At The Doctor in Canberra

Here I am, sitting at my doctor’s waiting room with 26 people ahead of me, thinking how come Canberra health system can’t be better than Sydney given its much smaller population?

When I was living in Sydney, there were so many bulk bill practices around. In Artarmon area where I used to live, there were at least 2 bulk bill doctors just 5 minutes walked from home. If I didn’t have time to go during the day, there was another practice that was opened until midnight everyday in nearby Chatswood area. Usually I only needed to wait about 10 minutes in those practices.

When I moved to Ashfield in the inner west of Sydney, there were so many bulk bill services around as well.

Now in Canberra, as far as I know, there were only two bulk bill services around. And from the end of August 2009, at least the one in Ginnendera charged $30 gap payment. The waiting period doesn’t seem to improved with 26 people ahead of me at 10 am on a Wednesday morning. The receptionist said that the queue is much better now since they’ve imposed this gap payment. She said that the queue used to be up to 70 people during this time of day. Well, it still seems too long for me.

Maybe it’s time to go to homeopractoe instead. Save the queue and more natural.

Thank you, mom

This morning when I read the Quran, I surprised myself on how smooth I can read it and I didn’t feel any ‘heavyness’ feeling that I used to have when I read Quran in my younger days. From memory, learning reading Arabic was not easy at all. I honestly thought that I will never be able to read it well enough. After reading, I started to think about who taught me in reading Quran. No faces or name appear in my mind except for my mom’s.

My mom did not teach me how to read Quran directly. For years she forced me patiently to learn it. She hired private tutors to our home to teach us at least once a week. It started since I was in the first grade and ended when I was finishing my uni degree. So it took her about 16 years.

I didn’t think much of learning it though. I’m quite sure that I am a very stubborn daughter. There were some days when the tutor was there and I was out playing. She would find me and asked me to learn even though a bit. If I still didn’t want to do it, she’ll offer me some treats if I still didn’t want to do it, she threatened to hit me on my bum. No wonder we have a very high turn over of Quran reading tutors. Anyway, she managed to get me study even a bit by a bit for many years. If a tutor quit, she will find another one and another one and another one. I must commend her patience and believe that one day… one fine day her children will be able to read Quran.

Well, here I am after those many years of learning can say that yes I can read Quran quite fluently. I know that it is far from perfection but as far as my mom’s concern. It will do her.

Thank you mom xoxo

Reading

When I opened my side drawer last night, I found out that I had many unfinished books. I’ve got Ali’s “Infidel” quarter read, Kureishi’s “Love in a blue time” half read, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s children half read and some other books that I haven’t finished yet. This fact makes me wondering why is this happening?

I remember that I started my affection to reading since I was in the primary school. I used to read the Indonesian version of Nina comics series, Enid Blyton books, even the encyclopedia. I always finished what I was reading.

When I was in Junior high school I read a lot of novels and kho ping ho (an Indonesian version of martial arts stories- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kho_Ping_Hoo). I enjoyed reading Agatha Christie’s work cover to cover. I even read almost all of Kho Ping Ho’s and Gan KL’s martial arts stories. These martial arts stories are up to thousands of pages. It was a man’s wallet size book but packed with words and no pictures at all. One story can easily consists of 100 books. I have never known anyone that owned kho ping ho’s books. Everyone I know who read this kind of book borrowed it from a commercial book lenders place. When I was reading kho ping ho’s, the world was not exists, I didn’t care about what was happening around me. I remembered one day when we were going for a family trip, my dad had to stopped the car and took the book off my hand and threw it in the bin in order to make me listen to the conversation and realised what was going on around me. My mom to my defence said that I can’t be blamed of reading too much because he was the one who started it and everytime we went to my grandma’s place in Padang, my uncles kept telling me what books to read next when I finished the one that I was reading.

