Mr. Colonel's Guest house

24 June 2011

Our guest house is owned by a colonel and his wife. They are very nice and friendly and they always convince us that it’s safe to be in Ashirvad (the name of the guest house). Ashirvad literally means ‘blessing’, and for us, it’s really a blessing. It’s very comfortable because even though it’s not air-conditioned, each room has a cooler. When any of us fell sick, the colonel and his wife always make sure that we have everything that we need. The servants are also very nice and friendly, they bring us water once we reach ‘home’, they save our clothes when it suddenly rains while we are in the office, and they help me post my postcards. J

The colonel and his wife also check on weekends whether we have come back safely to Ashirvad because most of the times we reach Bahadurgarh quite late, around 10pm, and according to Mr. Colonel’s wife, this area is not safe after 10pm.

Compared with the buildings surrounding Ashirvad, it looks like a luxurious place and after some weekends when my friend got disturbed by strangers (from an old man who made some obscene gestures to another man who kept touching my friend while we were sitting at the back of the auto facing the road behind), reaching Ashirvad is really a blessing. There’s this feeling “Yeah, we’re safe” once we step into the garden. FYI, my friend is a guy, so until now we do not understand why he always gets disturbed by strangers at night. We hypothesize that the many people are drunk during weekends, that’s why we somehow meet weird people every weekend.

The problem with our guest house is the SUPERHOT kitchen!! The window was locked, there was no ventilation at all. I always perspire a lot when I cook. Initially I did not plan to cook even though my roommate bought cooking oil and salt because the condition is just not suitable for cooking, but cooking can make me save a little bit of money each day, so I bought a frying pan and decided to cook the most possible food in urgent situation: SCRAMBLED EGG! :)

Oh one more thing, the view from the roof top was very nice!!! :) I feel like I’m in Japanese drama which has lots of roof top scenes. Hehehehe.

-FP-

The second week at Conserve HRP

The second week at Conserve HRP

21 June 2011 

After 2 weeks trying to design the shop, finally I will be arranging the products SOON. I thought arranging the products on the shelves will be an easy job, I told myself, it’s ONLY arranging products. Just put them in the shelves, that’s it.

However, there are lots of things that need to be noted down during this process. We must record how much stock left in the boxes when we remove the products to the shelves. I’ve also realized that despite the planning that I have had, there are a lot of changes that I must make because first, I’m not familiar with the size of the real products, and second, quantity matters! It’s not a display room anymore, but it’ll be a SHOP, meaning that we will display not only one item of one type of product, but we will show more items and all colors that we have.

Anyway, I feel excited!! :) hehehe.. I Will take some pictures once the shop is done :)

In this second week, I also had a new project: choosing color of artificial leather according to the color of the design. This is soooo fun! It started when Mdm Anita asked me to choose the color from the existing sample of artifical leather according to the color of the design. Because a lot of colors are not available, she told me to go to the factory opposite Conserve and to another factory, accompanied by one of the employees, to get other samples of artificial leather. 

The first factor was just opposite our company. Me and Shukhla, another employee, entered a room and he explained in Hindi that we were looking for some colors. So I just told the gentlemen there, “I need this brown,” or “No, brighter than this,” or “No, darker than this,” or “Yes, this one but without texture, please,” then those gentlemen asked other people to bring different kind of brown, or grey, or yellow that they had. They were even willing to make special sample according to the color that we want, but we’re going to make the bag from wasted artificial leather, so there’s no point we get the color that we want from special sample because there’ll not be the wasted version of that color.

Two days ago I went with Shukhla to another factory. It was 1.5-hour journey by MOTORBIKE!! The factory is located in Mayapuri, another industrial estate like Bahadurgarh and this time I already made appointment with the vice production manager of the factory. Entering the factory, I felt like I entered the man’s world, because it’s just the guys everywhere in the factory. The experience in this factory is more fun because they had special room for samples so I just needed to pick the colors that I wanted. The vice production manager was also very friendly. He even joked, “For each sample, you must pay Rs 100,” and I took him seriously and innocently asked him, “If I get smaller sample, only this size (make a little square with my hand), do I need to pay?” He asked for our company business card but I didn’t bring any (moral of the story: bring a business card!!!) 

Coming back from the factory, I finalized the choice of colors with Mdm Anita, made a table of swatch (the small cut of leather), what style of bag it is for, amount needed, and cost. I still need to make one more trip to the market to choose the real leather.  

