ArchDaily has changed the focus on my life’s ambitions (which are admitedly pretty vague) by writing about a teahouse in the Czech Republic.
Oh man, I want one sooooo bad!
Take a look at the originial post for lots more photos, including Tea House in the Snow.
UPDATE: MJ suggested I build a tea house in the backyard at Rushworth! Ask and you shall receive…
I read something the other day (I think it was a reflection on Stumbling on Happiness which has been doing the blog rounds for the last few months) about how humans are not very good at predicting what will make them happy. Apparently we also tend to overrate how unhappy a certain outcome/event would make us. I agree with both of those ideas. I am especially prone to dreading something and then when it comes along finding out that it’s not so bad.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve had more than one of those moments because in a new job there are so many unknown outcomes (e.g. how will the boss react to this; how will I figure out how to do that). Today though I am especially surprised by how little I care about an outcome that I would have predicted, a matter of days ago, to have me looking for the nearest window to leap out of.
I spent a few really unpleasant days working on an administrative task that was very complicated, very dull, required all kinds of information I didn’t have and all kinds of skills that I don’t possess. Had it crossed my mind at that time that I was going to have to do the task all over again in a couple of days I probably would have cried real tears at my desk. Fortunately it didn’t cross my mind. It turns out that situations have changed and I have to do a fair bit of the work on that task again. I didn’t jump for joy when I found out, but I wasn’t that bothered. Only now that I’m almost finished I remembered how much pain it caused last time, how much joy I felt knowing that I never had to look at it again, and how sad I would have been knowing that this second phase was around the corner.
Therefore, if I don’t predict possible negative outcomes I’m saving myself all kinds of brain-fuss. But are there benefits to predicting negative outcomes? Surely there is a place for risk assessment (and prevention) and emergency response plans in the bigger picture, but do we need these in daily personal life? Does ‘preparing for the worst’ given our limited skills in accurately predicting the worst, help us to avert tumult?
****
Daniel Gilbert, Author of Stumbling on Happiness at TED. If you can spare the 21 mins, watch this video.
Sunday night
Guess where I am? Sitting in my new apartment! Contracts have been signed, a billion gagillion baht has been paid up in advance, and I’m ready to go…for one year! I am completely weirded out (in a good way) that I will be in the same apartment for a whole year. Such…stability. Perhaps that says a lot for my unrelenting need for change, but it also says ONE YEAR! I might as well decorate!
One of the very cool things about my apartment is that I’m its very first tenant. That means my bed is brand new, and the fridge still has the operating manual sitting in the crisper. I have a big balcony with a beautiful view of a brick wall, but unlike other ‘balconies’ there is more than ‘standing room only’. There is serious lounging potential (if one doesn’t mind a bit of stifling heat). My apartment has a kitchen, lounge room, bedroom and bathroom and all but the bathroom is separated by imaginary walls in my head! Yes, it’s one very multipurpose room, but I love it…a small space designed to to feel a lot bigger.
Monday afternoon
This is going to sound like a bit of an Oscar’s speech but I really do need to thank a number of people who helped me find the place, do the negotiating, scrape together huge amounts of cash at short notice, etc… There were quite a few factors working against the smooth flow of the day yesterday and as my nerves frayed (convinced something would intervene and tear my new home away from me) I was overwhelmed by the extra help I was getting from people I know well and people I didn’t know at all.
How’s this for a great spiritual problem: I am receiving too much! I needed to send gratitude out by the bucket load for fear of two things. 1) that people wouldn’t know I was grateful, 2) Karmic backlash. I called in favours that weren’t mine to call in! So my favours bank is in serious deficit. I sent out a few shout outs to the Universe in general as I drove along in a taxi yesterday (because, as I might have already told you, the universe is ON MY SIDE in a big way…I have proof), I also did some victory dances throughout the day, but I need to step it the gratitude and the giving. I’m thinking some kind of offering to the gods could be helpful (any and all gods), but I’m also just on the look out for any opportunities to pay it back or forward (probably both to be on the safe side).
Any ideas?
Categories: 1
Tagged: Bangkok, Family, Friends, home, Soul, universe
It’s day two in the office and I am trying my hardest to stay focused on work (establishing good habits and all) but I couldn’t hold off posting any longer. Once I sort out internet access outside of the office I’ll pick up the blogging pace again.
There are many things I want to talk about, mostly relating to my office because it’s the only place I’ve been so far, but for now I will just gloat about the glorious garden in the centre of the compound where I work.
