Monday, February 24, 2025
Finished reading Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips. It took place during the civil war of America. Initially I had difficulty understanding some of the sentences and terms, but as I got further along and things revealed itself to me, it became very very interesting. The book begins with a girl and her mother being dropped by someone the girl called papa in a lunatic asylum. Then we found out what happened to the girl and her mother, how they ended up in that situation, how papa wasn't the girl's real father. The girl real's father was a soldier for the union who got badly injured that he lost all of his memory. I really had difficulty understanding some of the sentences that up to now I'm not sure if my understanding of the relation between the girl's father and mother is correct. So anyways, somehow they all ended up in the same asylum though they didn't know this yet or we thought they didn't know, we as the reader definitely know and I was getting excited. However, what's supposed to be a happy ending didn't really happen - at least in my opinion. I felt rather sad about the tragedy that happened towards the end, but the girl would say it's okay, she's okay and all was well in the end. It's not a very thick book, but I took a long time reading it. I wish I could read faster and better.
What else to share? In preparation to watch Severance season 2 which I'm really excited about, I've been re-watching season 1 and I found myself forgetting many points of the story. Like I forgot that Helly was so miserable. As I was rewatching the episodes, it kinda brought back to mind this thought that I have been having for some time. Can you accept suffering if it makes the other part of you be okay or happy? It's like a toss between how much you love yourself and how selfish you are. In my weird mind I ask myself, can you accept being miserable for the other you in the alternative universe to be happy? Can you sacrifice yourself for all of yous' good? This does not require science fiction actually, it happens a lot in our life. Decisions we make about our health for example, things we consume, things we don't want to do but do for our own good. A wiser person would say happiness and suffering are not permanent and you are one being, the happiness of the other part of you is the happiness of you. Taking it further, we're all one being as the the whole human race and even bigger as living things. The suffering of others should be seen as our own suffering too and hence we should try to make things better for all. Happiness in others shouldn't bring envy to us, we should also be happy when people are happy. Yeah that is sometimes hard. Well that's me and my weird mind and I need to stop writing.
:) eKa @ 8:52:00 PM • 0 comments
Monday, February 10, 2025
hujan menangisi kota penuh ilusi
banyak manusia tapi ku sendiri
terus melangkah terus berjalan kaki
mungkin hidup ini memang begini
Puisi Kota - Maudy Ayunda + Iwan Fals
Found that song by chance and I like it a lot that on the day I found it, I played in on repeat a few times. The lyric is pretty nice though there is this line that I don't understand, bagai puisi mimpi harus dikejar - I was like what??!? Like a poem, a dream has to be chased - yeah I don't understand that one. One of the comment I read on that song was this girl saying that she thought life in her 20s should be the golden era and yet it's the anxiety era and I was like oh girl, nooo!!! I do feel bad she's feeling that way though I have nothing positive to say because I think as you go on in the decades of your life, it just gets worse with more worry. Actually I think if there's any decade of your life which should be glorious, it should be your 30s, because you're still young enough, by then hopefully you're smarter and you have a bit more money so that combination should make a more enjoyable time of your life. That being said, anxiety also never left my 30s, well it never leaves me even now. I guess as the song says, maybe life is like this. The song is like telling me that my life is like this with all its different facets, almost like you need to come to terms with it just like you come to accept who you are. As usual, I'm not sure I'm explaining myself well.
So I spent some time back home for Chinese New Year. I got to spend time with friends and family, hearing stories. Varied stories like unexpected health issues (that was scary), wealth (I have some rich relatives, but hearing wealth bigger than what these relatives have, bigger than what I could grasp, suddenly it made me think my world is so small), to beauty (now I realized many things can be fixed in Jakarta). There's really variety in my big extended family :D Being that I'm not the most social person out there, meeting all the family on Chinese New Year day still fills me with social anxiety but we only meet like once a year (particularly for me), so it is nice that the extended family still come to visit. As mom said, even with dad gone the cousins still come, they're so good. It is nice to see everyone with new addition, like there's a new baby this year and next year there will be more new babies. By hierarchy I'm actually on the grandmother level with some of these cousin's grandkids - yeah I covered my face when my mom told me that. She however is happy being on the great grandmother level, I guess in her mind it's a great thing to be that when she doesn't know when she'll have her own grandkids. There is something to be said, to be happy about things like this and to not be focused on things you don't have which I admittedly do a lot.