Not until uni days that I started reading English novels and books. I remembered the first English novel that I read was Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy. At first, I was quite amazed to learn that I can read, understand (most of it) and finished an English language novel. It took much longer time for me to finished reading it but I enjoyed the challenge.

Nowadays, thanks to my dear Malaysian friend who introduced me to Hermann Hesse, Coetzee, and Kuraishi’s work, I enjoyed reading these kind of books.

So, lately when I found my unfinished book, the question ‘why’ is keep appearing in my mind. I think with the ‘digital age’, I have become more and more impatient. I would like most thing quick, fast and done with. It seems like hard to find time to sit and read. I don’t carry books in my handbag anymore as I used to be. I read news on my mobile sometime or read e-books on my fiancee’s Iphone. Instead, I read excerpt of books online. I spent my time on facebook, emails, youtube, or just browsing the internet.

Well.. maybe one day I’ll take my books to a place where there is no internet connection. Then, I’m sure I’ll read them all.

Do You Like Australia?

About a few weeks ago, a friend of mine who currently live in Singapore went to Australia for holiday with her family. When she got back to Singapore, she texted me and asked where do I like more to live in, Singapore or Australia and why. Eventhough she is Indonesian, she did not include Indonesia at all in her question for a quite obvious reason.

The first bit was easy to answer, I can easily write AUSTRALIA of course!! The second bit required more than a text message or two to answer. So, I better write my answer in my blog.

There are some reasons why I like living in Australia more than Singapore (and Indonesia). The first reason is because of the freedom. I feel totally free to discover and be myself. No one is going to judge me (at least not in the face value) of what I’m doing, how do I practice (or not practice) my religion, whether I am married, divorced, single, gay, a high ranking officer, a student, or a cleaner. So far, everyone respects another person way of life. So to some extend, if someone would like to be very religious they are welcome to do so and if someone wants to be an atheist, no one cares.

When I was living in Singapore almost whenever I hopped into a taxi, the taxi driver will asked me where do I come from or whether I am a Phillipino. If I tell them I am Indonesian, they would say that I don’t sound and don’t look like Indonesian. Somehow I feel being an Indonesian is derogatory there. There are some pre conception in mind that if you are Indonesian in Singapore, you may be a maid or looks like a maid, a bit uneducated and might be marrying an old Singaporean guy no one wants there. Plus if you meet other Singaporean friends or colleague, once they know that you are Indonesian, they will say ‘my maid is Indonesian’. Honestly, I don’t feel good when people tell me that. It is like telling me that ‘oh.. your kind is cleaning my toilet bowl and some of them died when they try to hang my clothes off the bamboo clothes hanger’.

In Australia, if people know that I am originally from Indonesia. They would say ‘I’ve been to Bali and it is beautiful’ or ‘I’ve learnt Indonesian in school a few years back’ or ‘I had a friend whose mother is originally from Indonesia’. Whatever they say, I have never had any hint of putting me down as a person who is originally from Indonesia here. So I feel free and proud to tell them that I was born in Indonesia.

The second obvious reason is because Australia is simply gorgeous. I only need to look up to the blue sky to be grateful living in this country. The sky is so blue and sometimes at night we can see the stars shining upon us. Some of us will go to the beaches, parks, wineries, lakes, and other outdoor amusement activities instead of going from mall to mall from Plaza Singapura to Tanglin Mall in Orchard road of Singapore.

The third reason is because I can feel equal living in its real multicultural society. Singapore may claims that it is a multicultural country with its Chinese, Indian and Malay society live in harmony. Australia does not need to claim it because you can see and feel it whenever you go. If I go to Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and other restaurants; most probably the chef and/owner are from the country where the food originally come from. I can easily see people who were originally from France, Italy, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, South Africa, America, South America and many other countries here. These people who were originally from other countries, including the second generation, work in various field of work. We even have an Asian born minister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Wong) here. To some extend, it makes me feel equal. There is no such opinion that silently said that the Chinese are much better than the Malays because if you are born Malay, you might be lazy, have too many children than you can afford and might be a future homegrown terrorist.

