Singing - is for Every one.

Have you ever heard a duck singing?
Next question, do you want to hear a duck singing? Quack quack all along?

Well, if you truly want to hear a duck singing, you can ask me to sing. My boyfriend (again??? Yes he is my truly frenemy. That's why I love him) reminds me regularly how bad my voice is.

But I love singing! Since I was a little girl, I always love singing. My music knowledge and taste are even better than my boyfriend  (at least on my own opinion).

Then, do we have to stop doing something we love just because people said so? No! Totally no.
Even tough I realize that my singing voice is like a duck quaking, but he can't and never stopping me.

Singing is for everyone. It is free, fun, and need little requirement. There is no rule saying that only people with moderate to good voice are allowed to sing. No way!

My point is do not ever let anyone to control your life. Your right. No matter who are they, they do not have any right to say that you can do this or you cannot do this. As long as you do not do something bad and play by the rules, so what, just said, "kiss my ass if you want to stop me."

And do not ever stop doing something just because people think you are not good at it. So what? If you do not want to listen my singing, just get out. It's easy.

Do what you need to do. Life is so short, right? Then again, make it so damn valuable, every single second. And make it fun while it lasts!

Hormones

It is the time of the month again.

Maybe most of the women will understand it. The time of the month when you will upset over small things, being that super sensitive bitch, and feel like you need a conflict to feel better (being temporally drama queen). Women understand, because women feel it, actively, so I guess we share the pain together.

I guess, men, on the other hand, do not really understand it. I have a boyfriend, so I know it. I have to explain to him, regularly every month, that sorry it is the time of the month again, my bad.

At that 'time of the month', I will be very annoying. There's a moment even when when I hate myself. I feel so not confident. I feel that I make more mistakes than I do usually.

When I was younger, in high school until college, never I have to deal with 'the time of the month' like this. I was happier back then. I do not feel "PMS" like now. But when I started working and being more serious in relationship, the PMS is getting worse. The stress, the workload, the insecurity, make it harder.

I do things, you know, to tackle the issue. I keep doing exercise, twice a week. I keep my self busy, reading books or watch movie, so I'm not daydreaming which can trigger the bad thinking. I even control my appetite, I avoid sugar and salt to prevent bloating,  I eat a lot of yogurt and fruits to help me feel better about myself. For most of the time, it is working, but sometimes, I still hate my self.

We can do things to minimize the impact. I tried hard to be the better version of me at  that time. But it is not always easy. Sometimes, no matter hard you try, a teeny tiny problem can lead to explosion in your day to day life. And that's OK. Because you are only human after all.

Men do not understand that, because they did not feel it. The back pain, the mood swing, the swell in the breast. They do not understand the hormones. I said to my boyfriend, if I act like a jerk sometimes in my PMS, please just suck it up. Please be compassion and patient. It sometimes can out of my control.

You know, I do not want to hate my PMS. One day, I'm sure I will missing it, if I'm old enough and never have to experience it. It's a moment in women's life, that we have to believe, any storm will be passed out. It is a cycle, there is time when you feel not good in PMS, but after it finished, you realized that your skin is glowing, your hair looks better, and overall you appearance and mood is much better.

I guess, I still learning that it is just life. And life is suck sometimes, but how wonderful, if we can fight as hard as possible, and feel the victory against ourselves?

Sweet

What is the sweetest gesture in your relationship?

I have so many actually. I like it when he kisses my forehead and hugs me every time he says goodbye after a date. I like it when we hang out every weekend in a small restaurant and I get tired and I put my head on his shoulder and he kisses my hair. I like it when we walk together and he will pull me and put himself in front of me if there is a car rushing.

Relationship in day-to-day basis is not always sweet. We meet almost 7 days a week. Well, it is natural if sometimes we feel saturated and got into a fight. But there is no leftover in the fight. Before we sleep we will make it up.

But, those every little detail. The sweet gesture we do to each other. It lasts much longer than the fight. It makes me warm.

It's so crazy. I'm missing him right now. Yesterday we just met, and now I'm missing him and think about all of those details.

