I thought I couldn't get into my blog! I tried logging in on Chrome and blogger refused to log me in - it just kept refreshing me to the home page of blogger.


I'm using Edge now. I was honestly scared about losing my blog, losing my blog posts. Ahh thankful that I managed to log in in the end. Am I supposed to start preparing for another blog on wordpress or tumblr or somewhere? In case blogger shuts down :O Argh, I sincerely hope it never will. All my posts and memories T.T

Anyway, so here I am! After 3 months of hiatus!

I've started on my full-time work life, as most of you will know. It's been full of ups and downs. Maybe because I'm an emotional person myself. I tend to take work (too) seriously and sometimes I feel responsible for many things. Detatching from work/boss and yet being able to handle things responsibily and professionally is something that I'm constantly learning and aiming towards.

Pottery has been fun too! I'm thankful to the two potters who taught my patiently! I received undivided attention from them haha. I realised how hard it must have been for people to go for pottery lessons where there's probably 1-2 instructors per class and each class has 10 pax or more. It's hard to learn the skills with that kind of teacher-student ratio I think? But of course, not everyone who goes for lessons wants to make perfect pieces. Perhaps they just wanted to try something new, meet new people, spend time with themselves etc.
These are my babies. The bowl on the left was my first ever piece and also my best thus far. Hahahaha all my subsequent pieces, I got lazy with centering the clay perfectly. Talk about the lack of mindfulness :x On the right is a small sake cup! I tried to make a Fuji mountain effect with the white drips on the side but I think I put too little glaze there and it's not that obvious. It's alrighty, try more next time. My boss allowed me to work on a project for the upcoming Boutique Fair! My idea was to make a tea set - 4 cups with saucers and a tea pot for sale. Limited edition. HAHAHAH. One set for sale only. Super excited about this.

Yesterday was rather intense. We worked on the commission pieces + loaded the kiln and we only left the studio at 1.50am. Thanks to NY who came over to rescue and help us with attaching the handles and the loading of the kiln that we could go home at 1.50am. Hahaha without him, we'll prolly be staying for an extra hour.


Here's the hero! He only reached at 10pm and it was pitch black outside and on the dragon kiln side too. A pity that we were a little tight on schedule and we couldn't bring him around to see the dragon kiln and all. Hope you find that your little experience with pottery was fun or at least relaxing :)

Okayyyy, moving to my next agenda - a review of 2017 and resolutions for 2018!

Review of 2017
The not-so-good
Overall, I felt that 2017 wasn't a very well spent year for me. The pockets of time that I had while I was unemployed; I wish I had spent them better. I have a couple of friends who are in the transition period now between graduating from uni to finding a full-time employment. Looking at what they're doing, I feel like their life is so much more fulfilling! They're doing different different projects, volunteering, taking up meaningful part time opportunities etc. I'm happy for them they're doing activities to help them make it closer to their dream jobs :)

I had a goal of reading 12 books in a year but I didn't fulfil that in the end. I completed only about 6 books. Many of the books I borrowed were half read D: So this year, I would love to continue this goal of completing one book every month!

Another goal that I had was starting daily exercises. I did it for a couple of weeks but I stopped and then I never started again LOL.

The good
I finally explored my own home country - Indonesia! Indonesia is such a beautiful place and I never knew that until I got to go to Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta. I even spent CNY in my hometown for the first time since I came to Singapore in 1999. I'm really happy and thankful for all the experiences! I would definitely love to explore more parts of Indonesia. Plus I can speak the language and communicate with the locals so all the more I should travel in Indo!

I started volunteering with Trans Family Services too! While the volunteering is a small small step towards my dream career and I'm not sure if it'll help, but I'm sure I'll get to meet many people from different walks of life and learn more on things that goes on on the ground.

In the second quarter of 2017, I did an internship with World Vision and I think my experience there was life changing. Not so much of what I learnt from my job scope that made my experience life changing, but it was the mission and vision of the organisation, the beneficiaries they are helping that opened my eyes to poverty in the developing countries. I saw how poverty can be a vicious cycle; I saw how poverty is not anyone's fault but it's their environment, their circumstances that make it so hard for people to get out of it no matter how hard they can work; I also saw how we as a collective society can aid people out of poverty or provide people with some relief. My experiences there humbled me and I'm thankful to WV for this learning opportunity.

There were occasions in 2017 when I felt demoralised, because of the seemingly futile job search process and even when I got my full-time job, things seemed so bleak with a crappy boss. There were so many occasions when I just felt like giving up. I'm just so so so thankful for the people I met and shared my job woes with. Thinking about it actually brings tears to my eyes - the sense of relief that I'm heard and understood and that I'm not alone in all these difficult situations :') Thank you everyone of you who has crossed paths with me, have sat down and taken time to hear me out, and gave me advices :')

What will happen in 2018 then?
I foresee that 2018 may be a year of big changes - changes in my job, changes in my relationship. Yes. I hope it's gonna be a good change though. Well, good is in how you see things eh? Haha.

Here are some of my new year resolutions:

1) Start attending yoga lessons - I'm about to sign up for Ashtanga Yoga @ Tampines Hub. Join me!

2) Read 12 books - aka one book per month

3) Water my dad's plants diligently. I killed almost all of his plants that he painstakingly grow. LOL.

4) Buy something home at least once a month. For January, I bought egg sponge cake home and xg ate it! Yippee! And I bought my dad a fortune plant too because I felt like it. Now that I'm working, even though I'm not contributing much to the finances at home, I hope I can give back in my own small ways.

5) Find another job, hopefully counselling or social work related.

6) Finish one online course every two months. I started on some social work course last year September and I'm midway through the course but I stopped ever since I started working :/

7) Find ways to relief stress better and not fall sick so often. So the story is like this... In December, I fell sick twice and visited the doctor. The first was a cold and the second one was a bad... idk what to call it. Basically, I fell sick very badly. Had to pangseh my boss halfway through the workshop and see the doctor. I had been feeling that imbalance in my body for about 2 weeks prior to D-Day. But I thought it was nothing much and that it'll go away soon but in the end I vomitted (which started in her car - she wasn't scared or grossed out anyway cuz she used to be a doctor lol) and was nauseous and had fever for a few days. And you know what the doctor told me about the cause? Emotional imbalance and stress. WUT. Yep. That's the story. I don't really want to fall sick like this anymore. I had the same symtoms in August when I was back to Indo too. That feeling sucks. Maybe at that time I was stressed about the uncertainty about my job hunt. Haha.

Yeps. I'm looking forward to a fulfilling 2018! :)

&the pages keep turning.