7 Quick Takes Friday - vol.18

- 1 -

I spent the past week transcribing the observation study files. Now it seems clearer that research assistant needs to stay up-to-date about what the preschoolers watch these days: Noose (Singapore local comedy show) and Ah boys 2 Men (it's a movie about army life in Singapore). No wonder one of the boys was worried about going to army. Apparently he watched this movie =P

- 2 -

Me and my boyfriend went to see Mummy exhibition last Sunday. It was soooooooo fun!! This exhibition is a collaboration between Art Science Museum in Singapore and British Museum. They did CT scan on the mummy and revealed the possible age of the person when the person died, the possible cause of the death, and so on and so forth.

- 3 -

I had a good meet-up with 'old friends': my hostel friends and NUS friend =D It's been a long time since the last time I had lunch with them.

- 4 -

Last night I cooked beef with capsicum and prawn with french bean. I accidentally spilled almost a tablespoon of salt, so that we needed to 'wash' the beef in hot water before we ate it. >.< Then we watched "Now you see me", a movie about four magicians =D it's supercool!! The ending was really unexpected.

- 5 -

Last Friday I read Pride and Prejudice till 1am. My bad habit is...skimming through the book once I reached second half of the book. I was so curious so I have already peeped the ending of the book (oops!!). My favorite part is when Mr Bennet supported Elizabeth to reject the proposal of Mr Collin. Hahaha. He's so cute.

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. - Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

I smiled when I read this part =P

And my second favorite was when Mr Darcy revealed his feeling to Elizabeth. Somehow I felt it's very sweet =P Ah I think it's just because I'm not used to nice writing :)

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

When I read this novel, I really imagined the characters talk to each other in British accent because I watched documentary on Jane Austen before. Hahaha. Sometimes I still have difficulties in understanding the words in this novel, but I love the tone, pace, and the description of each character.

- 6 -

October is coming! The three last months of 2013. Wow!! *that's why I start cooking again.. improve my new year's resolution report card for the last three months, I guess. I was supposed to learn cooking every alternate weekend*

One thing I like about cooking is... when I tasted the food afterwards, I felt happy. I really really feel happy to enjoy 'homecook', my own cooking and to taste something that is precisely for my 'tounge'.

One thing I don't like about cooking is... I am naturally clumsy. I'll mess up one thing or another. And I don't like other people to know about it. Even if the mistake is not on the cooking part per se, I always mess up any other thing when I cook.

- 7 -

I met up with my hostel friend on Thursday. I really admired her that she's very driven and she's a very ambitious girl. She has completed CFA (finance examination) level one and she's studying for the second level exam. She's taking driving lesson twice a week (early in the morning before her work!!). She meets up with some friends for guitar club almost every Saturday. Hmm, what else? Oh and she's looking for a job in investment/ finance. Sounds very cool!

But listening to her sometimes makes me ask myself, "What have I done?" To be more precise, "What have I accomplished?" Recently, I feel a bit "urgh, please don't ask me THAT question" when people asked me, "Are you going to do graduate studies?" I'm happy to give them a short answer "I want! But not in the near future." Full stop. Thankfully I'm still under 3-year-bond (all international students in Singapore must work for 3 years in Singapore or in other Singapore-based companies because the Singapore government has subsidized our tuition fee) so I still can give the excuse: "I want to fulfill my bond first." What I don't tell them is, I'm quite happy that even my mom, from insisting that 'you should take Master's degree soon' now just suggesting 'it's good to take Master's, maybe next time when your kids have grown up .' What I want to say is, to be honest, to be really really honest, it's not in my priority. I wish and I would love to do postgraduate study, but I start doubting if I really want to do it anytime soon.

Ahh it became a long post. Sorry!
It's just sometimes...I feel that I can't recognize myself anymore *a bit* and my close friend did say this to me, "You've changed, right?" And I just shrugged and smiled, "Well, the ugly side remains the same =P "


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More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com!

7 Quick Takes Friday - Vol.17

More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com!

- 1 -

Hey, this is Friday and I'm writing my quick takes. Yeay! :)

Today I went to Ryan's house. He said the thigh is not painful anymore (he even wanted to show me that he could walk slowly, but the parents didn't let him). I told him to just keep sitting until he fully recovers so we can go to the zoo.

I read him "Curious George Goes Fishing". Okayyy... I think he just doesn't like books somehow =P but not too bad, he looked quite interested, but this thin book is too thick for him. Patience...