The other reason is because it is possible to make a career change in Australia. I do not mean that if you are working for the Singapore ministry of defence then you change your career to the Singapore ministry of foreign affairs, which is; yes it is a different department but more or less the same. I know many people in Australia who changed their career completely. I know someone who used to be a dentist who become a diplomat, a cleaner who become an IT person, a teacher who become a doctor, a vet who become a scientist researcher, and many other examples. So if one wants to do something in Australia, there are rooms for second or even third chances.

My arguments may not be applicable to some people because it takes a lot of people to make the world. But those are the main points among a vast lists of why I prefer to live in Australia than in Singapore. Unfortunately, shoes shopping is not in those lists. There is no place I can find a size 4 high heels in Australia.

Ketupat Sayur

A few days ago I was craving for a ‘ketupat sayur’ (which is rice cube and veggie curry dish). So, after work, we went to the Asian groceries shop to buy ‘instant’ rice cube and the green papaya to make the curry. When we got home, I told my boyfriend that dinner will be ready in approximately 60 minutes.

Wow!! I thought, 60 minutes to made what used to be about 6 hours work in my mother’s days. This is really incredible! Plus I can eat it anytime I like, without need to wait for special occasions like the Eid Ul Fitr (the end of Ramadhan celebration). In the old days, I still remember how hard it is to make ‘ketupat sayur’ because first of all we have to buy the leaves from a certain coconut tree then made it for hosting the uncooked rice, put the uncooked rice inside the ‘host’…ugh..just to think about the process made me lost my appetite already. Nowadays the rice cube is available from the Asian groceries store, all we have to do is take it out from the packet and boil it for about 60-90 minutes, put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes, then voila!! it’s done. Plus grating the green papaya is so easy with the food processor, it only takes about 5 minutes to do it!!

Technology made our life seems to be more easier and made it possible for women to juggle their roles. But why some women are still complaining about the hardship of our life nowadays?

I remember my late grandma when she taught me how wash the clothes properly when I was visiting her in our hometown. She separates the clothes based on their colors and put it in a big wide bucket. Then we need to take the water from the well and pour it in to the bucket. My job at that time was pouring the water in to the bucket. Then we put the washing powder in each bucket, wash our feet then get in the bucket, pressing the clothes with our feet. Then we had to soak it for a while. After soaking it, we hand wash it,squeze the water out of the clothes and put it in the clothes drying rack outside the house. So, nowadays when I fell like complaining about the load of washing that we need to put into the washing machine and the dryer, remembering how hard it was in my grandma time, helps a lot to be grateful of what we have.

One day when I was heating up my lunch in the kitchen, there was a guy who said that he can’t imagine what it’s like living without a microwave. I told him that until I relocate to Singapore and Australia, I didn’t use microwave. He seems to be a bit surprised and ask how was it like then. So, I explained that we just need to warm up the food with the stove and pan. It’s lucky enough if we are able to have a gas stove. Some people have to use a kerosene based stove or even wood fire to warm up their food. Yes, it takes a lot longer than microwave but people work it out somehow.

Honestly if one ask my favorite appliances, it would be a dishwasher. Everytime I look at the dishwasher, I complitely feel blessed! My boyfriend seems can’t understand my fascination and why I really like to load and unload it everytime. Well… when I see the dishwasher, I look at my beautifully painted nails and feel happy that this machine save my nails for another day. Maybe this is sound ridiculous but before dish washer period, I rarely have my nails painted because it will chipped and from time to time my hands become rough and ugly from the dish washing liquid.

Maybe some women including myself complain about things in our life because we haven’t experienced or we forgot how hard life was before everything get easy, quick and electric.

The art of loving

For me to love and to hate something is an art. It needs certain skills in order to claim it and somehow it is us who need to decorate our life so that we can be surrounded either by love or by hate. Because life is a choice and since complaining won’t solve any problem then enjoying will at least make it fun.

