31 Days of Blogging, Day 13: A Walk in The Rain

I walked through the rain yesterday, a heavy rain accompanied with harsh wind which sent too much water my way.

"Are you going home," asked people, standing under the roof of a smaller building which stood between my building and my car. Funny question, I thought, but answering nonetheless: "Yes I am. No I don't need an umbrella, thank you."

The rain was so heavy I got very wet right down to my bag and shoes (I had to walk through puddles to get to the car). I thought of a time when Mom bought me boots so I could walk in a puddle. I still remember those boots: red outside, colourful stripes inside. I still remember what it felt like, splashing in a puddle wearing them. I got into the car, thinking how different walking in a puddle felt when you were all grown up.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 12: On What He Says

"You'll want to try smacking your lips repeatedly. Like This. You know you do. You'll try it, when I am not around. When you're driving to the city, alone."

"Do you want spaghetti? Aren't you bored with it yet?"

"It is okay. No, you don't like it when I say that. It is not okay."

"It is okay."

"I love you."

31 Days of Blogging, Day 11: Loft

"Cityloft" I read that word to myself, a word printed across a big building not far from the office.

"I don't know what loft means", I told myself. "Maybe it means really small apartment." I then proceeded to tell myself that yes, indeed it meant a small apartment, but very expensive. Because it stood on the most expensive area of the city. Of course then I told myself that I could live there, in the "Cityloft" and then maybe I wouldn't have to leave at 5.30 AM to get to the office on time.

At the office I went to look for the meaning of "loft", and among others it was said to mean "a high place." Now it seems even more interesting. Imagine people asking "where do you live?" and being able to answer "In a high place."

31 Days of Blogging, Day 10: Shopping for Shoes

It was only in the last 2 years that shopping for shoes became a chore for me. Perhaps I have grown more stingy over the years, not willing to pay more than peanuts for shoes. Alas, I realize that shoes cannot be beautiful and comfortable and sturdy and cheap at the same time.

Especially if you have big, fat feet.

The quest for new cheap beautiful comfortable sturdy shoes started around October last year. I circled a big shopping mall with no result: all the beautiful shoes were expensive, or uncomfortable. The comfortable, sturdy shoes were ugly and expensive. Of course the cheap ones were both ugly and uncomfortable. Next, went to a market famous for its various shoe-stores. Nope, couldn't find exactly the beautiful-cheap-comfortable-sturdy combo, and by that time I had fully realized how ambitious I had been to come up with that list of criteria.

However: I ended up buying two pairs of shoes, cheap and nice looking, and they were even comfortable to wear. I knew that they weren't exactly built to last, but I figured that being able to wear them for 4 months or so was worth the money.

Last weekend I said goodbye to one pair, as it was broken beyond repair. I bought another pair, another cheap and good-looking and seemingly comfortable one. They might not be very sturdy, but by now I have grown to love shoes-shopping, so I won't mind shopping for another pair in the near future. Ha.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 9: On What to Wish For

As it is tiring to merely wish for a house in a clean suburban area overlooking a manicured garden, one can wish for a Monday free of traffic jam. And when it actually happened: the roads were almost empty, the rows and rows of cars nowhere to be seen, one got freaked out.

Where is everybody? I wanted to ask. Apparently they were too afraid to go out, the TV and radio stations kept hinting that riots were in store, too many rallies threatening the government not to raise the fuel price.

I drove along the empty road, thinking of 2005 when the government raised the fuel price by 80%. It was also the year when my salary was significantly raised to compensate for it. I didn't quite know what to wish for: perhaps for the government not to raise the fuel price, and my salary to be raised significantly again, and a Monday with no traffic jam. Wishing for them all seems greedy.

In the back of my mind a house with a manicured garden popped, and I told myself that maybe I was greedy. Strangely, admitting that didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 8: On Remembering

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.~ Woody Allen (1935 - )

R forgets things, as I do. But it seems to me that he forgets much more than I do. It is with horror that I witness his leaving the house with the keys still on the door, his forgetting to take home our laundry basket from the laundromat. Sometimes he asked what we did the previous weekend, not remembering anything about it. I am on the other hand obsessed with remembering, and with keeping track of time. If possible, I want to remember every movie we went to, down to the date and place. I keep ticket stubs, restaurant bills and such, to retain the memory of an event for as long as I could. I want to remember as much as I can about the time we spend together.

