Whining?

Setelah lama tidak posting, akhirnya saya tergerak untuk kembali belajar menulis.

Quick update about my life, I have finished my education in France and earned my master degree. I have decided to try out my luck by applying for Jobs in Europe. While waiting for that, I am taking a German course, 3 languages are not enough for me. Yeah, I am THAT ambitious. HA. (im just being sarcastic if you're not notice).

Long story short, living as a Jobseeker always been an interesting phase to start writing a blog. You have plenty of time in your hand and what is better than whining out your misery in Blog while still being productive. HA. (again, Im just being sarcastic).

Anyway, being in this phase is always an unique experience. I have always tried to come up with many solutions to keep my sanity. Just to feel that Im good enough to work somewhere. After rejection and rejection and rejection, dont you think is normal for you to question your competence? your capabilities? your faith in God?.

I have always, ALWAYS, try to be a positive person. Try to see a silver lining in every situation. Try to understand what God's plan for me. Try to remember that God has given me so many blessing.

But still.

It has been many many times my families and my closes friends told me that many people want to have a life like mine. Many people want to achieve what I have achieved. Do not take your achievements and experiences for granted Raisa.

But still.

I tried to remember many reasons why I should be grateful with my life. And it is more than just for my freaking achievements and status. I should remember that no matter how many rejections I had, I still have roof above my head, I still have food on the table, I still have highly function and supportive families.

But still.

A good friend of mine told me "Although we still have roof, food and families, doesnt mean we are not struggling. Doesnt mean we are happy. Doesnt mean we are not allowed to whine".

HA.

Human and their ambitions and their disappointments.

Many many many times I really want to given up. Just want to say "Fuck you God" and then disappeared. But disappeared to where? and who am I to say that shit to God. It's not like God need me more than I need Him.

At some point, I feel tired and burnt out after so many whining, after so many questioning about Life and God.

So maybe for now, I am just going to learn how to keep my head above the water. How to keep my sanity on. And how to be better from myself yesterday.

Maybe after that, just maybe, I can learn how to be a free-spirit Raisa  again who is strong enough to take a leap of faith in God.

Missing you :")

I received the video this morning on one of my whatsapp group. It broke my heart when i realized how true the video is. The video was talking about how time has changed our relationship with our "used" to be gank. How close we were in the college, how easy we were to just hang out and did fool stuff. But now? we were hesitated even just to say hi.

Sometimes, i am wondering, what goes wrong? is it because of the time? is it me who become a jerk? or you become a jerk and not willing to make time for this so called friendship?.

Or is there any reason beside that?

 I read an article which is saying "Losing touch with your old college friends is a natural consequence of growing older. It isnt solely up to you to keep every friendship you've ever had alive-some things fade out naturally, because they should. and that's okay".

Really?

This evening, i talked with my other friend regarding this topic. Her answer has succesfully blown my mind. She said "Raisa, people come and ago in our life. It's just like when we were passing by with someone on our way to go somewhere. Sometimes we are meeting this person longer than others because we are on the same road, has the same direction at that time. But when we reach our goal, we are eventually split our way. We should moving forward and continues our journey to reach our other goal. So if you are losing your friend along the way, that's normal. It doesnt mean that one of you is "the jerk". It's just because you are walking on different road".

I found her opinion very interesting because sometimes when bad thing happened in my life, i tended to put the blame on something (it could be on me or other people). But maybe, actually, there's none of the party is the wrong one.

It's just the road that was taken is different.
It's just the situation that has changed.
It's just us who has to grow up.

But you, my dearest friends, yes, you.
I'm still missing you.
Till we meet again,

Raisa

Pushing the boundaries

Have you ever wondered why NASA spends millions of dollar in order to understand Mars?

That’s the first question appear in my mind when I watched the show in National Geography. So what if there’s water in Mars? So what if there’s oxygen in Mars? It’s still an unknown place which is far in the physical distance. We won’t migrate to live there, right?  Not at least for the next 20 years.

So, why we have to understand that? Thanks to my over curiosity, I did a little bit research on the internet to understand the reason. Based on NASA’s website, the objective of this exploration is to heighten up the unknown which can be benefited for the human kind. Frank Stratford, the founder of Marsdrive, wrote that this exploration was meant to test our knowledge, our resourcefulness, and the limits of our abilities in every way.

