Memory Book (AKA Buku Kenangan)

When I was in Elementary School and Junior High School (pre-internet/mobile phone days), on the last grade of both schools female students usually distributed a memory book (or "Buku Kenangan" in Indonesian) to her classmates to fill. The book was usually a hard-bound diary-like notebook (the size of which was usually more or like a paperback) with a cute cover and on the front page the owner of the book would write some introduction. The idea was that before the students graduated (sometimes this meant they went separate ways), they wrote down their details for the memory book owner to keep after graduation.

The classmates would then fill up the memory book with their names, address, phone numbers, hobbies, birth date, what they wanted to be when they grew up, their motto, their fave colour, etc. It could be as detailed, artistic, and colourful as they wanted it to be or it could be very plain and short (not too many details given). It was all up to the students themselves. The classmates could pick whichever page(s) they wanted to write down their details on, so one of the exciting things about getting the book back was to find out where he/she had written down their details on he he he...Another exciting thing was that if you had a crush on a boy, you could find out more about him after he filled in his details in your memory book HA HA HA HA HA...


glitter-graphics.com
So the book owner usually gave the book to her BFF(s) and seatmate first and then she'd hand it over to her other classmates. Ideally the classmates took it home with them and then return it to the owner within a day or two, though sometimes the boys would forget about it and the owner had to ask them to remember to bring it back. Some boys didn't even bother taking it home, so instead they fill it up during a break and returned it immediately to the owner.

I distributed this kind of memory book in Junior High and kept it for years, though my mom has burnt a lot of my stuff after I moved to Finland. I remember some of the more artistic classmates would doodle or draw some stuff on their page. I myself loved adding colours when I filled up someone else's memory book, so I'd usually use different pens to write down my details he he he he...I'm not sure who or how the whole thing started, but I kinda like the idea of having my classmates write their own details in a memory book. Different handwritings, different styles.


Have you ever had this kind of trend back in your days? For some reason, this trend stopped altogether in High School (nobody ever gave me any memory book by then).

Movie Memory: Moulin Rouge

You know how finding old songs can bring out a certain memory or flashback, right? Well, the other day I was suddenly in the mood to listen to a song in Moulin Rouge again and it brought me back to the past. I saw the movie with my mom at the cinema. I used to be able to go out with my mom every now and then, treat her food or go to the cinema with me. This was one of the movies that she liked. Yep, not all of the movies I took her to were her taste (though she always let me decide) ha ha ha ha ha...If she didn't really like the movie, she didn't complain, but she'd fall asleep in the middle of it LOL!!! Funny how seeing her fall asleep on the chair reminded me of my grandma (her mom) dozing off so many times on the couch. Whenever we told her to lie down in bed, she'd refuse and pretend that she wasn't sleeping, though every single time she'd fall right back to sleep on the couch ha ha ha ha...

Anyway, I saw Moulin Rouge with my mom but during the last scene my bladder was screaming like crazy. I had no idea how much longer the movie was going to be and the toilet was a bit far away, but I took a chance because I was afraid there'd be a long queue if I waited until the movie ended (as what usually was the case). When I came back, I found out that I had missed the climax. Doh! My mom had to tell me what was going on. She said it was a good story. :-D 

Any movie/song memory you'd like to share with me?

Here's one lovely song from the movie: 

Childhood Memory: Pupa

When we were younger, a few times we found a pupa in the garden and we shrieked in delight. Then we picked the leaf carefully and set it inside the living room in a safe place where it wouldn't be crushed by anything. Being kids, at first my brother touched the pupa to see if it would move. It wriggled to the left or to the right whenever it was touched. CUTE, we thought. LOL!!!

I think at least we kept a pupa inside the house on four different occasions. One time for some reason nothing came up and we were so sad. We waited and waited and waited but no butterfly emerged. We don't know what happened and what went wrong in the whole process. We would check on the pupa every morning and every time we got back from school to see if something had happened. Fortunately on the other three occasions it was always a lovely surprise to see a butterfly flying around in the living room for a while before we chased it away gently to make sure it could find its way out into the garden. Fly free, little butterfly! Go out into the world and enjoy the garden of life! 

While trying to find out the kind of butterfly we had seen, I found this brilliant blog with time lapse videos as well as lots of close-up pics of the caterpillar, pupa, and butterflies. I think this is similar to the butterfly we had had in the past: The Tailed Jay.

