Back from Silence

Been busy with so many different things, so haven't been able to blog or blog-hop. First of all, had a company party until late at night with another group of people from another branch and of course I was the only foreigner in the bunch ha ha...But it went very well and I realized even more that these days I could manage those kinds of group gatherings better than in the past. I remember how overwhelming it was in the past 'coz my vocabulary was so much more limited. Of course it also helped that I had known my own coworkers for a while, so I felt more at ease with them as well. We laughed so much that my cheeks got sore he he he...and I managed to talk more to some coworkers of mine there 'coz usually at work we don't really have much time to chit-chat. 

In between the party I had work as well as a test, so before and after the party I had to study the materials. I had to take the test in Rovaniemi, but thankful that another coworker had to go there with me, so we could go together. It was fun getting a ride from her 'coz during the trip we also talked about so many different things that we never got to talk about at work. :-D

I was a bit worried about the test, but it went very well (THANK GOD). The thing is, I would have felt bad if I hadn't passed because the company had paid me to take the test and I needed to pass it so that I could learn something else at work. Without the certificate, I wouldn't be able to do the new task that would be available at work later on. So my coworker and I were both relieved that we had passed the test. :-D After this we'll have more things to learn at work, because the test only comprised of theories, but the practice will come later.

There have been again heart-warming situations at work when my regular customers wondered where I had been and said that they had missed me. One or two of them even joked that their days were "complete" now that they had seen me at work LOL!!! BLESS THEM!!! THANK GOD for sense of humour!

However, I felt a bit uneasy when one customer (don't actually remember this one particularly as this one was not quite old yet) asked me where I had been and then I heard this customer say to me, "Yeah, here in this little village everybody's being watched because they want to know who's leaving." (rough translation of what the customer said)

That very second I just had this eerie feeling as if the government had sent spies to watch my whereabouts ha ha ha ha...Too many movie watching!!! LOL!!!

Anyway, I saw this one on FB and it's SO good that I just have to share!!! I'm gonna blog more about the Rome trip later. Take care, folks!

Beauty Chronicles

I've been talking to my Indo best friends about beauty and I've found something interesting. Each of us is different: different build/height, different eye shape/facial features, different skin colour, different personalities.

I asked them if they had ever felt beautiful in their own skin in Indo (esp. during teenage years) and based on their answers, it SEEMS that those who received positive feedback/validation from lots of people during childhood can still maintain that image of theirs in their minds (whether it's cute, beautiful, pretty) during their teenage years.

On the other end of the spectrum, during childhood some who received so many strong messages about outer beauty that was the opposite of what they had still remember very well that message even until now (for example: that darker skin is ugly). They were affected by this negating strong messages (that negated their own kind of beauty) at least until their teenage years.

However, in the middle of both extremes there are also those who never really received any positive nor negative feedback on their outer beauty and that led them to having mostly neutral POV on their own beauty during their teenage years.




glitter-graphics.com

This is only pure observation from childhood until teenage years and I don't claim that my POV is the right one, but I'm just wondering about the effect of messages given during our childhood. I belong to the latter group in which I had never really received any positive nor negative feedback on my outer beauty during my childhood and as such, in my teenage years, I mostly felt neutral about my outer beauty - there were times I felt beautiful, there were times I felt not too lovely, but most of the time I felt okay enough.

Now in my adulthood it's a whole different case, of course, as per what I've written down here: The Thing About Beauty.

The Thing About Beauty

The other day when I was feeling upset (reflected in my post Somewhere I Belong), one other thing that bugged me at the time was a small exchange I made with someone in my FB list.

She had posted a few new pics of herself and they all look stunning. For all that's worth, she's a very beautiful, slender, and tall young lady, so under one of the photos, I wrote this comment: "So pretty."

A little while later, she wrote back, "Thank you."

But right away she added, "But my cheeks are chubby."



 
Mind you, I was already upset at those things I wrote in that previous post - plus I'm having PMS - so the moment I read her second response, I got upset (yeah, PMS mode can be bitchy mode).