Limit is the word that usually be put on the same sentence with human.  As a human we have our limit, we can’t do that, because that’s our limit. How we can know our boundaries, if we have never crossed it?

I remember when I was 6 years old. I and my mom went into a public swimming pool. I usually swam in the children pool. However, one time, my Mom asked me to swim in another pool. She even dropped me up from the children pool into another pool and just staring at me from the pool side, I begged to her “mom, I cannot do it, I’m too small for this, I can sink in and die” “Yes of course you can, look at that boy, he’s even smaller than you, if he can do it, why you cannot? You need to be brave, don’t be afraid!”

Yep, afraid of the unknown, scare of change; that’s usually be our limit. Don’t you think that when we are getting older and we tend to be more hesitate to push the boundaries. It could be caused by more understanding on the difference between fantasy and reality. You already knew how hard live could turn when making a mistake by doing a change, by going out from the comfort zone. Oprah winfrey on the Harvard commencement said that “If you constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages predicts that you will fall at some point”.

Fall, or we can called it failure, is the situation where no bodies want to have.  When you cannot 

manage that thing, it probably could turn into a depression where you need an expert help to solve that. I had one experience where everything felt go wrong and world turn into a dark place; where I had to ask for a help from a psychology in order to have a grip with my life again. I wouldn’t say that’s the nicest experience to have. But, like Oprah said “There’s no such thing as failure. It’s okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may lose but the key is to learn from every mistake”

Fearful to make a mistake is another set of the lines which keep us on the box. Since when we make a mistake, we felt wasting our time which can’t get back. So sometimes in order not to waste our time, we stay in that mistake like stay in the wrong job. Let me tell you my wrong job. I used to work in strategic consultant firm where the boss was really intimidating. He really likes to answer a question with a question in a very intimidating way and he didn’t mind to speak his mind out loud “Raisa your answer is like a kindergarten student answer”. I always relieved when I get back home especially on Friday and depressed from Sunday morning “Oh God less than 24 hours I had to go back to that office, why time flies so fast”. I didn’t even want to go with my boyfriend after the office hours or during weekend as I really wanted to appreciate that precious time by myself, alone. I stayed on that job for about 6 months because I don’t want to waste my first 4 months and learn nothing than how to type fast, how to photocopy fast or how to make a good coffee. No way. I can stand this job, this is just part of the success.

“I’m not depressed, I’m not depressed, and I’m just not…depressed”. That’s the mantra that I usually repeated to strengthen myself every day. Thanks to my friend who woke me up by saying that “Maybe you just need to accept that the learning from this situation is to show that this job is….not into you”. Yes, maybe I made a mistake by taking a wrong job or not knowing what I wanted from a job, but at least I learned that “that job” is not the thing that I want.

Fellow friends, in three 3 idiots, Fairnan said that “Life is a race, if you don’t run fast you will get trampled” and like in the horse race; the record is always broken by the fastest one. So keep pushing our limit by facing our fear, having a failure and making a mistake so that we can run fast and race to Mars.

Yang muda, yang sibuk?

Setelah sekian lama lulus dari kampus UI tercinta, kemarin akhirnya saya memutuskan untuk kembali mengunjungi kampus tersebut. Well, kampusnya sekarang canggih banget cyiiiiinn. Dari tempat fotokopian jadi banyak, pakai AC dan ga uwel-uwelan sampai banyakanya cafe / kantin ber-AC untuk para mahasiswa gaol/malas kuliah buat nongkrong hahahahaha

Melihat canda tawa anak-anak mahasiswa yang begitu carefree ko rasaya ada rasa iri yah dihati ini? hhahahha. Bukan berarti sekarang saya juga engga ketawa-ketawa, tapi lebih pake tanggung jawab aja. Kenapa? because I have grown up. 

Pertambahan usia buat saya berarti dengan pertambahan peran yang kemudian sama dengan pertambahan tanggung jawab, misalnya kalo dulu peran saya hanya sebagai anak, adik dan mahasiswa dan pacar, sekarang peran saya tukar tambah berganti dan bertambah dari mahasiswa menjadi pekerja. Nah secara sekarang saya bekerja sudah bukan di kantor lagi atau bisa dikatakan freelancing, saya harus mempertanggung jawabkan perilaku saya kepada orang-orang yang berkaitan dengan project saya. And sometimes it's not easy.HUFT. 