Have you ever kept a pupa inside the house, too? :-D  
 

glitter-graphics.com

Junior High School Memory: Manga

Manga (Japanese comics) started booming in Indo when I was in Junior High School. A big publisher had just started translating manga back then and I was one of the fans. The first manga I had ever owned was Candy Candy. I had actually watched some episodes of the manga in the form of anime*** (VHS tapes) when I was much younger, but at that time there was no continuation yet, so I bought the manga also because I wanted to know the end of the story. If I remember correctly, at that time a new manga was published mostly every month, so we had to be patient, especially because at that time there weren't too many other manga books to read in between the wait. 

Of course as time went by and the popularity of manga increased drastically, the publisher hired more translators so that they could publish more manga books in a month. So I started collecting some manga that I liked and the collection grew bigger and bigger. As I had a limited amount of pocket money, I couldn't buy all the manga I wanted, so usually we'd switch reading them with other people who bought different ones. And there were also some friends who just wanted to borrow them.


Unfortunately, bringing manga to school was forbidden in Junior High School, so sometimes there would be unexpected raids. One time I had some manga books and comics that some friends had returned when I heard a friend saying that there would be a raid that day. I panicked while trying to find a place to hide them. Finally someone suggested hiding them underneath the teacher's desk. You see, the teacher's desk was put on a kind of "pedestal" (hollow platform in a shape of an upside down box), so I hurriedly shoved all the books there.

Fortunately, there was actually no raid, so it was a false alarm. But at least all my precious books were safe (albeit a little dusty). Ahem! :-D 

P.S. I sold almost all of the manga and comics that I had collected years back because there was simply no more space for them. I sold them to a place that rents comics and manga books.

 ***Before translated manga came to Indo, I had already been influenced by Japanese anime ever since I was young through VHS tapes that we used to watch with my cousins. These were some of the anime tapes that we watched when we were younger (there are more but I'm gonna share five):

1. Candy Candy (it's dubbed in Finnish):


2. Mazinger Z


3. Megaloman


4. Minky Momo


5. Goggle Five

When I posted links about old anime movies in FB, a cousin of mine said that we used to play together pretending to be them. I remember that, but I don't remember who I "chose to become". He said that I used to be Goggle Yellow, my bro used to be Goggle Red. My male cousin used to be Goggle Red, whereas his sister used to be Goggle Pink. We were laughing hysterically while remembering those days ROFL ROFL ROFL!!! OK, enough reminiscing hi hi...

High School Memory: Religion Teachers

When I was in the first year of High School, we had this super cool and fun and funny religion teacher. He was a big, tall, dark-skinned man with glasses. He had HUGE hands (he could hold a basketball with one hand) and yes, he loved basketball so much. His body did look like the body of an NBA player. He used to throw lots of jokes and each session was fun, so all the students loved this cool and laid-back teacher. Each teaching session was just as laid-back and relaxing and fun as the teacher himself.


He resigned when I was in my second year of High School for some reason (I can't remember anymore), though he did start teaching us first. In my second year of High School, I was in a notorious class. There were around 40 students altogether in a class and there were 7 other classes. This religious teacher was replaced with an older, serious guy who was rather "rigid" in teaching the class (Who wouldn't if they were compared with the first teacher?). 

He started off the first day of teaching by citing some rules and I could feel the whole classroom's spirit went down drastically. He was a systematic teacher, so he wanted us to write down systematic notes as well (if I remember correctly, the notes would also be a part of his grade system for us). He'd write plenty of notes on the blackboard (yep, back then we still used chalks and blackboards) and he also expected us to write down a weekly Sunday sermon report in our own respective churches and he wanted us to add the church's stamp on the side of each report. We had to give him this report each month or so for him to check. And of course this weekly report was also a part of his grade system. 

I remember that one day one close friend (let's call her P) who was in another classroom had forgotten to write down one Sunday's report, so frantically she asked for help. Fortunately for her, one classmate was active at her own church, so she had the church's stamp with her at that time. So P copied that classmate's Sunday report and added the stamp. Problem solved! So she thought at that time. After all, there was no guilty conscience because she DID go to her own church that Sunday. It's just that she had forgotten to write down the report that week.


After the teacher took all the reports and returned them, he asked P to come and meet him and he gave her a punishment (I can't remember anymore what it was, but it must've been related to writing more reports or something like that). Apparently the Sunday sermon report that she had copied was the sermon that had happened in the teacher's own church and he knew that P wasn't a member of the church. Doh!!!