Then I wonder why I got upset simply because I read such a response. I think I got upset because I just wanted to shake her and ask, "Are you blind????? Your cheeks aren't chubby at all! Not even close!" (Believe me, anyone on earth who saw the photo would say the same and I'm not being biased here!)

Besides, what does chubby cheeks have to do with beauty? Then I started wondering if there had been people commenting that her cheeks were chubby (Indo people can be that nosy, I tells ya!). Then I got more upset 'coz if that happened, then it meant she believed what they were saying. This had happened to me in the past - I gained a few kgs in Indo, but I was happy in my own skin UNTIL people started telling me, "Oh, you've gotten chubbier these days." And then I started panicking! Sigh...





Then I got upset again 'coz I can feel the topic repeating itself in my own life, in my other female friends' lives...I wonder if men also fuss so much about beauty. I know one sore spot for R2 is the almost bald patch on his head, though I find it cute and it doesn't lessen his sexiness (I love tickling it and then scratching it and hear his sigh of relief he he he...).

It's just that at the end of the day I think to myself: Why are we so hard on ourselves? I know the world pays more attention towards our external self (esp. those who don't know us well), but why is it so hard for us to see our own beauty?




I think I've once written a post where I talked about this topic - about how in Indo I knew I didn't belong to the "beautiful girls" group. I guess it has something to do with age as well - seeking confirmation about yourself from others (read: comparing yourself with others) VERSUS knowing about yourself from within (read: embracing yourself just as who you are at the moment).

Now that I'm getting older, I find that there are days when I just wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and see a beautiful face. Don't get me wrong. On those days when I look at myself in the mirror, I'm NOT comparing myself with anyone (not even with myself in the past). I just see beauty in front of me (in the mirror) just like I see a beautiful flower or a lovely painting or something like that. It does NOT make me feel proud, but it makes me feel good in my own skin, like I belong there. It's like saying to myself: "You're a piece of artwork made by God and I love you."

This doesn't happen every day, but in the past when I was younger, it only happened after I lost some weight or after I put on some make-up and dress myself up or after I reached my weight goal. These days it's not the case anymore and I wonder if any of you has ever felt this way, too? ---> Tell me I'm not crazy!

Ah...I'm rambling...I suppose in the end the small exchange I had with that young lady just evoked the scars I had in the past when I still lived in Indo - where people would comment on my weight and made me feel like I'd done something wrong. And damn me for having succumbed to their words and their standards of external beauty!!! (I know this is easier said than done for those who live in such a pressured environment, but anyway...) OK, I'll just stop here before it gets too long he he...I'll just leave this post with this quote:

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

- Confucius

The Wrong Relationship

Yesterday one foreign customer complimented my beauty. He himself is an expat who has lived in Finland for 20 years. He said he had always been attracted to eyes like mine - he called them special. I thanked him for his compliment and this incident reminded me of my past.

Back in Indo, ever since I was young, I never felt especially beautiful. I never felt ugly, either, but I knew what people considered "beautiful" - those who have bigger eyes, not a girl like me (case in point: in many Asian countries, those people who have slanted eyes try to make their eyes look BIGGER when they put on make-up. If you still don't believe me, just try googling Japanese manga series and you'll see that the idealized female person there has big eyes instead of slanted Japanese eyes. Want more proof? Try googling double eyelid surgery in Korea. So many people there have been getting the surgery to make their eyes look bigger.)

Anyway, when I was 19 going on 20, I met this guy online who made me feel especially beautiful. I knew he was a bad boy, but he was the first one ever who made me feel that I "shone among the others" (so to speak). He also taught me how to be open and by being open to him and still being accepted as who I was, I was drawn to him. He was the total opposite of me.

I knew our relationship was doomed from the start, but I did one of the most cliched mistakes a girl could ever make. I thought I could be the one who turned the bad boy into a good boy. Yep. Silly little me. We broke up not long after we met in real life. I realized even more after we met that we were just too different and there was no way I could ever change him. After all, we can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, right?

