Hair in the bathroom

My mom has always taught me to spray the fallen hair after I take shower to the hole (what hole is it? I don't know the proper English name). I always forgot to do it and only now I realize that my housemate also asks me to do the same.

When you stay with other people, you start recognizing how important these small details are. There is more urgency to improve yourself because how you act affects other people! In my previous house, my roommate is a light-sleeper. She wakes up when I open my wardrobe, she wakes up because of my alarm (even though I change it to my tut-tut-tut-tut IKEA clock), and she's also awake when I reach home late! So since then, I always keep my cupboard throughout the night and prepare my working cloth the night before.

I forgot who told me this story, I think someone from Opus Dei centre. She said she knows a couple; the wife always 'clean' the soap bar after she uses it and the husband doesn't have this habit, so the wife often complains about this. So yah.. my friend said the husband learn to 'clean' the soap. My other friend told me that she didn't like when her fiancee chose what to eat and what he doesn't want to eat from the plate, so she is used to complain to him during dinner. Apparently her fiancee really hated the dinner-plus-complain situation, so they negotiate, you can complain, but not during dinner.

So yah.. hair in the bathroom may be a small stuff for some people, but it's always good to make someone's life more pleasing each day :)

Body Clock + to work with consistency

Hwahhh... as much as I wanted to wake up late, my body clock has been switched. I was already awake at 6am but I forced myself to sleep again. Okay let me write about something in this beautiful Sunday morning :)

In general, my old house in Serangoon was cleaner and tidier compared to my current house (or it may be not that tidy, but because it is only 3 of us, the mess was not so visible). When three people or five people live together, the effect is different. For example, in my old house, we put our shoes not on the racks, but they look okay. In my current house, when we put our shoes not on the racks, the effect is horrible. Another factor why old house is generally cleaner, my roommate is allergic to dust and my housemate sweeps and mops the house so often. His working hours is not constrained by 9-to-5 (unlike my current housemates and me), so he can mop the floor at 11pm! The effect of this change is, me, a messy person suddenly has higher threshold of cleanliness and my hands are quite itchy to at least sweep the floor or wash the rags.

However, to be honest, it is very hard to work consistently. Ideally we have a schedule to clean the house. Look at your mom, she doesn't clean the house only when the house looks dirty right? My first few weeks staying here, I mopped the kitchen once a week, but now, I just sweep the floor. It's quite hard to practice this consistency because on some weekdays you might meet up with your friends, you go home late, and tradaaa.. you don't feel like you want to do any house chores.

So yeah.. It's a challenge :) I was quite struck by the reflection on the feast day of Our Lady of Loreto. Can you imagine how Our Lady maintain the good home environment for Our Lord and St. Joseph? I was so happy when I finally bought a wooden image of Our Lady and put it on the wall of our kitchen. It is a good reminder every time I pass the kitchen, to learn from Our Lady to take care of little things, including my home. 

Our Lady of Loreto, pray for us.

Living in Singapore

Below are the most common questions/ statements that were said by neighbours/ relatives before I came to Singapore:
1. Do you want to come back to Indonesia after your graduation?
2. Wahh, so good to go to Singapore. Then you can get PR and live happily ever after in Singapore.
3. Where are you going to study? Nanyang?