The things R seems to forget are the simple trivial things: he never forgets the way to a place, for instance, even if he only went to that place once, and that was more than 10 years ago. He never forgets which classes he has to teach in a day, which means he is unlike some professors who enter a classroom asking whether it is his class. He remembers details about his students.

I wonder whether forgetting things is in fact normal, and I am the one being weird for wanting to remember everything. Sometimes I think my obsession to remember every little details of our daily life means I forget to live the moment.

I suspect life is what happens when you are too busy to remember its every little detail.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 7: A Walk Inside

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be able to literally "have a walk in the park."

We don't have parks here. Actually there is one about 3 kilometers from our house, but I don't quite see the point of driving to a park before I can start walking in it. I suspect I am not making sense here, as usual.

Anyway. If you don't have a park, and you don't have a yard, and you don't have a garden, you can talk a walk inside the house. No, I am not mad. Well, I probably am, but people are still paying me to give lectures to youngsters, so I guess I am not that mad. Not yet.

How does one take a walk inside? Well, by getting off the chair and start walking, of course. I usually walk around the house with a broom (see, this is one way to avoid looking like a truly mad woman, but you can find other ways, such as, walking around with a mop). Our house is only 42 squared meters from the inside, including the bathroom where I don't think I should walk in with a broom. So this walk usually takes about 30 minutes.

This solitary walk isn't proper if you don't look all tranquil and dreamy. So, I will do it from time to time putting my best dreamy face, by imagining a life of a full-time writer.

You get to stop the imagining if you decide to actually use the broom and sweep the floor. I do that too, from time to time. But, but: I think once you get really good, you can do both in the same time. A full-time writer doing one hell of sweeping, someday I would be.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 6: The Distraction

You know the days when you're so stuck with one sad/scary thought all day, or many days, and you know that you just need to snap out of it at once? Maybe you don't. I just know, anyway, because that happens to me lots of time. An ugly thought will sometimes stick itself merrily in my brain, refusing to budge. After an hour or so, I will usually tell myself to "snap out of it". Only, it is never easy. (Maybe I am just not good with snapping out of anything.) However, it can be done. Sometimes.

One good way to get an ugly thought out of your mind, I happily report, is by thinking of a happy thought. Ha! The hard part is, fabricating a happy thought is sometimes tiring when you've been bogged down by the ugly thought for days. As I often lack the energy to create a really, really happy thought with an ugly thought stuck in my brain, I just use my distraction.

You see, a distraction does not have to be a happy thought. You can think of a face cream, for instance. I do it quite often. I read the ingredients of many face creams, to the point where I can almost memorize them by heart. I am well aware that almost all over-the-counter face creams share the same ingredients, so it is very amusing that each cream claims to be the secret to youthful skin/clearer skin/younger looking skin/anything.

Still, I find them very adorable. Face creams, I mean, not the claims that they make. I love the jars, the colours, the textures of them. And the promise that after just a week of usage, you'll wake up with a new face all youthful/clear/young/anything. And of course, I buy them from time to time.

Now. How do you use this kind of distraction? I mentioned it could help chase away ugly thoughts from inside your brain. Here is how you do it: when you feel that tinge of sadness, when an ugly and sad thought forms inside you, and when you recognize it gets bigger, almost swallowing you from the inside, think of one face cream, let's call it Face Cream A. Think of its TV commercial. Can you remember its tagline? Then you search for it on the internet, and read all of its ingredients. Those ingredients may be written in Latin or Greek or Kazumbwa (e.g: Myristic Acid, Decyl Glucoside) which make them even more useful as a distraction.

After that, think of another face cream, let's call it Face Cream B, and google its ingredients. This will help to prevent tears from forming in your eyes. Next, compare the ingredients of Face Cream A and B. How many of them are the same?

You see, now you're thinking that the two creams are almost the same, and you have been officially distracted. Your ugly thought has been pushed aside a bit, by the thoughts about Face Cream A and B.