There were times when I wished I could erase that part of my life, but now that I think about it...by making that mistake, I have learnt so much. First of all, I've learnt how to be open to people. Secondly, by having that short relationship, I learn how to set boundaries and thirdly I figured out what kind of qualities I was looking for in a guy.

When I had that brief relationship, I had been emailing with R2 as well, though we weren't too close yet. After I broke up with my first boyfriend and I got to know R2 even more and more, I realized that he was the one I was looking for all along. We're more in tune with each other and there are some similarities that make it easier for us to understand each other. R2 makes me feel safe because he's a steady person and he really tries his best to bridge the gap between us. Most of all, he's always brought up the best in me - and even more so in real life.

However, if I hadn't had the wrong relationship, I may have not been ready to be open with R2 and everything might have ended up differently. Because I could be open with R2 and I allowed myself to be vulnerable, he also felt more at ease to show me his vulnerability. That created so much closeness between us. And because at that time I knew already what type of qualities I looked for in a guy, I recognized them easily when R2 and I began to get to know each other better.

Anyway, back to the topic of beauty. Beauty is really tricky, don't you think? I think as time goes by, I've begun to appreciate more and more the individual beauty of people, including myself. While back in my past, I craved for other people's appreciation of my outer beauty, nowadays I hope I've learnt even better how to view people through God's eyes - that He's woven each one of us in a mother's womb...that each one of us is His beloved.

East Versus West

Today I talked quite much in Finnish compared to other days at work (YIIIHAAA!!!). The reason was that 'coz in the morning there were only 2 colleagues (the other one is on a sick leave), so on our coffee break, they asked me questions, such as when I met R2, if I miss my family, where I learnt Finnish, etc. Before today, it had been rather hard for me to speak, since there were usually more people on the table and it was already hard to follow the conversation and I'm always MUCH better speaking my thoughts when there are less people (one-on-one is better than being in a big group).

Anyway, one of them told me that my skin looked beautiful and the other one said the same thing. I was rather surprised to hear that since I have zits here and there...but what they meant was that my skin was moist/oily (ever since I moved to Finland, I never used any face powder) and my skin colour was darker than theirs. I told them that the irony is that MANY Indonesian people think that fairer skin people are more beautiful.

This conversation reminded me of another conversation I had with my Hungarian friend when I visited her house. I told her that I had recently read lots of internet pages on Korea and the pressure to look "beautiful outside" over there is SO high. It's like they feel like they won't get a good job if they're not "beautiful outside", so many people have undergone double eyelid surgeries and other types of surgeries to enhance their looks. If I'm not mistaken, over 70% of Koreans have done at least double eyelid surgery (dunno how many of them have done other types of surgeries such as jaw reductions and nose jobs).

I've also found an Indonesian blogger who's lived in Korean for a while. She says that one of her students (she tutors Indonesian language to Koreans) is encouraged by her own mother to do double eyelid surgery and the student is only around 10 years old!!! I've also heard from my friend who studied Chinese in mainland China a couple of years ago that her Korean friends got plastic surgery as birthday presents from their parents.

My Hungarian friend was SHOCKED when she heard about this. She asked me, "But why do they want to have double eyelid surgery? I think their eyes look beautiful just the way they are."

He he he he he he he...it's ironic, isn't it? What bothers me when reading about double eyelid surgeries and other types of facial surgeries (except if a person has undergone an accident or something that disfigures their facial features) is that when the "beautifully looking" people have kids, their kids won't look like their present selves...and the cycle continues...they'll keep on encouraging their kids to have surgeries to look more "beautiful"...when does it end?

Oh well...let me leave you with some quotations on beauty:

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.
- William Shakespeare

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.
- Al Bernstein

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”
- Sophia Loren

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius

Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.
- Horace

Question of the Day

Why is it so hard for women (I don't know how it is for men) to accept compliments about our looks, I wonder?

