Troubled Heart

I was wrong in my last post when I wrote that I had like 20-30 pages to go in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Turned out I had like 100 pages to go but hustle I did and I finished the last few pages today. It was really really good, vividly written, even though the few pages at the beginning weren't that captivating and the last few pages at the end wasn't so easy to read. The last few pages had nothing to do with the story but more about thoughts from the main character, like things I write here in this blog, but his thoughts were much intelligent I suppose. Anyway the title of this post is in relation to the main character of the book, Theo Decker. The story began kinda at the end and then it flashbacked into the beginning of when Theo's life changed at 13 years old. He was with his mom in a museum when there's a bomb attack. His mom died and he ended up getting out of the museum with a small painting. The story then continued to when he had to live with his estranged father in Vegas, made friend with a Russian boy at school, Boris. His story had accompanied me throughout many lunches alone when I quickly finished my food and checked in on him. I was sad at how his life turned with Boris, they got high and stole things, pretty much wasted their potential especially since both of them seemed to be smart. Then Theo's dad died and he decided to go back to New York and the story progressed and we met adult Theo. He did more drugs and became not a really good person because he cheated on his business. Towards the ending another big trigger in his life was when he met Boris again and they had to deal with the painting. Boris had became a criminal whom you perhaps don't really hate much because he just came across as fun and loyal and he was really loyal through and through so that's admirable. I had my disapproval about Boris but the ending reminded me that Theo had also been a dishonest person. He's perhaps more hidden in his illegal dealing but he and Boris were both criminal. Reading how Theo's life progressed, I had sadness about how he was becoming and also because he's so troubled. I guess I'm a sucker for people with a very heavy heart because though it's not the same situation, I can understand the sadness, despair, restlessness. We're kindred spirit in a way. There are other things happening in the book, but I don't want to spoil it for you. I really want to see this made into a tv series because then it won't be contained to 2 hours and such if it's a film. Boris would be a really interesting character. I would love to see this gregarious character comes alive, though I cannot picture anyone playing him. I imagine someone like Nicholas Hoult for the role of Theo. Anyways, so that made it 7 books this year, did more than the mission of 5 books, well done me :D

Went to watch Seventh Son today. Went to watch it knowing nothing about the premise except for the fact that Prince Caspian (Narnia reference there, actor's name is Ben Barnes) was in it. He looked good with shorter hair. Turned out Jon Snow (Game of Thrones reference, actor's name is Kit Harington) was in it too. Too bad he died like within 5 minutes of the starting of the movie. Yeah, Prince Caspian is the main character here. I found it to be quite boring despite of the many famous people in it. I was sleepy watching it but it could be because of the McDonald's hot cakes I had for breakfast. McDonald's breakfast always make me sleepy. It's annoying that there aren't many good movies to watch in this period especially since I have a 2-week break from Japanese classes. I should be consolidating my notes and finished up my homework and yet I haven't done any of that. I found myself to be really struggling to keep my head afloat in Japanese classes :(

This end of the year is of course not a happy one for Indonesia. It's really sad what happened with AirAsia 8501. Yesterday news that some wreckage and dead bodies were found gave me mix feeling. Relieved that there's clarity and it's not like being in the unknown like MH 370, but I was feeling really sad because it's such a tragic news. It's really really sad. Hearing the story of some of the passengers, it's really sad. This also makes me feel rather ungrateful that I don't think much about flying. It's so random and can happen to anyone. Around 7 planes were in the area when the plane found trouble and this was the plane that didn't make it. The flight path and the area where the plane got into trouble is similar to the flight path from Jakarta to Singapore, the flight that I've taken the most. I have been safe in all my travels so far and yet very often I think nothing of it and didn't thank God for the protection. It's very very sad and this AirAsia flight hit me harder than what happened to MH 370 or MH 7. On a side note: the Indonesian search and rescue team seemed to be doing a good job. They seem to be very organized and capable. It must be a difficult job for them especially with the bad weather, but they seem to be going strong and so committed in their effort and that's good to see.

So it's the last day of 2014. As usual a new year freaks me out because I'll be older. I reckon this week will still be okay. The last 2 weeks have been pretty okay, yes okay even though in the last post I sounded sad. I'm not looking forward for next week. Told my cousin about it and she said with the new year we should have new drive and spirit. I don't know where she gets her positivity from. She was born 9 days before me, so we have the same chinese sign and we're both pisces, but our outlook in life is so different. What's wrong with me?!? Okay enough sad depressing ranting. Chanced upon this song like maybe last week in Radio Rai and been hearing it a few times since. When I listened more to the lyrics, it's like a sign for me to be brave especially when I feel rather scared on doing something. I'm building up that courage and I think I will make this song as the first song in the soundtrack playlist for the plan I hope to execute. Some parts of the lyrics that spoke to me:
There's a place I go to where no one knows me
It's not lonely
It's a necessary thing
It's a place I made up
Find out what I'm made of
...

