Feeling back HOME

This December 2010 is the happiest month because I am at HOME.. the greatest feeling of going back is the feeling of all hassle things at home. My home is not a typical quite family and peaceful environment. We all have loud voice (I'm loud at home only). My parents and my sister are having high volume voice, we like shouting and yelling each other, it is not fun but that's my family type. I always wondering our neighbour might get used to it already and think our family always have arguments. While we tell about A topic it will develop to another D, G.F topic, from the past to present. It's funny somehow when I think of that. And, it is normal for me for not talking whole day. we are not a romantic family with lots of hug and kisses or warmth words. Well, this is not only my family and I think all families in this world would have the same experience. All I can say here is I love my family :D..


Another feeling is when I came to the temple and prayed in Sanskrit and Indonesian. I really love this feeling and how I missed to recite those mantras for ages. It feels fresh and enlightened my mind. I always pray "please always lead and guide me to the right way" because deeply inside, my heart telling me something has changed and I might go to the wrong way.

and oh yeah, I met my long lost friends. We havent met for ages..It was really nice while we were talking and laughing. Love you all my friends and sorry because we have lose contact for a long time and we will lost contact again. However, I believe...
"It does not matter if the person you used to close with or maybe this person has significantly changed and forget about you. Yet, the most important is you will always know and remember the feeling you have shared together. This feeling will never be replaced in your heart." We enjoyed the laughter and happiness and wish it will last and we hope we could forget all misery and sadness events in the past. In the end, all these memories would stay still in our deepest unconscious mind.

I might blame How could he/she change and totally different from the past, but then I realized that I am not the same person as yesterday and so does everyone..

Smile, how simple it is..

Today, I was inspired by the teaching of an American monk named Vimala Ramsi and I would like to write it back what I've got from the talk. He taught about meditation and how simple it is based on Sutta/ the origin of Buddha's teaching.

Meditation is purely to bring happiness for us thus we always see Buddha with a little smiling expression. We always think that this life is full of pain and suffer. We feel suffer because we have desire and attachment. While we can fulfill our desire we feel suffer like sadness, disappointment and all negative feelings come up. Could you still smile when you feel suffer? Yeah, everybody could.

Smiling every day would bring happiness even though we are in a bad mood. It is part of meditation though. When you aware with your anger or sad feeling you would not take it personally and see it as "it's only..." . You will not fight back or indulge in that feelings but just see it as "Oh, it's anger.." not "I'm MAD!"..... Of course, you have to practice it over time and I believe everyone can do it. It's important to know, hear the truth and when you can just "laugh" to it, you would feel relief and happy. Knowing the truth sometimes makes you deeply painful but then when you can just laugh to it, Why should I bother? It is a good thing!

We could radiate love and kindness by smiling, it shouldnt be reflected by our face but we can smile from our heart. When we see people suffering we CAN'T help to let go their pain, because it is "theirs".. we can not do nothing and we do not have to add more people by sharing pain..(this is the ultimate point for me, because I always think we should be sad in the sad situation or meeting sad people). Well.... we do not have to laugh or crazily smile while facing terribly sad situation but instead of doing that we could radiate our love and kindness, hope that they will be happy in their life and make them smile. Believe it or not, smile expression can stimulate positive signal to our brain and bring out happiness feeling. Plus, it is contagious! when we smile to others they (of course) have to smile back so that we give them one shot happiness ;p..

Overall, keep practicing smile to everybody and spread happiness, love and kindness from our heart. When happiness is an option, why we can not choose it as part of our life, having fun with problems and hurts (this is my words) and in the end you just look back and smile to it.

2010 Memories

WOW! It is almost the end of year 2010. Today I was reading one of my friend's blog and it is inspiring me to update my personal blog. I totally forgot about my own blog~~ sorry my blog :p

This time I am going to reflect back my 2010. Once, my friend asked me "how do you think of 2010, now is December.."

well...well.... All of sudden every moment flashed in my mind. What I have done so far..? what things i feel not satisfied? and in the end I can't regret of everything happened in my 2010.. what I can say "each year has different story, different moment and different goal"

This year I have noticed something changed with myself either I'm going mature or less mature :/ haha..

anyway, I realize Who Am I indeed. I am still a shy and reserved girl but this year I could do something that I would have never imagined. I do not have to explain what I did here. I could have lost the "OLD" me. Fortunately, it does not happen.