How a bunch of hormone I am!

Complete Failure?

Two days ago I had a little emotional breakdown.

It was the night of my birthday. My boyfriend called me in the midnight, said happy birthday with joy in his voice, and started to singing. Suddenly I cried- nonstop. 

He's getting upset (as always every time I cried). He said he hates tears and weakness.

It's all about my 27th birthday. I get all emotional that night.

I said to him (yelled actually), "my life is a complete failure".
I'm 27 years old, I do not have my own apartment or house, I still living in Kos,
I do not have my own car.
And what about career?  My boss, when he was 28 years old, he already becoming CFO in Korea. Me? I do not have anyone to lead.

I know, I sound like an ungrateful jerk.

But I have my reason. Since I was a kid, my family and my friends see me as someone who will be very successful. I always be in top of my class, every single year, since elementary school until high school. Never missed that top percentile. I was number one in my class in SMAN 5 Bandung (one of best school in my birth city at that time). I was studied in ITB (you know, the Best University in Indonesia - well this might be debatable for some people, but ITB is really really good). I have both my bachelor and master degree from ITB with scholarship. I'm not just that diligent girl. I have vision and determination, I'm so tough about my work. And look where I am right now.

My boyfriend was very upset to me when I said all of that. He said that I'm very ungrateful. He said that if I'm a single parent with 5 kids, and I do not have any money, then I can say that.
He said, with all of my degree, with my career right now, with my experience as the only girl my company sent to Japan last year to working there. I should not be so harsh to myself.

I got his points. But my standard is not that 'ordinary'. I cannot easily satisfied.

I know that my reaction was super bad that night. I had a tiring day, and with all of the hormones, I felt extremely upset that night.
It is so extra when I said I'm a complete failure. No, I'm not a complete failure of course. But it is not good enough for me.

Being hungry for self-accomplishment is different with being ungrateful. If you are easily satisfied, you will not achieve the best potential. Never. It is important sometimes, in some level to feel disappointed about yourself and make it better.

I refuse myself to sit tight on my chair and said oh my god how wonderful life is, when birds is chirping and flower is blooming, and my life is just that ordinary.

How much I hate that ordinary word.

Life is so short, right? Then fight for it. Fight like you keeping score with life. Fight like it is so important to you that in your deathbed, you can proud of your life. Proud with everything you achieve. 

Fish

I like to criticizing things, I guess..

Anyway, friends of mine have some fishes as their pets in the office. Some of them have small aquariums (literally small, like 15cm x 15 cm) or very small aquariums (like 10 cm x 10 cm). Btw, can I called it aquarium? I do not know what is the standard dimension for legitimate aquarium.

So, they said that they do really love the fishes (golden fish or cupang fish (Betta sp.)). They treat them like real pets, give them names, clean their super little aquariums, give them food, change the water every two days, and etc. etc.

But every time, I go to their desk and see the fishes. It looks stressful. It looks like unhappy actually. They just stay still, not swimming happily regularly (well maybe they cannot swim after all, because it is a very small aquarium).

So I said to my friend, I guess your fish is not happy. And they said, how come, I just give them food and look there are some accessories in that 'super little' (I added the term super little by myself) aquariums.
I replied, how come they can be happy, the aquarium is similar with my Kos in the human world. And there is no internet, Netflix, TV in that small aquarium. How come you expect them to be happy for all of this time.
Imagine, if you live in a small kos, and you cannot go anywhere. 24 hours in your kos. Doing nothing, no television, no friends, no space to breath. Though you have good food (not sure it is a good food, it must be boring to eat the same food all the times), you will never feel happy if you are living in that kind of prison with no interaction with your species.

And you still can assume that they are happy. Naive or you are just that dumb?

That is the basic problem with human in general. For their own ego and happiness, they buy the fish or bird or rabbit or dog or cat or iguana or whatever animal, you call them as your pet, you said you love them, care about them, but you put them in a prison, small cage, never go outside, give them same food every single damn day until the sweet release of death comes after them.

