A few weeks ago, Kak Apoo and the rest of the kakak2 were making fun of my “Saya tanak kawen, saya kena paksa kawen!” trauma of last year. Things have obviously changed a bit because I am no longer driving people mad with all those tantrums (thank God!).

So where have we gone from where we started?

Well, for one, I don’t think of marriage as bad as I did before, although I still cringe when people start talking about marriage. I don’t go out of my way to encourage people to get married or similarly, to discourage them. When people ask me, I just tell them to think about it A LOT and ask for a lot of guidance from Allah.

After one year, I think the things that kept us going were patience, tolerance and understanding. We are both very different people and yet we accept and celebrate those differences. We both understand that we got married at a relatively young age, and thus we cannot expect solemn 200% dedication and commitment from each other. We both know we have our own unique flaws, so we don’t view perfection as a goal.

To Abang Kadir (as Kak Ning calls him), thank you for being patient with me always… when I sing crappy tunes and you have to pretend to enjoy it, when I spend more time on Ebay and Amazon than with you, when I drool over Orlando, JT, Brad and Abang Hugh and for letting me use a calculator when we play dominoes.

Anyway, we went out for dinner at Chicken Tikka. Obviously we’re not going anywhere exotic or exciting for our anniversary, since we haven’t even had time to go for our honeymoon, so it’s quite wrong to go somewhere nice for an anniversary. But the night before, Asma’ and Syazwan took us out to dinner at a really nice Chinese restaurant, complete with a delicious chocolate cake. Personally, I wouldn’t celebrate a wedding anniversary with other people, but I thought their gesture to celebrate our anniversaries together (plus Syazwan’s birthday) was very sweet and thoughtful indeed.

The ambience.

The menu.

The delicious cake.

Duck in Szechuan sauce (40LE).

Duck in black pepper sauce.

Fried calamari with five spices and mushrooms.

Fried wontons.

The first Chinese/Japanese restaurant I've been to that doesn't offer free refills on tea!

Happy anniversary, Happy birthday and Happy going into labour.

I definitely agree with Confucius - "He who knows how to taste food knows how to enjoy life." I think I want to be a food reviewer when I grow up. I wanna look like Nigella Lawson but eat like Maria Tunku Sabri. Sounds like a great alternative to pretending to save lives.