Autumn Misfortune

Good morning peeps! It's pretty late actually but I just got myself in front of this computer. As I opened my window curtain, I saw a newlywed getting out of the car at the car park below. I waited to see the bride. The thought that came upon seeing her was how brides chose their wedding dress. Luckily of all the brides I've seen in life, I've never seen a dress I truly like which means I will find my own dress which will not copy or be inspired by others. Morning thoughts are a funny one, they are.

It's been awhile since I last wrote. I think it's because I didn't have anything interesting to say, not that I do now. Also because I have things that I should be doing with my free time, such as studying french, which I haven't really done, and also because I'm still in that depressed mode that I'd rather not talk about things. Well, it's been 3 weeks since I last wrote so let's continue from where I left off. This new room of mine. It's been 3 weeks, it feels short and long at the same time. I've been adjusting better than I imagined I would. I think this room is not as bad as I saw it the first time. I'm still adjusting with things, but I found myself writing in my diary something along the line that this room has become that safe zone where when I am inside it, I am safe and sound and all is well and I think that is a very positive thing to say. This is the place where I know I will be alright and it's important to have that in life and I do realize how blessed I am to have it when there are many people in this world who don't. As for the distance, I am adjusting much better than I thought I would. I guess I don't think about the fact that I still need to walk another extra 5-7 minutes much. I still haven't figured out the food situation though. It's hard getting cheap meal here since by the time I get to the stalls, there aren't many choices left and so in the past 3 weeks I've been eating on the expensive side and choosing things I like which definitely is not healthy. As for Jenny 2.0, she's been great. We have talked in broken english which is a pity I think because I don't think it allows neither of us to express ourselves well. She's so nice. She's been giving me apples which made me feel bad and so one day I got her that famous soya pudding and she said please don't buy her stuff but I can't be taking her stuff without giving something back, right? She also had given me some sort of gel to help with the swollen ankle and bad bruise that I got when I fell.

That's right ladies and gentlemen. I fell. I fell 2-3 flights of stairs on Monday. It was horrific. As it was happening, the thoughts that ran through my head was that I had to stop this fall and would I seriously roll right to the bottom of the stairs and break something and possibly die? When I didn't and I was sitting down trying to cope with the pain, the positive part just kicked in on its own and that was thank God nobody witnessed that embarrassing fall (I think noone saw it), thank God I wasn't bleeding and I didn't break anything. It was painful though and I had to get myself to the toilet just to deal with it. My instinct told me to cry because it was painful and you cry when you are in pain but I didn't but then when I was in the bus that day on my way home, I did feel like crying, not because of the pain which was still there but because of all the misfortunes that don't seem to leave me. A few days before the fall, I wrote in my FB status that I needed a good thing, just a small good thing to come my way, please God, and yet nope, I have to fall off the stairs. Mom asked how it happened. I could only say that my mind was off at that particular moment. I didn't know where my head was. I actually would rather a more logical explanation that there was some sort of spirit pushing me off the stairs or someone just did some voodoo things on me. Let me explain how those are more logical to me. Those are more logical because that would mean that there was a force doing it on me rather than God just feels the need that I need all these misfortunes. It's like when Job was tested, it's better to know that the devil was doing it rather than God, although some may argue that it's just as bad because God let it happen. Well for me, I would feel better if it's some sort of other force than God that drop all of these things on me. So when I reached home that day, I realized the bad swelling on my ankle and the fact that I had a nasty bruise which was hurting even on touch. I think my whole right leg was just swelling. I got awoken at night when I rolled to the right side and my bruise was grazed by the bed. As the days pass, the swelling on the ankle subsided. I think it's the normal side now. The bruise still looks scary. It still hurts when I touch it but not as bad. Jenny 2.0 offered to have a hard boiled egg to be rubbed on it. I was like, hah?!? what? Is this some sort of the misunderstanding we have because of the broken english? But some seconds later I realized, nope I understood her and it made sense. Again how does it make sense? Well as an Asian in Asia, I'm pretty sure it's one of those things which seems illogical which people believe can help to cure things. I didn't take her offer on that because I doubt the effectiveness. Overall, it was horrible when it happened, it was still horrible the days after, but I survived it.

I still managed to hang out with my cousin and aunt when they came this week. My cousin, Helen, and her mom were in town last weekend. It's weird the things that people want to see when they come to Singapore. Orchard is on top of the list and right now that is coupled with Universal Studio and then perhaps Sentosa for Songs of the Sea. I'm not a big fan of Orchard road the way many people perhaps are. Yes I do go there like once a week but I always have a purpose to go there. I get in and get out. People who know me know I'm not really a mall person. I go to a mall for a purpose and window shopping is not my thing and window shopping on the many malls in Orchard road is truly truly not my things. So I was trying to get them away from the malls as much as I can because seriously there are as nice malls in Jakarta. The first thing they saw was Gardens by the Bay. I decided to get an annual pass but then when I went inside the cloud forest dome, I thought to myself it was perhaps the wrong choice since seeing it again for the second time I felt like I may actually get bored of seeing it over and over and I may get lazy to make the trip there as many as I should to make use of the annual pass. However, the flower dome made up for it. They have an autumn theme going on, so I got to have these wonderful pictures.



I love the orange colours all around and all the pumpkins. For more pictures of the autumn display, you can go here. I realize that I have never had the picture of the domes from the outside so people may not be able to visualize it and so I'm putting this wonderful picture of Gardens by the Bay's domes. From left to right, it's the cloud forest dome (the taller one), the flower dome, and the super trees (the things on the right of the picture) as seen from the Singapore flyer compound.

