Time passes real quick. It feels like yesterday when I was still in my parents' home busy preparing for our wedding early this year, then moving city and in 3 days, the year of 2016 is ending.
As usual, wrapping each year, let's look back and see how we have grown and start another year bringing a better person and forgiving a less "good" quality behind.
This year is definitely an important year for me. There are many changes in life since I got married. Early this year, I wrote about 2015 in a glimpse but didn't make any personal resolution for this year, because I honestly haven't figured out things for myself since I got married. It is no longer about me, it is more about "us" (Henki & I), as Ajahn Brahm said and supported by Mom and Dad.
Moving to Bali is a bitter sweet experience. I am super close with my family and relatives back in Medan. The bitter part is that I am now quite far from them (I joke that Medan - Bali flight is like flying to China, it takes almost a whole day), and I miss spending weekends afternoon, playing, catching up with my sis, niece, nephew and cousins. The sweet part is that I am here in one of the heavens on earth with my other half now, sleeping better, and playing harder. Also, living further from family makes me realized how I love and I am loved by my family back home. Early this month when my dad and mom made their visit to Bali, my grandma and aunties were buying me lots of good food from Medan. Everybody was busy shopping and preparing cooked food for me and Henki. Honestly, whose relatives are still doing that??? I am blessed to be raised in this family, aren't I?
About Married Life
Being married is not the end of a "happy" story. It is just the beginning of living LIFE in a more humane way in general. It is building a family after all. Some people asked me when I am planning to start a family, referring to "having a baby". Deep in side, I tell myself that I am already starting a family, by being married.
Being married, I learn about so many things, I think it is the same for Henki too.
We have to make lots of adjustment in our life and learning (yup! still learning) to accept one another. It is putting 2 different individuals and hope they are walking towards the same destination after all. First year of marriage is not really a honeymoon period, it is a learning period (a continuous one, in fact!). Lots of respect, patience, tolerance, forgiveness (at times) and of course the "never-give-up" attitude are needed to make things work. Those things are not cliché. Those things are REAL! You have seen lots of our happy moments captured on camera, you just didn't see those nights sleeping back to back, trying hard not to touch one another. I am glad we made it through those nights, reconcile and get a better understanding (hopefully) about one another.
I am proud to say that we do start this family as those in the olden days did. We experienced those shopping for household items and making a place HOME with our hard earned/saved money, not asking from anybody else. We started from the kitchenware, dining table, bed and lastly an old secondhand car for practical purpose. Looking back, there are some "soury" feeling to not being able to buy the things that we "want", because we want to save it for something more important and matter, but most of the feeling is Pride!
In this case, I really look up to some family and friends who can actually afford luxurious things, but choose a simpler way of living a life, with a super generous heart to those in need and things that really matter. They are my other role models (other than my parents). I learn from them not trying so hard to impress others with what we have, but instead of what we are as a person. This life value is easier for me to practice, because I grew up in a small town where people are more sincere, although not all, than those in bigger metropolitan city. From this, I learn too not to be impressed easily by people who talk big about what they can do and what they have, because most of the time, we can see through them.
From here, I learn what kind of family that we want to build and what not. If lucky to have any, what kind of values that I want to teach my children in the future. Things are not always as comfortable as what some of other newly weds have, but dad and mom started simple too and if they make it works to date, I hope Henki and I can too. I hope we started right. Bless us!
Carreer & Work
One of the biggest adjustments that I have to make is in term of work. I tried a full time job as a school teacher, teaching Mandarin. It didn't work out well for me, as I am not 100% satisfy with my working environment, so I quit. On top of that, Henki had to sacrifice his resting time (due to my early work schedule) and work longer hour. Exhausting for him. Although he didn't complain. Thanks for those one full month, Baby!
After that, I applied for a part time job, and was having the power to bargain for work schedule as much as I think I want/am capable to handle, by giving house chores, my family, as my first priority.
I know it might sound silly to some others, but growing up one of the most important things that MIGHT contribute to how Dad and Mom turn out to be, for me, successful parents is that they keep those values that we youngsters deem as outdated now. For example, always making the time to eat, at least, dinner in one table together, how mom no matter how busy she was with the shop, she had never neglected the needs of her children. We are always her first priority, we had always had breakfast before we go to school, she prepared our snack to be taken to school, lunch has always ready when we got home. Those motherly chores might seem 理所当然 as Chinese put it or "as it should be by right", but those things are the things that we appreciate the most now as their children.
Those 'outdated' things are the things that I want to keep in my own family with Henki. Just during the visit, my dad told me (he is not a kind of dad who will sit me down and tell me all kind of life lessons, but he did this time), to prepare a glass of water when your husband is home after a long day of work. A more 'modern' part of me will tell myself that is the thing that he can do on his own, but there might be certain things that need not modernization, thus, I try my best to do as dad and mom told /showed me on how to be a good wife, hoping that my current family will work out like how Dad and Mom build their home. A home where I am very proud of and can't stop to brag about!