Oh, oh. What if, after this, you're still sad and bothered, that ugly thought still find ways to spread in your brain? What if you start thinking of Face Cream C and D, and still you're consumed with grief, the distraction cannot compete with the sadness? I am sad to say that this may happen too.

That is precisely why I know all the ingredients of almost all over-the-counter face creams.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 5: Failure

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. ~ Quentin Crisp

Failure, it is when one flunks an exam. When one doesn't get the job one has been eyeing, has been working hard for. When one runs after a bus and falls flat on one's face. When one works and toils and researches and does one homework dutifully and still does not get what one is after. Because the stars and the planets refuse to align, and there are too many stars and planets up there, I think I will never get them to align the way I want them to.

I think I know it intimately, failure, I know its ugly face so well. I thought about it while driving home from work yesterday. I know it so intimately I know when it has about to decide to visit me, I can hear its footsteps and smell its faint scent.

I am still thinking about Giuliana Rancic (and Marilyn Monroe). I wonder if they thought they were failures. I suspect they never did. "It's just life", I imagine they'd say, and then they'd go on drinking their coffee, looking gorgeous.

That's what I've been trying to do all morning. "It's just life," I've been saying to my coffee cup. And I went on to drink my coffee, although I am not looking gorgeous. Not at all. But it's just life.


I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. ~ Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962)





image from http://tips4health.net

31 Days of Blogging, Day 4: Serenity

Naturally serene, not me. Some people seem to walk, talk, move about with this air of serenity, I imagine they are that way because they have this perfect self-acceptance.

I imagine they look at themselves in the mirror every morning, accepting that their hair is too oily, or too dry. And that their skin is too oily, or too dry. That way, I imagine, they will be able to walk down the street to work looking serene, because they won't be thinking: damn my hair is too oily. Or too dry. You get what I mean?

Perfect self-acceptance, a concept so strange to me it hurts. But I do know how to fake looking serene: it is by holding an imagery of a garden in my brain. That is what I think about, walking down the street or standing in front of my classroom. A rose, a tigerlily. Perfect bushes and rhododendron.



I just found out (too late), that Giuliana Rancic has breast cancer. On top of the struggle with infertility. I wonder how she keeps her serene look. I also read that she has opted for a double mastectomy. I wonder if she has perfect self-acceptance. Or if she walks around, one step at a time, thinking of roses and rhododendron.


image from http://mostbeautifulflower.com

31 Days of Blogging, Day 3: On Imagining Things

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)


Drive to work everyday at dawn. No, before dawn. It's always dark when I start the engine, but it will get brighter about 12 kilometers later, when I drop R at the highway rest-area to get his taxi. Then it is just me, and 24 more kilometers of crowded roads, or intersections, or toll booth, or narrow lanes, or busy people getting of the bus. Every kilometer of the way, I imagine things.

Flowers growing in the yard. Magically. Without intervention. Didn't I once spend hours in the yard, planting flower seeds and hoping that they would bloom? Of course they didn't bloom. Those were forget-me-nots who didn't like the harsh sun of Tangerang.

Working in a nice buildings, having my own private office with wide windows overlooking a garden way below.. Didn't I use to work in such a building? It didn't last long, though.

Living in a strange city, where I didn't speak the language. This has partly happened. Would love to experience it again, as an adult. In the strange city, R and I will work down-town (which means we live in the suburb)but we commute to work by train. Like John Grisham, I will write long-hand on my yellowpad during the commute, producing stories after stories. Oh, I will furiously write everyday! Then on weekends, I will type the stories on my computer, at home where flowers bloom in the yard. Where I sit in my home office, facing my big glass windows. Which of course, open into the garden. Yes, I can call the yard a garden in that strange city. Because the yard is full of flowers, you see? And of course, my stories, they get published.

Busy roads, people getting into and off buses, motorcycles criss-crossing narrow lanes. Into an old unkempt building I drive into, where my cramped office is waiting for me. Not to worry, though. By tomorrow morning, I shall visit my home office in the strange country.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 2: Keeping Track of Time

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

I am obsessed about time. If possible, I want to remember exactly what I did on a particular day, or even a particular hour of a day. Between mid 2007 to mid 2010, when I was back in school and didn't have a rigid 7 to 4 schedule, the obsession grew so big it swallowed me whole.

