Perfect Cut

It is already hard to find a nice and fashionable cloth for a lady whose height is 152cm.
It is even harder to find a nice, fashionable, and decent cloth.

When you browse the online catalogue, you were admiring the dress which has a perfect front appearance, but when you zoom in, you realize that there's a 'cut-out' at the waist. (Is it really a fashion? Weird)

Or you find a nice sleeveless dress, but somehow the holes for your arms are so big that people can peep through your armpit.

When I didn't bother to even wear a dress, I just thought, "Forget it. I won't buy those dresses". However, since it's getting very hard to find a nice, fashionable, decent dress for short person, I've been investing in tubes, tank tops, cardigans to layer some dresses that are almost-perfect, but...not perfect. I need to change my attitude, instead of saying that "This dress is just not for me!"

In other areas, it seems that there is no such thing as 'perfect cut' either. Even though we have standard size for shoes, there is a wide variety of the shape of human foot, so that somehow some shoes may not be suitable for some shapes. Even though a pencil skirt looks nice on most people, our own body shape matters and we need to adjust or change our preference.

In terms of relationships, there's no such as thing as someone who is 100% compatible. Love will be 'just' a fairytale if we measure the journey in our relationship in terms of 'compatibility'. (Here, I don't talk about principles. We need to have similar principles, I believe that this one can't be compromised). Sometimes, what we need to do to make our relationship is happier is not to change the other person or change ourselves 180 degrees, but what we need are the tube tops, tank tops, or cardigans that can beautify things that are a little bit 'ugly' in us, be it a little sacrifice, a little smile, or just.. an additional text or call of 'Sorry' or 'Good night'.

It's tough, but it's worth it.
cos there's no perfect-cut.

Lessons about faithfulness from my vacation

I really had a great time in Bali :) and I really need to thank my parents for this vacation. It's a great time that I can spend time not only with my family, but also with Paul. I don't believe in traveling only with boyfriend, so I'm very happy that I can travel with him AND my family :)

My mom is the first person who woke up in the morning even during vacation.
Yes, there's no holiday for mothers, and I experienced it again during my vacation. I felt a biit guilty that I don't think I help my mom a lot (well, the most I did was washing dishes and cooking Indomie). My mom was the one preparing tea and bread for Paul!

After the trip, while everyone can take shower peacefully and sleep, my mom needed to handle all the laundry because we would leave for another road trip for our pilgrimage the following day after Bali trip.Well, now I understand why the mommies blogs keep talking about laundry. My mom only has me, my dad, and my brother, but that night she needed to handle the laundry of 5 day-trip. My job was to hang all the clothes up there and as I was hanging them one by one, I was like, "wew...this is a lot!'

During the road trip, sometimes my mom needed to keep awake even though she's very sleepy too because she needed to keep my dad, who took turn driving with my brother, awake. While me? Urgh, I dozed off very fast once the engine started.

Thanks, Mom!

There are lots of things that I need to start learning now. I only need to care about my own laundry now and my own room. Recently, my boyfriend and I have been having discussion about 'appearance'. My default hairstyle is messy hair and my fashion is 'Monday to Friday just be normal, then dress up on weekends'. I find it very difficult to take care of myself (even though it's firstly for myself!!), so now that I look at what my mom has been doing, I am kinda reminded that I really need to wake up. This is my responsibility now, this is a step of practicing the faithfulness to my vocation, not only to run here and there organizing events or meeting friends to talk about God bla bla bla, but also taking care of the little things that will make myself better and make my boyfriend feel loved too at the same time.

My mom, even long before I am attached, had reminded me that I need to take care of myself. Every girl needs to take care of herself. She has to take care of herself too even though she's married my dad for almost 25 years. Citing my friend, wife or girlfriend's ability to look beautiful and well-groomed is the guy's self-esteem too. =P

I guess love is really in the little things :)

7 Quick Takes Friday - Vol. 28

- 1 -

Uhmmm, internet problem and my post was not saved in the draft so I need to re-type everything. These will be the shortest quick takes because I've written a lot just now :(

Anyway, I am kinda still in new year mood and I read through some old posts of mine. Then, I decided to write the journey of this blog.