Here I am. 4.5 years after those conversations. Before I left Indonesia, I always said that I will graduate, fulfill my 3-year bond, do Master's in Clinical Psychology, and tradaaa.. go back home and serve the country (read: Indonesia). As time goes by, I have seen the complication part, firstly, it's very hard to get into Master's of Clinical Psychology program. It's hard to get in and it's hard to get sponsored. Secondly, as much as you want to go back home and serve the country, you might not be able to serve your country with a Bachelor's degree 'only' (especially for psychology), you might not be satisfied with how things are at home (it's quite frustrating that I don't know my way about at my hometown, or 1-week-'internship' experience at home made me see how some stuff were not standardized in Indonesia and things were run not like in what your lecturers taught you). Well, there is no guarantee that in Singapore things are also done according to textbook, but it's better to work in an environment that has good supervision and standard before you intend to serve or contribute to your country. Thirdly, you might have served your country more when you are at other people's country!! (surpriseeee!!!). Let me elaborate more on this point. My supervisor in my third year did a collaboration study with a researcher in Jakarta on spelling error in Bahasa Melayu vs. Bahasa Indonesia. This also gives insight on what intervention you can do back at home! I also learned more things about my country during my undergraduate study here: the untold story of Timor Leste, how to play Gamelan (and how to explain about Gamelan to foreigner), what's the difference between Javanese dance from Solo vs. Yogyakarta, and so on and so forth. I am not joking if I say that by being in other country, IF you know your country, you can be a good ambassador, more than what the posters do ;). Last but not least, sometimes you never know what happens in this foreign country and whom you will meet in this 'foreign' country >.<

Anyway, home is still the best place! And even when I read about the silly stuff that happened at home, e.g., Rhoma Irama wants to step up as president, Indonesian MOE wants to eliminate science and English subject for primary school, I still L.O.V.E my country. I'm proud to be Indonesian. I still want to do something for my country. I may not make my government proud like how my friend became international science competition winners, but when my friends listened to me recommending them good places in Indonesia, when my friends have good impression of their Indonesian friend, when telling them about the good and bad things about Indonesia and what can be learned from us, I feel happy. I've done my small parts and I'll need to continue to do other parts.

On the second point, *cough cough*, FYI, it's very hard to get PR now. It's not a happily-ever-after life when you are overseas, away from home, must move from one house to another house (or you might even only rent a room and that's your territory). It's even hard to get an Employment Pass. It's also hard to find a job if you are not a PR. And if you don't have a 'good' job, how can you be PR?

For third question, yeah...in Indo, NTU is more famous than NUS. I must keep explaining my neighbours, "Tante, I study in NUS". Anyway, it doesn't matter. I tried to apply to NUS not because of NUS rank, but because of the adventure. Indeed, I've had many many adventures :) Thank God :)

On the other hand, to Singaporeans here, I must explain that 3-year-bond doesn't mean that you're guaranteed a job :) it's really a complicated situation. Anyway, I'm trying to embrace it. The moral of this post is... wherever you are, you have to struggle :)

Cooking Diary 1 - supposed-to-be Chicken & Lemon Risotto

disclaimer: I'm in the stage of observing someone's cooking, so it doesn't mean that I can cook this dish already.

Today's recipe was supposed to be Stir-fried baby french bean with minced chicken AND Chicken & Lemon Risotto. In this post I'd like to share about my silly mistakes.
First of all, I've put the chicken breast and minced chicken in the freezer for 3 days and I didn't put them in the bottom fridge last night. Sooo... 50 minutes passed by and they're still freezing! Please don't try this at home.

Secondly, please read your recipe carefully. I bought 500ml chicken stock instead of 900ml chicken stock, 1 chicken breast instead of 2. Thankfully there was a shop near my house where we could buy another chicken stock and luckily I bought minced chicken (that's why at the end, no stir-fried baby french bean with chicken)

Apparently, grating lemon rind is DIFFICULT! (well, I didn't do it, Paul did it and it's difficult). According to Joanne, my housemate, perhaps whether the lemon is ripe, or almost ripe, or not yet ripe will make a difference. We didn't google about it.

Instead of using risotto rice, we used Japanese rice. We put so much rice!!! (I think it can serve 5 people. I'm eating 1 portion now, and this afternoon 3 of us ate BIG portion, and there was still risotto left!!).

Parmesan is expensive! Next time, please check out the price of the ingredients before choosing the recipe.

Anyway, today's cooking lessons:
1. cut vegetable before cutting or chopping the meat. Make sure you scrub the chopping board carefully after you use it for meat because if you use it for veggie afterwards and it's not clean, you can get food poisoned. (I don't understand why... :( )

2. I must 'feel the knife'. Today I tried to cut onion nicely and feel in which part of the knife I should put my strength

3. Hold your sponge at the upper part of the blade avoid accidental-cut

(why does it sound like washing lesson?)