I was so worried that I spent so much time "doing nothing" and "not making enough progress", that instead of doing my research, I browsed the net for time-management tools. The browsing, of course, took hours off my working time. Oh the irony.

Anyway. There are so many time-management tools on the net, and I tried several of them. I tried Joe's Goals, but it was very terrifying after only a week or so, because there were so many goals that I set for myself but didn't meet.

After a lot of stumbling around the internet (and wasting valuable time), I finally set to use the Pomodoro Technique, or using the freely download-able Instant Boss.

Oh and good old journals. But of course. I have 3 journals at a time, most of the time. One for my to-do list, and the other two for scribbling stories, thoughts and what-nots.

With so many time-management tools at hand, does it mean my productivity level hits the roof? As you've guessed: the answer is no. However, the tools feed my obsession nicely, and I don't use them to increase my productivity anyway. I want to remember how time moves. I want to consciously feel what happens when. With my tools, I can safely tell you that I remember my days well.

So, what did I do on, for instance, February 2, 2009? Of course I remember that day well. July 3, 2009? Also on record. I told you I was obsessed. Ha.

31 Days of Blogging, Day One : Warming Up for A Moleskin

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)



Here's the thing: I tell people who matter in my life that I long to be a writer. I tell them not once, not twice, but probably a zillion times. Some of them would nicely ask what I write, and I'd stumble for an answer. One or two of them, nicely still, would say that if I really want to be a writer, then I'd stop talking about it and actually write.

Admittedly I am guilty of not writing enough. I blame this on my fear of looking stupid: I wonder why it matters so much to me not to look stupid, when day-in and day-out I already project to the world how stupid I am by my usual foot-in-mouth actions. I want my writing to be impeccable, no typos, no grammatical mistakes, backed up by nice observations (!), all words sitting prettily next to each other with perfect coherence.

This fear can be paralyzing, especially when I don't really have to own-up to my laziness. It's not like an academic advisor would be scolding me if I didn't submit an article on time, or that I'd be dropped out of uni if I didn't finish a thesis after a definite time-frame (this was mainly why I could finish all my schoolwork on time: not because I definitely loved my research, but because I loved deadlines so much it helped me to forget my fear of producing imperfect manuscripts.)

Sometimes, I also blame academic writing. Writing academic papers and research proposals took a lot of my time outside teaching hours, and yours truly are too lazy to write at home. This means, according to a dear friend, I don't really want to be a writer. A writer makes time to write, this friend noted, a writer does not makes excuses not to write. To which I am guilty as charged.

So far, aside from the academic writing with their nice deadlines, I only wrote 1 tiny essay for a magazine, a short-story which was published 3 years ago (!), two blogs which are updated about 3 times a year. Yeah, that bad.

R bought me nice notebooks, actually, so that I could write long-hand, anywhere without a computer. I only started to write in the first notebook 3 months after he bought it. And the other notebook? Still empty, tight-wrapped, almost 7 months after he gave it to me.

This other notebook, is a Moleskin, my first Moleskin and I admit it scares me a bit. Everybody seems to buy Moleskins right and left, I know, but to me a Moleskin is...sacred? Especially because when he handed it to me, he just had to remind me that it was the exact type of notebooks used by Ernest Hemingway. Ouch.

Okay, nobody is comparing me to Ernest Hemingway. It's all stupid thinking that I'd be that accomplished, but I did spend time to think up a "theme" of the essays I dreamed to write longhand on that notebook. And of course, the vicious cycle continues: I got too afraid of writing I ended up leaving the notebook untouched.

This has got to change. So here is my masochistic way of straightening up my act: I am going to blog everyday for the next 31 days. Gulp.

And the fact that I fear looking stupid actually helps me in this project. Publicly saying (although, again, only 2 people read this blog but they are still...part of public) that I'll blog for 31 days straight and not delivering equals falling flat on my face. And that counts as looking very, very stupid.

I am hoping that once I strengthen my writing muscles enough, I'll be able to fill up that Moleskin. Somehow I even dare to hope that strengthening these sagging muscles won't take as long as 31 days.

And to that, I raise my glass.