So, for now, work with the sole purpose to earn is a less important thing. I work to fill up my time and to keep continue doing things that I am passionate with. However, tell you the truth some part of me do fear that my value as a person is lessen because I am not able to support myself, to shop without feeling guilty and other petty negative feelings about being too depending on someone else. That's my sacrifice. I hope it will be worth it, as they said.
That's mostly about my "work", not so much a career.
There are more to Henki's career though. I know only certain parts of it, but I do know he works his "b*tt" of this year. He has his heart full at work when he is at work, and sometimes even when he is home from work.
He does make progress in term of career advancement, and I am a proud wife. Don't argue with me, I am a true believer that hard work always pays off, one way or another.
He decided to take a new role in his company this year, to be out of his comfort zone, from Revenue to Sales & Marketing, and I think he does well that he was trusted with a new property to handle, starting the very end of this year.
I don't know much about what's going on EXACTLY in his daily work life at the office, but I hope that he will learn to take care of himself better, after the 110% that he had put in at work.
"What's done is finish", said Ajahn Brahm
I kind of understand how he felt about "unfinished" work, but work will never finish, there are always things to do, if you do not want to stop at just being good or enough, things can always be better. However, that's a worry for another day. At the end of the day, our body is the only things that stay with us (yup! even people we love/love you, will leave us one day, hopefully not by choice), so better take a good care of our body, when we can.
I just want to let him know that he has done super good here!
Others...
This year is not a good year for me physically. I was coughing for almost 4 months and just got better about 2 weeks ago. I went for a consultation and being diagnosed with bronchitis and pneumonia (caused by bacteria called Pseudomonas Aeruginosa) and were hospitalized for almost 2 weeks. during the hospitalization period, I had measles and was isolated. After being discharged, I was still on antibiotic (lots of them) and not getting better until I stopped the intake of the drugs given and went for a second opinion in Singapore, just to be told that there might be wrong diagnosis and I am young and healthy. It might be just my body recovering slowly and for sure, the side effect of a month of antibiotic.
Relief is the biggest feeling that I have, because I have been worried sick about the things that I was told that I had in my body (even search for the "mortality rate" for that disease, yes! I was feeling that terrible that it felt like dying). However, to think about all the stress that experience had put me through, I do feel disappointed at the medical care standard in Indonesia. There was a point that I was asked to go for HIV test to eliminate some aspects that might causes my compromised immune system (Is it even really compromised? Who knows!) It came out negative, but that was one stressful afternoon. My mom was tearing and kissing me in relief when she and Dad accompanied me to the hospital to take the result.
What an experience. I am glad that it had passed. During that terrible period, I realized something, that the most scary part about dying is when you think how people who love you might grieving so much that it breaks your heart and it is your fault to put them through that path of suffering. That is the scariest part that I felt, not the fear about dying itself, not the fear about not achieving anything, there was even slight relief that you do not have to be worry about anything worldly anymore, that you have done your best. Anyway, that's just sick body and mind talking.
As the doctor in Singapore told me "You are young and healthy." Let's just hang on to that for now :)
Henki is generally healthy, there was a few times that he was down because he was too tired, one of those times was when he was taking care of me. I just hope that he will commit to saying goodbye to the "da*n" cigarette very very soon! Oh yeah, I hate cigarette, soooooo much. I am super sensitive to it, in a bad way, I can even smell someone was smoking outside of my frontdoor while I sit here, typing.
Moving on, we didn't travel much this year. Henki made a trip to Kuala Lumpur for Work, We made a trip to Singapore for medical care (which turn to short getaway that Henki didn't enjoy much, very difficult man to satisfy, poor him :p), and short trip to Bandung last March. That was pretty much it.
We had never planned for any honeymoon trip and didn't have any. To comfort myself, I told myself that I am living in Bali, where newly wed came to have their honeymoon. How smart! =D Based on this logic, we have our honeymoon every other weekends for about 3 months early this year, adventuring around Bali. Lots of beach hopping, until earthquake stroke last June/July.
Reading is poorly maintained this year. :( Writing, I have been writing lots of posts that are related to learning mandarin this year, but nothing much personal, 15 posts, including this one, in a year time. Cooking, I learn to cook, and I think (I hope Henki agrees with me =D) that it gets better with time. Slow progress and depending so much on the mood, but I think am slightly better, comparing to the beginning of this year. I know how coriander looks like now, how does "leek" and "lemongrass" look like and how to differentiate the two and many other simple things around the kitchen. In between, lots of hours of phone call were made to mom as my lifeline. Oh yeah, I am that stupid before, slightly smarter now. =D That's the most important thing about life, isn't it? To learn each and every day. Doesn't matter how small the progress is, as long as we keep moving, that's what matter.
This pretty much of our 2016, more of mine and a bit of Henki's.
I am grateful for whatever happened in 2016, not limited to all the good moments, but to those period of time when I wasn't well, to those times that we have our arguments, to those stressful time of work. I believe we are going to start 2017 a better person, if not much better, a little.
2017's prediction is not good for me, however, I determined to make it good and prove the prediction wrong. If I lose, as always "That too will Pass".
May each and everyone of our family and friends have a healthy, blessed, prosperous and happy New Year 2017.
Love,
Us (Linda & Henki)