Anyway, back to the teacher and our class...after being taught by this second teacher for a while, my classmates became more and more restless. They were unsatisfied and they wanted the first fun teacher to come back to teach us. One day out of nowhere a classmate gave me a slip of paper filled with my classmates' signatures. On top of the paper somebody had written: "We, the students of class 2-8, want to protest about our current religion teacher. We want the first teacher to come back to teach us bla bla bla bla bla..."

glitter-graphics.com
I felt pressured. Even though I liked the first teacher better myself, but it was a tough call to finally sign the paper. I didn't want to be the odd one out, you know? I didn't want them to think that I was rooting for this second teacher (which wasn't true), but I did respect him as a teacher and human being...but anyway, in the end I signed it anyway. Apparently after all our signatures were there, someone took it to the headmaster he he he he...

And yep, not long after that the headmaster asked us all to come to his office separately (his office couldn't possibly hold all 40 of us at once, so first he called all the boys and then the girls). Diplomatically he reasoned with us about why the first teacher couldn't be brought back and that we should give the second teacher a chance. I don't remember anymore what he had told us, but he managed to appease us all anyway. I gotta hand it to the headmaster, though, who was able to be the peacemaker only in one sitting and it even took less than half an hour 'coz I don't remember being in the office for a long time. Actually, it was the first time ever that I had ever been in the headmaster's office ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Childhood Memory: Glutinous Rice Balls in Ginger Soup

When we were younger, we used to help Mom prepare some glutinous rice balls. On certain days of the year, she'd try to sell lots of these at the traditional market where she made a living. Making glutinous rice balls in ginger soup itself isn't that hard, but when you're trying to sell at least dozens of bags of them (a bag would consist of 20-25 balls), it can be a tough task, especially for children.

Here's a recipe that I found online: Glutinous Rice Balls in Ginger Soup. The ones we made were without fillings, so they'd be smaller than those in this pic and my Mom would use food colouring to make different types: chocolate (using chocolate powder), white (original colour), pink, and green (using a dash of red and green food colouring). 


Anyway, one day my Mom asked for our help to make hundreds and hundreds of these balls (she never forced us to help, mind you!). Being kids, of course we were so excited to help. Who wouldn't? Even Ken, my bro's son, loves helping out. In fact, today he did make these balls as well - that was what prompted me to write this post hi hi...But now that my Mom has retired, she doesn't have to make too many balls anymore. Just enough for the family and to give out to some relatives. 

Let's zoom back to the past, shall we? Anyway, Mom had separated the four colours in different bowls and she told us to pick which colours we wanted. Being the youngest one in the family, my brother was the slowest one because his hands were smaller than ours. At first he was so excited, but after some time had passed by, after watching how fast the others (me, Dad, and esp. Mom) managed to make the balls, he started comparing how much dough we had left in our own bowls. After realizing that he had the most dough still, he got stressed out and he started crying. He bawled and said, "I'm never going to finish this!!!!!!!!!"

Poor boy...Mom finally let him stop and take a rest and she took the dough that was given to him and continued making the balls efficiently. In the future after this incident, whenever we gathered together to help Mom make more balls, we'd remember it fondly (well, except perhaps my bro who would probably wish everybody else had forgotten about it LOL!!!).

Childhood Memory: Kaleidoscope

I remembered that when I was a child, one time I was playing with this magnificent toy whose name I never knew. It was the shape of a small "telescope" and I had to peep into it to see wonderful abstract images. If I shook the "telescope tube", the abstract image changed pattern. Felt like magic at that time!!!

Ever since then, I had been wondering what it was and where I could possibly find it again. I had this nagging feeling, though, that it was from USA, so I never tried to find it in Indonesia. I don't know if I had that toy or if it was my cousin's toy or if a relative who lives in the States gave it to me, but I remember the magical feeling I had when I was playing with the toy. It was just beautiful to play with! Too beautiful to be true. Shake once, the pattern changed. Shake again, it kept on changing patterns. Amazing!

Anyhow, a few months ago when I was trying to find educational toys for Ken (after we bought the plane tickets to Indo), I went to this online store and accidentally found it!!!! Its name is Kaleidoscope. Click on the link to read the history of kaleidoscope. It's been around since 1817!!! Geeeezzz...

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found it after all these years of having this nagging feeling of wanting to find out what it was he he he he he...YIIIIHHHHAAAAA!!!!

P.S. Have to remember to ask my Mom later on to find out if I ever had it for myself or if it was someone else's toy he he...

Childhood Trauma

The other day I was talking to my closest friends via email about different topics and one topic brought up this memory somewhere in the dark corner of my brain. Being a melancholic/phlegmatic, I never craved for the spotlight. I don't like being in a spotlight. I prefer working in the background, never to be seen or heard (that doesn't mean I don't need recognition or acknowledgment for my achievements, though). That's also one reason why I doubted myself when I first started working at the store 'coz I wondered if I'd enjoy being face-to-face with customers.

