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Sunday, April 30
A Bus Ride
It's funny how sometimes I forget that I am surrounded by people who care for and support me. Whenever I am down, and whenever I feel that I am the most unfortunate person in the world, I would go into a mourning period and I would enjoy pitying myself during the period. By allowing myself to mourn for a while and be vulnerable, plus doing tons of thinking, I could come out again to continue living as a stronger person. From the bottom back to the top. Well...that's the idea, at least.

Except, sometimes I forget to lift myself up again because I have been at the bottom too long, and I start to get comfortable down there because I feel there is no hope left. That is exactly what happened to me recently. For quite sometime, I had been feeling down and blue to the point where it had started to affect my personality, and even my work.


But last night, as I was surfing the net, I came across this old familiar site
Soundclick

If you click the link above, you will find the lyrics to a song called "Terbaik". This is actually the lyrics of the song one of my dearest friends wrote about me. Yeah...you heard it right, people. This song is about me. Me! And it really hit me. I had been forgetting that there are people who care for me, who love me for what I am, who had been calling for me from up above, but instead I had chosen to remain silent at the bottom.

My super talented friend, Riera, wrote this song for me when we were about to separate two years ago. I was leaving USA for good after 3.5 years, while she still had to stay for another year. During the last 6 months I was in Michigan, we got really close, mainly because we shared a passion for music (with some other friends, we shared lots of sad attempts to be musicians. hehehe...).

One of our sad attempts at a local talent show. Ga Boleh Ketawa!!...


A notable thing about Riera is her ability to make people feel good about themselves, and her ability to make people feel they are important to her. And she demonstrated just that in writing this song for me. So, although she can be a real b#%ch sometime, and although she has been too busy with her 'yayang' lately, I always love her dearly. Hahaha...peace, ra!....

Reading the lyrics of the song, and listening again to Riera's soothing voice singing the song (btw, you can also listen to the song "Terbaik" and other songs from Riera by clicking on the word 'Music' on the navigation bar on the right hand-side of the page from the above link), I realized I had been wasting too much time at the bottom and thus, I had been missing lots of things.

Life is a journey, much like taking a tour on a bus. After you choose the route, it circles around and brings you to several stops. People get in and get out of the bus at different stops. To get the most of the bus ride, you can spend sometime at every stop to observe and enjoy the scenery, and also to chat and to mingle with the people who happen to be at the stop. Just for sometime. Just for a while. If you spend too much time at a stop, you would be missing the sceneries that otherwise you could have seen in the whole journey. After all, it is a one-time bus ride.

So, thank you for reminding me to catch the bus again, friends. You know who you are. :). Special thanks to Riera. I luv you, sis! Kapan ya kita ber jam-session lagi?


Tiada Yang Berakhir

Tiada Yang Abadi

Semua Datang dan Pergi

Silih Berganti

("Terbaik" by Riera Fladya)

 
posted by FLaW at 7:23 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, April 29
Be Grateful for What We Have
Exhausted from a 2 hour-flight from Jakarta, plus a 2 hour-ride from Bandar Seri Begawan with a chatty driver, I was glad to finally able to check in. I knew that there are a large number of TKI (Indonesian Labour Force) working in Brunei, but I was not prepared to encounter so many of them on my first night in Brunei. After filling out the check-in form, I handed it back to the receptionist, and then she surprised me by asking how I would like to settle the bill in Bahasa Indonesia. Okay...that's one.

Because I was carrying with me a box containing the training material for the training I was to conduct, I asked the receptionist to have it sent to my room. And of course, the bell boy who carried the box to my room was also Indonesian.

I was hungry enough to eat a horse, so as instructed on the menu catalog, I dialed the number for Room Service. Sure enough, the girl who answered my phone was also Indonesian. She mentioned that actually she knew I was Indonesian before I told her (she asked me, of course)because the receptionist and the bell boy had told her so. Hmm...I guess I was already famous among the staff of the hotel. I then had the weirdest room service conversation with her, in which she told me a bit about how she ended up working at the hotel (she was to give me a more detailed version the next day when I went down for lunch).

It was not a pretty story. She got duped by the recruitment agency she was using. To use the service of the agency, she already had to pay a lot of money. She was told by the agency that she would be working at an office, but instead they put her at a small bakery shop where she had to work her butt off to earn money. It was not a lot of money, plus she still had to pay the agency some amount of money every month because the agency said that the amount she paid earlier was not enough to cover their expenses to bring her over.

The owner of the bakery shop was not a very nice employer as at very often occasions he would cut down her salary because of some missing coffee sachets or oranges or even breads, at the price they were sold on the menu (for example one coffee sachet could make a glass of capuccino, so she would be charged at the price of a glass of capuccino). She had no idea why these items were missing, she did not take them, but still she had to pay the price. Did not like the treatment, she then tried to find another job, and found one at the hotel where she works now. Although she had found a new job, it was not very easy to resign from the bakery shop because she had a two-year contract with the owner, and of course, she had to pay the agency again because she was breaking the contract.

When she told me her story, she said she was happy because she had just finished paying back all the money to the agency just two months before. She has been working in Brunei for two years, but she had no savings at all because of this. Finally now she could start to save money for her and her family. She said she was very grateful for this.

I was touched by her story. By placing the order through room service, not only did I get the food I wanted, but I also got a lesson. If she could be very grateful for what she had after what had happened to her, certainly I could, too.

Sometimes we take this life for granted and we always look up to have more. Sometimes we also feel that life has not been fair to us. But all we need is just to take a second to stop, to look back, and to look around us. Then we will realize that there are lots of things we have accomplished in life. Then we will realize we have been provided with so many good things in life. Then we will realize that there are people who are not as lucky as we are.

We should always be grateful for what we have.
 
posted by FLaW at 10:42 PM | Permalink | 1 comments