Learning to love something is an experience. I used to be afraid of two things in general. The first thing was babies. I am terrified of babies. I don’t hate them since they are so cute but what my friends didn’t know was I am afraid of them. I think the babies can sense this. That’s the reason why every time I visited my friends who had children, they will scream and cry like crazy whenever they are near me. Maybe they can sense my negative energy so they just didn’t like me somehow. Lately I’m getting better with babies and toddlers. I can hold my friend’s babies now for more than 5 minutes and spend time playing with their toddlers. The reasons behind that is because I try to conquer my fear. So, whenever I go to see my friends with babies, I need to mentally prepared and tell my self to relax and remember that everything’s will be allright. Nowadays when I go and visit my friends with babies then I look at them in the eyes and those beautiful eyes create a different feeling that in one sense can be identify as love.

The second thing that i’m afraid of is changes. I didn’t like the fluidity of changes. I like stability surrounding me. I didn’t like the idea of having a short time relationship. I like relationship to be long lasting and try to make it that way even though I need to conceal my own unhappiness. Then when the only stability that I’ve known for eight years of my life broken apart, I realize that nothing is stable anymore. Fluidity and changes surrounding us are to be expected. This thing changed my perspective towards relationship. I view relationship as something that will ends. Either naturally by death of a partner. Or many other unnatural ways such as divorce, separation, infidelity, geographically challenge that caused infidelity, lost of feelings towards each other and millions of other things. So, nowadays I don’t really care about maintaining a relationship anymore. I just go with the flow. If I feel like it then go for it. If things doesn’t work then too bad and move on. If it meant to be then it meant to be and vice versa. After my longest institutionalized relationship didn’t work, my other relationships only lasted for three months in average. I told my (current) boyfriend that if we survive until end of this year, it will be the longest relationship that i’ve had after the ‘institution’ fell apart. We will be 17 weeks together by then. This speaks on many things in my life such as a place of living, jobs, and many other small things.

Somehow I learn to love the things that I used to be afraid of in my life. Things look less scarier when we are in it rather than we see it from afar. Just like some people opinion about Indonesia for example. The news about Indonesia sometimes can put off someone to visit the country. But when the same person decide to conquer his/her own fear and go there, most of them will return with a lovely memory. After all it’s not as scary. It’s even loveable and worth to be revisit.

Youtube-ing

A previous student of mine sent me his cliff swingging video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkrkQfjMk8). After finished watching it, I felt my life so damn normal (and a bit boring). There is no cliff swinging, bungy jumping or even joy riding at all. Don’t get me wrong in here, I’d love to try it but I think those activities and me just don’t have it’s fate. Well… once I told Kevin (the cliff swinger student) that I’d love to come (maybe try) in one of his cliff swingging trips. Yet, I guess there was not chemistry between me and the cliff so I happened can’t make it to one of those interesting trips. So, my question is what kind of activities in our daily (probably) boring life that is worth it enough to put in youtube?

I remembered a few months ago I met a professor from my previous work in a social gathering function. We chatted and somehow it led into what food does she eat for lunch. She said that she eats lentils everyday. It’s very interesting (she said) because on Monday she usually has the yellow lentils and the brown one for Tuesday, it is altered and she got exited because she knows on Tuesday she’ll have a different colored lentils, even though it cooked all the same way and taste the same anyway. Is this interesting enough to be put in youtube?– well, I don’t think so.

It’s normal in a working world that every Friday people will ask ‘what do you up to for the weekend?’ question. Normally we do our laundry, grocery shopping, cooking for the rest of the week, eating out , watching footies and more footies. There is no drama or exitement except ‘oh.. I did manage to get in the Supermarket in time before it’s overcrowded so I don’t have to queue so long in the check out counter’ bit. Putting this weekend activity in youtube will put most of us drowsy.