Pertambahan tanggung jawab juga kadang membuat saya kelimpungan dengan segala kesibukan saya yang sampai-sampai hampir ga ada waktu untuk urusan yang tidak berkaitan langsung dengan project-project yang lagi saya handle, misalnya update informasi tentang situasi Indonesia (selamat pak Jokowi! semoga kabinet ini bisa membuat Indonesia menjadi lebih baik lagi!), nonton infotainment (selamat om raffi! semoga langgeng-langgeng yah marriednya, inget biayanya mahal banget cyiiiinnn) dan juga banking activity (buka account baru? aduh males deh pergi ke bank bok!)

NAMUN!

Saya baru tahu kalau ternyata CIMB Niaga tuh sudah bisa membantu saya meng-overcome masalah tersebut. Selasa minggu lalu (21 October) saya datang ke acaranya CIMB Niaga ON Account, ketemu dengan kembaran saya Raline Shah yang ternyata memiliki tingkat kesibukan yang sama dengan saya ciyeh gue sibuknya kayak artes. 

Anw,mini talkshownya tuh diadain di Digital Lounge-nya CIMB Niaga di Central Park Mall sektiar pukul 13.30 - 15.00, aih gila itu beyond imagination banget lho tempatnya,dari fitur biasa atm tunai, setor tunai sampe sophisticated feature kayak tempat buat video banking gitu! Kalo menurut saya sih, CIMB emang salah satu bank yang cool yang selalu bisa catch-up dengan kebutuhan manusia, khususnya anak muda hits kayak saya. 

Kenapa saya bilang demikian? 

Karena sekarang CIMB Niaga udah punya satu product baru namanya ON Account, itu mudah banget, kalao mau buka tinggal isi aja e-form yang ada di www.cimbcliks.co.id terus udah gitu saldo awalnya cuma Rp.100,000,- cui! cucok banget buat saya ketika lagi sepi project LOL. Nah selain itu, kemudahan lainnya tuh kalo kita jalan-jalan ke luar negri, CIMB Niaga bisa memberikan nilai tukar terbaik lho! terus banyak promo-promonya lagi hihihihihi

Pokoke ini product mantap deh! 

I'm sooooo lucky to join that mini talkshow! Saya juga datang bersama salah satu the newest allience Barbara! and you know what? what other thing that we found as interesting as the product? the macaron! Men, itu enak banget lho LOL. 

Yaudslah, tunggu apa lagi, diriku saja sudah daftar, bagaimana dengan kamuh?

Cheers, 

Raisa 

My Super Mom

If England has Margaret thatcher to rule the country, my family has my mom to rule the house.

Her wish is our command and no bodies dare to defy her words. She has a golden rule which already understood by each house members (My Father, my Sister, my Brother and even my new dog). So what is her great rule?  Rule number 1: “Mom is always right”, rule number 2: “If Mom makes mistakes look at rule number one”.  She made that rule basing on the assumption that she’s the best on knowing what the best for her family is. At first I thought it’s just an excuse for her to make it her way. But then, as time goes by I realized that “yes, she is the best at least on 3 things"  

First, best to be effective, one day, on Sunday morning, I was just laying back on the couch in front of television, holding my head with my right hand, raising up my left feet and enjoying the easy Sunday. Suddenly my mom came to me “Raisa, what are you doing? Being lazy?” “No mam, I’m not lazy, I had been mopping the floor, washing the plate and cleaning up the table. I deserved to watch Shincan after everything I’ve done today. i have waited for a week mom!” “I don’t say that you cant watch the show, but you need to optimize your time. Rather than just watching the show and doing nothing, why don’t you watching and do ironing. Not only It will increase your merit as you are helping me, but also it will burn your fat” Yes, she always knows the best way to be effective, enjoying the show and burning some fat (although I ended up having back pain for ironing 4 batch of clothesline but hey I had burned some fat! At least I thought i had burn it.