My late night of packing before I left set me up for some serious sleepiness this week. Last night I was asleep by 8.30pm but consequently awake at 4.30am, so today I’m a bit daze-y. I decided to rectify the sitation by getting a coffee, but I wasn’t sure which canteen to go to, or how to get to any of them. I could see a nice outdoor cafe from my window and decided that if I could see it I should be able to find it. After a little bit of wandering (pretending to have a purpose because you can’t stumble around like a schmuck in this place) I found the cafe, ordered a cappuccino (Serene Destiny reminded me of the goodness of a cappucino when we wandered the city streets a few weeks ago), and took a seat outside with a view of the garden. Apart from the surrounding white buildings, which were pretty well concealed by various green tropical plants, this cafe by a garden could have just as easily been in a resort as in a workplace. For a place that presumably contains its fair share of stressed out workers, the quiet calm at the cafe certainly hid it well.
It reminds me of the cafe I would go to in Kuching (hello tangent, goodbye productivity). At the end of a work day, maybe once a week or as the need arose, I would walk home the long way and stop in at the San Francisco Coffee House in the lobby of a fancy hotel for a coffee or tea I didn’t really need and some ‘quiet time’. I would sit at the bench that ran along the window and look out over a fairly plain green field that people played a bit of soccer on and that kind of thing. There was something strange about this cafe in that I could go in carrying a bad mood or just general brain busyness and walk out feeling calm, on track, enthusiastic about life’s potential even! I wouldn’t do anything special. Just sit and drink my drink. I think the secret to this place was that no one else I knew in town would ever be there because it wasn’t in the area where we stayed (time alone was hard won when our expat community consisted of 7-8 people with too much time on their hands – and we all lived in the same building). I think knowing that I wouldn’t be interupted was as important to ’quiet time’ as actually not being interupted. It was like my secret cubby house that no one else was allowed to enter.
So maybe the cafe in the garden can be a calming escape from the office when needed. It’s missing the guarantee of not being interupted, but I think the good plant energy from the garden will more than make up for that.
Last Friday night Marcus and I were heading to Hermes Palace BBQ which, for a time, was a Friday night ritual for us with the beloved Jonathan. Jonathan wasn’t here this Friday so Marcus and I decided to go it alone. We’d been planning to swap music for a while too and decided to do that before hand at my house. Marcus came over but didn’t have his computer so we didn’t swap music but instead just had a drink and waited for a car to take us to the BBQ. Time passed and we decided we were hungry so we ended up eating at home. Simone was at her place (she lives with Marcus) and called to say we should join her for a couple of drinks. A Friday night hanging out with my besties, seemed perfect! Marcus and I walked over to his place and I was going on about how I would fall asleep on his couch within minutes of walking through his door.
But when I got to the door I saw this:
Michael and Lucy as the welcoming Romans
And this:
Artist's rendition of actual events
Well, not exactly this but I was too busy being shocked to whip out my camera.
Thankfully Jess was on the case and took some other photos of me walking through the door to find a surprise farewell party for moi!
Take note of Alice’s arm in the right of the photo. They are the hand gestures of someone yelling “surprise!”.
Sarah looks like a dork with her laptop on her back
Is it really a surprise part for me?! Marcus...were you in on this the whole time? What about Hermes Palace BBQ?
Simone...I was going to have a nap on your couch!
No really...is this party for me?!
Oh my god, I can’t even write this post without a huge grin on my face and getting a bit weepy.
A little bit of back ground, a few weeks ago Jess and I were talking about mumus, those drapey dresses that originated in Hawaii (Wikipedia taught me that), and Homer wore in the episode of the Simpsons that he got really fat. Ibus in the village get right into them here, but I think they’re more commonly known as dusters (or something like that)…Anyway, we were talking about them with our AYAD pals Alice and Eve and somehow a plan was concocted that for my farewell party we’d all get dressed up in mumus and go to the beach. It wasn’t long after we made that plan that I vetoed it. I decided it would be a bit too much of spectacle (read: Sarah is a big square chicken).
What happened next I’m a little unclear on but it turns out that my friends decided to have a surprise party, Jess was able to convince everyone else of the greatness of a mumu party, and they convinced Jess of the greatness of having it behind closed doors (I’m adding in a lot of assumptions here). Mumus turned into togas and there we have it: a farewell surprise mumu/toga party for Sarah. Lucy, being the brains behind pretty much all social events in Banda Aceh knew how to send out a facebook invite that was private and voila a party was had and Sarah had no idea!