Do you think that animals is emotionless? They can feel a damn. It is ok to treat them whatever you like, and you can just assume that they are happy, just by giving them the same food every single damn day. No, they have emotions, even though not as complex as human. They can feel, they can be stressful. I do not want to have any pet, if I can guarantee to give them a space to breath. If they can run in reasonable space, or if they do not have interaction with other animals. No, because unless we can give it to them, we just put them into life sentence in a prison.

Stop being so naive, use your brain to think. To have empathy for every creatures in this universe. Thing twice, if it is you, do you want to be treated like that?

Again, the mindset is the problem. I always said again and again, never think that human is everything. That everything in this earth can be used only for human's happiness and satisfaction. It's an arrogant mindset, and totally wrong.

Never think like that. Use your brain.

Put the Purpose

Today, one of my friend casually asked me, then what will you do in life?
It start with very casual conversation about Kapuas river, the tribal life there, and 'who's gonna win the fight, wonder woman or black widow'.

Then she asked me that question suddenly, out of nowhere. It quite strike me like lightning in the middle of the day. It's important question, right?

So what will you answer if someone ask you that question. What will you do in life? What is your life's purpose?

For girls, please do not answer, "I want to get married with someone nice." Please don't. It is 21st century. Please do not humiliate yourself with that kind of answer. It's like one of the most swallow/super ordinary girl's answer and I hate it for its ordinary. Like, marriage is your super important goal in life and that's the only thing you are breathing in.

So I answer her, I'm not thinking about it thoroughly yet, but I want participate to save some tiger, to increase awareness about animal protection. And I want to go around the world as a gift to my own self. I want to see the penguin and whale migration. And see the Aurora in the North. And try as many as cafes all around Europe and America. That's what I want to do. 

To be honest, put purpose (a real and good legitimate purpose) is not easy. And do it, it's even more and more harder. I've already visited 5 countries so far, but to go to Europe or America, it is difficult. Money is the biggest obstacle of course, but also the time to go. I have to work, and I love my work. Do I have enough time to do that? And for the tiger, I already participate to donate money regularly, but how far I will help them with little money, and never directly involved.

Human life is just so short. 60-70 years is already very long for human nowadays. It's like you wake up in one morning feeling young, healthy, and energize. And one day, you wake up again, you are already 26 years old and not enough amazing thing you do in life.

Do you know Malala Yousafzai? She is Pakistani and she received Nobel Prize for Peace when she was 17 years old. And when David Letterman asked her about her goals in life, she said I want to put  women's education as purpose in my short life. I want to fight so young girls in my country and anywhere in the world can receive good quality education. She has very brilliant and honorable purpose and she is working on it, again brilliantly.

She's amazing. And I'm not achieving anything brilliantly yet.
Gosh, time is keep ticking, like a bomb. And what have I done so far? Will you ask the same question to yourselves? What have you done so far? What will you do? What is purpose in your life? Or will you be that 'faceless' person, with no significant life purpose, and the only life goal is getting married.

I hope not. So help me God.

Still sinner, eh?

When you like to watch Game of Thrones very much but the next day you preach to the world about how religious you are, and how important is purity and holiness. It's complicated to understand you know.

I rarely talked about religious matter in social media (anymore). When I was in senior high school and two semester of my college, sometimes I quoted some verse in Bible. But after finished my college, never anymore. I do not know. It does not mean that I do not believe in God. It's just social media is not a right pipeline for me. Just too many 'proud of myself' trap in that.

I'm totally OK with religious people who like to share their believe in social media. It's their choice, and no one should give any comments about that. But, sometimes I cannot stand myself when I saw some friends who in one day posted IG stories about how he/she loves to watch Game of Thrones or Fifty Shades, but in several next day they will quoted some Bible verse, or posting photo that they give some service in the church, or you know basically act like a very pure and non-sinner person.

I mean. Be realistic and honest. Game of Thrones and Fifty shades is full with nudity and sex scene.  I think Bible definitely against that kind of smut.

So my point is if you want to dedicate your social media life to spread about your religious thing, first thing first, make sure that you build you image properly in daily basis. Do not act religious and posted it all over social media, but then you watch soft porn. It's two faced you know.

