The word between like and love

Yesterday night I was watching Sex and The City with my flat mates whilst finishing dinner. The story was about the difficulty of saying love or like to someone close to them. This thing made me think about the word love and like and how they intertwined one another and what’s the difference and what made it difficult to say it.

As an Indonesian, I feel a bit confused about the whole love and like statements in the western society just because we express it different ways in our culture.

For me, when a person says that he/she likes someone, it ‘sound’ awkward because ‘like’ is for something more tangible or ‘light’ activities such as hobbies or the way one passing time. But saying the word love seems to deep and creates commitments as well as something really enormous. In my opinion, the word love can only be justify for two things. The first thing is the love of God to human beings and vice versa. The second thing is the love of parents to their children. Love outside those things are still ‘questionable’.

So, the question is what is the right word to say something in between? I mean if the feeling is not too light as a hobby but not too deep as God’s love to human being. How do we say it in English? I don’t know the answer to this question because it’s so grey so it makes things more complicated. Will by adding the word ‘so much’ after the word ‘like’ would be enough? But then, one can also say ‘I like chocolates so much’ so again it becomes a bit less meaningful.

In Indonesian we have this in between love and like word, which is ‘sayang’ (care). So, a couple can say ‘aku sayang kamu’ which means ‘I care about you’ that weight more than ‘I like you’ but not as deep as ‘I love you’. In English, saying ‘I care about you’ sound a bit unusual.

Well.. the word ‘sayang’ is still debatable though because I heard a friend who define it as more deeper than ‘love’ (cinta). People is quite free to define the word as they wish but whether it reach the other people with the same level of understanding, we’ll never know.

Hence, there were times where words are not necessary to be spoken out loud as well. Even though my ex never said that words in almost 8 years of our marriage life, there were times when I felt that he loved me. And, vice versa, even though I kept whispering those words in his ears, he felt that I don’t love him enough. Well… what a difficult word indeed.

Web2.0 vs Web3.0

I tried to organize my membership in various web2.0 websites because I’d like to try them all. Unfortunately time wise this thing creates a diversion to my supposedly tight schedule that I made for my self this week. Anyway, while people like me still trying to find the needle on the huge stack about what is actually a Web2.0 then somehow I stumbled to this:

“We’re delivering Web 3.0 capabilities to you while the rest of the world is just discovering Web 2.0! ” in http://www.allthingsweb2.com. (http://www.allthingsweb2.com/mtree/KNOWLEDGE_2.0/ManyWorlds.com_%7C_Thought_Leadership_For_Business_%7C__Networking_and_Knowledge/details/)

When I read it for the first time, I was gawking disbelieved to see that and said to myself what the heck is this new animal? So there I was become a member to the said Web3.0 website in manyworlds.com just to get a feel of what is it all about.

So far, I haven’t got any ideas what made it a Web3.0 instead of 2.0. Anyone knows?

Mom and the Opera house

Mom and the Opera house

Originally uploaded by Benilda.

“What’s that ‘ta’? ” asked my mom.
“It’s the opera house mom”
“What’s that for?”
“People performs there. So we can find drama, theater and opera there, do you want me to take you there sometimes?”
“No.. it’s not my type of excursion yet. I don’t even understand what do they mean”.

My mom does not like museum because she said it’s only for clever people who would like to see the world in the past. She think she’s not up to that level yet, so there’s no point to bring her to such places. I love my mom so much, she’s so simple and very cute with her ways of thinking most of the time.

Just for an example, we were waiting for a bus in central. She saw some teenagers with tore jeans and said:
“Why do this children walking in the street like that? Don’t they supposed to feel ashamed?”
“Well..that’s how they dress up mom, it’s trend”
“Don’t their parents tell them not to wear such thing?”
“I don’t think they parents can say anything at all, or they won’t listen”
“Your brother used to have one jeans like that, so I took a scissor and cut the jeans into two… ” (laughing).

I laugh and told her that it’s very different down here. Children can wear basically whathever they want. It’s free and it’s their choice. Later on in their life they can choose whether it’s really good for them or not. So when they grow up, they grow up as an adult who knows what it was like when they were young. Unlike in Indonesia we can see many adults who wished they had done this kind of thing when they were young but then the society didn’t allow them to do this. As a result, we can see some cases where adults act like children or even worse dating children and think it’s okay.

Kangaroo Shit

Kangaroo Shit

Originally uploaded by Benilda.

