Travels: From Doha to Indonesia to Sydney

So, I've been busy plane-jumping and country-hopping, but I have photo's to share! 

We begin on a plane.

Through my homeland of Indonesia..via becak (beh-chak)

Wayang Kulit, made from animal skins, which they then paint and carve stories into.

Beautiful, no? 

From Jogja to Kabanjahe for a wedding.

This is one of my many aunts.

I've been travelling for 2 months now and I've made it to Sydney. I travel a lot, just sometimes I wish I had my own bed and my own daggy pants to sit in. Instead of hopping from one bed to another. 

I need a cookie.. 

I'm basically itching to start University in Wales. That may sound completely queer to you, trust me, I never thought I'd ever hear myself weeping at night for University. But I do. Not weep. Just grumble. I'm incredibly excited to start my course, to meet like-minded people/lyricists like myself and broaden my mind with tons of English lit. 

There you have it. The confession of a proud geek.

POOVIEW: The Possession

A couple nights ago I unintentionally ended up watching The Possession. Such a delight. 

I don't exactly enjoy horror because it's usually all blood and high-pitched, big-breasted women screaming and running in the direction of death. I'm more of a comedy/romcom/foreign/action film junkie type. 

In The Possession there were no monstrous tits-- just a sweet girl being tormented and eaten inside out by some ancient Jewish demon. I don't know about you but seeing kids being possessed by the supernatural and fueled by revenge and egg sandwiches; I find it super disturbing. 

So basically you have this sweet girl being turned into a demon who happens to resemble Gollum. 

But let's be honest, Smeagol is pretty adorable. If I could have it my way and he existed I would have Smeagol as a pet and dress him up in maroon corduroy pants with a bowl hat to top it off. 

So--sweet girl gets all agitated because, hell, she's got a look-alike Smeagol living inside of her and it's such a relief she doesn't have an allergy to moths. If she did, I'm not sure how the movie would have continued. The moths were essential. 

By the beginning of the movie I had already wiki-ed it and knew all the scenes when to run to the kitchen and 'make more toast'. I spent the majority the movie under my red blanket that's splattered with cows, drinking tea with my eyes closed and calling out 'UNO!' as a warning to my Dad of the next creepy scene before scuttling back to the kitchen. 

All in all, I slept well that night. 

A POOVIEW RATING: 

Originality: Hardly any

Enjoyment: I don't remember

Mood: Sinister

Soundtrack: Surprisingly unique

You Are Not Alone

"Make absolutely no mistake," Vegh said. "Women can smoke dope, booze it up, throw a fist, wield a knife, use a gun, beat their spouse, and beat their kids. It is a type of violence that is ignored, condoned, and treated as frivolous by a justice system that survives by feeding on the one individual who is easily stereo-typed, lacks public sympathy, does not raise fear of reprisal in politicians, and often does not fight back."

Mary Matalin was right when she wrote in a 1993 Newsweek column: “We are not victims; our daughters are not infants; our sons are not brutes; our men are not monstrous pigs.” If women hate the idea that only men can be strong, we’d better reject the myth that only women can be gentle. If we aspire to leadership, it’s time we take responsibility for our own capacity to abuse and victimize others.

Sheridan Hill writes, "Women have been on a self-righteous soap box for a long time. Men have cowered in the face of feminism and other movements that have been used by those who want to avoid looking at the consequences of their behavior.

Women hit. Women kill. Men are taught not to hit back."

To read more on violence against men click here. It is a brilliant essay called "In the Defense of Abused Men." by Sheridan Hill. 

Men, 

You are not alone. 

Fight for your lives. 

Please. 

I have a personal story about this and I had posted it but I've now chosen to take it down. I don't want this to be motivated by my anger at the injustice personally. I want people, women, to understand that men are human beings and shouldn't be generalized and shoved in a box categorized as 'thug'. They bleed. They cry. If we women demand their respect, we should be respecting them. 

It breaks my heart. 

We should be defending our men. I feel that the abused man is a mere shadow because you hardly hear of it in the media. And I think we have to change that. We must try to change it. 