When I was very young, I was so sensitive inwards and if I made the smallest mistakes ever, I would scold myself over and over and over. If the mistake was big (at least in my eyes), it could take even days before I finally let go (yep, I'm my own worst critic). Along the road, as my self-confidence grew, I learnt to be more lenient towards myself and lower my expectations, but I only started learning to laugh at my own mistakes AFTER I moved to Finland (yep, it took me 28 years!). Having R2 as a hubby and MIL helped A LOT in learning to be more lenient towards myself. They never criticize me no matter how silly my mistakes are.

Anyhow, back to the dark corner in my brain. I think when I was very young, I once performed in front of a group of people (I think it had to do with dancing) and they laughed at me. I don't remember the incident, but ever since then I've been so worried about performing in front of people and I've always admired people who can perform in front of people without looking so anxious. And ever since then I've always had this idea that I'm such a bad dancer and that my body can't correspond to music and rhythm very well.

Back in elementary school, I hated it when we had to sing in front of the classroom. If I had to sing with some other students, it felt MUCH better, but if I had to sing alone? Ugh ugh...and UGH. I remember clearly the first time at the uni (during writing lesson) when my lecturer gave us a topic to write and then she gave us a few minutes to think about what to write and all of a sudden she asked me to come forward and tell the class what I was going to write (without reading what I had jotted down on paper). I remember that I was very calm at that time, which was such a HUGE surprise to me. I think of that moment as a point of progress in my life.

glitter-graphics.com

One of my closest friends, who's a natural when it comes to performing in front of people (she's even led a meeting in front of hundreds of people), was amazed when she realizes that other people may have problems in this area, 'coz she's never had the same problem her entire life.

It's interesting to me to be able to talk about this stuff with my friends 'coz then we get to know each other better - and hopefully then we get to understand other people better that way.

Memories

Last night I had a long talk with hubby about our past...our first meeting, his proposal to me, and everything else. I just wanted to know how much he remembered about us. And I also wanted to know if how he felt our marriage life had been so far.

Turned out that he FORGOT the way he proposed to me. He didn't even remember where!!! I should have been upset, but turned out I had FUN telling him about it in details HI HI HI HI HI...especially watching the way he smiled nostalgically while listening to me. His whole face just turned tender and it was a sight to behold!!! Then he held me more tightly and kissed me. Mmmmm....

I joked to him, "Well, the good side about your forgetting stuff is that I can tell you everything all over again. PLUS I can add this and that or I can just make up a whole story." (laughing wickedly)

He said, "Yeah, right..."

glitter-graphics.com

LOL LOL LOL!!! Funny thing was that he did remember some other "less important" stuff, but he forgot all about the proposal he he he he...

How much do you remember about the past?

There are stuff we remember so clearly, whereas there are things we don't even remember until someone else mentioned it and the memory surfaced back. The other week my friend said something about our mutual friend that happened in the past and all of a sudden I remembered it too! I wouldn't have remembered it unless she had brought it up!!!

I'm not going to talk about repressed memory here since it belongs to a whole different topic, but I do believe that some things are better off forgotten, especially if we're not ready to face them.

I'll end this post with a quote I found while reading Vagabond last night.

So many things in this world...cannot be expressed with words. They must be experienced...Some things cannot be explained.

Another Award + A Fond Memory of Chicks

Max has generously shared this award with me. THANK YOU SO MUCH, Girl!!!!!



In this post, I also wanna ramble a bit about chicks. I have a fond memory when it comes to chicks. Whenever we visited my Dad's mother during my childhood, there were always lots of chickens and chicks near her house. Just like us, she used to live in a small alley. My brother was the one who had a way with animals. I was always too passionate so sometimes cats scratched me 'coz I squeezed them too tightly ('coz I thought they were SOOO SOOO CUTE!!!).

Anyway, one time the CUTE yellow chicks sauntered to my grandma's yard, so I asked my brother to pick one of them so that I could touch them. I knew I couldn't get them myself and I was SO sure he could get a hand of one of them 'coz he got that "magic gentle touch". He moved in such a way as not to disturb the chicks and voila! He caught one of them. WHOOPPPEEE!!! We were both SO ecstatic!!!

However, just as I was going to caress it, my grandma came out and told us to let it go. I guess she thought we would do something that could hurt the little chick. Sadly my brother did let it go. Sob sob sob...Well, what makes it such a fond memory is the fact that my brother still remembered the incident, even though we were still pretty young back then. We'd tell the story to my parents or his girlfriend or other people with a sentimental feeling. We were THAT close to caressing the chick and playing with it he he he he he...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rigbymel/268579466/in/set-72157594309426954/