Winter in Canberra has made me into a hosiery fetish girl. In fact, based on my calculation, I spent twice as my forthnight rental for the hosiery and underwears last month. Normally, I go for a normal black preferences, except for some delicate colorful lacy undies. Last week, I bought a red fishnet leggings and today I wear it to work with a black stocking underneath. For me, wearing a red legging is something really special and very unsual. However, I don’t think this is really a youtube material.

Ah..well..I come to term that most normal people like me don’t have any clue what we should put on youtube in order to show an unusual part of our normal life.

When Stuart turns into Jenny

I had a ’sort-of’ double date dinner last night in La Rustica restaurant in Kingston that went on for three hours straight. I had a great time talking with the group as a whole (discounted my disconnection with my supposedly ‘date’ of the evening). There was one highlight that my friend’s husband told us about this guy who owned a security company in an Asian country who used to be a bloke and he turns into a sheila and some things somehow changed around him.

When a Stuart turns into a Jenny
Stuart was a handicap 4 and play in the white tee box. Jenny wants her rights as a woman to play in the blue tee box. The golf club management told her to play in the white tee box and there’s no way Jenny could play in that blue ones which was intended for ‘real’ women only. Jenny would like to take the golf club to court for this.

When a Stuart turns into a Jenny
He used to be a very tough guy in the business sector and complaining about the government’s policy to high rank government official who used to handled him differently. When he was a bloke, if he made this kind of unhappy comments and ranting about policy matters, the counterpart will told him to literally shut up and if he still doesn’t like it they can finish the thing ‘outside’. When he becomes a she the counterpart lost of words to say. All the counterpart can do was ‘Jenny… why don’t you calm yourself in the ladies room’.

When a Stuart turns into a Jenny
He used to chair a very important committee in that country. Then when he becomes Jenny, there were motion to move him from the position. Given the fact people know how good he was as a chairman yet discount needs to be made because he is a Jenny now. He used to play the game and replay it again as a woman. Her constant efforts paid off and at last she got her backing as if she was a he in the male dominated business.

The moral of the story is in some (most) cases a woman is still being treated differently than a man for the simple fact that woman is different than a man. So, what the talk and the fuss about feminism if in fact it needs a man in a woman body to proof herself worth it of she is.

(Another) conversation with my mom

My Mom.. how I love her so much!!
I make sure that I call her once a week and just chat with her for about an hour or so. I was so busy last weekend so didn’t get any chance near the phone and earlier this morning whilst organising my room, I called her.

“Oh..Ta, you didn’t call last Saturday, so I thought you might be busy. How are you dear?”
“Am fine Mom, I moved to Canberra now”
“Anyone help you with the move?”
“Nope, I did it myself, but I asked my neighbor’s help for one or two heavy things”
—–> General conversation opener

“Oh Mom, I’ve broke up with K”
“Alhamdulilah!!! (means: Thank God), I’ve been praying for this to happened and at last it happened. Oh… I ‘m so glad my dear, he is bad news for you. I think God has granted me my wish. So tell me how it happened, did you talk to him?”
“No..no.. I can’t get him remember? I left a voice message in his apartment’s number and emailed him and that’s all. I’m sorry mom for introducing him to you, I didn’t know this will end up like this. You know that I thought he was genuine and serious about me, yea? It’s part of my mistake as well, I trusted him because he was so nice while he was in here Mom. You know that he introduced me to his family, friends and we did lots of things together, we talked seriously Mom…”
“He’s just not for you my dear. Things happened for a caused, he is not a good guy and he does not care about you. Now the next step is try not to think about him anymore okay”
“Yes Mom, I don’t” (well.. I lied!! big time!! – he haunted me in my dreams, it’s terrible!!!)
“I’ll pray for you my dear. I am sure given time you’ll have someone very nice for you in the future. I know this because you have a very good heart”
—————-> on relationship