I appreciate anyone who came by to read this. It means a huge amount. Thank you. 

Question: Are you working to live or living to work?

Do I like it in an office? Dad says I only feel uncomfortable here because it’s a new environment I’m not used to- good point, but it doesn’t help I’m a dozen ages younger than everybody here. Maybe I’d be better off in the back kitchen of some cafe or begin a course at a Uni here, I mean, I don’t have to finish right? I know people who drop out. It’s just an ‘in-case’ scenario, which you need when living in Doha, Qatar because the Royal family are the law and what they say, goes. If they want shut down all the malls in the country for a month and momentarily forget that the employees will be jobless and make no money for that month, so be it. It’s happened before. 

What is the ‘important’ question within all of this? Is it ‘what am I going to be?’ or ‘what job will I be working in five or ten years?’ or is it maybe ‘who will I be?’

Do values matter in a world now a shade grey? Is it about those quotes that make you feel, for a nano of a second that you could be whatever you wanted? About working to live? Or is it the other way round, living to work? Is work just another compartment amongst others labelled ‘housework’, ‘shopping’ and ‘entertainment’? Some believe work should be something you enjoy, a hobby even, but isn’t that hard for people to achieve? And if so, should those people give up trying and settled for a desk job stapling paper and straining their eyes at the computer screen? Or should they search for it, study for it or work they way up to it? Is work our entirety at the end of a life? Or is our life meant to be bigger than 9 to 5 every weekday with sloppy weekends? 

Why do we work? Some it’s solely to gather money, whether in a tight spot or simply greedy. But I think the general reason is because we must work, we have no choice, we need to feed our children, clothe them with the latest accessories and get them to a respectable college someday. Work, whether we enjoy the job or not, is for money and money to meet needs and desires. 

Should a job be for making money for ones own benefit or for others? Voluntary jobs in orphanages, missions and the like that either are not paid or are minimum wage, are they of less importance because they don’t wear suits? Why is it that the jobs that benefit people who have almost nothing are paid little, but those who work in tall buildings, pay tax and don’t seem to benefitting anybody but themselves and the government get so much more? Is it fair? Should it even matter? 

Jobs. Work. Day in, day out. All types of work: business, construction, hospitality, voluntary, entertainment etc. So, should work make us happy? Should it energize us, make our heads spin with ideas? Or should it be drab, making the clock seem to tick slower and slower? Why should work make us happy? Should we bunny-hop through part-time work or have a career in mind? Which is right? Maybe we shouldn’t be so fussy and be grateful for whatever job we manage to receive. Could you imagine if your hobby was your job? In a parallel universe- fishing, a circus act, pianist, artist, fashion designer, dancer, food critic, futurist- you could be anything you had a passion for.

 Maybe there’s an invisible line separating the people who dream to work, and others who work to dream. Is either better than the other? I don’t think there should be discrimination against one or the other. Each job should make each individual smile at the end of the day, lift the mist of confusion and give them a purpose, a goal to pursue, direction. A job can be whatever you make it to be: your life or just a part of your life. A job can sometimes be our lifestyle, it can shape us. We could be that artist struggling make money by selling paintings on Ebay and doing shifts at the cafe. We could be the paramedic on call at night, a career unlike the artist. How do people know what career they want? Is it something some people are born with? Do they figure it out by the end of university? Is a career necessary? What comes to mind when you think ‘career’? 

These questions are my own questions. It’s my way of trying to figure out what is right, what should be, what shouldn’t and trying to see where I’m headed. My therapist once told me, “There’s no right or wrong decision. Once it’s made, that’s when you’ll find out whether you like what you’re doing or not.” 

It made me rethink a lot of things. I see a majority of the world in black-and-white, that includes religion, type of work, relationships, opinions etc. The past two years have been hard on me as I’ve been working on broadening my colour scheme and accepting some things in life as: grey. 

All my questions about work, half of them I already know the answer too deep down, but generally in the large scope of life and everything in between, work is a shade of grey. Work is something you come across or look for and make for yourself.

Thank you for reading,

Riahta