If you decide to spread the good news, just stop doing the opposite things.

I cannot respect someone who judge someone who does not going to the church, then regularly posted his/her religious stuff, but watch soft porn, or wearing something provocatively.

If you still watching soft porn (not literally porn, but contains nudity and sex scene) and likes wearing dress in provocative ways and like to gossiping and like to hurt somebody else feeling and not generous, please do not judge other people. We are all still sinners then. 

Legaly at Work Place

One day, if you resign from your company, do you want to be remembered as someone nice, very helpful, good at your job, or do you want to be referred as that asshole who finally quit the job?

Nice question, isn't it.

In my office, there someone who will resign soon. He's been working for several years, so many people already knew him and had experience working with him.

Today, one staff come to my team desk and he dedicate his 5 minutes to told us how happy he is that this person is resigned. He said how this person is the pain in the ass regularly, so demanding. He said that his boss also feel very happy to hear the news and can't wait to see the replacement. Well, we laughed of course, it is not that serious.

Actually I knew him because we work closely, and personally he is not that terrible. I still believe that he has a good heart, quite fair. It's just that he is strict, cannot communicate very well with anyone, either vertically with his team or horizontally with other department, and he has problem to control his emotions.  He seemed to be frustrated all the time. He is stingy. It's like, what good memories you left for us to mesmerized? You left almost nothing, literally. So when no one bother and even they feel quite happy when you're gone, it's not their faults. You reap what you sow.

Someday, we all will leave our work place, either by resigning or retired. We all will. Of course, not everybody's thought is matter, we do not have to think about other people's opinion all the time. But I guess nobody wants to be remembered in that way.

So, even we still have to work professionally all the time, and sometimes we have to pragmatic and maybe some people has to get hurt by our working (it is common in workplace). But we still have to be a nice person, for minimum level. Do not blame anyone for our own work frustration. Do not be rude when asking something even when you are a boss. Do not be stingy because unless you are very cute like Mr. Krab in Spongebob, people will always hate you. Just be nice and polite in some minimum level. Be a better person overall. And when we leave, we can leave with good legacy, not only our work, but some good memories with our colleagues.

Art of Survival

I realized it since a very long time. Human is the most selfish creature in this whole universe. Human's arrogance based on the perception that we are more superior than any other creatures in the world is just so absurd. Some received that perception from their interpretation of religion.

I do not want to say that I have deep knowledge about religion. No' I'm far from good. But I have finished read my Bible for the third times, even when I was in junior high school. I'm a ferocious reader. I read anything very quickly, so then I read my Bible over and over when I was younger.

In Genesis, as far as I remember, God puts Adam and Eve in Eden to "take care" of it. Take care. Not conquer, not ruin, not exploit greedily. Then on what ground people have this though that Human is so much superior and then we have rights about everything in this earth, we can exploit and treat as we like.

No, take care means that we are given responsibility to guard it, to be kind and respectful to the earth. Because earth is not ours. It is God's. We do not have a right to ruin it or think of that as our belonging.

Yesterday, I was very upset. I read a news about how a government official called the people to kill a tiger. Rumor spread is that the tiger is not real animal, but some kind of ghost, something supernatural. It is a very stupid, idiotic statement to say. People who still live in superstitions, prejudice, and that kind of stigma makes me totally feel nausea.

Short story, they kill the tiger, brutally. Not once, but six times they piked the pity creature till died. Then they did skinning to the tiger's face and took of it's front teeth.

It makes me feel disgusted and upset to my bones. I made several ig stories to spread up the news. Retweeted several tweets. So people will know what this government official and people there has done.

How come they do that kind of thing. Because they think, that only their lives matter. As long as they feel comfortable and happy, they do not give a shit about others.

It's not happened only once in Indonesia. Several weeks ago, there was a news that an orang utan has been tortured till death, then it was cooked and eaten. They did it, not because action of survival, but for pleasure, to feed up their stupid ego.