- 2 -

My order has arrived! I finally started reading Pride and Prejudice. I know, I know, I'm very left behind. I don't read classics in school and the first classic I read was Quo Vadis, a novel written by a Polish writer about the first Christians. In one Tuesday Lounge, we were watching documentary on Jane Austen so my housemate decided to read the free e-book version. I downloaded the e-book, but I didn't read it. (I still live in stone age, sorry!!) Now that I have the hard copy, I'm just so happy that I can read book in the bus (instead of chatting on whatsapp). I told Paul too that he should be happy that I have a novel =P Anytime there's "change of plan", I'll date my novel. Hahahaha.

- 3 -

I tried to transcribe more observation videos this week. The kids' voices in the videos are so loud that even though I wear headset, my colleagues can hear the kids' noises. It's loud, but it's not clear. Oh no...the pain of transcribing... :( But it's fun though :) It's really really fun to listen to the children's conversation and even to type out their gestures!

- 4 -

My friend has arrived in Nottingham, so now four of us (me, Nyz, Pril, Nic) are chatting from 4 different countries and we're on 3 different time zones. While Nyz said "Morning", we're already in the afternoon =)

- 5 -

I tried to start out the travel blog dream by writing my traveling experience. Today I wrote about my trip to Taiwan in 2010. The time stamp of my camera was wrong! I went there on 1st Dec 2010. I happily brought knee-length pants (thanks to my 'living-in-hostel' mentality) and I needed to wear my aunts' clothes there. If you see my photo, all my shirts and jackets are purple because my aunt is crazy about purple!!!

- 6 -

Krizia was about to lend me the book on 5 love languages (but first, she needs to finish reading it! so I just took picture of some good sections). Oh well, knowing the theory of "what love language do you use?" is not enough. The difficult part is to make an effort to love using your partner's love language which is not your love language. This book reminds me of funny conversation when me and Paul tease each other:

me: Guys ah, only nice at the beginning of courtship. Last time even it's already 9pm you still call me, "Can I go to your hall? Can I see you?" Now....... ???!!!

vs.

him: Girls ah, only nice at the beginning of courtship. Last time when it is late already you will say, "Okay go home, go home. Don't go home too late." Now..... "Can you stay for a while? Can you take taxi home?"

=P

Oh well, that's enough to make me stop rebuking him. Hehehe.

- 7 -

My friend's grandpa is in hospital. Seeing him on the bed and looking at how he didn't respond to the people's call anymore reminded me of my late maternal grandma. She needed to let go lots of things before she could pass on :( I hope things will work out for my friend's grandpa.
 

Taipei: Pieces of Memory and a little bit of travel tips

Hmm, since I do not plan to travel anywhere and I did not travel anywhere recently, I've decided to dig my traveling photos to start writing whatever I can remember from my previous trip.

This time, I'll try to write about my Taiwan trip. I've written about it here (it was the story of my second day). I'll share a few different photos here :) This is a warm-up session before I slowly set up a travel blog =D

My aunt lives in Ying Ge (鶯歌), not in Taipei. She works in a factory, so I had a chance to meet her other friends. In fact, in one of the evenings, we all went to eat Indonesian food with a karaoke lounge upstairs. (I CAN'T BELIEVE I WENT TO TAIWAN TO EAT INDONESIAN FOOD!). I even brought back some Indonesian products from Taiwan to Singapore >.<

Ying Ge is a pottery town. It's very quiet and peaceful :) The only Mandarin words I catch when I was in Taiwan was, "Xiao xin" (Be careful!) because my head kept knocking the entrance of my aunt's house. (I'm short, but the door is the type of the door that needs to be 'pushed up' and it was made of metal.) When we went out, the door would already be half-closed because we were going to close it anyway, so my head kept knocking this door. (Any English term for this kind of door?)

The best thing in Taiwan is the night market :) I really love the night market, not to buy stuff, but to play games and to eat!! :) 

Anyway, there is a cathedral in Kaoh Siung. I remember I missed mass that Sunday (yup, that time, I still thought that it is okay to miss Mass during vacation. It is NOT okay! This is a common misconception!). It looks beautiful, I should've gone there :( check out their website here. Mass schedule in Kaoh Siung is available here.

1st day

Night market is all about food and games! The bubble tea is super-huge!!! I couldn't finish it!!

Day 2
Please do not speak loudly in the museum! I was talking on phone to my friend and the museum guide asked me to leave the exhibition because I was too noisy =P

quite disturbing

You can watch something inside!

the equipment that the factory workers used. My aunt worked in a factory.

Did you see Suzuki there? My uncle is a mechanics in Ying Ge. This is his niece :)

 Day 3 - 4
National Museum!! The only thing I remember was it was sooooooooooo crowded :(:(

Me and my two step-cousins

Cute!