Did quite a number of things with mom. Took a train to visit my aunt / mom's older sister and it was combined with taking ojek / the motorcyle for hire, without helmet - so Indonesia, so unsafe, but honestly I wouldn't want to wear helmet that's been used by many people and no that option was not even available. We made it and back. That day was a day spent taking many public transportation, I'm quite proud of that day and I also got to eat cempedak goreng (google this one yourself) after we went praying that morning. In this trip, I managed to eat in two different eateries that serve Indonesian food, this is unexpected to me because I couldn't imagine my parents in my younger days doing this. I suppose as mom said, one could get bored of Chinese food too. Then one afternoon, mom flipped to a TV channel she said she sometime goes into. It was the channel that shows foreign films and we ended up watching this movie which initially I thought was french, but there's a scene where a license plate was shown and I think it's actually a Belgian movie. It was about these two youngsters who got pregnant at 15, yes roll your eyes everyone. We followed along these kids on their stupidity. At first they were going to abort the baby and I was telling mom isn't it nice that over there you could just go to a hospital and get it done and it's not a big deal, you can get safe abortion. The kids decided not to and then there's a scene where the parents finally met. My mom is definitely pro-choice, but she's also pro-marriage. She's like wondering why they're not asking these kids to get married. I was like why, the parents may not be married themselves. Mom does concede forcing marriage due to accidental pregnancy is not a good idea. In our extended family we've seen cases on those who got married (disaster) and one who didn't (she does alright, I'm sure even the aunties and uncles would give her a thumb up now). Anyways, from this movie I learnt that by 3 months you can get legal abortion in Belgium, but the silly kids were at 3.5 months by the time the parents met, so the girl's mother was suggesting The Netherlands. Side note: just googled this, wow in the Netherlands you can have legal abortion up to 24 weeks, which is the same as in Singapore :| So anyways, the girl's mother unable to help with this extra responsibility took the girl to a house that help girls in her situation. I was telling mom, isn't it great there's such option over there. What's the point of writing this much about this is because I do think sex education is important and safe open options should be available. In Indonesia, it's like we don't want to talk about these issues openly and this leads to stupid things happening that leads to dangerous things. Back to the movie, I had things to do, so didn't really watched the movie in full. I did see the baby being born, but what are you going to do with a baby at 15? How can you possibly support a baby at 15? Mom said in cases like this, the parents of the youngster have no choice and they need to step in and help. In Asia this seems to be like the default setting, but in the western world it might not be so?
What else? Back in Singapore, back to the grind, and back to elevated high blood pressure. I checked my blood pressure quite often back home and it's been good, like really good. So not sure why the very high reading in Singapore :( The only thing that's kinda bad back home is my pulse rate is not as good as in Singapore, but I literally didn't do a lot of movement back home, so that could be it. I know this is laziness to quite the extreme, but I kinda like it that back home I literally had days in a row where I did not step out of the house. Back in Singapore, this is not possible because I need to find food. Anyway, so my life is back to its usual routine now. One of the thing that I stumbled into on TV back home was the Christian channel and there's this young lady preaching about something. Side note: this young preacher used PowerPoint in her sermon, I didn't know they use this too these days. I didn't watch the whole thing, but in one of her bullet points was about being negative and that's how the devil gets you. I'm trying to remember this and put this into practice. On my first day back in the real world and I got nervous in the morning, I was like not today demon. I don't know if this is going to hold. In my many waking moments, I still ask God to please help me. May He has mercy on me.
:) eKa @ 8:59:00 PM • 0 comments
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