Sense of right and wrong

When did it all began? I remember seeking to start a conversation with a virtual friend during my freshman years. She had just found her salvation through a close-knitted religious group abroad after a difficult break-up of her engagement, while I was fresh out of my high school experience – learning to swim in the confusion tides of different thoughts, cultures, and beliefs.

I was beginning to realise probably everything I was taught to believe in is inaccurate1, or off-the-mark (I’m avoiding the word “wrong”, for its definitive nature), so I told her, “I want to start all over again. From zero. I want to look at the world from a plain view of flat nothingness. Not guided or influenced by pre-conception of things I’ve been taught before.“

She was quiet, a silence I gather a result of being stunned. I have said something out of norm, I have stepped into a dangerous territory.

“What do you mean by starting from zero?” She asked. I was going to say, from belief to non-belief, and probably to belief again. Just like experiment, when you want to find out the effect of something new, you have to remove all variables and start all over again, right? But I refrained myself.

We didn’t continue our conversation. The friendship tapered off as the years gone by. She married a man she knew in the community she was involved in and had a daughter I’ve never met, while I continue to swim in my ocean of great confusion.

Today, I realised, it all started like a great snowball of chain reactions. I had in me planted a seed of doubt, and it has grown malignantly inside my head like a tumour. Infecting my earlier beliefs, thoughts and convictions. Manifesting abnormal symptoms and alienating behaviours. I am infected and there is no turning back.

How do you achieve balance?

Taking a deep breath, and looking deep within myself to find out (again, and again) what’s truly important.

Going for a 3km run between intervals of my hectic life. It’s short enough to fit in my erratic schedule, it’s intensive enough to give me the good, satisfying sweat.

Talking to my mother about our daily happenings; my nieces’ antics, my cat and her kittens well-being, the upcoming wedding and what we want to do about it.

Eating wholesome meal, with a lot of veggies on the side.

Crossing my to-do lists one by one.

Listening to peaceful songs of Kings of Convenience, Feist, or (if my mood permits) Pink Floyd.

Finally, curling up in my bed with the book I’ve read so often there are countless cracks on its spine. It’s so comfortable to hold it feels like sitting down with your best friend.

What do you do to achieve balance in your life?

Seeking inconstant

The plane was descending through the clear clouds. It was early morning, and as the countries beneath her begin to take shape, she was gripped with an ironic sense of longing and nostalgia.

She has done it a thousand times, since she was ten or earlier, she couldn't really remember. Taking off and touching down, packing and unpacking, sitting in the unmoving transit of arrivals and departures.

Her life is discontinuous tales of hellos and goodbyes, and she knows no other way of living. She never stays, she seeks inconstant.

Break your heart open so new light can get in

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.


A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.


A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Do what brings you joy

"Do what brings you joy”, was the holiday message of Money Rabbit, and I concur.

The foreboding sense of a new year falling upon us, and the 2011 which came to an end in a split second has left me wondering about my life – and put me in contemplative mode of what-have-I-achieved-so-far and have-I-done-enough-for-my life.

2010, when I first started work – feels like a long time ago. 2009, when I left Australia almost seems like never happened.

Life has slowed down a great deal in 2011. As a compulsive achiever who is always greedy to get to the next point in her life, it means a lot to me.

However, to say my life has come to a standstill is probably inaccurate. It was not going forward outwardly (in the sense of adding new stuffs to my life portfolio – new degrees, new house, new friends, new jobs, etc.), but I ended up creating and expanding a lot of space inside me.

Looking back now, I am beginning to see 2011 is my year of great de-cluttering.

I learned to make peace with moving through life at a slower pace, I learned to appreciate how being here and now is enough.

I recognised and accepted the realities of my relationships with everyone around me, why some is working while others not. I learned a lesson on ownership and entitlement; I do not own people, and I'm not entitled to own people.

The result was a liberating experience. I feel light. Accepting I alone am responsible for the direction of my life, while at the same time recognising there are always larger things at play in influencing the course of my life - allows me the simplicity of taking one step at a time.

Every day, every decision I make; I choose joy, I choose empathy, I choose love.

It's not easy, sometimes I carelessly chose anger and vengeance, but I am learning.

Latent happiness

"So, instead of actively trying to make places, or people, happier, perhaps we'd be better off heeding the advice of Canadian author Robertson Davies: 'If you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.'"

- Eric Weiner, in The Geography of Bliss

Like the Mars bar. Dark and convoluted on the outside, but latently happy on the inside.

A different side of Jakarta

I am writing from the luxurious comfort of Jakarta Le Meridien's lobby. Outside, guards in uniform stand by the electronic scanner, greeting every guest who walks in with a generous smile.

By experience, I know every vehicle which comes in will suffer the same fate too. Policemen with their metal detectors will stop each and every one of them, asking to see every guest's face by insisting the driver to lower down all windows.

Inside, men in suits walk around with one hand in their pockets - looking at the same time important but carefree. As if they own the world. The clacking sounds of high heels distract me, a celebrity-looking woman walks past with her head held high, with men trailing behind her like ducklings following their hen mother.

I came to Jakarta with expectations, and none of them has been met so far.

Why is it, when we want to do something good, it has to be confined within the boundaries of existing systems or institutions?

For three days, eating inappropriately overpriced food, sitting around in an unnaturally regulated room temperature, we speak of how we want to try to save the world and change humanity. Granted, millions have been spent for lower income groups who is supposed to be our beneficiaries, plans for policies are underway to ensure more sustainable and equitable world.

But are we doing the right thing? Who are we actually benefiting? Who do we eventually leave feeling good, our beneficiaries or ourselves?


I know I'm supposed to be inspired, but at the end of it all, I think I'm left feeling more disenchanted than ever.

And Jakarta feels like a date gone wrong. I'll have to come back, next time.