- 2 -

My friend's baby passed away. I was trying hard to hold my tears. I think this couple is really heroic. Every time I look at them, I remember how faithful they are and I pray for their happiness. I hope God will grant me the grace to be faithful like them too.

- 3 -

Have you read Four Loves by C. S. Lewis? I'm going to put it in my reading list. Hahaha.
I'm currently reading the Great Gatsby.

- 4 -

This is my first time using a real smartphone. Uhm, my previous phone was supposed to be smart, but it's a lower-end smart phone so I couldn't download Skype and isilo to read e-book.

- 5 -

For many girls, it's natural to put make-up, to dress up, and to comb her hair.
Somehow it's not natural for me. I comb my hair once in the morning. That's it. Now I start bringing comb to office, but I still forgot to comb my hair after a windy lunch.
Urgh, tough...

- 6 -

I'm tired. Even though it's only second week of January.

- 7 -

I've been thinking a lot since the book discussion on Tuesday. It can be quite sad to see that my own Catholic friends are not interested to know about the Church doctrine.

More quick takes at Jen's blog!!

 

Journey of this blog

I'm still in new year mood, even though things are getting tougher already. Well, I keep telling myself that Chinese New Year is coming, so I still can finalize my new year resolutions.

Anyway, I would like to talk about this blog, especially that my best friends are currently making new blogs :)

This is my second blog. My first blog was the Friendster-blog. Hahaha. We all know Friendster, right? I remember my URL was something on 'Ferninda-kepang-2' (Ferninda with two braids) because I used to braid my hair EVERY MORNING since secondary school to high school.

Then, people move to Facebook. In my second year of university, I still kept my friendster blog until I did my internship in Yahoo!Southeast Asia and became a little bit more tech-savvy. Thus, I decided to make this blog (even though my supervisor encouraged me to make Wordpress =P, you know...blogspot - google, wordpress - yahoo).

This was my first post. That guy, Dominic, the first commenter on this blog is now a political science lecturer. Cool right??? Hahaha. If you notice the change of my writing style, it's mostly because of his comments. I still remember he told me to 'finish my sentence'. I like to break my sentences and use a lot of '...'. I think these days, I like to use to use a lot of quotation marks, which indicate my laziness to explain the terms that I use in my posts.

This blog was a mixture of Indonesian and English posts. When I felt sad, I couldn't express myself in English well, so I chose to write in Indonesian, like this. Now I read that post again, I laughed at my self. =P I was so childish (yah..now also still childish). If there's something that I could tell to my past self, I would tell her to control her feeling more :) It doesn't mean that I should've suppressed my feeling, but I think those days I spent too much time day-dreaming, and I had uncontrolled 'what-if's, and I wish I knew something about emotional chastity since I was in high school :)

And then, in 2011, I did another internship in India. Well, commuting by public transportation from the inn to office, and from one city to another, witnessing real poverty (I would say that it's worse than in Indonesia), having slow internet connection, made me reflect, read, and write a lot. I typed many posts in Word document, then I went to internet cafe twice a week to upload all my posts in this blog, my Indonesian blog, and my internship programme blog. I would say that this 2.5-month-internship was another major turning point in my life.

I don't know when it started, but after I read some Catholic blogs regularly, I was inspired to write more regularly. However, the sad thing is I lost the habit of writing my diary (it's the real diary, the so-called "Dear Diary" entries). I think I also stopped writing my diary because now I can express my feeling better even though I use English (and even though my grammar and vocabularies are still so poor, eeek...). The fact that my boyfriend can't speak Indonesian also contributes a lot to this change because now I need to express my head and my heart in the language that he knows (he really HATES it if I don't finish my sentence and say 'like that' or 'you know...').

Oh and for the first time (and so far it's also 'the last' and 'only' time), I wrote an English short story. Hahaha. I'm not sure if people can read what these three rings are. Actually I like writing fiction. I still have a half-done Indonesian novel that I started when I was in high school. Now my Indonesian language is too poor for formal writing and my English language is also not good, I haven't really decided to write a new story or even to continue that half-done novel. I really really really don't like to describe place or object in English, so I am very reluctant to write an English story. I can't set up the setting of my story. Even in my blogs, my writings are dominated by feelings, events, but not description of places or persons or objects.