There were a couple of keys to the surprise not being spoiled.
1. When Enda said “I’ll see you tomorrow night” and Michael unsubtly pinched him on the leg I thought they were having a gathering that required fixed small numbers. My mind went to “How to Host a Murder”. You can’t let too many people know about that because there are only so many characters. It didn’t occur to me that no one has played How to Host a Murder since 1995. I guess the key to this was my dumbness.
2. When Marcus was acting weird on Friday night I DIDN’T GIVE IT A SECOND THOUGHT! He’s always weird.
3. Even though Jess thinks she’s not a good liar, I am going to hire her the next time I need to do something illegal. That girl can lie without an inkling of visible guilt (even though she carries around more guilt than anyone I know!)
Just because these photos are so funny, here are some more. I could keep going forever with these (but the internet is so slow today that I will eventually have to stop).
Did you guys know about this? Alice and Cat in flowery designs (you can't see the designs, but trust me)
very happy Sarah with the leafy thing on my head (I have no idea where they found these in Banda Aceh)
Please excuse me while I get a little bit mushy. You can only hope that this post will replace a “leaving Banda Aceh” post (but I’m already composing it in my head, so not likely).
You meet plenty of fun, interesting people as you go along in life, but every once in a while you strike it lucky and find someone you hope to keep with you after you part ways. In the last few months I’ve found more than my fair share of those people. Sas moved into my house, Jess turned up as an AYAD, Simone moved in with Marcus. They just appeared in my life! It was so easy and I knew I was lucky to have stumbled upon them. But then they got together and planned me a surprise party and only then it struck me that they felt the same way about me.
Jenny Lewis sings “you are what you love, not what loves you back” and I’ve pondered that a few times, changing my mind as to whether I agree with it. But when I think about how much it means to me that these great people love me as much as I love them I’ve decided that Jenny Lewis was wrong and that it’s probably just a combination of both: I feel somewhat defined by who and what I love, but I also feel defined by who and what loves me back.
The best dressed of the night, Michael (who shared the prize with Lucy) + Marcus and Simone, two of the party planners
Simone with Jess, the other party planner
So, continuing on from yesterday’s story…after enjoying burgers and fries by the pool, Rijal the superstar becak driver picked us up to take us home. After driving for a while we realised we weren’t heading directly home.
“Where are you taking us Rijal?”
“Jalan jalan sore” (which roughly translates as “afternoon drive/stroll”)
Jess had picked up on the very festive vibe earlier in the day (think of that meat market as a supermarket on Christmas Eve) and by 5pm the whole town was feeling silly. The cat calls to our becak were particularly ridiculous. One old man walked up to us while we were stopped in traffic and said simply “You and me? I love you, do you love me?” wiggling his finger back and forth between us both as if to say “don’t you feel the connection baby?” Best part: he was about 170 years old and didn’t seem to mind that he was declaring his love to two girls simultaneously. Instead of being creepy like these shout outs sometimes are, this day they were a bit cheeky and funny, like “it’s Hari Meugang, to hell with being serious!”
After plowing through traffic in the centre of town we headed towards the suburbs by the sea. Everything was destroyed by the tsunami in this part of town and the roads are brand new (well, they’ve probably been rebuilt three times since the tsunami but at the moment they are brand new), so we hooned around on the wide, sealed roads as the sun when down, ducking in and out of small village streets, onto big thoroughfares with beautiful views of the sea and the mountains and the sunset.
This is how much fun it was:
Jalan jalan sore
And then…everything fell into place. It was obvious…Jess had to drive the becak.
Jess is a natural. Could be a good second income.
Jess was an INCREDIBLE becak driver. All was going well until the brand new road ended.
“Jess!! There’s NO MORE ROAD! STOP!”.
“I DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE IS THE BREAK!”
Fortunately, Jess handled the situation amazingly, like a real becak driver (who hasn’t figured out where the break is yet). Jess slowed down and everything was OK. Rijal resumed control of the becak and we continued on our jalan jalan sore. We went to the edge of town where the water meets the hills and Rijal showed us the entrance to a hike through the hills to a secret beach. We drove along a road built on top of a man-made sea wall that looks like it connects villages that were cut off by flooding to the rest of the town (this is 100% speculation, no facts were used to develop this theory). There is water on either side of the road as you ride along it. We saw monkeys and a lot of cows who were lucky to have survived the day (but probably didn’t survive the next). I don’t have any photos of this, sorry. Trust me when I tell you it was pretty darn nice.
