Doomed to Love

This conversation happened in sauna yesterday. It hasn't been warm these days outside (plenty of rain and cloudy days), so it was really nice to be able to have sauna together and warm ourselves up. 

Me: (coming closer to R2's face, joking) I think you must be infected by something.
R2: What do you mean?
Me: Well, your eyes are red.
R2: Ah, well, I'm infected by you.
Me: Me? What kind of infection is that? (bracing myself to hear him tease me back)
R2: Doomed to love you.
Me: (nicely surprised) Really? I like the sound of that.
R2: Yeah, I'm doomed to love you.
Me: (grin) Hey, that means I should infect you even more with that virus.
R2: Yeah.
 

Why I Blog

Read a post on this topic on some blogs and it reminded me of my own reasons to blog. When I first moved to Finland, before I learnt the language properly, I was lonely. The full-time Finnish course started about 8 or 9 months after I moved to Finland, so before then I had so much time on my own. In the beginning it was okay (I'm not a people person) and I spent time learning to cook and bake and trying out different recipes. After some time had passed, though, I felt like my brain was about to explode!!!

There were SO many things I wanted to discuss and share with other human beings than hubby. I still didn't have enough ability to discuss these things with MIL (bless her!), so I started blogging and tried to find friends. I just wanted to have "normal conversations" with other adults. I wanted to learn from them, I wanted feedback, I wanted them to hear me out and I wanted to give feedback, too. I visited so many blogs and left many comments here and there in the hope that some of them would feel some connection with me and be my blogger friend.

My closest friends were only an email away, but they couldn't cope with the amount of info nor details that I shared with them (just look at how many blog posts I've produced back in 2007 and 2008 and you can imagine how many SUPER LONG emails I wrote them). After all, each of them has so many other things to do in life than read and reply my emails. Thus another big reason to blog.

After some time, though, the blog provided more than just online friends. It is also a good outlet to try to make sense of what I feel. It's also a good diary to jot down what I've been doing and what I want to achieve and what I've learnt along the ways so that if I ever forget, I can just go back and reread the posts. And boy what a journey it's been!!! :-D

Once we both fell into IF (infertile) category, I also started a separate blog, because I don't think that the readers of this blog want to read posts connected to infertility, but I do need that blog mostly for my own personal diary. I need to pour out my feelings - not only to understand what trigger them or why I feel a certain way, but also to let them all out "in the big vast universe" and then leave them be. I hope that by writing them out, I don't have to carry them on my back anymore. I also need that particular blog to know how far I've gone or where I'm standing in my IF journey and hope that whoever finds it would feel what I felt when I found other IFers' blogs - that I'm not crazy with all the chaotic feelings churning inside me.

I've deleted one Finnish blog 'coz I haven't updated it in a LONG LONG time. Although there's another blog that's half-Finnish half-English that I haven't updated in a LONG time, I'm not going to delete it 'coz some people may need it 'coz I've written my experience when taking YKI testi (Finnish National Test), so I'll just let it be.

P.S. I never really felt like I'm that much into details until a close friend pointed it out in an email that I wrote about my Indo friends' visit to our place. A visited B and then they both came to visit me last year. The story that A wrote us (about what activities A had done in B's place) was much more succinct than the story I wrote about their visit to my place. So from then on I realize that I am crazy about details HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...

P.P.S. I've tried reducing the amount of words I use in my emails to my closest friends, mind you...and these days whenever I want to write in such great detail about something, I'd rather do it in my blog than bombard them with my long emails. If they want to read the story in details, I'll just send them my blog post link. This is another lovely reason why I blog - I can write as long as I want to without feeling like I'm bombarding someone else's space. :-D

3BT: Random Days

1. Hearing this conversation between a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old while they were flipping over the pages of a toy brochure:

5yo: "I want this kind of toy."
4yo: "Me too! I also want it, too."
5yo: "But I said it first!"
4yo: "But anyone can buy it from the store."
5yo went silent after that...