:) eKa @ 8:50:00 PM • 0 comments

Not The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Christmas eve. Was feeling rather sad this morning because I was feeling lonely. They say the holidays are actually the time where many people get more depressed. Totally true. In the end, because I asked (still I am sad that no one asked me instead) I had lunch today with Gascoigne (where he dropped me a news that I couldn't wrap my head around) and will have lunch tomorrow with la Gioia. Now suddenly I feel like I want to be alone, but I will still go to lunch tomorrow because la Gioia has kindly said yes. I'm such an anti social that I myself do find it annoying. How has your Christmas been? I'm sure it's more cheery than mine.

Had a bad week last week which made me scream FUCK a lot, to myself. I had enough self control to not run to FaceBook and start ranting. I did tweet though and wondered if all the shitty things are like punishments. Today was still bad too that I wanted to scream fuck you! Obviously the bad things made me feel even worse today. For now, I am safe in my room. It's raining outside. If I think about how this year has like only a week left, I'm sinking deeper into the black hole of depression. Yes, it's not really the most wonderful time of the year for me right now. I did manage to come up with a plan for next year. Even managed to calculate the cost. Right now I'm wondering if I should ask people to execute the plan with me, but again I wonder why I just don't have people to ask me rather than me asking them and then get flat out rejected. This sounds very pathetic, yes? I know it is, I hope you appreciate how honest and open I am in writing this. Today Gascoigne bet that I would still be here in 5 years time and if he's right, I should pay him S$100. Being 37 and still in Singapore and single, that is utterly tragic and depressing. Please God, please the universe, don't let it be so. Please, please, PLEASE!!!

On movie news. Managed to watch a few things. Watched Paddington which I thought was okay. Love the colours. Hugh Bonneville is in it and all the while watching him, I felt rather weird seeing Lord Grantham speaking and behaving the way his character in Paddington does. It was the same watching Michelle Dockery in Non-Stop, so weird to see Lady Mary working. I think I will feel weird watching all actors of Downton Abbey in a more contemporary role. Anyway, yeah Paddington wasn't bad. So want to buy all its merchandise. Then yesterday, I went to watch Annie. The review for this wasn't good, but I quite enjoyed it. If I'd been alone in the cinema, I would most probably have sung along out loud. Quvenzhané Wallis was great. I watched her in Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was a rather weird movie and I think I found her to be great there too. I think I managed to watch a few other movies, one that stood up for me was Men, Women & Children which I thought to be really good. I read somewhere that it's not as good as the book, but I found this movie to be really good. Speaking of book, I was convinced that I'll finish The Goldfinch before December ends and yet with 1 week to go, I still have like 20-30 pages to go. I have to say it's a really good book and since we're towards the ending now, some things have happened, things that made me gasp out loud and had my jaw drop in public! People who saw me must have thought I'm so weird. Sometimes though I feel like I have the invisibility cloak on that people don't notice me or ask me to do things. Anyway The Goldfinch, right now the ending doesn't seem to be a happy one, but I am trying to be hopeful. I have been so absorbed in the book and the imagery has been pretty vivid in my head and I think this would make a good tv miniseries. I kinda don't want it to be condensed for a purpose of a movie. I'll talk more about the book when I finish it. I will hustle and get this done before this year ends.

Not much else to write because my life is that empty. Merry Christmas Everyone!

:) eKa @ 7:10:00 PM • 0 comments

Good Grief, It's the Last Month of 2014!

I'm not one who knows what the date of each day is. Today it took me awhile when someone told me that she and her family moved in to a new place on December 1. In my head, it's like December is still a concept in the future, not realizing we are already in December. The more I think about it, I can feel that I'm gonna freak out more if I let the thoughts of having this year end and a new one start soon to occupy my head. Freaking out that will lead to depression because I will think about me getting older and then I'll end up examining my life and what I have accomplished in life and where I am now. Where I am now is pretty much where I have been all these past years. It's not a stretch to say I am stuck and let's not go there, let's not talk about this, because it's just gonna make me upset.

Alright, let's talk about a few mundane things. Watched a few things. The Walking Dead had its mid season finale this week and I was pretty sad about the death that happened, sigh. As for the cinema, well I really don't have the time to go anymore. Watched Fury which was better than I expected. Shia LaBeouf is a really talented actor, but too bad all the antics are clouding his talent. I thought it's a shame, but some of the weird things he did, he brought it upon himself. I also watched The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and felt kinda annoyed with Katniss in it because I felt she's kinda weak and whiny. I also thought Philip Seymour Hoffman was great and how sad it is that he tragically died.

On other news, last week found out that my credit card was blocked due to security reasons. Got the news in a text and I was told to call a number immediately, which I didn't. My lack of concern was perhaps worrying, but I was thinking that the card was going to expire in January, I would have to get a new card anyway, so I didn't care much about it. The next morning, the bank called me. Turned out someone had tried to use the card to buy something online. Since it's an online transaction, we don't know from which country this is coming from, but the transaction was in USD. I was pretty shocked hearing the news that I don't remember how much the transaction was. Either way, it failed and the bank quickly blocked the card. The lady from the bank just wanted to confirm it's not me trying to buy some vitamins online (the thief is health conscious?) and she told me that I would get a new card mailed to me in the next few days. I'm thankful that there is system in place to detect this kinda thing and thankful that DBS did a good job in protecting me. Still, it's very shocking that such thing could happen. I am assuming this is from some evil staff who took credit card information from legit places where I have used my credit card. All and all, there were extra prayer that night thanking God for the protection.

