Rivena

This morning I was reminded again never ever judge the book by its cover. I was driving just two blocks away from home, queueing at an intersection. The traffic light has been dead for several months and no clue when it will be resurrected. I was waiting for my turn, which I thought will be after a hideous minivan, when the minivan gently stopped and the driver waved his hand to me as if to say "after you". I quickly stepped on the gas. I was still thinking about how nice the driver was, when I heard a loud bang from behind. Hit by another car from behind, the minivan jerked forward and hit a motorcycle behind my car. I saw from my rearview mirror, the minivan driver did not look upset, he just signalled the guilty car to pull over, while the motorcyclist was shouting in anger.

If the minivan had not let my car go first, I would have been the one getting hit. I learned a lot from the minivan driver. He was not good looking, he looked like a typical satay seller: dark skin, big mustache, thin build. He drove an ugly minivan with windows open. But what he did was quite extraordinarily good in Jakarta. He has quite a big heart to let other vehicle go first. He did not shout or curse when a car bumped his car. I have seen a lot of contrast incidents: drivers with very nice cars cheated in queues or ran through red light; I had an incident where my car bumped a motorcycle as the driver forcefully turned when he should wait - he said something like this: "Lucky you. If you were a man, I would hit your face!"

It’s a strong reminder about how we should judge anyone or anything not by the look or appearance, but by the true value.

I’m spending this Christmas and new year staying at home without the kids, they are all at Semarang. The first two days without them was enjoyable, after that I’m missing them like crazy. My house is like a ghost house without them - so quiet.

Nothing much to do, I started reading novels. Last night I just finished reading Terminal Run by Michael DiMercurio. One valuable lesson from the story: it’s crucial to know the way your enemy think. The other way around, it’s dangerous to let your enemy know how you think. That leaves me wonder whether I should continue writing blogs… my friends and enemies will know me better. Oh well, everyone deserves to get good inputs. I’ll be glad if someone, even my enemy, learn something good from my blog.

Yesterday I was really stunned as I got the news that my friend passed away. Until late at night, I was wide awake, thinking about how fast life can pass by, how I get upset by little things in life, how easily I grumble about any discomfort, while many people are struggling with really serious matters. I looked again at my life and found wonders. Suddenly my back, which was sprained since 3 days ago, feels a lot better. I promise to myself that I will keep in mind what is really important in my life, see problems based on my real priorities, and let everything else out of my focus. Life is too short to be spent on unimportant things. Indeed.

My life has been quite miserable for the last three weeks. All my kids are away for holiday, at their grandmom’s, and I’m missing them like crazy everyday. Good news is, they’ll be back in 2 days. Without them, I have so much time for myself sometimes I don’t know what to do - I even had headache from too much sleeping.

It reminds me that everything in life has positive and negative side. Poor people will imagine how happy they were if they had a lot of money. On the other side, rich people with unhappy marriage will envy a couple riding a motorcycle holding onto each other so tight. The grass always seems greener on the neighbour’s garden. It’s all in our mind, our perception. What creates our perception? The way we were brought up, past and present environment, good and bad experience in life, the books we read, and a lot more aspects of life. Sounds complex? Well, life is complex. Let’s live this complex life happily ever after. Everytime you feel sad, remember that without sadness, there will be no happiness. So sadness will always be there but we can do something to be happy.

Most of the times, we are measured only by result. However, the process of getting the result is what matters most. It is in the process that we learn something - either something new or learning from our mistakes. I remember my dad used to say that result or good grades (in school) will be the byproduct of our learning, so why bother aiming for good result - just do the process right (learning diligently), without doubt we will get good result. Thus, result is just a measurement of how good we do the process. If the result is not as good as we expected, then we can conclude that we are not doing the process as good as we should.

It’s been quite a while since my last blog, but here I am.

For the last few weeks, I picked up a new line of sport since my eye got irritation and not allowed to wear contact lens for at least a year. Rather than pushing myself out of my convenience to play badminton wearing glasses, I chose to join a small fitness center in my neighborhood.

Turned out that switching from badminton to fitness center has its own challenge. Playing badminton is about beating other people. Lifting dumbbell is about beating the smashing pain on your arm. Chasing shuttlecock is to anticipate and react. Doing sit-ups is to be sure and consistent. Seeing someone play well in badminton may energize and inspire you. Watching somebody lifting 70kg in bench-press makes me feel very small and helpless.

Well, I guess if we are aware, life lesson is everywhere. It depends on how we take it and learn from it. Let’s turn challenges to lessons and always make ways to improve ourselves.

A lot of problems in this world can be solved or prevented by communications. The core of communications is having two parties agree and understand something. To achieve the objective of communications, a set of so-called language, signaling, or protocol is used. For example, bus crew will repeatedly tap a coin on bus door to tell the bus driver to stop or slow down. So is X.25 protocol I’ve been dealing with for the last few weeks before I can contact the right person to help me configuring it to work on LLC2 using Cisco CMNS router. Simple or complex, all signaling and protocol is meant to exchange information.

There is one common mistake which make communications may go awry. I remember a training instructor once created a clever sentence to emphasis how this one word is very dangerous: ASSUME - make an ASS of U and ME. Never assume anything, especially with someone we hardly know. But in reality, there are times that we must assume, either because we don’t have the information at hand, or nobody can confirm. Well, life is surely more challenging and fun with all this communication and assumption balancing act, isn’t it?

This morning I decided to take public bus to office, as I feel so tired of driving through traffic jam all the way from the border of 3-in-1 area to office. Turned out taking a bus was so fast, only <10 minutes compared to driving ~30 minutes. As I stepped down from the bus, the bus crew held my hand. I was quite surprised. After a while, I came into a quick conclusion that the bus crew was holding my hand only for good will. Imagine if:

*I were an old lady with unbalanced feet

*The fact that public bus in Jakarta never stop completely while passengers get off

–>I would be very thankful to the bus crew for holding my hand to help me getting off

Further thinking brings this into my mind: the bus crew took responsibility of passengers’ safety as far as he could. I feel amazed. I’m sure it’s not in his job desc, if he has one. If a bus crew can be proactive in doing his job, to ensure customer’s satisfaction, wouldn’t we all should do the same?

Yesterday as I was waiting my children to finish their class, I watched a handyman painting fence. Before brushing paint onto the fence, first he cleaned it using wet cloth, then he scraped it. I observed that cleaning and scraping the fence took longer than painting it. I guess the process of cleaning and scraping is necessary to make durable paint. I thought, how similar to other things in life, sometimes planning and pre-work take longer than executing. Without proper planning and pre-work, we can ensure the failure of execution, maybe not visible instantly, but the same case if the handyman painted the fence without cleaning and scraping, the fence would still be freshly painted but it wouldn’t last. The world is becoming more and more instant, but I believe most valuable things in life cannot be made instantly - careful planning, proper pre-work, tact execution, and continuous care/maintenance are some of the steps we must take, either we like it or not.

Sometimes we live everyday just like a flow, taking it for granted when everything goes smoothly. But when things go wrong, we suddenly realize how important and valuable those small things we usually take for granted, for example health, safety, good weather, friendship, etc. I vaguely remember some song lyrics saying that we don’t know what it’s worth till it’s gone. How true. So, the challenge is for us to always remember to be grateful for everything, small and big; as we get older, we should value things when it’s present. I will try.