Legal Cat-asthrophe: PUDGi

THIS IS A MISSION STATEMENT :

Nani Yunus and I have decided, after a long thought and she agreeing to it (although she said it was my decision - kids, this is how a marriage works), we are going to move to a place called Giching in 2016. Here's the Airbnb link for the place : https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4458240.

It is in Sepang, just across the entrance to Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi (Jalan Haji Jumani to be exact), 5 minutes drive to Salak Tinggi ERL (the fare will be RM18 one-way now after staying at RM12.50 for a long time). It is 10 minutes to F1 Sepang International Circuit track, Mitsui Premium Outlet and both KLIAs. Seri Serenia, where the new Xiamen University Malaysia Campus is, is just 15 minutes drive from it. There'll be another premium outlet there, soon.

The land is owned by my mom, the real property guru who bought the land in the 80s and can make a bundle if she sells it now. I am thankful for her as a mother and learned all my property skills from her (a book about her is in the planning stage). We never live in a kampung and this is as close we ever get to live in one.

In 2011, we did it by selling our house in BBSA- Bukit Bandaraya Shah Alam at a price we didn't expect anyone would be willing to pay but surprisingly, someone did. We have to apologize because for all you know, we are the one who started the price range for the 20' x 70' double-storey terrace house in that area to cost upward of half-a-million RM.

As we don't have kids, yet (insha Allah when we have rezeki), we could easily relocate and we choose Ara Damansara to be the place we might want to buy a house and we want to try it out first. So, we rent. I wrote a few article saying we should rent first before buying a place and I practiced what I preached. I am renting my current abode and extend it last year until near the end of 2016. Alas, the place is getting too crowded, there will be 7 malls in this area alone with all the condominiums to be completed soon and although LRT will be just 3 minutes drive, it is not a nice place to live anymore.

I did write a few of my books in this house including PINJAM - sebuah novel Anuar Shah, PENTAS and the upcoming PERSONA (all with Fixi) with a few short stories and a few of my Ask the Lawyer books. Nani Yunus did make a good career for herself with Reapfield Property Shah Alam. We love it here in Ara Damansara and it is our first fully gated and guarded community with us, a Malay couple, being the minority (again, I did write articles about this a few times). We love the park behind our house with dogs roaming (wild and tame) and we even feed a few of the dogs, one we name Doggie (yes, we know) and one black poodle we still not sure to name him Dash or Bash. The stray cats Stranger and Stoking don't come here anymore and we lost our cats, Cookie and Muffin, here. We hope they are in a better place.

So, after discussing with our cats, Pudgy, Kiddo and Jelly, we are moving very slowly to Giching. We will still use this current place as our transit home until our tenancy runs out in November 2016.

Kg Giching might just be our retirement place. We are NOT retiring. We plan to never retire. I am very much involved with my legal firm Khairul, Suhaila & Hazlina and Nani Yunus with her 'Property Listings by Nani Yunus' project. We have tried the commute from it to our respective workplaces and we'll be using more public transport than ever. We've been testing ERL, LRT, Komuter, Uber Malaysia services, GrabTaxi and even busses to get around. We will drive if we need to. We will be buying properties in Transit Oriented Development soon as transit houses and maybe rent or sell them accordingly. We will still attend events and lepaking like we always do in Klang Valley.

We are also jumping into the start-up bandwagon with PUDGi - Pusat Urbanisasi Desa Giching, a cafe cum event venue with writing residency planned in the future with involvement, I hope, from Malaysian Writers / Penulis Malaysia (a Facebook page group), Fixi, DuBook Press, Lejen Press or any of the indie publishers who like to support us or do a community-base event. We also aspire to make our home a homestay, an open-air wedding venue and a place for a few agriculture projects. We want to make it communal more than anything else.

We welcome anyone to come talk to us to make it a more vibrant community-based project than just a place to live. We may want to give mostly what we get from it although we are not the ultimate owner. My mom will be very much involved with whatever we do with it. She's a scary woman who knows her way in the corporate and agriculture world. She was the 1st batch of Sekolah Tun Fatimah after all (and I think Sekolah Pertanian Malaysia, which became Universiti Pertanian Malaysia before its current name - Universiti Putra Malaysia). The stories she could tell and did.

So, as 2016 beckons, we are dreading it very much on our new journey. Most of our friends would have known about this already. This is not easy for us and of course, with some rezeki, we are going to make it work. Or we will be 'balik bandar, tanam something' with our tails between our legs if we fail. We've tried and failed a few times with different projects because that's where the fun is.

Wish us luck and pray for us. We'll be updating about it and inviting all to come to PUDGi soon enough.