4. Today I learned the meaning of the term "simmer", when you keep the flame minimal while you're still cooking the stuff.

5. Be prepared for plan B. (We boiled the french bean and put the french bean and minced chicken into the risotto.)

6. Move your meat from the freezer to the normal fridge one night before!!!!!

Okay that's all for today!! :D
btw, our risotto didn't look as nice as the picture on the website, but it tastes nice!! I think I'm going to have second serving now. still hungry. Hahaha

Cinderella and prince charming

One last post before I go to bed...
This is a very random thought. Hahaha. I think prince charming is very lucky because Cinderella has been doing house work for her whole life!

It's quite funny that when you were young(er) *cough, I'm still young* , you envied people who can dance better, who have higher grades, who can sing better, and so on and so forth. Now that you are growing up, you actually envy....YOUR MOM! for the 'simple things' that she can do but you can't, like ironing (oops, this one I envy my dad), cooking, baking, mopping 'properly', and so on and so forth.

quote of the day from Wanyu: "Don't worry, I couldn't cook before but I learned from youtube. I started from zero!"
quote from my mom: "There are only 2 possibilities when you just start learning how to cook: not salty enough or too salty, can't be worse than that." Hahaha

Oh no..just remember, still need to hang my clothes first :S
nitez!!

Welcome December!

I've noticed that I have more things to write when I have spent enough time to be alone. It can be as simple as going from Clementi to Boon Keng MRT alone :P This kind of silent moment gives me chance to contemplate things. It's kinda hard for me because I'm sooo talkative. Last time I tried to not say a single words for 10 minutes in MRT and I was failed!! At the moment when I walked out of MRT I was sooo happy because I've been holding things that I wanted to comment on MRT. Hahaha.

It's December. Time really flies.
Looking back at my resolution and my post last month, it was still a struggle to fulfill my resolutions. (Slowly...:) )
Among all my November resolutions, I managed to fulfill one of those: to review my Thai book! Just a short review though for 2 or 3 consecutive weeks, but it's okay :)

So talking about resolutions, how to make a good resolution?
1. It must be concrete and realistic
example: One of my resolutions is "catch up with some friends whom I have not met for quite a long time". When I read this resolution just now, I could not think whether I have fulfilled this resolution. Perhaps next time I should take note of the names of the friends or see whether my own situation allows me to do so. For example, in December, it's harder to do this because I only have 3 weekends in Singapore and 2 of the weekends are full!!!

2. Write it DOWN and tell someone about your resolution
Yes, I do believe that writing our resolutions is really helpful. I've been doing that since secondary school. Even if it seems that we do not fulfill our resolutions, you'll realize that you somehow fulfill parts of it and there are other moments in the year, e.g., birthday, anniversary, Chinese New Year, Easter, retreat, when you can read them again, revise them or just feel inspired to concretize it more.

Telling someone about your resolution will provide you with a good social support, especially when you're down or when things go wrong. It also helps you to re-think whether it is a good resolution or not.

3. Take one step at a time
In "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens", Sean Covey called this the "baby steps". Don't be afraid to just make small and simple resolutions to help you reach the "Big" dream :)

So yeah...end of the year. Time to think of our yearly resolution. But first of all, remember that you have every day even every hour to make the urgent resolution :)

to do our work well

Yesterday I spent my time doing literature review, looking for new research ideas, writing up methods of our current research. To be honest, these were not the favorite part of my job. My favorite task is to go to kindergarten to run experiment.

I recalled a meditation by Fr Mario about "doing our work well". It's not about doing task that I like, but doing task that I need to do. It's not only about finishing my work, but also on knowing how to do my work more efficiently, in a way that is helping other colleagues, and in doing it well and with intensity. It's so tough!!

Remember my advent resolution? I tried to shade the circle every 15 minutes of intensive work. I was failed! Hahaha. So difficult! I was still easily distracted.

So...Advent is coming!! Let me try again on Monday :) Hopefully my work can be a small offering for Our Lord :)