Blogwalking

I used to write, write, and write posts without spending too much time reading other people's blogs. I can't remember when I started picking up this "blogwalking" hobby, but I guess this hobby is spread by Nic.

Why do I read others' blogs?

Well, I truly found inspiration from other people's blogs. This is real life of the people with real challenges. The fact that they 'survive' inspires me and reminds me that even if I feel some things are impossible, to read other people's life stories reminds me that I'm not alone in pursuing this "ideal".

I have posted similar posts in my Indonesian blog, but today as I "walked" through my favorite blogs, I want to share some thoughts again about what I learn from other people's blogs. My first encounter with Catholic mother's blog started from here. I think Dom posted this blog on his facebook and in that blog, I've found this post on stay-at-home-mother. Then, on one Sunday afternoon after my cooking session with Sharmini, she told me about this post on Natural Family Planning and openness to life. Believe it or not, as a young girl (I believe that I'm young :P), after I (try to) understand more about the importance of being open to life in marriage, I was kind of curious, "So...do couples who "need" to postpone pregnancy abstain from sex on their wedding night if it's in the woman's fertile period??

At the end of the day, these posts are sharing from other people. Yes, we must be cautious when we read other people's stories. Each person's situation is different. Nevertheless, one important lesson that I learn from these blogs are the reminder that these people live in the US, with the secularism, with the increasingly anti-family culture, with a high living cost, etc etc. YET, these people are blessed, these people are happy, and these people struggle to be faithful (notice that their blogs tell you about their hardships too!) ! This is such a beautiful reminder for me.

Why? Because as I grow up (a biiiittt) more, I notice that it's difficult to put your ideals into practice. Look at how Singaporeans (and me, a foreigner in Singapore) complain about the high living cost in Singapore (especially, HOUSING!!!). It's expensive to live here until people think that it's "normal" to choose not to have kids, it's "normal" to not get married, it's "normal" to think 'die die must have house first before getting married', it's "normal" to think that your kid must go to the BEST kindergarten ever. Nevertheless, the wonderful people around me did NOT experience the so-called best kindergarten! My colleague, graduated from Ph.D. in Edinburgh, did not even attend a kindergarten. My boyfriend, 'only' attended a normal government kindergarten half-day. Sharmini was also taught by her mom at home when she was toddler! I was initially against the idea of homeschooling kids. Come on, in Singapore?? How can it be possible? I was against this idea because at least I attended half-day kindergarten in Indonesia. Nevertheless, after seeing these people, after reading blogs of people who live in similar "challenging environment", well, I guess it's good to keep this in mind. The wonderful people around me did not have a house immediately after they get married.

Ideally you have your own house, you have your career established, you have your money to send kids to best kindergarten, but these blogs told me that it's perfectly OKAY not to have this ideal situation. I can't also stop looking back at my parents, my friends' parents, etc. Not surprisingly, they do not live in the so-called "ideal" situation. The normal thing back then is... to learn how to live with your in-law, to slowly build a home, a family! And I think my dad's first car only came when I was around 8 years old.

Going back to blogwalking, no one knows what will happen to me in the near or long future. Perhaps one day I look back and read my post and think that "You... crazy naive (young) girl." Well, I guess I've always been the same crazy girl. As much as I dream to study in Oxford (hoeeek, vomit :P), as much as I want to be a behavioural therapist, as much as I want to open my own clinic, as much as I want to travel here and there,

I would love to have my own family.

I remember one conversation with my Thai painting friends in my third year. We are eating at the pier opposite Wat Arun (Bangkok) then I told them, "Wahh, I love travelling! I want to go here, go there. Maybe it's fun ya to be a travel guide?
One of them: "Ya ya! Same here!"
Me: But this kind of job, hmm, a bit hard when you have kids ya. At the end of the day, you want to settle down right?
Same person: Umm, I just want to explore the world. A bit weird to think about settling down.