THEN (yes, this day really went forever), we drove out of town to the beach where our friends Enda and Jen were having a joint farewell/birthday party. The party was at Joel’s, an icon for the foreign residents of Banda Aceh. We ate wood-fire pizza (but not a lot because we’d only eaten burgers a few hours ago) and drank beer (hence it’s iconic status for foreigners) and got a little bit creeped out by a guy who befriended us. His name was Tom. Was he friends with Enda or Jen? Yes, I am. He just wanted to make friends, but as Rijal put it “he’s a little bit crazy”.
After delicious chocolate and banana cake was served, it was 10.30pm and Sarah was TUCKERED OUT! I was so ready for bed that I hopped on Rijal’s becak and drove it home. Well…I drove it to the end of the street.
As we drove back into town, Jess and I discussed how we were going to handle the separation (our day had started at 7.30am when I arrived at her house for a hot shower and by now it was 11pm). I bid Jess adieu and Rijal drove me home. I went straight to my room and crawled into bed.
***
Epilogue
Jess and I went back to the hotel last night for the massage and facial we’d planned for Saturday…We went in a little highly strung and came out as two very chiiiilllllled individuals. I wish I had a photo of us as we practically sleep walked out of there. But I was too chilled to think about my camera…
Categories: Aceh
Tagged: Aceh, AYAD, Becak, Food, Indonesia, Religion, Soul
Ibu sprinkles rice over the bike (one of the many stages of a traditional bike blessing which also included sticky rice, coconut milk, a flour/water combination etc)
Ibu gives the camera a dirty look
Australian film crew
After the bike was blessed the Ibu moved inside to bless the house which meant using a bunch of leaves/flowers to spray a mixture of flour and water over the walls, furniture, people. (By then my camera ran out of batteries…) Then we all feasted on fruit and sticky rice and some truly sensational chicken cooked in coconut milk (that apparently takes many hours to prepare but I think it was worth the effort). Mum, dads, kids, aunties, Ibus all crammed inside the house and found some space on the floor to enjoy the food.
And in true Aceh style, they ate, they cleaned, they dispersed. Acehnese really know how to celebrate and really know how to get it over and done with. I love this so much. Jess and I were discussing how we might carry this practice back to Australia. Arrive at someone’s house for dinner at 8pm, eat at 8.30pm, finish food, gather dishes and wash them all at 8.45pm, out the door at 9pm. Efficient no?
Unfortunately the Australians bucked the trend and sat on the couch drinking coffee for four hours. Eventually, after all that relaxing, we headed off to the next plan for our day…massages and facials at the four star hotel, Hermes Palace. We had planned to do this around 11am, but by now it was 2.30pm and unsurprisingly, the spa was fully booked for the day….So we headed upstairs to the restaurant and ate burgers and fries by the pool. Not a bad compromise (and possibly as good for the soul).
The Jess and Sarah Saturday Soiree continued for many hours to come, but I have no photo evidence. So I will wait until I can get the photos from Jess to continue the story, which contained one of the greatest moments in Sarah’s Aceh experience…
Preface: This isn’t a post about whether ExxonMobil is good or bad. It just triggered a thought in my head, so ExxonMobil is only a vehicle for an idea, not the subject matter itself. OK? But maybe the subject matter is corporate responsibility…but maybe it isn’t. I’m not sure yet.
As I walked past my colleague’s desk a moment ago I saw press release about management training for Indonesian women, sponsored by ExxonMobil. This reminded me of the link I posted a week ago about ExxonMobil being sued over human rights violations in Aceh.
So we’re thinking about a company accused to doing ‘bad’ things, who then does ‘good’ things in the communities where it works (forget about the merit or strength of the ‘good’ things vs the ‘bad’ things in the case of ExxonMobil. That’s not where my thoughts are going today).
While you could say that ExxonMobil sponsors projects (another example here) to improve their image (and you’d probably be right), there is probably someone working for ExxonMobil who adopts the philosophy that it’s better to ‘do good’ in the community, even if there are PR gains, than not to do anything at all, and maybe that’s right too. But it makes me wonder about ‘being good’ vs ‘doing good’ (although I’m already having doubts about my own distinctions here. We’ll see how far I can take them).