My boyfriend said, we cannot really blame the villagers. He said they are 'orang kampung', do not have good college degree or proper education. But is it true? That only people with college degree and proper education can respect other creatures. I don't think so. It is not about education or degree at all. It's all common sense. I remember I read that people in Sahari, before they kill their prey, they will sit down and said sorry to the creatures. They kill it because they have to eat, not because they having fun doing it. Tribal sahari people in the past, did not have any college degree. It is purely common and ethical sense.

I always think in this perceptive. Human and plants and animals are neighbors. We share this earth. Food chain is unavoidable. It is an art of survival. But there is ethic, common sense. There is statue of limitation.

We cannot live without animals and plants. Face it. If they do extinct, we will extinct as well at the end of the day. We need each other. Prey and predator need each other. One, just one extinction will distort the nature balance, and it means the end of the world, eventually.

I know that now I cannot do much. I donate some amount of money to WWF for animal and forest conservation, regularly every month. I curse every cruelty against animals,  in cosmetic or fashion. I never use plastic straws anymore. I tried in my best to preserve the nature, even with the simple actions.

The most important thing is to have the right mindset, which will lead us to better actions as human being. Do not ever think that this earth is only created for human. Do not ever think that any other creatures in this earth is our own belonging. Start to respect the earth, out home. Start to respect the animals and plants, our neighbors. We cannot survive without them. We cannot.

Melbourne

An unforgettable evening in Melbourne, when I admired a beautiful Yara river with amazing sunset as background.

The ambience is very good. Beautiful lights from the buildings, it's just so romantic. In Indonesia, I never seen something like that.

Yara River - Melbourne

Yes, Melbourne is a very sophisticated, and diversified city. I spent only two days actually in Melbourne with my two friends as part of our Oz's trip. But it's very memorable. We visited some popular tourist attractions of course. Because it is autumn in Melbourne that time, we visited Royal Botanics Garden Victoria. It's a cozy place, there are many people just sitting there the other playing some balls with their dogs.

Royal Botanics Garden - Melbourne

 

 

Royal Botanics Garden Victoria - Melbourne  

We spent our afternoon there, taking some photos (of course, we are Asians) and basically just chilled out. 

Then we visited Etihad Stadium. But that day there is no match, so we cannot go inside.

Etihad Stadium - Melbourne 

Melbourne with the crisp autumn.. One of my unforgettable memories. So lucky to go there.

Famous Melbourne Tramp

Autumn in Melbourne

I think there will be some moment in your life where you feel void and alone.
Though you are surrounded by your partners, friends, and family, I guess there will be time that you feel no one really understand and you should solve your problem alone.

When I was a kid, I though if I have a boyfriend then I can always depend on him, that he will always understand me. But the fact is that we cannot. There will be time, when even your closest confidant cannot really understand you. It's normal and natural. It is a reciprocate relationship actually. He must feel the same about me.

No matter how happy and healthy our relationship, we are still two different entities.
Love movies, poems, songs are responsible to distort that fact. In movie, poem, song; love and relationship are portrayed as these overrated, helpless romantic that do not actually exist.

Someone that always can understand you is not your boyfriend/girlfriend. It is a robot, programmed specifically and customized to your personal demands.
I do not even believe about the soulmate thing. What I do believe that we are connected better with certain people, and we build chemistry, and we work very hard in a relationship by compromising.

At the end of the day, the only one you can really count to is your own selves.

I felt it sometimes. My spirit goes down suddenly. Things getting very hard and dark. I always (literally) tell my boyfriend about my problem and my worry. On most of time, he will help me out, give me advise, give me suggestion, and we will solve the problem together. But on some cases, I cannot even make him understand, my deepest and darkest problem. Who only myself can solved it, can get rid of it.

What I learned so far, the best way to take care of yourself and to get out of that dark situation, is to prepare our mental, our mind. When we almost give it up, said it to ourselves that we will not. When we are afraid, said that everything will get through at the end of day. Said frequently to yourselves, that you will never let anything to crush you, that you are fire and wind. That you will make it, anytime and anywhere.  Motivate your own self.

Be strong mentally. And you will be okay.