, best for last, Jacqui will be carrying more than a scroll as a graduation present. Exotic travels to South America will have to be shelved for the moment as we prepare for the arrival of our first child at the beginning of May. Hence the two bedrooms, and that’s a wrap.