If we consider a person. A not very nice person (suspend judgment of ExxonMobil now, we’re moving on), called Stan. Stan is a grump, overly cynical and tells four-year-olds that Santa Clause isn’t real. Not a very nice guy right? But Stan knows he’s not a very nice guy, so to make up for it he gives money to children’s charities.
1. Does giving money to children’s charities make up for being a not very nice guy?
2. Should Stan forget about easing his conscience by giving money to charity and just start being a nice guy?
3.Assuming that Stan would like to be a better guy but doesn’t know how to be or doesn’t want to be (surely we all have things about ourselves that we would like to improve but haven’t), is it better to give the money to charity or, because it’s a token gesture, forget about it?
It seems like Stan is choosing to ‘do good’ occasionally rather than ‘be good’ as often as he can.
1. Assuming that most of us want to ‘be good’ but are probably lacking in some areas, should we continue to strive to ‘be good’ or should we accept that we have limitations and take a ‘do good’ approach?
2. Is there any difference between the two? Does ‘being good’ just mean that you ‘do good’ many times a day?
3. Is it just a scale of ‘doing good’ frequency that’s the issue? Stan is still a butt because he does a lot of bad and a little bit of good, but his friend Sally ‘is good’ because she commits herself daily to ‘doing good’ for others.
Epilogue: For the sake of expressing this thought I have ignored what I think is the key issues of ‘what is good/what is bad’, and ‘how do we measure the impact good/bad’. In fact, without exploring those ideas this post is just a silly ramble.
Also, the corporation as person? If you haven’t watched The Corporation yet watch it soon.
Things are getting busy as I wind up my work here so today I will just post a couple of links instead of a story about my weekend (which, unless you want to hear about the report I’m writing, wasn’t really that exciting).
Thank you to those who gave positive feedback on my new WordPress blog and who have shown interest in the Middle East trip. Now I just have to show extreme discipline to stay focused on work instead of wandering off to sites about Syria and Jordan.
P.S to Greg: YES! That photo of the Pade Hotel…taken JUST DOWN THE ROAD FROM MY HOUSE! Can you believe it??
OK, to the links…
Benj sent me this link this morning. Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait. Wow.
Marcus sent me this article over the weekend. The Disadvantage of an Elite Education. Even if the subject doesn’t immediately grab you I hope you keep reading because there are many interesting ideas in this paper. The part about solitude (towards the end)…ugh, it worries me when someone pegs me so well when talking about ‘my generation’. If my personality defects are more than that (i.e. broad systemic failures)…well, we’re all in trouble.
As you might have noticed I’ve been messing my blog up a bit. Playing with the layout of my blog is one of those things that starts small and eats hours away without me realising. The slow internet connection doesn’t help either because I wait for a few minutes for every little change…and then decide I preferred it the old way. This got me thinking about another entry for:
THINGS I WANT TO DO WHEN I’M HOME. PLEASE HELP
No.2. Overhaul my blog.
I can’t let myself start this now because I will make a mess of it and neglect some fast approaching deadlines in the process.
I have to keep it simple (I already spend a bit too much time writing posts so I don’t want to spend too much time maintaining the layout), so if you have an inkling of inspiration for a simple blog design, or can help me make a design I choose a functioning reality (ahem…Benjamin) I would be eternally grateful for suggestions.
I don’t really need a fancy looking blog because I suspect my readership of 20 will tune in anyway but it would bring such joy to this simple heart if I had a pretty blog.
All this blog talk has got me thinking about what keeping this blog for a year has meant for me. I started the blog as an alternative to sending group emails about what I’m up to, and as a way to keep thinking about what I was seeing and doing. I’m terrible at keeping a journal even though I see great value in it so this is a bit of an alternative. There are obviously things I can’t/won’t share on this blog for reasons of being work-sensitive/personal/boring, so it’s far from a complete replacement for a journal but it does seem to working as a recorder of my experiences even if there are giant gaps.
But I think the most surprising outcome of keeping this blog is that it helps me to feel connected to my life outside of Banda Aceh. I didn’t necessarily expect that because the communication is mostly one way (apart from comments received). And I write to a mixed audience so I don’t particularly tailor my content to one group. But I suppose that as I write a post I think of the people who might be reading, where they’re sitting when they read it, who will like a particular youtube clip, etc…and I feel connected.
By the way, ramping up the frequency of my posts has made all the difference. Seems like my “9 Things to do Before 2009” list, including the posting target I set for myself, is actually doing some good then.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Aceh, Blogging, Family, Friends, Soul
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