Thanks to people who I met this year with their totally opposite mind, attitude and behavior. The good thing is I can stand on myself, cause it is morality and psychologically challenging. I can't judge how bad people from their behavior because I know I am not good enough and not my business though. And it is totally wrong if I am comparing myself with others~ Everyone has different world.

"Letting go" lesson~ I saw how hard to let go someone who we love (because he/she leaves you or you have to leave him/her). Tears, angers, hatred, and denial. Forgive is the hardest part and I believe the harder we can forgive this person, the harder we can forget. By the way, it is not only about love issue, also for every relationship we have with family, relatives, and friends.

It is easily to say yeah.. I know. What I know, it is important to protect your own heart and yourself. After all, it is just mind-game where we do not focus much on how suffer and desperate your life cause actually it is not as worst as you think.

I met many people and see how people actually lost in their life, you know you're not alone. And some people who are really confidence with their life path and success. I might be the one who still do not know my future and I am desperately need a stable life. Every night I tell to myself, Ok, D.. what's next? what are you going to do next? a year has gone. My mood was up and down lately. I have finished all things here (just a little more) and I'm ready for the next stage of my life..

I would miss all FUN and relax time in Malaysia (maybe relax is not the right word because I always have something to do, finding something to make me busy or just to kill my time. I'm easily bored actually. However, it is considered as RELAX compare than super busy women at my age).

In the end, again, I'm struggling with myself, "Come on! what do you want?!" ~~!!

A Story of Emotions

"Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feeling lived:

Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others, including Love.

One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love.

Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment.

When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help.

Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?"

Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place for you."

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. "Vanity, please help me!"

"I can't help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat, " Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked, "Sadness, let me go with you."

"Oh..........Love, I am so sad that I need to be myself!"

Happiness passed by Love, too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her.

Suddenly, there was a voice, "Come, Love. I will take you." It was an elder.

So blessed and overjoyed, Love even forgot to ask the elder where they were going. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went her own way. Realizing how much was owed the elder.

Love asked Knowledge, another elder, "Who helped me?"

"It was Time," Knowledge answered.

"Time?" asked Love. "But why did Time help me?"

Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered,

"Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is"

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This story I copied from a website. I feel touched with this simple story so I'd like to share with all readers here. This story reminds me with the real world where people has forgot about what is Love and caring people we love.

Last but not least, the last favorite sentence:

"Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is"

It makes me really believe that Time can make people value love, respect and grateful with what we have now.

A brief notes

My hobby is one of nerds' hobbies and you may feel I'm so nerd because I enjoy studying :D.. and yeah I absolutely enjoy it. I like facing books but more than that I really love the "class" experience. In these 20 days, I met different people from different country. I'm gonna jot down a note from what we have shared and it is something new for me. It is not about the English lesson I have got sound too academic!) but it is interesting stories I have got.

* My UK teacher pronounced "bus" with "bos" . Then one of my classmates asked her that how to say "bus"? was it "bos" ? I thought I was the only one who was misheard. Later on, my teacher told us that in UK, every 15 KM distance, they speak in different accent! Let's say "cup" it is pronounced 'kap', but every 15 KM you can hear different pronounce, 'kop', 'kup'. And not all accent sound like in the "Harry Potter" .. the best English accent in that movie , according to my teacher is Hermione. She has "Posh" accent it is similar like "high-accent" style in UK.

*No offence about this. Malaysian-chinese loves to have white skin color instead of tan! why? it is silly though, but my friend said that it was because people would misunderstand that person was Malaysian not a chinese if she had "tan" skin color.

* In Iraq, there is no mailing address. Then, how they post goods? It is only through public places where they can get their posts. Also, if we want to find one's address there, just meet in public places. Plus, there is no electric there.