>.<

Perhaps this pull-and-push factor between MY ambition and my other deep 'ambition' is something that makes me really interested to pray more for my colleague, whose situation is not easy. I hope things will work out for her!!in
Once I told my spiritual director and directress, I felt a burden! Why oh why other people at my age could still 'enjoy life'? Nevertheless, I quickly hit myself every time I feel a burden in attending my spiritual formation, or going for Masses, or etc. I quickly told the Lord, "Oh please.. I don't want to trade my vocation and You, Lord, with other things." Citing Paul, "Things can be a burden, but a sweet burden" (Chen, 2013). :P

The privilege of forgetting your ambition for a while

Today I saw the beauty of not achieving my ambition/dream for a while

:)


ps. Tonight I hope to get 7-hour sleep :P too late though.. Ok maybe 6.5 hour :)

Mother Mary on the donkey

These past few days, the image of the painting of "Flight to Egypt" in a chapel always came to my mind.
Why?

I guess because of some uncertainties that I am facing now. Like other people, I have this "I want the answer soon" mode. Nevertheless, when this image of the painting came to my mind, I guess God is telling me that "It's okay that you don't see your destination now."

So every time I felt shaken or tired by the fact that it seems like I'm having a never-ending-uncertainty, I imagine Our Lady was 'shaken' here and there on the donkey as the donkey walked on the road with bad condition.

Nevertheless, she's bringing Jesus in her hand. That's the most important thing. And... she's not alone. St Joseph was there too and she has the faith to carry on instead of complaining, "Hey Lord, I gave birth to your Son but you want me to travel all the way to Egypt NOW???" :)

 

I love Steam Iron

I (finally) bought a steam iron. I can't believe that having a steam iron gave me more joy than getting a dress *oops* It's less frustrating :P

Nevertheless, after having steam iron and still got wrinkles on my shirt here and there, I came to a conclusion: I just can't iron properly >.<

So........
I watched this video on "how to iron a shirt"

I'll try the tips tomorrow. Collar-shoulder blade-sleeves-back. Set! :)

Suddenly I'm in Thai mood

Today I had dinner at a Thai eating place near West Coast Plaza. I suddenly heard a 'familiar song' (I have a playlist of Thai songs on my youtube). I am suddenly in Thai mood now. Listening to Thai songs while writing this blog. Well, let's talk about random things about Thailand:

1. Thai songs are sweet and romantic
Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN2sSphuNfA&list=PLABC11184D605D3A8&index=45

A band played it during Songkran in NUS last year. So sweet!!! (even though I didn't know the title last year)

2. Thai TV series are funny!! :)

I would recommend you to start with Soot Saneha - Love Recipe. Ken Theeradej is superhandsome there!! :P (I mean..he's also handsome in other series lah..but in Love Recipe it's just different :P)

3. Thai Advertisement can make you cry

4. Thai language is still easier to learn than Chinese
Of course, the more advanced level you study, the more "exception" that you need to learn (e.g., need to memorize more unique words, rather than depending on the 'letters)

Ahhh.. I miss my Thai class!!

Is "love" enough?

Sometimes I wonder if "love" is enough in a relationship. What happened when someone says "I love you" but the action contradicts the words?

I finally had the opportunity to see from the 'outsider's point of view', how sickening it is to see when someone says the words "love" accompanied by a selfish action. It's a good lesson for me. I take it from granted that my circle of friends have shown what it means to show an act of selfless love, so that when I see someone who was just....urgh..from whatever angle I see or read the message over and over again, I can't see how it is a "love".

I guess it's true that when the someone said that these days, people misinterpret "charity" as 'donation' and simplify 'love' as 'Hollywood love'. Look at Glee! Well, I've never watched a single episode of Glee, but one day I on the TV and there was a scene like this:

Man: "I have good news! I will go to xyz state. This is what I've been dreaming for!"
Woman: "Ohhh I'm so happy for you."
Man: "You'll come with me right?"
Woman: "What? Noo.. that's your dream, but I have what I want here, teaching, etc."
Man: "You can take sabbathical leave."
Woman: "Nooo! You can't just expect me to follow you like a puppy."

After that, I changed the channel. This is the 'love' that has been planted in most movies.

Soo.. is "love" enough in a relationship?

I think, when you talk about dating, you can't expect that "I love you, you love me, confirm we'll get married". You get to know each other, and of course, you should take each other's personality and values into account. (Do I sound like a psychologist yet? :P)
At the end of the day, it is true that each person tries to grow to be a better person and each person helps the partner to be a better person too. Nevertheless, if there's a very strong value that you just can't take it (we don't need to put the phrase 'anymore' here, because after a few months, you actually can see the values that the other person holds), it's better to seriously think and talk about whether you two can go to the next stage.