Surely there are good days and bad days for everybody, but why is it so hard to accept that other people's compliments may be really sincere. Plus beauty is subjective, so what some other think as "ordinary" may be deemed as "extraordinary" by other people.

Interesting, don't you think so?

Challenge of the Day

True contentment comes from within.

No matter how many people say you have such good qualities and such a lovely face or lovely hair or whatever beauty you may possess, if you can't find it within yourself, you're bound to feel that their compliments are nothing. So today, let's treat ourselves as our best friends. When you catch yourself thinking about something bad about yourself,

STOP RIGHT THEN AND THERE

and think if you heart your own best friend says such and such about himself/herself, what would you have told him/her? Then say the words you'd say to your own best friend to yourself. And let's EMBRACE ourselves WITHOUT comparing ourselves to other people. Let's watch ourselves in the mirror and STOP your thought when your mind starts forming something negative about yourself. No matter how many bumps, scars, zits you have, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. Even though you have some fat in your belly and flabby thighs, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!!!! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US IS BEAUTIFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE!




So you may not be as "intellectual" as such and such. So what? LOVE YOURSELF! So you may not be as "creative" as the guy/girl next door. So what? LOVE YOURSELF!

LOVE YOURSELF TODAY!!!

Here are some wonderful quotations taken from HeartQuotes:

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.
Sophia Loren

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own—even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
Katherine Anne Porter

Silly Teen Comparisons

Last night I remembered something a friend and I did when we were about 15 years old. Back then I had 4 close friends. Each of us had different personalities and looks. I don't know how I started the conversation, but I knew I was the one starting it. I asked one of them about the other three (without their presence). I wanted to know what she thought about our looks, so I asked her to rate us all and I'd then tell her what I thought about each of us.

So we started rating the looks (which ones of us were more attractive and which ones were less attractive). Then we started talking about each girl's possibility of finding a boyfriend based on our looks and personality (which ones of us would most likely find a boyfriend faster and which ones of us would most likely find a boyfriend slower).

I know it's SILLY, but back then it seemed to be a FUN thing to do. Besides, we weren't THAT serious, even though now looking back at the moment, it's actually kinda dangerous to do such a thing. It doesn't do anyone any good.

Anyway, based on looks and personality (mostly whether the girl's outgoing or not), we rated ourselves as the bottom two in finding boyfriends. Funny thing is how life showed us how WRONG it was. She was actually the first one who got a boyfriend and I was the second. We didn't factor in the possibility that even though the other girls might have more "guy fans", they might not want to have anything to do with any one of those guys. Just because you're surrounded by guys doesn't mean that one of them "clicks" with you and doesn't mean that you're willing to take a chance with one of them.

Fast forward to the present: Both she and I didn't end up marrying our first boyfriends, but still it was ironic that our own "silly ratings" were SO wrong. Now all of us have gotten married and two of us have gotten a kid already.

I guess it boiled down to the fact that back then, I was wondering about my own beauty. I knew back then that in the eyes of the guys in Indo, I wasn't particularly beautiful. They liked girls with bigger eyes. However, in life I've found out that NOT everybody approaches you simply because of your own looks. Maybe for teenagers, that might seem to be the case. But as you get older, you learn that there's MUCH MORE about a person than just their looks.

Over the years I've learnt to appreciate my own beauty, ZITS AND ALL!!! First I learnt to appreciate my own beauty through other people's eyes, but then I switched to learning how to appreciate my own beauty through my OWN eyes. I've learnt to accept myself no matter what. I've learnt to feel beautiful even though I'm not perfect. There are good days and bad days, but I think what's more important is that now I know my own worth better than before: that God created me as a special person and that nobody's better or worse than me. It's about me and God. It's about God's view of me. It's about knowing that I'm loved no matter what. It's about knowing that God cares THAT much about me. It's about embracing myself fully when I'm bleeding inside and feeling "ugly" and being able to say, "I love you. God loves you. So rest if we must, but let's get up again and move on and let's remember this lesson."