My Blog

A friend of mine, who spent most of her life as a journalist in Indonesia, said, “When people asked me why I decide to leave Canada, I have a very good answer, but people hardly understand it.

She told them, “Here, you know exactly what you are going to do tomorrow, next week, next month, or even year. You do the exact same routines day by day: you wake up in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, return to home, prepare dinner, and then go to bed. In the weekend you do your shopping, your laundry, and do some house cleaning. Visiting friends and family are some other options. Everything is so well organized, from the tax you pay to the government you get your health insurance, good education system for your children up to high schools, have access to good public transportation, and enjoy numerous public festivals through out the year. So, what I am saying here is that you miss the excitement, that life is something to fight for. After hard work, struggling in an extremely tight competition, you’ll get different level of satisfaction…"

I smiled. Indeed she’s right in the sense that I am living a very luxurious life compare to the life I have back home. Within minutes of walking or biking I’ll be right behind my desk at the office. Everyday I only think of my works, because everything has been settled on my first days of arrival. Most of my weekend filled with social activities, and once or twice in a year my office sponsored me for international conference, so I can travel for free. The only challenge is how to get better results and learn new techniques. While in Indonesia I almost have no life for myself. From Monday to Sunday there are always things to do, either for the students or extra jobs to earn more money for my living. How different it is…

Last week as I attended another conference, I had dinner out with some colleagues from the US. Everyone were curious with my plan after finishing my study, "Are you returning home or wanna stay abroad? You’ve been living in different continents, why don’t you stay for another 2-3 years in the US, so you’ll have a complete experience?" Hmmm, interesting thought! So, it remains a big question, do I really want to go back, except to get together again with my family? Or do I really want this luxurious life?

For Mbak Ida, thanks for sharing…

For Indonesians, the translation of "Mahal Kita" in English will be "we’re expensive". But for Filipinos it means "I Love You". Another expression I learnt after ‘Ik houd van jou’ in Dutch, ‘wo ai ni’ in Chinese, and ‘je t’aime’ in French.

In the past 5 months I’ve been making new friends with a lot of Filipinos who are migrating to Canada. Most of them are my french classmates. First impression I can say about them, they are very friendly. Within minutes, you feel like you’ve been knowing them for a long time. The funny thing is that actually we have so many words in common (Tagalog and Indonesian) but totally with different meaning. So when you hear them talking it sounds like you can catch some words, but you have no idea what they are talking about. Some of them at first talked in Tagalog with me because they thought I were Filipinos too

My classmates are very funny and cheerful. That’s one of the attraction that motivate me attending the class, even though I have to travel 45 minutes and wake up early on Saturday morning.  As elementary  pupils everyone has their own favorite seat. Since the second week I always sit beside Elenor, Juristy, or Charryl; while Engeline and Rosevell always sit in front of us. They kindly ‘reserved’ a seat for me if they knew that I’d come late. As time flies, in a few weeks we’ll finish our course and it’s kinda sad because we’ve been close friends.

So, I dedicate this blog for them and I just want to say, mahal kita…