Hiding Tonight

I feel like writing tonight, so bear my random words.

Japan

You know, no matter how many times I went to Japan, every time someone posted a picture of it I always be jealous about it. Maybe I should go there once again, to proof if that magical wonder still exist. Third time is a charm, right? :P Meanwhile, my friend Insan is probably too excited to sleep waiting for his Summersonic magic to happen tomorrow (titip salam aja deh ke mas-mas Arctic Monkeys). One thing for sure, I already wrote down a complete itinerary for a train trip across Japan :)) Yep, including riding Shinkansen and the mighty night train Hokutosei.

Music

How’s life? Not too much, just going back to regular routine of being average worker and hard core commuter. But life is changing a little bit, I’ve started to listen to music again. For some times, I’ve stopped listening to music while working (or any time et al). Now, I started to feel invincible again. Rock music would never failed you. Why would people want to end their life if they have good music like this? There is this one day, that I started my day listening Whatever by Oasis. It stucked on my head, and I played the song on the loop for the entire day. That day, I was a rock star, a spaceman, a social worker, a stay at home mom, a cook, an archaeologist, a painter, above all, I am whatever I want to be.

I’m free to be whatever I
Whatever I choose
And I’ll sing the blues if I want

Whatever you do
Whatever you say
Yeah I know it’s alright

On Being a Better Person

I started to wear hijab. Yeah, not much to say there :)) Just started laughing every time someone called ‘Bu Aji, Bu Aji’. Shenanigans.

On the other hand, I try to understand life better from many perspectives. I’ve been doing it for many years, but I guess it will never be enough. You know, if there is one thing about last general election that I need to really focus on, it is the ability to see more angles, many more angles. People is more than one thing. Trying to void the existence of someone by seeing them by one angle, is just a humiliation to their life.

And this is just a very reason why riding public transportation got a vital part of my thoughts about life. There is so many light across the street, touching them by listening their everyday conversation, looking at their gesture and appearance is always a pleasure. One day, I sat across a mom and her son on my ride home. Her son started to ask what a Moslem should wear during Eid al-Fitr, what the difference between an Israeli and a moslem, is their still any moslem in Israel, why they are fighting each other, why people in Gaza are being bombed, and it touched me the most when he asked, “How they celebrated Eid al-Fitr when they’re being bombed? Will they forgave each other?“. Such a young kid he is, asking a question about war and bomb. Words they shouldn’t need to use. We have created monsters. Each living in the darkest part of our heart, waiting to sneak out on a perfect time to make another war. Just because we are different, there isn’t any reason to stop listening. Just stop being a jerk.

Words

Here is a confession, I hate people using the word ‘corporate slave’. Why do people seems so proud to call themselves like that? Even if there is a sarcastic tone there, I still hate it. The word slave has a long and dark part in the history of humanity. Just be very careful to use it to entitled yourself.

The Idea of Working at Home

Haha, I always wanted to work at home and having early pension as an employer. So the option to run a business that I like have been in my thought for quite a while. Earlier, for 1.5 years or so, I’ve been having an online shop selling imported snacks and chocolates. Buying products in wholesale and trying to resell it, is always a great place to start. Because it builds up your confidence, at least you know how to handle the consumer (and always being a bigger person), what question they’re going to ask regarding the goods, when they like to shop (a little tip: Always, I mean always, post an advertisement/send newsletter at Thursday night/Friday morning, because people love to surf and searching stuff at Friday, and buy things at Saturday). In a technical side, there are also many things to learn from. Maybe it teaches you how to think about packaging and what option and method you have to ship goods. For example, a fragile goods may need an extra bubble wrap wrapping inside, how and where to get them, how many layer you need to add, etc. And it is always a good idea to befriended mas-mas JNE (it always comes in handy), no I mean the shipping schedule :)) Maybe the profit isn’t that much, because you also need to watch the market price and in my case, *ehem* Indonesian currency. But it will give you better vision on your strategic marketing and branding.

So, after the rise of many competitors out there, I decided to make further achievement. I know that my sister is going to continue her study abroad (yeah, her second Master FTW), so I will have to sell the goods occasionally only. I need to have other thing to pour my energy into. Exploring many options, I finally come out with homeware and living goods. Like mugs, cushions, storages, furniture, etc. It is the dream, right? To have your own designed homewares. I decided to run it along with my friend, Liza who shares the same vision. We started buying fabrics, doing print test (seeing your design on fabric is priceless), making labels, buying a domain, setting up website (the joy!), and now going to production test (which is taking forever :)) ). Maybe it is one step too many, maybe there is a lot of things we need to learn, but this is surely a small step to achieve that dream of working at home. And other dream as well, hey I learn how to set up an e-commerce web! It’s so awesome~ Wish us a good luck then.

The set of chevron mugs I made. I finally able to make this Tangerine Tango mug comes alive :’)