LOLLLLL!!! GREAT argument, 4-year-old! :-D

2. Having a one-on-one conversation with a 5,5-year-old boy and we had great fun. It was great that he responded to me well and he even gave me elaborated answers and he showed me the kinds of things he could do.


glitter-graphics.com

3. R2's birthday present is ready - actually several small, inexpensive gifts and today I found the rest of them while browsing in a store. All I need to do now is wrap them in one package and put it somewhere where R2 can see so that he'll be CURIOUS HA HA...(P.S. His bday is March 20th).

4. We've booked the final plane tickets and a hotel for our 7-day trip to Crete next month and I've also told my boss and the unemployment office about this, so all we need to do is pack and leave next month HO HO HO HO HO...

5. Planning to eat some cappuccino ice-cream later this evening - after I cleaned up some snow from the yard (yes, it snowed again today for a while) and I also did some Taebo, though not too rigorously.



6. Enjoying my training and being with the kids and getting to know them.

7. I've been pretty successful in battling negative, criticizing thoughts and being my own best friend and life couldn't be better! :-D

8. I've finished reading the third Finnish novel and now I have to choose another book to read. WHOOOPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

9. I still have a stack of Finnish novels/books to read 'coz weeks ago I found cheap ones at the library and also at the flea market HO HO HO HO HO...LOVELY!!!

10. Having a hubby whom I can give a massage to after he cleared up plenty of snow from the roof and he was experiencing some back pain.



11. Having wonderful coworkers who guide me gently and who set good examples for me to copy ('coz sometimes I don't know how to handle a situation).

12. Having a smart, thoughtful, and loving MIL. She gave me some baking tips and then she said, "I hope you're not angry that I'm giving you tips. I'm sure you'll be an excellent cook/baker after you do lots of experiments."

13. A bottle of pine tree smell for sauna that I bought. I LOVE its smell while we have sauna. :-D

Photos + A Short Convo

Yesterday went to visit R2's cousin and his 6-year-old daughter wanted me to play with her right away. When they visited us a few days ago, she asked me to play hide and seek in our place and when it was time to go home, she cried 'coz she wanted to keep playing hi hi...Anyway, here are some bits of our convo in between playing:

Her: How old are you? I'm 6 years old (holding up her fingers).
Me : 31 (holding up 10 fingers and explaining to her that it's three times that much plus 1)

She imitated me a few times, but I don't think she realized just how much older I am compared to her hi hi hi...After all, the last time we spoke last month, she asked me if I was a "big" girl or an adult (even though she herself pinpointed to me our wedding picture in her living room) he he he he he he...

Her: I'm a Finnish girl. What are you? English?
Me : No.
Her: Finnish?
Me : (laugh) No.
Her: Then what nationality are you???
Me : Indonesian.
Her: Really? But to me, you look Chinese.
Me : Well, I am Chinese, but I was born in Indonesia, so I'm Chinese-Indonesian.

Dang...it's SO hard to try to explain things to kids. You've gotta be really creative hi hi hi...And it's funny that now she seems to understand "races". When I first met her about 3 years ago, she didn't realize that I was different (she didn't stare at me like I was some sort of alien) and she didn't understand why I didn't speak at all (that I didn't speak Finnish to her).

Her: I have a picture of you and R2 on your wedding day. It was summer.
Me : Yes, well, in Indonesia it's always summer. There's no snow there.
Her: Really? No winter?
Me : Yes. (although on the peak of Jaya there is apparently still some snow, but it's just too hard for me to explain it to her, 'coz I don't think she realizes yet just how far away Indonesia is from Finland)

Okay, now some more photos from our Helsinki Trip:

1st pic: the train station.


2nd pic: Zooming in on the figures there. Brrr...they look cold, don't they? HI HI HI...


3rd pic: The newest shopping mall called Kamppi. At least I never heard about that when I went to Helsinki in 2004. All I knew back then was Stockmann.