Dear someone out there, don't worry, you deserve a better person :):) that guy may be a nice person, but not the right one yet. *hugs!*

English children songs and Nursery rhymes

I didn't grow up listening to English nursery rhymes and children songs, so it was a real challenge to find English songs for Paul's niece or cousin. I "learned" Incy Wincy Spider from a kindergarten when I sat in the class to build rapport with the kids that I'm going to test for my experiment :P But I quickly forgot the lyrics so I literally needed to search the lyrics.

So far Paul's niece, Shalom, LOVES the B.I.N.G.O. She still can't really sing the whole song, but she can follow a bit here and there and she recognizes various nursery rhymes and song. The bad news is... Paul also can't remember the lyrics of children songs >.< Today we were running out of songs (we tried to entertain her in the journey from Boon Keng to my house, Clementi) so we sang Baa baa black sheep, Old MacDonalds, incy wincy spider, B.I.N.G.O, etc etc (too bad my house is far). I remembered Barney's "I Love you, you love me" but only until the line "we're a happy family". *failed.....*

Okay time to learn new songs. Shalom is bored with old songs already. Hahaha.

Oh the funny thing is.. today Shalom joined us watching BBC "Human Planet" series. We were watching about the "Rivers" and she watched the 'waterfall' so we taught her "waterfall"! I was like, "Wah, such a sophisticated baby. 2-year-old can say 'waterfall' already". Hahaha.

Privacy

Living with five other people, it is quite hard to have a "privacy". When I use skype to talk to my parents, with the superslow internet in Indonesia, I literally need to scream!! (Perhaps it's time to buy headphone with microphone?) Hhh.. Sometimes I really want to talk about a very personal stuff with my mom (which I don't even want my dad to hear!), but when I use skype, my whole house definitely hear it too.

Nevermind, I should buy Hello Card after my day.

April

So here we are in April.

This month reminds me of lots of things. This is a very obvious reminder of how I work as a research assistant for almost a year. One year! Time flies.

I have been looking back for a few times. These few days I have been very very grateful of what has happened the past one year. So grateful that I want to cry because of those good things that have happened in a year.

I remember that the first few months of working, I did not dare to write email updates for my boss. I always try to go through my colleague as much as possible. As our workload has increased, I challenge myself to try to take up this work of writing email updates and contacting the kindergartens.

I remember that I have spent lots of time preparing the ethical review proposal for the elderly project. It was my first time writing IRB proposal from ZERO. I'm quite nervous and excited at the same time that we will start data collection soon after waiting for soooooo long (we thought we could start after Chinese New Year).

The children in the kindergartens are getting more familiar with me. Some N2 kids in a kindergarten love to wave to me and say, "Hello Ninda!" It's such a joy to look at them. Working with children, I must stay cheerful all the time. What a good reminder to have a sense of Divine Filiation. The most vivid memory was when I jokingly asked a kid for a sticker that the teacher gave to him. And he gave the sticker to me! How generous kids are.

I am looking at the friendships that have been nurtured the past year. Recruiting members is a tough thing this year, but looking at the spiritual growth of each Legion of Mary member and the friendship that we have, I feel that we grow deeper and deeper. I am looking at the "coincidence" (aka. God's plan) of the friendships that God has given me the past one year. It was just so beautiful. Yesterday Sharmini came to Singapore and I did say that this was such a beautiful Easter gift. Recently I have passed my old house at Serangoon and my mind fly to the time I had with Ci Yaya, Frank, and Jas in that house. I only stayed there for four months and this is enough to make me see how God has a great plan by making us meet each other. I have also observed how my friendship with my colleagues has been growing. Yesterday I found out how my colleague's desire to have a 4-working-day has given me chance to work 5 days. It's interesting how our path crosses each other.

I am looking at the journey to discover my vocation too. I still remember that very morning when I was praying after Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church and I wrote in my prayer book the sentence that Our Lady said, "Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word." This fiat can be tough at times, but to see how God has always guided me the past one year, and let me see one thing after another, there's nothing I can say but "Thank You, Lord", for letting me see, for teaching how to keep saying "Yes".

I'm quite nervous, for the fact that some uncertainties have disturbed me a bit (again). However, I have faith in Him. He will show me the way. My mom keeps saying, "You will find the way."