The husband had good news to share last week. He had been confirmed in his job in an O & G company since joining December last year. We are ever so grateful and humbled by this expected piece of information.
There's a good reason why.
It has been more than 6 months since we were hit with adversity. The hardest kind.
Before his present job, he had worked with a company for more than 10 years. He worked his way up to his last post. In the course of his work, he was never disloyal, always reliable, been through thick and thin despite some problematic staffs, crazy workloads and even partial management. Certain individuals were given preferential treatment despite zero productivitiy.
It was in late 2006 when the company started to face problems. Future projects were scraped thus making the company fundless. Whatever on-going projects had to be done with very limited resources hence the management and employees had to suffer massive paycuts. It was a matter of time before they had to downsize. In the end, only a handful of people stayed on. Since the husband was one of the major shareholders, he had to bear the burden. For a year, he had no salary. Whatever monies that they get would be channeled to pay existing contractors, employees, office rents and bills.
So how did we get by during which hubby had no salary for a year? With personal loans and whatever savings that was left in his bank account.
With personal loans, we use them sparingly for our household expenses and other miscellaneous. The credit cards (to fill up petrol and other necessities) were used to the max. Life was very hard for us then. But we persevered.
The first practical thing we did to ease the burden was to let go our first car, the proton perdana but we maintained our second car for him to go to work. We cut down on a lot of things considered extravagant drastically. We don't go on Cuti-Cuti Malaysia holidays anymore. School holidays means the kids were going to stay with their grandparents. We stopped eating out, stopped weekend outings and shoppings were done strictly for groceries. We even stopped buying clothes during that frugal period.
During Hari Raya, we wore our previous Hari Raya clothes and amazingly, the kids were cool about it. I remembered the girls said, "Tak pe ibu. Baju kita pun masih cantik lagi tak koyak pun. Kasut raya lama pun elok lagi..." Sayu gile aku masa tu.
During these trying time, hubby applied all kinds of job that suit his qualification. Many times he was politely turned down because they (the advertisers) thought he was too qualified for a mere managerial post. Sometimes I would ask him, "Tak pe ke turun pangkat from COO jadi manager biasa je?" To which he replied "At times like this, choosing job is not an option for me. I'll take whatever that is offered (reasonably) to me".
After unsuccessful attempts in getting suitable job, he received an impressive offer and he accepted it immediately. Macam tau-tau aje. The job couldn't have come at a better time when our savings was about to dry up. Most importantly, its a steady job with perks lining up for him if he works smart and hard as he is.
For what is worth, it makes me think that life is indeed a circle. Hari ini kita di atas, esok kita di bawah. We'll never know what's going to happen in the future. For me, this invaluable experience has taught us to be prudent in our expenses, to be grateful and count our blessings for whatever Allah has bestowed us upon and to appreciate all the little things that we took for granted before.
If its not too late to say this, congratulations Abang on your job confirmation. Alhamdulillah syukur! We made it.