“How’s the kindergarten Mom?”
“There are too many students want to enroll. I can’t cope and will only open two classes”
“Why Mom?”
“As you know their monthly school fee is only Rp 40.000 (less than A$7) and it’s barely cover the materials, maintenance and the teachers, I can’t put the fee up because as you know they are very poor. Do you know Anis right? he is always come on top of the class, he doesn’t have a father and his mother is a veggie seller. So, how can he afford an increase in fee? If we give him a scholarship then everyone else would like to have one because they are more or less in the same situation”
“Why don’t you ask Elang (my brother) to email me the details about these very unfortunate children with the photos of the child and their living condition and give some details information about them. Who knows I can ask around, and maybe one of my students even want to sponsor a child. Well.. I’ll give it a try anyway”
—————> On our “TK Kak Shinta” kindergarten

“Ta.. I took a course on computer now”
“Wow!! that’s excellent Mom!!, so thus it means that you can email me now?” *laughing..*
“Oh..no..no..no… it’s far from that. I was learning how to type but I just didn’t have time to get into the computer. Your dad told me that it needs practice but I am just so busy with my grand-daughter, the kindergarten, and the house so didn’t have time at all”
“So… what do you learn then?”
“The teacher gave me something to type and I am learning excel”
*LoL* “What are you going to do with excel knowledge mom?? *lol* are you going to computised the kindies or what?”
“No… my classmates are all very young. They are all very fast and I’m still struggling in finding the letters in the keyboard. But my teacher is nice, if he gives me a task and I don’t complete them all, he said it’s okay and he understands. I always remember you if I’m in class because I think you are very smart, you type very fast and without even looking at the keyboard”
“Well.. at least you learn something mom, good on you!! I can’t wait until you learn to send me an email yea..”
———————–> on one of her activities

My Mom…
She was the one who dropped and picked me up from school for many years.
She was the one who I searched for once I opened the house door after school.
She was the one who asked me my daily highlights after school.
She was the one who turned our house in to a home.
She was the cheerfulness of our home.
She was the fussiness of our home.
She was the constant nagger in our life.
She was the the one who encouraged me to finally finished my schooling.
She is the one who keep saying “you can do it my dear” and somehow I did what ever I wanted to do.
She is the one who said “your heart is my heart, and if you get hurt, I get it more”
She does not need to contest and win miss universe
She is already the most beautiful woman in the world to me.
Just because she is my mom.
And I love her so.
Always and forever.

May God bless you Mom. Selalu dan selamanya.

Third day living in Canberra

Well here I am on my 3rd day living in Canberra. I spend my first day unloading my stuff from the car, assembling the table and organising my room. There are still heaps of clothes and stuff unorganised sitting on our hall and lounge area. I can’t wait to see until I work on it and the mess will magically dissapear in an organised way.

Yesterday I went out with my flatmate and end up buying Marquez’ one hundred Years of solitude, Rushdie’s Midnight Children, Coelho’s Eleven minutes and Manual of The Warrior of Light. Despite that I had to go through the hassle of paper work in order to buy firecrackers for my friend’s son. It is so cold in Canberra and the idea to light a firecracker under such weather can’t beat me with a book and a cup of herbal tea. So… thanks, but no thanks for me.

One thing that put me down a bit was the cafe culture. We had this Indonesian friend who just came from Jakarta to study and we took him around Fyshwick area (it’s a shopping district in Canberra — well..sort of) then we took him to Woden for coffee. It was barely 5 pm and no place, I repeat, NO place was open. Even the Krispy Cream shop was closed!! I have to bite my tongue in order not to make comparison with Sydney. I don’t want to begin my sentence with ‘In Sydney….’. Well.. hello, I am not in Sydney anymore and this is Canberra so better live with it or leave it. Still I miss Bade Manors in Glebe point road which open till 1 am in the morning.

My sleeping habit hasn’t gone to normality yet and I haven’t enroll to my usual activities because of the long weekend in Australia calendar. So, I am looking forward positively to Canberra and life won’t be so exiting but life is full of choices and this is my choice at this moment.