Second, best on finding the right price, when we went to Bangkok, she wanted to buy a big suitcase which was offered on 1,600 bath by the madam seller. Of course her motherhood instinct turn on, she was trying to bargain and offered 600 bath instead. I thought she wouldn’t succeed, because come on her English is not that good. After a tough discussion (which was including me to do the translation and a much of using the body language) she managed to get the suitcase for 700 bath. Jeezzz, she was Bill Gates on bargaining. Even the madam seller agreed with me. “Your mom is great, she is expert! I’ve never met a customer like her! You must be proud of her”.

Third, best on being creative, like I had mentioned before, her English is not really good. So when she had to travel alone from Frankfurt to Indonesia after visited my sister there, I was worried how she would survive. But then she showed me that language barrier wouldn’t stop her for getting what she wants: to be seated near the window and not to be charged for the overweight baggage. On checking in desk “Excuse me sir, I want to seat near the window because I want to “ngolonjor” do you know ngolonjor?” “…” “Look, this is foot , do you understand?” “yes” “this foot is hurt, so I want to ngolonjor. This is ngolonjor, do you understand? Near the window, to ngolonjor I want to ngolonjor” “okay”. Then she put her baggage on the. But suddenly, her luggage were moving as the machine was on “oh noo..stoopp” hearing her hysterical voice, one passenger came to her “may I help you mam?” “my bag is red, I want to nimbang. You know nimbang? My bag is red, I just want to know, my bag is red, put it here, and then nimbang”  but she realized quickly maybe the confused officer just wanted to end the confusing conversation with her by putting in her luggage into the trunk without caring the weight  “Aha, nothing, so far so good, no problem, thank you”

Ladies and Gentlemen, my mom with all of her goodwill and limitation always tried to be best on being effective, finding the best price or being creative to strive. Because of that I hope someday I could have those qualities and i could be a super mom like her!

Happy birthday Mom *thousand kisses for you*

Raisa

Stop and Install

Happiness? 

That’s the simple word which is not very simple to be translated into the real world. Many psychology experts have done many experiments to understand the meaning of this word. Is it a destination or a process?  If it is a process, then why many people still chasing for this? You cannot chase the process right? For me, happiness is a process as it always changes from time to time. The things that used to make me happy in past time maybe wouldn’t make me happy now.

So what will drive the happiness?

Based on the Global Happiness Research conducted by Ipsos in 2013, it is driven by living conditions, security, environment, income, health, education and family harmony. The research which was conducted in 21 countries showed that some countries are significantly happier than other countries!

Indonesia?

With the traffic

Big flood

Where do you think Indonesia would be?

We are number 1!  55% of Indonesian respondent said that they were very happy with their current state of life. Because they considered their national economy to be 'good' with last year economy grew by 5.6%. Although the wealth was unevenly spread, with 11.4% of the population living in poverty and least satisfy with the education level. But with the positive answers about time spent with family and neighbors could overcome all of the concerns.  Why? Indonesian could always adapt to the situation.

Big float? Smile!

Traffic? Selfie!

However, this skill could be a double edge sword. As a human, we can adapt to anything, it seems—you can get your dream job, marry a wonderful human—eventually we acclimate and find new things to complain about.

Why? Because our needs are always changes. In his pyramid, Marslow mapped the human needs into 4 different levels. In his theory, the movements should be from the bottom to the upper level. But, based on my experience, it could be the other way round. When I just graduated from University, I could say that I wasn’t really care about money as I thought I had my parents to back up me and I didn’t had to support anybody, so this first two level, I didn’t need this. I could say that I was looking for Self-actualization so that by doing a job which always challenged me and made me smarter that’s my happiness. But then a few years later when I was getting older, the pressure of being independent and not be supported by my parents was getting higher. Then, my need moved into this level, I started to question whether I had been compensated enough? My happiness was decreasing.    

Sometimes, life is like a flappy bird game. In this game: you need to control a funny-looking bird by tapping the screen. You need to manage the force, if it’s too hard; it would jump all over the place, if this this too weak, you would crash.

So, how we could manage the force to have a happier brain? : train our brains to appreciate positive experiences by taking the time to focus on them and install them in the brain. It is different with positive thinking. Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist, a member of U.C. Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center's advisory board said that the fundamental distinction between activation and installation. In positive thinking, the person is not taking the extra 10, 20 seconds to heighten the installation into neural structure, so it would be wasted on our brain. We’re not taking into account so that it doesn’t learn very well.