The journey from the factory back to my office reminded me of my dad because I used to accompany my dad to factories, or to buy raw materials in Glodok, Jakarta version of Chinatown which sells EVERYTHING that you need, particularly electricity. But I didn’t enjoy the experience in the factories when I was small because I always felt bored, it used to be very hot, and I was just ‘daddy’s little girl’. The only thing that made me happy was everyone knows that I am Adam’s daughter, because I look like my dad and when I walk with my mom, most of the people do not believe that I am her daughter.

During the 1.5-hour-journey back to my office, I just felt happy because I’ve realized that this-factory-thingy is in my blood. My dad started working in Jakarta as a purchasing guy, just like Shukhla. So my thought flew to 25-27 years ago when my dad might be like Shukhla, riding motorbike (or taking bus??) from one factory to another factory then go to my mom to settle the receipts because my mom was working as the cashier in the same company. 

Now I’ve also realized that choosing color of the leather is not easy because there are different textures, different shade of the same family of color, and so on and so forth. It’s just hard to find the exact color with the print out of the design and it can be harder to match the two different colors (some bags need two or three colors), but it’s FUN!! Oh moreover, my vocabulary of color is very limited. I don’t usually use ‘beige’, ‘magenta’, ‘peach’, etc, so I just point and point and say “darker”, “lighter”, “more orange”, “more brownish”, “more black” hahahaha.

Simplicity

20 June 2011 

I have not finished reading the biography of St. Therese of Lisieux, but I cannot wait to share how beautiful the book is. It is actually a letter to her sister, hence when we read it, we will also feel the intimacy that St. Therese felt when she wrote this to her sister.

The strongest impression that I feel every time I read the book is the simplicity. Even as a little girl, St. Therese’s mind is always on God. She walked with her father to have a Visit to the Blessed Sacrament every afternoon, she sat and listened to her sister preparing her for her first communion, she rejoiced every Sunday and every feasts day, and she felt the vocation to be a Carmelite nun in such a young age.

When I read the book, I was amazed by how the family of St. Therese was really centred in God. Her  sister’s first communion was also a great joy for St. Therese. When she was sick, her father sent another sister to go for pilgrimage to Our Lady of Victory, but even before her sister left, St. Therese cried out for her sister and her sister knelt before the statue of Our Lady of Victory and prayed to Our Lady. At that moment, Our Lady appeared to St. Therese and St. Therese was cured.

Hmmph...I think I can’t really put my thoughts from this book into words. There are only two words: beautiful and simplicity. When I read that book, I imagine the life hundred years ago and a whole family really lived a life full of devotion. I imagine the little girls did not plug in earphone to their ears and ignore their parents. I imagine that Sunday was a BIG DAY not because it’s a school holiday, but because the whole family was going to Holy Mass together. Bible and spiritual readings are friends for the whole family, not TV series or facebook. The ambition of the little girl was not to grow up and marry rich guy that can take care of her, but to achieve SANCTITY.

However, the world has evolved and there are different needs in this modern society, but still I believe that nothing can replace the inner call to want to be close to God and to always please God. There are positive and negative sides of this fast-paced and well-connected world, but God’s goodness is absolute. In the midst of this hectic world, there’s always a room to have a retreat, to step back and enter a private room in our mind which is reserved only for ourselves and God. Life is simple, there’s no complication in this life if we are not attached to the world even though we live in this world. 

A big challenge, huh? J No worries... God’s grace is powerful!! Hehehehe... and we have the Sacraments, the special channel of grace, that will help us to reach sanctity :)

How hard it is to be humble

When someone asked me, “Do you like India? How’s living in India so far?” I always answer, “Good!” or “I like India” or “I’m having a great time here”. However, I will also tell some people that life here is not easy and sometimes the biggest challenge doesn’t come from India per se, but it comes from my own non-Indian group. Hmm, let me correct this. It comes from myself regarding the relation with my fellow interns.

In these few days, I have been avoiding a particular person. Because we are always clustered together, of course my avoidance is not obvious. It’s more into talking less and trying to keep myself ‘alone’ even though I’m together with this person. Somehow most of the time that we spend to talk, I feel uncomfortable at the end and I do not feel the connection.

