Self-sufficiency for Eve’s descendants

Man says to God, “God, why did you make woman so beautiful?”
God says, “So you would love her.”
“But God,” the man says, “why did you make her so dumb?”
God replies, “So she would love you.”

Over the years, I have heard again and again from different people, including those whom I thought I could respect, that women do not need to have high ambition or high education or in short, lots of money because all will be provided by their husbands. No matter how often I heard this kind of remarks, my blood boils.

Some guys today made similar remarks and I tried very hard not to retort because then, I would sound unintelligent (har har). Ok, so I was whining about university majors and future goals, and so perhaps I whined a little too much, but their remarks stung. So I told them that I need lots of money to shop  and I asked them, rhetorically, if they would be willing to provide the money (for their future wives). There are more implications of course aside from my materialist reasoning. I need to be free of my husband’s control, too and I have always somehow been reluctant to depend too much on people (so that others won’t depend too much on me, ergh, that sounds bad, what I mean is I respect a person who can fend for himself or herself more than those who are super dependent on others) And of course, I need the skills for ‘rainy days’ and I do not want to be a bored or boring wife.

Perhaps it’s my family that influences my view on this. The only man in my family is my father. And my mother has suffered from gender discrimination in her own family. And I’ve witnessed too many cases of discrimination in my big family which still largely adopts some unreasonable, archaic oriental traditions. But it does make me wonder, if I were to have a brother, will my parents treat us differently in terms of dealing with our dreams?

Oh, heck.

Anyway there’s a case of food theft on my floor. And the victim has pledged fervently to hunt the thief down and not to spare her once she caught the culprit. Ooh, scary. But how do you eliminate theft? Labelling your food as suggested by the hostel staff clearly won’t deter thieves. My solution is to provide small fridges for every room and of course, an air-con too for each room since it’s so hot and humid. (hahaha, dream on, dream on)

The wonder (and curse) of a small town

Ah, I’ve been wanting to write about this a long, long time ago. You see, I came from a small town passed by the equator line on the third biggest island in the world. Only the town is small, by the way, everything else is big. We dream big, we have big house on a big land, even our mouths are big. That brings me to the first curse of a small town: everybody knows everybody, and words travel fast. My parents practically recognise at least one person on the obituaries on the newspaper everyday (oh-kay, so that’s a rather gloomy example). And when you do something wrong, the WHOLE town, believe me, the WHOLE town knows it (a little bit of hyperbole won’t hurt here). I’m reminded of that song “Secret” by The Pierces: …coz two can keep a secret if one of them is dead… Yeah, I guess that applies to people of my town.

Ever heard of this saying “You can take a girl out of a small town, but you can’t take a small town out of a girl” or sooomeeething along that line? Well, I think it’s true. You can’t really change the small-town ambition to prosper and to wander everywhere to achieve the Big City Dreams (another favorite song of mine by NeverShoutNever!). Well, this is the wonder of a small town in my opinion.

Another curse of a small town, I guess this applies to people of my town only, their greetings when they see you, is not hi-great-to-see-you or hello-how-are-you, but more of “Hi, how stuck-up you are for not contacting me” Oh-kay, so they mean it in a friendly way, but it’s getting irritating. Come on, if you’re dying to contact me to the point that I become a no-good stuck-up loser once you see me, why didn’t you contact me first?

Finally, the wonder of my lovely small town is the FOOD. Duh. Even after many generations of those who have migrated to other places, they will still retain their food culture and they will always come back to my town for the food! As one of the folksongs of my town muses “Once you drink the water of Kapuas River (that’s the famous river in my province, now you can guess where I’m from ), you’ll never forget this place” And you the excellent food vendors in my town have also run for generations. There’s something called the rich-people noodles vendor which apparently closes most of the time, so you’re really lucky if you get to eat the noodles, or something called the cock-and-hen kway teow because the vendor is run by this lovey-dovey old couple (if I’m not wrong, one of them has passed away recently, that’s so sad), and there is the forever-waiting noodles, coz it just takes forever for the vendor to cook the noodles but many people love them anyway (I LOVE THEM TOO!). Here’s a picture of one of my favorite dish, called “yam mee” which is definitely very yummy

OHHHH, my eyes have grown misty. I wanna go hoommeeee, let me go homeeee….

narcissistic exhibitionism

Another interesting GP lesson on blogging and narcissistic exhibitionism today… (which is probably what I’m doing now, exhibiting my narcissist tendency by voicing out my insignificant opinions in trivial issues )

I’ll say that narcissism is something that is almost celebrated today, especially among Indonesian teens. Declaring oneself as a narcissist is quite a trend, although it should not be taken seriously as the term narcissist here refers to somebody who loves to take photos of himself. The negative connotation of narcissism has actually toned down -a phenomenon that my mom cannot comprehend. Anyway, I think that this mild narcissism (extremely mild one, I must say, if you recalled the myth of Narcissus and his pond) is rather desirable. While most of the older generation generally detest having their photos taken (ever seen their awkward smiles and stiff postures in photos?), the millenial generation strives to preserve a joyful moment by inventing numerous poses (with wide smiles, cheeseee…) in front of cameras. Maybe this is a sign of how this generation is more comfortable with themselves? Although of course, this is an oversimplification-of-a-complex-reality.