I haven’t seen any kangaroo shit before. So this is my first time seeing one. Apparantly it looks like a goat shit but it’s larger. Before I saw it I can’t even imagine what it’s like, could be like chicken shit or cow dung.

The job that I hate the most

There is one job that I hate the most which is finding the job itself. Might be because of that I have not changing job for the last 10 years. Well… to think about it again, I have had other jobs before I have my current job.

When I was in kindergarten, my brother was smaller then me at that time. My job was to protect him from the brats. So, if a kid disturb my brother, I’ll came up to him and gave him a bit of a lesson.

During my school years, my job was being the leader of some of the classes I am in, self appointed as an Indonesian constitution reader for every flag rising ceremony. I was also into boyscouts at that time. I was the leader in some flag rising ceremony. So basically I was ‘serving’ my community.

In my uni days, I did more serious work. I voluntered as an English teacher for the marginalized children near my place, temping in two banks, tutoring Indonesian and English and put on marketing campaign for the economic faculty management major in order to sell our ‘crappy’ jackets.

After the banking jobs, I decided that I’m not the kind of person who can sit still in a desk and work. So, me & my friends made an English tuition centre. It went well until I got married then I made my own. Since then I’ve been teaching all the way until now.

Sometimes, I feel jealous with my students and my friends who told me they’ve worked different kind of interesting jobs when they were young. One of my friend ever become a grave digger in a European city when he was young. Some of my students also work in different places, bars, cafe, clothes shop, construction, and many more. I think they are lucky to experience a lot of things before they settle with whathever they want to become. Now, I think my life is a bit boring, there was not enough spice in my career life compared with the personal front. Might be it’s time to move on and try new things.

I should’ve just borrowed Nike’s slogan than writing another shlog in my blog. So, I’ll just do it then.

My first swim in almost two years

This is the first day when me & my boss doing our Tuesdays and Thursdays swimming day for this semester. The idea was about to get fit and it’s good to have an exercise buddy to made us stick to our commitment.

Anyway, this is my first swim in Australia for almost two years living here. It’s all because of the weather. I like warm weather, water, and drinks. So, the cold water put me off from the pool. But, thanks to my boss, she convinced me that it was a heated pool. At first when I get in, it was not as warm as I expected but after some encouragement to keep on moving from my boss, I feel great and get quite warm afterwards.

I was surprised to find out how fast I got tired after a few swim compared to my gym routines. I’ve been going to the gym almost everyday now because I had this written plan by the personal trainer that need to be assessed every now and then. Might be because I am not used to swim yet. Let’s wait and see what happened in the second round.

My Mom and Australia

I just returned from another holiday in Queensland for a week. The holiday was great because at least I can be refreshed and more energized in taking my new road.

There are many amusing stories along the road which I have to write down in batches as my memory returns. The most memorable one is the amusement in taking my mom into those places.

Since I am a big fan of yha (www.yha.com.au) because its reasonable price, cleanliness and people are generally friendly, so maybe my mom will fit in well there as well. She loves the idea of cooking at the Yha. The only thing that make it a bit challenging was the fact that she is a very early morning person. She used to wake up at 4 am and praying then reading Koran and praying again. So, she can’t sleep after 4 am. She woke me up to pray and I bet she made other people who shared the room feel uncomfortable as well. So, next time if I had another chance to take her around, I shall take her to an appropriate hotel instead of Yha experience.

I am glad that my mom see some parts of Australia now. She came to Australia a few times in the past when my dad did his business trip but that was still the Keating era so its pretty different back then compared to Indonesian perception towards Australia nowadays. When we were on the road, my mom commented that she didn’t realize Australia can be so peaceful, secure and nice. I think this is because the news about Australia in Indonesian paper was basically smells trouble ranging from anti-moslem sentiments, participation in Iraq war, Bali bombing and Australian hatred to Indonesian for that, plus the Ms Schepelle Corby case. She asked me sometimes whether it is allright for her to wear her hijab around. Might be she was worried that people will judge and label her so she won’t be treated well in here. On the contrary, people was generally very helpful and greet her in some occasions.

Now, she was even wondering why Australian need to go overseas for holiday if they have the Gold Coast. She thinks its the best beach that she’d ever seen, it’s even better than Bali’s beaches.

I think my mom changed her perception about somethings in Australia now. Even though she can’t make sense why do parents let their children kissing in public during new year eve celebration, but one thing that made me happy was she feels secure to let me stay and work in Australia.