Got a new passport. Confused and disappointed about it because I was expecting to get a biometric passport and turned out it isn't :'( Can only hope that at the very least, it's machine readable. I had a big problem getting a usable finger print scan when I was applying for it. I was thinking if I should write about what happened here, but I chickened out and wrote it in my diary instead. I guess I'm not ready yet to talk about my condition, a condition whose name I finally found out in these past few weeks after googling on how to deal with it on a particular situation. This led to finding out that there are people like me and while it's comforting to find out there are others who know exactly how it feels like and reading the same things I have been dealing with, it's also kinda sad because somehow it's all official now that there's something wrong with me. Wrong is perhaps too sad of a word to use, perhaps not perfect is better, but no one is physically perfect, no? Also since I have been living with this my whole life, it's strange that finding out the exact medical term for it caused me to feel sad. With or without the name, I have what I have and it's unfortunately a really annoying condition to have, especially at important times. Anyways, I talk too much about it already.

So new passport, not biometric, super disappointed. I googled a lot about this and I wonder if the applying process in Indonesia (at least Jakarta) will be a more integrated effort. The thing is, Indonesia rolled out e-ID card in the past few years, which means our new ID card has our biometric information. It was a very thorough attempt, not only there's finger print scan but there's iris scan. The moronic thing they did though was to put an expiry date on the ID card. It's like saying there's an expiry date on being an Indonesian citizen. I thought it's a waste of resource. I think one should only change their ID if there are major changes in the data, like your picture doesn't match you anymore. That is what Singapore does and if you change residence, they just stick a new address, so there's no wastage. Unless the reason they're doing it is some benevolent reasons that the government would like to check on its citizen and see how they are doing. It's as ridiculous as I write it no? Anyways, if they can connect these data and the passport data, then the country would have a more integrated and meaningful data of its citizens. I did my passport in the embassy and for sure they're releasing these passports without linking back to the citizen's data in Indonesia. They didn't ask for my Indonesian ID number, instead they asked for a Singapore one. The chances of me being the only Eka Buntoro Dewi Putri in Indonesia or in the world right now is very high, so it can be easy to identify me in case of emergency, terrorism activity, or whatnot, but still I would hope that they're making more of an effort to get all these data be centralized, like if they do a search on a passport number, all the information about the person, their ID number, name, address, biometric data can be retrieved. Right now I don't think that is the case. Is it weird that I would like such a system? Pretty sure that there are people in places like America who would be terrified with such a system and think it's an invasion of privacy. Anyway, hopefully the new ministries can be smart about this, especially after all the spending on this.

Moving on, went to Gardens by the Bay after collecting my passport yesterday. They had their christmas decoration on and I feel like it's getting harder and harder for me to be amused anymore. There were teddy bears and christmas trees such as this with small teddy bears decorating it.

Then there's a fake fireplace with teddy bears in christmas stockings. The fireplace part is actually a tv showing crackling fire.

Then this is new for me and I found it to be very disturbing. It's from a French sculptor and it's called Les Voyageurs (The Travellers) if I'm not mistaken. It's gifted from Changi airport to the garden and the sculpture is to represents this family going to Changi after making memories in the gardens. Maybe it's because I just watched The Walking Dead the day before, but I found it to be really disturbing with parts of the people missing and they're not actually looking happy. I was so surprised to see this and I wonder if I am the only one thinking that it can give nightmares. Seriously, are kids okay seeing this?

Moving to the center area, there are little houses with little snowman decoration, teddy bear santa, and fake white snow which I didn't dare touch because I don't know what they are.



Towards the exit, there are two last teddy bears. By the way, glad to see the rose garden section back though there are still not a lot of roses in it.

I decided that I would come back again when it's darker, so I went out to look around the areas and ended up having dinner. After ice cream, it was dark enough for the lights to be switched on and it does make the flower dome look more mesmerizing than in the daylight. Below is the center area with the houses and the light tower where there are actually lighted flying reindeers on some parts of it, parts of the reindeers pulling Teddy Santa's sleigh.



Then I went outside to the super tree areas where the Spalliera is. Copying this from the website, Spalliera: A crown of lights, some 17m tall and 31m wide. Enter and be enthralled.

I was enthralled for like a minute or so. There was to be a snowy blizzard thing at 7:30 pm so everyone was waiting for it. By snow, it's foam, just like everywhere else where this is promised in Singapore. Can't they throw shaved ice instead? Also maybe it will work better if the machines were actually propped up high instead of shooting it from the ground. Blizzard is overstating it. It was very light and it's over in 10 minutes. I was amused for like 30 seconds. There were little kids who seemed to like it, but I think the general feel is not that of high excitement and wonder. There were actually a lot of crisscrossing wires to light up all these lights and the foam settling on them made them more visible.

That's about it peeps. For pictures, please go here.

:) eKa @ 4:55:00 PM • 0 comments

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