4th pic: Love this clock. The writing on the clock means: "Helsingin Sanomat Office". Helsingin Sanomat is the national newspaper.

5th pic: LOVE this building, though dunno what it is ha ha ha...Helsinki people, care to enlighten me?


6th pic: A cartoonized pic of us in our hotel room. I'm just bored taking pics while we're sitting down nicely, so that was why we posed like that ha ha ha ha...

Problems Arising

I just realized some problems I'm starting to experience at work. Although it IS more fun to have plenty of coworkers and we can talk about anything during our break, but here are some basic problems that I've encountered lately compared to my two other training places:

1. If there are more than 2 other people on the table during the break (sometimes there can be 5 of them!) and they start talking about many topics, if I REALLY want to follow the conversation well, I don't have much time to start formulating my responses. Why? Because if I start thinking about my responses (especially if they're long ones), I'll LOSE TRACK of the rest of the conversation.

Thus I resort to focusing on the conversation and I end up just smiling or nodding or showing the right mimic and blurting out short phrases. So I've become a passive listener instead of being an active participant of the conversation.

This problem is not as bad if there's only one other person with me or maximum two other people with me.

2. If I don't understand some words (which happen regularly since they talk about LOTS of stuff and my vocabulary is still limited - plus in normal conversations people sometimes use the slang words), I feel bad if I keep on asking as I'll ruin the flow of the conversation. ---> I'm pretty sure they won't mind if I ask them, but it just doesn't feel okay to ask all the time EVERY single day, every single break we have...

Thus I only try to guess - sometimes I guess well, sometimes I just don't have a clue of what they're talking about. Sometimes I can remember the word or phrase that I don't know so that I can ask R2 about it when I get back home or I can look it up in the dictionary, but most of the time I don't remember anymore as the conversation shifts to other topics.

This problem can be eliminated if I only talk to ONE other person, since then if I don't understand, we won't be able to carry a conversation, right? So either I have to ask or pretend that I understand hi hi hi hi...I don't mind asking if it's a one-on-one conversation since it's pretty easy to do.

3. More often than not, after our break is over, I start formulating my responses to whatever they have talked about during the break, but then once I know what to say, it's already too late to say it to them, right? It's kinda crazy, but I'm still in this phase of learning this language.

Okay, I just thought I should write these down here to remind myself about this. I'll blog-hop later, OK? I'm so sleepy he he he...

Cross-Gender Friendship: Possible or Not?

The other day my close friends and I had a heated discussion on cross-gender friendship.

Is it possible or not for a man and a woman to have a platonic friendship? (especially if one or both are married to different people?)

Yesterday I browsed around the internet and found that it's been an "eternal" debate everywhere. The conclusion in most sites I found is:

IT DEPENDS.

So, what do YOU think?

Any specific experiences on this matter? Do share as I'm SO curious about it.

When it comes to my own personal life, I think I only have one guy friend so far, but he lives far away from me, so that won't give me any trouble. We never really hung out together, but when I was in Bandung and he wasn't married yet, we used to call each other every now and then. Funny thing is that he actually became my friend until one of my girl friends dumped him on Valentine's Day. Then he called me and asked me to find out why his ex dumped him, so I did and we became sort of buddy-buddy since then. I knew that we could become friends only since he wasn't my type and I wasn't his type.

So you see, I haven't had that many experiences being friends with guys (well, first I was a good friend of my hubby but then it turned out to be a romantic one in the end). LOL!!! That's why I decided to write this post, to get feedback from fellow bloggers who have more experiences than me.

I also found some interesting bits and pieces from some sites. Here goes:


From Platonic Relationships More Realistic for Women:

In a survey conducted by www.match.com, more than 1450 people were asked which sex is more likely to misinterpret the intimacy of friendship for sexual desire. While only 25 percent answered women, 64 percent answered men.

In the same study, when asked who is better at keeping sex out of a platonic relationship, 67 percent said women and only 13 percent responded men.