The Singapore Flyer was a funny thing. I didn't join them. It turned out, they, like my other cousin, found the whole thing to be rather scary. I guess no hot air balloon ride for them. So what else did they do here? Strangely my aunt wasn't the type who's into the little nature that Singapore has to offer. The zoo, Jurong Bird Park, and night safari didn't interest her much. I guess she felt that Indonesia has better of these things and it's all natural which she's of course right. We did go to the zoo and Jurong Bird Park in the end because you know what else you're gonna do in the days you are here, inspect the mall one by one? We didn't see everything in those places though which was fine by me because I was getting tired and was still in pain due to the fall. I did get this great picture of the Orang Utans in the zoo.

Then they were off and here I am lonely, waiting for my other cousins to come after christmas and maybe I'll get to do all of these again with them. The River Safari will be open by then and I think that should be interesting. I am more interested to see the polar bears than the pandas. It's been a long time that the polar bears are seen in public, but all the hype has been surrounding the pandas. Seriously the polar bears are pretty majestic just as majestic as the white tiger. Amazing creatures.

Guys, let me pause for awhile because I need to go out to do some errands and watch Argo. Yes I haven't forgotten the movies despite of my depressed state. I just haven't written about them here. I did write in my diary. Since the last movie I wrote, To Rome With Love, I have watched Savages, Taken 2, Looper, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I watched all of them alone because noone asked me and also because I didn't feel like asking people out. Anti social mode on high. No Bond movie there because I'm not interested. I will not write about those movies here, since it's been awhile since I watched them and I don't have the energy to write about them now but I still have things to say, so I'll continue this later in the evening.

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I'm back. Argo was great. I like it and now I'm really curious in reading the history of Iran in that particular period. With the recent attack on the US consulate in Libya, the demonstration part of the movie felt pretty scary real, but I suppose every personnel who works in embassies and consulates in countries which are rather unstable do face a certain risks when they accept the positions. It was interesting to watch the protocol that the embassy had to follow when they're under attack, in this case they had to destroy all documents and official seals that they had. The rescue mission was unbelievable and although I knew it would have a happy ending, Ben Affleck did manage to keep some suspense going on. I like the movie very much.

Continuing on life news. I had my last DELF preparation class yesterday. Hallelujah for not having to attend Friday evening class. Am I ready? Absolutely not. If any, the 12 weeks show me the many different ways to fail. Yesterday was rather somber, well at least for me. I felt most sorry during Janet's session. She's always so cheery and tries to get everyone's energy up, but it's not always working. Yesterday I just couldn't say much which is pretty much typical me every week :( So test is on the 29th and I'm going to bore you with the details. There are 4 sections:
  • Compréhension de l'oral - you listen to 2 audio recordings. One for 1 time and the second one for 2 times and answers questions related to them.
  • Compréhension des écrits - you read 2 articles and answers questions on them.
  • Production écrit - you are given a subject and suppose to write 250-word essay on them. I'll be damned if I don't understand the subject :'(
  • Production orale - you are given 2 topics, choose 1 and prepare to talk for 10 minutes about your view on it and be grilled after.
Each section carries 25 points and you need to score a minimal of 5 points in each section and a total score of 50 to pass the test. I have a huge possibility of failing because of compréhension de l'oral. For the first part you have to answer a few multiple choice questions and for the second part it was more of answering questions with sentences. Based on last week run through, I just didn't get it. I didn't get full mark on the first part and I blanked out on the second part that I barely made it to 5 points :'( Then for compréhension des écrits, in the second article, normally the questions are multiple choice questions about what the paragraph was trying to say and I just can't get it as well. We found out how marking would be like and darn, they are very exact in the grading system. You have to get it exactly because it's either the whole point or 0, there's no half a point or something :( So I'm banking on the 3rd and 4th part to lift the score since the marking will be based on the kindness of the persons marking them, but then I was told as well that if my composition tends to be longer than 250 words, I can get penalized and darn, I'm just into details and I always get very lengthy when I write as proven here and so that's not gonna be easy. Then don't get me started on production orale. I felt thankful that we went through the techniques on how to do this. I've learnt 3 languages other than Indonesian and this is the first time I learn the techniques of doing orale for a language test and it's actually very helpful. Why didn't I know this before? Technique aside, I normally blank out during orale. Some weeks ago, I did my run through faster than I did my practice and I cannot imagine doing it on the actual day since I will definitely get nervous and be worried if what I'm saying is understood since pronunciation is not my forte :( With the luck I've been having, failing seems like an even bigger possibility. I don't want to fail. I really don't but I'm scared. Stupidly I haven't started praying since weeks ago so that God helps me pass. I have to say that since I haven't started studying, I perhaps deserve it if I fail but please God, please don't.

So that's that. With everything that has happened this year, my confidence level has dropped so low that I don't feel like me much. I am this capable person. I can do stuff and I have done stuff that I know some people will not be able to do. However here I am now, not feeling like I can achieve anything. I feel unsettled. I feel worried and afraid all the time. I know many people like my mother will tell me to change that mind set and be brave and bold and believe in myself, but it's just not happening now. I don't know what to say. I wish and wish things will just be better but as the weather these days, it's just been gloomy and rain storm in my world. I hope things are better in your side of the world peeps. Take care!

:) eKa @ 9:06:00 PM • 0 comments

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