Showing all posts in Journey

In Days in Edmonton, Impulsive Writing

Memory from a drizzly afternoon spring

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Memory from a drizzly afternoon spring

Edmonton, Spring 2018

There is something quite liberating about chilling on the balcony of your third-floor apartment in a rainy afternoon, under the huge, shady trees, just letting the rain shower your bare skins as you embrace the spring breeze. For a moment, forgetting about those unsettling emotions and unfinished chores. Breathe, let loose. Smell the dry earth. Sing a farewell ode to snows.

I think the majority of us often forgets to appreciate the small details that make life hurt slightly less, and enlighten the world slightly more.

In Adventure of a Lifetime, Thoughtful Enlightenment

A Decade Rewind

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A Decade Rewind

Hi, there.

It’s been quite a hiatus, isn’t it? A year and a half of not being present here, where a lot had happened. Too much, almost.

With the year of 2019 – and basically, the whole decade – is coming to an end, I thought I could maybe write something just so that the blog does not skip a year. Plus, isn’t it basically the most perfect timing? A piece to recap what had been said and done or left otherwise, not only for the past 1.5 years, but also perhaps the whole decade altogether. Crowds on Twitter and Instagram have been doing it anyways, so I guess I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

And so here goes.

My search began on Facebook, so I definitely went a little too extra as usual. Google Photos and gazillion pictures from my external hard drive also brought back endless streams of memories. Spent several hours rambling through those photos, trying to salvage pictures that define each year, or at least resembling it. And it’s amazing how I could still remember much, if not most, of the feelings that I got from those events that were passing by.

Like the lightweight, neutral, and completely undisturbed feelings when celebrating one of my high school classmates’ birthday in a pizza place one afternoon, even though it was gloomy outside;

or the excitement when having a sleepover with my college girls, gossiping about the threads on the Secret app back when it was still the bomb (and available);

or the burdened, heavy mood when I woke up a bit too late sometime in November 2017, realizing that I still had one more year left to pull through before I could come back home.

What a decade it has been, with all those emotions, events, actions, faces, stories, memories, episodes.. And I have nothing but gratitude indeed.

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In Days in Edmonton, Thoughtful Enlightenment

“Befriend” them, even if you’re scared to.

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“Befriend” them, even if you’re scared to.

Awhile back, I came across a blog post that was becoming somewhat viral at that moment, particularly among the Indonesian students overseas. It was written by an Indonesian student residing in a European country, who was describing how she always finds that the majority of Indonesians in that country seem to have always been only socializing with their own communities of Indonesians and rarely seem to be engaged with either the locals or the more internationally diverse communities. P.s.: she belonged to the opposite group.

For her, maybe her comfort zone is indeed in the circle of the locals. For others, maybe their comfort zone is people who share the same background, thus easier to pass along the jokes with or relate in any way. While it’s probably cool that someone enjoys being in the company of a diverse group of people just because not many people might even like that idea, it also makes the most sense for someone to be the happiest when surrounded by a rather homogenous society which shares the most similarities with them. Especially when it comes to the cultural or religious background that further defines our core values and general perspectives about life, which really accounts for who do you pick as your comfort friends eventually. Who would enjoy feeling constantly challenged just because they’re surrounded by those who do not see the world the way they do? It is absolutely just easier to live with those whom with we could be at peace together, is it not?

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In Days in Edmonton, Wanderlogue

Winter in Canadian Rockies

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Winter in Canadian Rockies

It was my first travel with the U of A Outdoors Club without my usual pals of the club. I remembered that I decided to go, even without telling them that I signed up because I knew that I had to find a new circle. Whether I liked the idea or not, I had to develop a new comfort zone. People who would get along well with me, and maybe share the same passion or interest with me too, to make it easier. Of courseย then this trip made the perfect sense. First of all, it was the Outdoors Club, whom people are pretty much equivalent to ITB’s LFM in a way that the majority of us listens to the similar type of indie pop/alternative/indie rock music, and we freakin’ love travels. Secondly, this particular trip was called Photography Trip, so it resembled LFM on a whole new level now. And it would make the most sense for me to find one or two new friends from the trip–that hopefully would help me to reconnect with new people.

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In Days in Edmonton, Playlist

If my current life were a TV series, these would be the theme songs:

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If my current life were a TV series, these would be the theme songs:

Sometimes when I was casually strolling on the rustic sidewalk on one of those days back in the Fall, particularly early in the day when the daybreak just rose, or later when the yellow shades of afternoon just turned gold and the evening breeze began to nudge my cheeks, I imagined if I had actually been living in a TV series. (And all this messed up reality is actually just a fake show, ha! Well, I wish.) There would be a camera shooting from one side of my moving feet, then another one from the tip of my right eye which was staring straight onto the avenue, and another one just across my lips that were mumbling some lyrics that I remembered from these songs.

The story begins when a girl feels like she’s misplaced in this small town, and she struggles to find a circle where she really fits in, without feeling like she has to try all the time.

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In Days in Edmonton, Impulsive Writing, Overcasted Mind

That one thought that lingers since last year

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That one thought that lingers since last year

Do you ever feel like you’re just not yourself, or at least not your regular, bearable self? Like you’ve somehow discovered some anomalous, unnatural habits that make you yourself even cringe to live under that living body. Like it’s just so not you. At least not in the past. Maybe time changes you, maybe the circumstance, maybe the geographical place… But whatever it is behind that, it clearly doesn’t do a good job getting you metamorphosed into a beautiful butterfly.

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