Maybe one doesn’t need to have so much money in one’s savings?
Maybe one doesn’t need savings at all?
Maybe one’s savings should go to ease just a little bit of someone’s hunger? So that some child won’t have to go to bed hungry that night.
One doesn’t need to have immense wealth to do that, right?
Last Saturday marks the two-year anniversary of me coming to Germany. This two years have been a long two years. And yet whenever one looks back at time passed, it always seem like no time has passed. I am still the same girl, yet I have all these memories with me. Yet I have these wrinkles, these trinkets. They prove to me that the past two years were real.
Two years ago, I said goodbye to my parents in Penang. I didn’t know when I will be coming back, or if I will be coming back. The only promise I can give is that I will be home in 6 months for 3 weeks. I have no idea what awaits me there, I have no permanent job.
Fast forward to now, I had been an assistant in the faculty of Physics in a University in Munich, took 4 months of intensive German course, did a 3-months Ausbildung as a Patent Lawyer (which didn’t work out because of Visa issues), worked in an engineering firm until now, got my heart broken, re-found friendships, found Flamenco, found love.
I am still lost. I may have even lost my confidence along the way. But I am slowly finding my way to it again. Having confidence and without knowing I have it, is very different from losing it and finding it again. Because I have to learn so much about myself.
Coming to Germany has shattered all my confidence. That is true.
I have felt what it is like to be invisible. That is humbling. It has also been very frustrating, especially when you don’t understand a word of the conversation and everyone is laughing at a joke which flew over your head. No one bothered translating. No one looks at you to see if you understand. No one cares.
And yet, when I slowly learn their language, I realize that they can be encouraging as well. No one ever laughs at your accent. They correct your sentence or words, not to laugh at you but because they earnestly wants you to know the correct version.
I have learned how frustrating it is to deal with administrations in a foreign language. In a nation where the people are fiercely proud of their national language, all documents are in German. Voice recognition answering machines are in German (I almost wanted to slam my head against a truck because of this, once). But I have met kindness from them as well.
Being thrown out of the apartment after a break up, I have found a temporary nest in the form of an old Professor, and a more permanent nest in the form of a kind friend and a kind stranger. And I am grateful for all the people whom I have met along this path, though I couldn’t see it in the beginning.
And though I am still lost, though I still don’t know where to go or what to do with my life in terms of a career, and though I sink into angry depression occasionally, I have been and still am more than blessed.
And there are so many of you that I have yet to meet. And I will meet you because I am blessed.
my mom and I two years ago in the airport
My dad and I two years ago at the airport
With the girl who introduced me to Flamenco
The thing about cartoons you watched as a child is, occasionally they will start replaying itself in your head, and you realize there are deeper meanings than you actually thought.
One of them is: Through heaven’s eyes from The Prince of Egypt.
Who has loved them as a child? Show of hands!
A single thread in a tapestry
though its color brightly shines
can never see its purpose
in the pattern of the grand design
and the stone that sits up on the very top
of the mountain’s mighty face
does it think that it’s more important
than the stones that forms the base
So how do you measure the worth of a man
in wealth or strength or size
in how much he gained or how much he gave
My interpretation of this song is that each of us form a single thread in the tapestry of the world. No one is more important than the other, we all play an equal role in God’s grand plan. So we must be humble, yet not forget our important role in the tapestry. For each and every thread come together and weave the intrinsic patterns of the tapestry.
And we must remember that the design of the tapestry are not predestined. There is no right or wrong design. The tapestry is still being woven. By each of us every passing day by our decisions, by our bravery and by our cowardice. Don’t you forget that grey and black also forms an important part in making a beautiful design.
We should all give our best into our lives in order to do our small part in weaving the tapestry of the world.
and though you never know all the steps
you must learn to join the dance
I am the sort of romantic who likes to believe in soulmates, in destiny.
Isn’t it so romantic? That there is this one person whom you will meet and re-meet, cross and re-cross throughout eternity as long as the earth spins?
Isn’t it so romantic? To believe that in your life there is this one person whom you will meet and it will instantly “click” because the two of you have always known each other since the beginning of time.
But of late, i have found another kind of romantic.
The “I don’t know if we will be together in the future, and I don’t know if we have been together in the past, but this life- I want to spend it with you” kind of romantic. The kind of love that doesn’t care about the past or look into the future. The kind of choice that doesn’t look at destiny.
i am now a different kind of romantic.
On turning ten by Billy Collins
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Do you realize your dreams or do you make realistic dreams?
In an alternative universe, it is filled with the unspoken words, misunderstandings and silences from this world.