If we get back again into my story, I realized that maybe I wasn’t took the extra time to install the positive experience when I did the job e.g. the opportunity to always keep myself actualize. So that when i had to face the negative one, i started to get unhappy.

The happiest people do not necessarily have the best thing, they simply appreciate the thing that they have.  So when life is turning into a Flappy Bird game where the forces pulling us down are just as strong as the ones pulling us up, we need to make sure that we have enough strength to manage the forces so that we wouldn’t crash sooner than we expect. Start by stop complaining and starting to appreciate good thing in our life and installing it repeatedly to grow the inner strength. 

Cheers, 

Raisa

Choices?

Jokowi or Prabowo? Wait for him, or let him go? Stay or move to a new job?

We are always facing choices every  in a relationship or broke up, using taxi or ojek, passion or money, career or love life,  Jokowi or SBY. Actually, my biggest concern on making decision is the opportunity cost, the cost which arises for missing the opportunity. When I was in college, I learn (a lot) about this. Since every decision has consequences. So when I made decision, I usually use three steps.

First, Asking “why” I was making the choice at first place. I used to be a social smoker on my second year in university.  At first, I think there’s no harm being a social smoker as I thought being the passive is more dangerous than the active smoker. Actually, at that time, I had 2 different peer groups, first is the good girl and good boy gang which I usually study with, and second is not really good girl and good boy who I usually not study with. The “good gang” is always mocking me up for being a social smoker and tried to stop this habit by explaining many sophisticated reasons why I have to stop e.g. the risk of cancer or bible told us not to do so. But I have never really listened to their crap as I don’t think the reason is not strong enough. However, when I saw government cigarette advertisement on the bus, It changed my mindset. The ads said “They are becoming richer, when we are dying”. Then I realize that many executives in Cigarette Company are not smoker. The fact that they are making money by selling us the poison which they didn’t even want to consume is like a slap on my face. The feeling by for not being the cash cow for the cigarette company is the “WHY” that I need. Sometimes, you don’t need a sophisticated reason to make a change. Since sometimes the details will cloud our mind to the most fundamental question “WHY”. By looking up this question, it will help us to find our true motivation.

Second, List my options by collecting much information and weigh the possible outcome. There’s many tools that can be used to help us to make a choice i.e. OODA method (Observe, Orient, Decide, Action), or cost and benefit table or even a simple yes and no table. When I was in a dilemmatic situation such as  Facing a little kid who looks so skinny, tired and hungry, it really broke my heart that at this young age, this kid has to struggle to make money when the other kid have a great time in playground. Frankly speaking, I prefer to donate my money in a charity foundation regularly as it will be more impactful. For this particular situation, I usually make a quick mental list, yes and no list. Yes because by giving him some money he can buy a meal and survive. It also makes me feel better since my mom used to tell me to always help other. No because, the money, probably, will be used by the parents to buy cigarette or phone credit or even taken by the preman. Also, it feels like I’m supporting them to be a beggar by providing the demand. But, if I didn’t do this, probably, they really can die as I had read in newspaper that there’s a kid who died since he hasn’t eaten anything more than 2 days.  It’s so dilemmatic you know. But when I face a freak beggar who cut himself by using a razor blade without having any bleeding, I will make a very very quick yes and no table in my head. No, because I don’t want to be intimidated by him.  Yes, because he is a debus and I don’t want him to make me as debus as him by cutting my bag or even my hand. So i always go with giving him money!

Third, Using my gut. Even tough, in college I had learned many decision making tools to assist me in making decision, I realize that by the end of the day it’s just a tool. It’s all coming back to me whether I want to listen to their insight or not. I usually will use my gut to help me decide which insight that I want to use. I realize that I have to sharpen my gut so I can be more confident with my decision. I usually do this by having a moment of stillness. Basically, it’s just sit for 60 second and doing nothing. At this situation, I can confronted who really I am and hide nothing but my own truth.

So, in short, based on my experience, the key to make good decisions is understanding the reason ‘WHY’ , listening to our head (the options and possible outcome) and balancing it with following our heart. Because every decision is coming with consequences and we have to commit with that. Remember:  the art of making decision is the commitment. So use your brain and your heart and let’s decide!

Bisous!

Raisa