Initially I thought it’s because of the lack of chemistry between us, but after a while, I think it’s because of the problem of humility, it is very hard to be humble and now I am really struggling with it. Started with the lack of chemistry, I’ve realized that every time we have a normal chat, I will end up having this automatic response in my head, “It’s not like what you think” or “No, you are wrong, I’m the right one” or “How can you say that?? I know better than you because you do not experience certain things that I experience” and the biggest indicator of the lack of humility is when this person pointed out my mistakes, I gave excuses and I DID NOT say sorry. 

Someone said, the most difficult words to say is “Thank you” and “Sorry”. I guess it’s true. When you say ‘thank you’, you really appreciate that another party has done something helpful and useful which means that you indirectly acknowledge the person’s contribution to your life. When you say ‘sorry’, you acknowledge that you are wrong, you have mistakes, and the other person is correct, and you also intend to repent.

So when I realize that I’m not 100% sincere when I say ‘Thank you’ and I even do not say thanks for this person’s suggestion PLUS I do not even apologize when I make mistakes, I realize something is wrong here. It’s very hard to have humility, a virtue that is commonly discussed when we talk about Mother Mary because she’s a perfect example of humility. 

Mother Mary, help me to be humble like you.... Amen..

I guess the experience in India is a great lesson on humility...

Mysore..really MY .. SORE..

26 June 2011

The second Sunday in Bangalore, people started falling sick, so this time, fewer people went to Mysore coz it would be another 4 hours journey. Not listening to Siok Xin’s advice to take train, we took bus and spent 5-hours through bumpy roads. This time, without supernice view like Nandi Hills journey. Hehehe.

Mysore is actually ‘just’ another city outside Bangalore, in the state of Karnataka. The highlight of this city is Mysore Summer Palace. The bus was only Rs 95 (for 5-hour-journey, it’s actually cheap right?? J ) and it was non-AC bus coz we wanted to save money. How did we know the bus? We just followed the conductor who screamed, “MYSORE MYSORE MYSORE!!” Hehehe.. We chose the best seats: at the back, so we had our privacy. Hehehe.

Once we reached terminal at Mysore at 2pm (we departed from Bangalore at 9.30am), we were determined to find a train station and bought train ticket back from Mysore to Bangalore. We bought non-AC ticket for only Rs 42. Ohhh wait, I almost miss the fun part: the journey from the terminal to find the train station. The police said, “Walk 1km down the road.” Then, it turned out to be ‘a-never-ending-1-km’. The moral of the story, when they said 1km, just flag an auto and get there. We were already tired even before we saw the palace!!

From the train station, we went to the palace. It was sooo huge and majestic from the outside. Too bad we couldn’t bring our camera inside, but the security didn’t bother when we took picture using our phone cameras. Once we stepped and felt the marble floor under our feet and looked up to the ceilings, we murmured, “It’s really worth our 5-hour-journey.” I’m not good in describing physical object, so I can just say, “It’s majestic”, “It’s beautiful”. Ohhh..but the “queue” (if it can be really called a queue) was horrible. They just pushed you. The ocean of people wanted to enter the palace at the same time!! Arggghhhh!! So what we could do was only to hold each other’s bag or shirt and push other people at the same time. Inside we couldn’t really move a lot because the stream of people kept coming so we just walked through the corridor to look at the interiors. There was also one corridor filled with paintings. On second level, there was a huge hall. I dunno who started this conversation but me and my friend were calculating how much money you need if you want to get married in this huge hall of Mysore Palace. 

The palace was majestic and beautiful, but even though it was an old palace, the architecture was in Western style. The paintings were also just western paintings of the royal families. But they really looked nice!

Ahhh..now the train back to Bangalore. We couldn’t find our cabin! (we thought female cabin was separated from male cabin so we split with the guys) Apparently they were all mixed cabins and we just could not find any seats. It was a 3-tier-sleeper class. Cui Shan, Siok Xin, and Cui Fen were sitting first (coz there’s no way we could find 8 seats together). Then, me and Elizabeth climbed up to the upper berth (thanks to the couple who told their kids to share seats with us). Gen and Jessica went further down. What happened with Kevin and Raymond was they ‘accidently’ went to AC class and stayed there. When the conductor inspected their tickets, they just needed to pay more according to AC-price. 

The weather was sooo hot and we were so hungry L but yeah...even though Mysore was really MY SORE, it was a wonderful experience :):)