 Night market (again)

My aunt is just sooo good in playing this game. Anyway, there the shopkeeper will re-arrange the prizes, so it's easier to catch the prize.

Woohoo! Our catch!

And her catch..

Tai Chong! (how to spell??)

 My uncle drove us overnight from Taipei to Kaohsiung, all the way to meet my schoolmate =D
We arrived around 5am. My cousin read Harry Potter in Mandarin and I tried to learn from her.
*failed*

My friend's dorm - dark

Bright!!

Our school motto is "Serviam". We had badge on our collar and when we sing the school Anthem, we hold the badge, so yeah, we pretended that we hold our Serviam badge. Anyway, her university is also an Ursuline college :)

 Day 5
I went to Saloon (yeah...all the way to Ying Ge to wash hair =P)
They did french braid for me too :)

Yummy dessert before flying back to Singapore

Kids can't lie. The ice cream is yummy!

To accept myself

In times when things are difficult, I had this temptation to 'not-like-the-way-God-created-me'. However, long long time ago, when every fall was always followed by tears and frustration *and crying in confessional was common - oh maaaan..poor father...*, Fr Mario told me this:

Tell Our Lord, 
"Lord, you created me this way. Please help me."

I think this is the most beautiful reminder in difficult times :)

This reminded me of what Sharmini told me about imagining our life without spiritual direction. It's really God who is talking to us through spiritual director! You will be surprised how big the impact of going for spiritual director (even though you feel fine without one now).

Well, accepting my weaknesses doesn't mean that I have excuses to stop struggling =P

7 Quick Takes Friday - Vol. 16

- 1 -

I started the week with watching Detective Conan with my colleague. It was my first time watching the movie version of Detective Conan. I used to watch the TV series when I was in Indonesia. I've just realized how similar the voice type between the Indonesian dubber and the original Japanese voices. (The TV series were dubbed). I don't like the ending about Ran (the girl), it was quite weird! However, overall it was a good movie.

- 2 -

This week I could take a breath a bit. Thank God we slowly finished our data collection. I hope the last six kids would not be absent tomorrow so we could finish the data collection in this school.

- 3 -

I suddenly don't know what I'm supposed to write. Hahaha. Well, yesterday was the Feast of Exaltation of Holy Cross. I wrote a reflection here. Sometimes it's still very hard to be strong in carrying the cross, but one thing that the priest mentioned during spiritual direction is every time we do our norms of piety, we are reminded that we go through this together with Our Lord himself.

- 4 -

I promised my mom to post photos her patchwork. She's looking forward for our trip to Bali in December to buy some traditional Balinese 'batik' clothes for patchwork. She mentioned once that even her teacher was bored that she kept using Balinese batik clothes, but who cares, she loves Balinese batik pattern.

- 5 -

I didn't expect that preparing Girls' Club's activity took quite some time, but I was very happy. Hahaha. We did basic stitching yesterday.

The handout. They couldn't understand the handout. Hahaha.

Sample that I made the night before.

Here are the girls' responses while they were stitching:
"Stitching stress kids up!"
"Actually after a while, stitching is easy!" =P
A: "Argh!! The needle keeps coming out!"
B: Again?

However, it's quite encouraging that some of them wanted more extra clothes and thread to practice at home. Hahaha. I was also quite surprised that Primary 2 children didn't have any difficulties in stitching (apparently some people learn stitching since Primary 1!!). And of course, this is a rare occasion that they were quite peaceful and calmed down during activities :)

- 6 -

Have you ever felt that somehow it's quite funny how you accidentally bump into old friends? I see it as a good reminder from God to re-connect with some people :)

- 7 -

Another week with difficulties of waking up on time!! :)

More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com.

Mom's patchwork: blanket, bag, etc. -- September

My mom has been learning patchworks and quilt for the past year. I promised her that I would like to showcase her works on my blog (and facebook) because she just kept all her works in her room. She has not thought about the possibility of selling them but I think there's no harm to try to show her works to others.

My mom loves making handicraft a lot. She also can knit very well (I have two scarves made by her. No chance to wear scarves in Singapore.... >.<). Hahaha. I imagine it'll be cool if my mom can teach the Girls' Club knitting or making patchworks =P

Bag for Hymn book. :) In Indonesia, we do not use projector for the Hymn lyrics. Bring your own Hymn book!!!

another bag

Decoration for the door, for Christmas (because we don't have mistletoe)

Decoration for the door, for Christmas (because we don't have mistletoe)

another door decoration

Blanket. Oh maaan, what's our phone doing there?!

another blanket

Blanket (again)

My favorite!!

Second favorite! :)

:)