And in this website, Justify My Friendship, I found some real-life experiences, as well:

Actually, I have a female friend that I would *like* to remain friends with, and vice versa, as we are both married to other people. But, for some reason (unconscious body signals? pheromones?) she thinks I am attempting something more, and, after three weeks of aggravation, we may have to dissolve the initial friendship. -- B-K.P.

Two good looking people cannot be "just friends" and if they do, there are certainly "non-friendly" thoughts going on which can clog any sensible thoughts. I think it is difficult for both sexes. I know I've wanted to be "just friends" w/ men and they want more - sorry, I told you up front what I wanted. It's tough on guys, women are such teases and it makes it difficult for them (men) to know where they stand.
Just a woman's perspective. -- Deborah

Here're some excerpts taken from this site, Can Women and Men Be Friends?: (I encourage you to read the whole article as I can't possibly write everything down here)

In a major 1988 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Sapadin asked more than 150 professional men and women what they liked and disliked about their cross-sex friendships. Topping women's list of dislikes: sexual tension. Men, on the other hand, more frequently replied that sexual attraction was a prime reason for initiating a friendship, and that it could even deepen a friendship. Either way, 62 percent of all subjects reported that sexual tension was present in their cross-sex friendships.

Truth #1: ...as people develop serious romantic relationships or get married, making and maintaining cross-sex friendships becomes harder. "Even the most secure people in a strong marriage probably don't want a spouse to be establishing a new friendship, especially with someone who's very attractive," says Monsour.

Truth #2: In Sapadin's study, men rated cross-sex friendships as being much higher in overall quality, enjoyment and nurturance than their same-sex friendships. What they reported liking most was talking and relating to women--something they can't do with their buddies.

Truth #3: "Friendships with men are lighter, more fun," says Sapadin. "Men aren't so sensitive about things." Some women in her study also liked the protective, familial and casual warmth they got from men, viewing them as surrogate big brothers. What they liked most of all, however, was getting some insight into what guys really think.

Conclusion of the study: Cross-sex friendships are emotionally rewarding.

One last excerpt from The Soko:

Do platonic relationships exist – in my opinion? Yes they do and no they do not. The possibility of a platonic relationship depends entirely on the situation.

A Simple Scenario

Did the friendship form while both or at least one party was single? As cold and shallow as it sounds, nine times out of 10 we physically evaluate with whom we form bonds when we are single (not a scientific statistic). I do not say this out of desperation; rather it is a matter of genetics. When we are single, we tend to look for a partner. If the friendship was formed in one of these times, there is a chance that physical attraction exists between the two. Once this attraction is acted upon the relationship is no longer just friendship, it is not platonic.

Thus the relationship can only be platonic if the two people involved can strictly be friends. Basically, the question “why are we just friends” must never arise!

I have to add one last thing written by Blake Roeber:

...being "just friends" takes a lot of caution. It takes care and a realistic appraisal of one's ability to avoid temptation. It also takes the humility to admit it when one's gotten oneself in over one's head.

To say that Platonic friendship isn't possible is also to recognize that, even where a guy and a girl do exercise enough caution to be "just friends," the friendship they form will still be one between a guy and a girl, not one between two neuters.

Let me end this post by telling you one funny conversation I had with my hubby yesterday:

Me : "So, babe, do you think men and women can be JUST friends?"
Him: "Sure."
Me : "Really? So, what do you think if I have a hunk as a guy friend?"
Him: "Nope, then you can't have him as your friend."
Me : "Really? Why?"
Him: "Because."
Me : "ARRRGGHHH!!! OK, so what if I have a guy friend whom you consider not handsome at all?"
Him: "Then you can be friends with him."
Me : "Oh dear!!!"

Yeah, you got that right. Actually both my hubby and I are jealous types (our jealousy level is THANKFULLY similar so we understand each other pretty well in that area), so we'll both be wary about this cross-gender friendship thing.