* In Tunisia, there are seven lakes (I don't know the name) and everything is thrown in these lakes (e.g stones) will be floating on the surface of the water. In these lake , there are two water taste which are salty and sweet!

* There are millions of camels in Australia.

Race does or does not matter?

It sounds a big topic, but I just want to share my opinion here..

What is culture shock?

Culture shock is the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown culture such as one may encounter in a foreign country. It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not. This is often combined with a dislike for, or even disgust (moral or aesthetic) with certain aspects of the new or different culture (www.wikipedia.org).

As a foreigner have you ever experienced this?

Personally, staying in Malaysia I do not experience much cultural problems. As Malaysia and Indonesia share similar culture roots. However, we all know that Malaysia has multicultural environment and this has helped me to learn from all interactions and observations with many people from diverse countries, race, religion, etc. It might be not so much "Culture shock" for me and overall of this topic only my opinion.

I should put my words carefully here...What I have noticed is the race discrimination is very obvious in Malaysia either it is personal prejudice or in the workplace. This has made me a little uncomfortable because this topic always comes in the daily conversation, website, newspaper, etc. On the surface, it looks peaceful but if we are going deeper a lot of issues appeared. How they judge a person from skin, from your face feature, from what nationality and keep mentioning what race you are. Why it is so important?

It was pretty annoying because I have an Indian name with Chinese looking. They thought I was Malaysian-Chinese or Indian-Chinese ( =_= )'' because of that I had to explain where I do come from and why I have Indian name instead of Chinese name so many times..

Also, there are Chinese culture, local, Indian culture of organization. For local company there are more Malays and so does Chinese company. In short, people create the organization culture and they would prefer to hire people who share the same attitude and culture. Another thing that heaps of peope complain is customer service manner. It is very rare to see customer service or shop assistants always smile, greet you, or say Thank you. "Customer is not a King".

In my country, we also have this problem and it is a huge country with hundreds ethnic, races, and religion. People are having their own prejudice towards particular ethnic. Foreigners are scared when they see news about ethnic war, bombings and how unsafe my country. But, indeed no matter what race are you, we always say we are from one nationality. We do not emphasize I'm Indonesian-chinese here or she is another Indonesian-....( any race). And the funniest one, a Malaysian-Chinese told me that he did not know there are lots of Indonesian-Chinese in Indonesia. And again, I have to tell them how huge and diverse people that my country has.

In the end, this is just my story. We can not judge or generalize my thought about a country or race. Malays, Chinese, or Indians they are good and expecially in my class everyone is friendly, welcome and very helpful. The thing is how open our mind by not judging people from their skin color, race and religion?

A big sister role

Hola! This afternoon I had lunch with my friend. All in sudden I talked about why I like to teach and help people in studying. I have no burden to do that and yeah maybe I just want to help them with my capability in knowledge..

I told her, It might be my role in the house as a big sister I used to help my brother and sister in studying. Suddenly I missed that memories. When I was child, my brother is my best friend in the house and my enemy as well.. I used to help him to borrow his friend's notes or homework, went to his friend's house at night, and wrote in rush. I complained and scolded him how I felt embarrassed because of his laziness..

Then I realized he was just a small kid who might not know what is "study" meaning, very playful, had no worries about grade, and doesn't like to study. and yeah how many people like studying?.. I wish I can be like him never worried about studying!

But then as time went by, my bro has changed and more responsible with his study. He is still lay back one but no worries he knows what he has to do..

A big sister usually has a leadership personality, able to guide and control their bros and sis, take care them, listen and give comment to them. However, in the reality not all big sister has this kind of capability. Many of them like me and my friends who are a big sister always been bullied by our siblings. I can't find the reason maybe our character is not strong and fierce enough..we become the weakest and being burden with the responsibilities to be the best and as a model for our brothers and sisters. The eldest somehow acts as experiment, if we are failed to do well then it the brothers and sisters won't ever do the same, all we get is shame and regret. But if you are the real big sister with a strong character, you can make your siblings unite and care each other. All the best for big sister~ <3