So yeah.. It's 2014 now. Soon I can celebrate the 4-year-anniversary of this blog. Hahaha. So young! :)

Some thoughts after a book discussion

On Tuesday, I invited my friend to give a presentation about C. S. Lewis' Four Loves. This event was open to students and staff from the university where I am working. As expected, all of the attendees were Christian Protestants, except me and my friend.

We had a very interesting discussion. About the 'building-blocks' of C. S. Lewis' Four Loves. In this book, he talked about affection, friendship, romantic love, and unconditional love. Before talking about these four loves, my friend explained about the 'need-love', 'gift-love' and 'appreciative-love'.

Anyway, the more interesting discussion happened over dinner. They asked us about things like "Why Catholics believe in Purgatory? Isn't Christ's crucifixion sufficient?", about the word "priest and pastor", and also about the Eucharist and transubstantiation. We really had an interesting friendly and deep discussion.

I really wish...that my circle of friends are as interested as the friends who attend the book discussion to know more about our Catholic faith. Sometimes it can be quite disappointing to see some people are 'resistant' about catechism or doctrinal formation (it's not about 'don't care', but 'resistant' in the sense 'against the idea of bringing catechism to community').

Anyway, pray harder :)

7 Quick Takes Friday - Vol. 27

- 1 -

What did you do for New Year's Eve?
I slept!!!!

It was raining after we had dinner in Bali, so we decided to sleep =P

- 2 -

I took pictures using my brother's camera (and he hasn't uploaded them). So I can't post many pictures now.
Anw, here's a glimpse of Church of St Francis Xavier in Kuta (Gereja St. Fransiskus Xaverius). Daily Mass starts at 6am @.@ I really want to post the photo of the interior of the Church. They have big crucifix, as usual, but the angels were dressed in Balinese style!!!

St Joseph

Our Lady

Outside...ooopsss..sorry for the mediocre photo..

 - 3 -

One of the days, we had dinner at Jimbaran. It's been a looooooooong time since I did jumpshot. Luckily, my mom captured the jumpshot quite well, so I asked her to take so many jumpshots!!

- 4 -

Back to Singapore, our flight was delayed for an hour. I reached Singapore at 00.20 and I finished bathing etc. at 2am. My mom stayed for one night in Singapore, so I asked her, "What time do you want to wake up?" She said, "7am".

WHAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT??

>.< Anyway, she did wake up at 7 am >.< I woke up at 8 plus, we went to lunch time Mass at St Joseph and my mom needed to nudge me so many times when I did my prayer cos I was falling asleep :(

- 5 -

Today, back to girls' club again. The girls now know that I have boyfriend, and they were quite obsessed with this fact, so they kept asking questions!!
When's Paul's birthday?
When will Paul graduate?

How many years difference between you and him? (I regret telling the girl. She kept saying, "6 years!! I can't imagine. It means when he's in Kindergarten 2, you are still a newborn!!")
When you get married, do you want to have children?

Well, one beautiful thing that I noticed is, they knew that courtship is a preparation towards marriage. Not many adults even realize that!!

- 6 -

Finally I started reading The Great Gatsby!

- 7 -

Today, a Catholic friend of mine is getting married, but not in the Catholic Church. :(
I felt quite sad.. A bit hard to send a message to congratulate him. Initially he didn't realize how serious it is, thank God his relative told him around Christmas period. Please pray for him.

It's very scary because now I really see my friends one by one are getting married. We know theoretically and practically how serious it is, yet..sometimes they are not aware of the serious consequences of this choice. Furthermore, the more I deal with girls in girls' club and the  more I see little kids as my research participants, the more I see how serious the impact of the formation of the parents on their children! Plus, to see your own friends whom you laugh with, or even you used to cry with, jumping into something without a proper spiritual preparation is quite difficult too. You were like wondering, "Why...oh why..how I wish I could've done more". Well, of course, I believe God will show them the way, so I must always be optimistic.


More Quick takes at Jen's blog!!