1, 2, 3 and 4…explained

I talked about 1, 2, 3 and 4 sometime ago and I said I will explain on the numbers soon. But naturally I have forgotten about it until I was doing some housekeeping of my drafts and noted it.

Well, 1, 2, 3 and 4 stands for the number of bedrooms in the houses that I have stayed since young and soon will be staying. It sound a bit “Darwinian” but yes, it has been an evolution sort of for us.

1

One first house (I think we moved when I was still 4 or 5 years old) was a single storey 1 bedroom in Old Klang Road. It was a rented house and the rental was just RM30 per month. RM30 in the early 70’s was not that cheap and we were not that rich to buy our own house. My dad was a lorry driver with low pay back then and he had asthma troubles. But it was convenient and had a large area at the back of the house. There are some shortcomings but despite that, we stayed there for a long time until the landlord decided to develop the piece of property somewhere in the late 80’s.

2

The next house we moved was a 2 bedroom low cost apartment couple of kilometers away. It was smaller than our first house but the facilities were better. It was rented out for RM300. Pretty steep increase in rental but as all of us were still studying in our secondary school, my dad decided to rent the house instead of buying one. Life was tough – my dad was not feeling at times and we had tough time meeting the rental commitments. There was no lack of food and cash for our schooling expenses (included expenses for my college) though. That came in right on time every month. We moved several houses within the area when the rental went up and we could not pay. Between the years, my dad tried his best to purchase a house for our own but it did not really materialize due to number of reasons. In the late 90’s, my dad had retired and the obligation of taking care of the family which included 3 school going sibling fell on my shoulders. My dad helped a bit by doing some part time job but it did not help much in the beginning.

3

By the time we moved to a 3 bedroom shop apartment in Puchong (the place that we are staying at the moment), we have somehow “moved up” financially. All of my siblings except for one had started to work, so payment of rental up to RM500 was not much a problem and in fact we could have afford to paid more. We opt for a shop apartment compared to a condominium or a double storey house because of the convenience (we did not have a car when we moved, so having the shops nearby was a plus point). Finally, we had enough to start saving. I even had enough to get married and buy a car at the same time. Based on the total income and the type of expenses that we had, we know that it was a matter of time before we could purchase our own house. The only thing that was stopping us was getting it at the right location, price and project.

4

In about 2 week’s time, we will be making the final move to a 4 bedroom double storey house which will be legally owned by us. No more rentals. I am glad that my parents are still alive to see and live through this moment. Opting out from buying a decent house due to expenses for our studies (putting 2 of us through university) is one great sacrifice they made. All the criticism from family members for us not buying a house (included one close relative from my dad’s side who boasted that he had bought 4 houses when he came to visit us in our rented house years ago) will be buried deep down by next month. Just can’t wait for the big move though.

14 days more to go and counting…

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