life before like

every once in a while, i stumble upon my past in the form of an old blog.

no, i don’t mean an old blog post, but literally old blog. before wordpress, before multiply, there was my livejournal.

just like reading an old diary, reading my old blog makes me smile, cringe, slap my head, all on repeat. but there was also something else i noticed.

i noticed how easy life was, not because i was still young & stupid (i mean, i still am these 2 things right now 🤪), but because there was no ‘like’ button.

i was blogging just to give an update to the people i care, who lived in different parts of the world already back then. i was blogging just to express myself, let out the anger, the happiness, the frustration, and the excitement, about anything and everything, without a care in the world on whether or not anyone would read it, let alone if anyone would ‘like’ it.

it makes me wonder about us, humans, in the present time, and especially the later generation that’s never felt life before ‘like’ buttons came out. will they ever know how easy life could be? how carefree everything is when you don’t have to try to be ‘liked’ all the time? how many times have they felt like they have tried everything to get more and more likes, do crazy selfies or spend extra money on things that will surely get them more likes, only to find that there will always be someone out there with even more likes? will we ever realize how the current social medias are basically dictating how we should behave/be in our lives? to be accepted, to be liked, to be validated. sure, some old traditions in some societies have always had these ‘mindsets’ as well, but this thing about the like buttons… they’re quite global and the impacts on people’s mental health have been quite scary.

at first, i envied my old self for not having these thoughts. but then i realized, i am still me. i can still think that way if i want to. i can decide to ignore the like buttons, the heart buttons, the thumbs-up buttons, or what have you.

i live my own life, and it’s not my problem if you don’t like me because i’m not pretty/trendy enough. i’m okay with living my own life the way i want to, without hurting others, and knowing for sure that the people around me like me for who i am, not what i post in my blog or whatever social media i have.

so i wanted to write this little post just to remind my future self (who knows what kind of self-deprecating buttons there will be out there in 10-20 years’ time?) to live life like the way it used to be, before the ‘like’ button existed. every time i post here, or wherever else, let it be just for myself, and not for anyone else. maybe, in time, i’ll learn to like myself–without having to press the ‘like’ button on my own blog post! 😉

if i were crazy rich…

warning: this is just me rambling about nothing. proceed to read only if you have nothing better to do. 😝

it has been quite a hard last few weeks for me as i have been on a sick leave due to severe back pain. my age is starting to catch up with me, it seems.

it’s quite bad that i can’t even sew, so yeah… i’m in a situation where it’s so easy to go down and be depressed about things. or everything.

so in order to cheer myself up, i started to daydream. what if i were to be a crazy rich Asian? not that i have seen the movie (or read the book, though it has been on my shelf for quite a while now), but my inspiration came from blog-walking.

a looong long time ago, i followed a bunch of fashion bloggers. you know, when blogging was still a thing, before twitter and instagram existed. i’m not gonna name names, but those days were awesome. these bloggers that i followed were so cool, because their sense of style was like way out there (just the way i like them!) and they were so… for lack of better word, ’pure’.

there was no endorsements from any brands or stores, they didn’t have much money (just like the rest of us), and yet with what they had they created the most fun fashion they could, and they were so incredibly creative that way.

for a long time, i still followed them. even after the numerous brands and stores gifted them with free expensive stuffs, i still peeked at their blogs, once in a while.

however, in my opinion, one by one they started to lose the touch. some of them became walking advertisements (if there is even such a thing), always posting whatever their endorser wanted them to post, even when they claim they are being honest about it. some of them only wore branded stuffs, things that—let’s face it—most of us would never be able to afford in a million years, unless we buy it all with credit cards and bring the huge debt of that damned Chanel purse to our graves.

i’m not here to judge, though, and people are free to do what they want in their own personal space aka blog. but i am quite sad to see the creativity that was once over-flowing from them faded away because of money.

that was when i started daydreaming, or actually more like reflecting… if i were rich, whether the money came from endorsements or my offline career, what would i do with all those money, in relations with my passion, which is fashion?

would i start splurging on designers clothes or accessories, one after another? i wonder what it would feel like to buy my first Chanel purse. would it give me such pleasure that i would want to spend more on a second one, and keep buying more and more? i have often wished i had the money to buy Vivienne Westwood shoes; if one day i were rich enough to buy my first pair, and still had more money, would i buy more than just one pair?

of course it’s hard to say when i’m not actually in those shoes (pun intended), but i would like to imagine that i wouldn’t go that way.

i wouldn’t mind buying good quality products that will last through this lifetime, but that doesn’t mean thousands of euros for just one purse, let alone buying many purses of the same price range.

i think i would still want to leave a biiiiiig empty space for my creativity (read: sewing), which probably means i would spend some money on designers brands’ fabrics, bahahaha…. i don’t know, i guess the difference of buying the ‘raw material’ than the ‘finished product’ of a designer brand is that (this will sound quite strange) i would feel more involved in the creative process of the whole designing thing. this would also mean i would get to make the material to be more uniquely me, i guess.

maybe that sounds too snobbish or proud to some, but well, this is my daydream on my own blog anyway!

i would like to think that i would pretty much stay the same even if i had lots of money. i would still stubbornly try to sew things on my own, and maybe buy some items that i cannot make on my own like—yep—that Chanel purse or Vivienne Westwood shoes. but i think i would rather stay productive and creative by sewing my own clothes than hunt for those limited edition dresses or whatever.

let’s see if i do become crazy rich one day, and i would go back reading this blog post to remind myself not to be a crazy, rich Asian. 😁

acceptance

there are many times in my life when i feel like giving up. in any thing.

giving up school. giving up working. giving up trying to get better after a nasty flu. but even through all those times, i never gave up my passion for fashion. after being able to sew, this included never giving up sewing.

until about a year ago. i didn’t know what was happening, i didn’t even know it was happening. i kept telling myself that it was a good thing i don’t sew as much anymore, because who needed all those clothes anyway? i hid behind my own resolution to not sew useless things, and in the end i hardly sewed at all.

but somewhere along the way i realized that i did not even feel good among fabrics anymore. they didn’t call me the way they used to. when i looked at my fabric collection, i got exhausted already, thinking of all the work i got to do to process them into a wearable item. that was when i realized something must be wrong with myself.

i was tired at that time, physically and mentally. there were many things going on at work, and no matter how hard i tried not to bring them back to home with me, i still did. i lost count on how many nights i lost sleep. and even when i did sleep, i woke up a lot earlier than my alarm and couldn’t get back to sleep. this lasted for more than a year, and regardless of how many times my husband encouraged me to go to the doctor for my insomnia, i never did.

funnily enough, at the same time, my work mates were relying on me to get things done. not that they didn’t do it themselves, but it seemed like their favourite person to turn to for help when there was some problem at work was me. and i was/am not even in any official managerial position. i didn’t mind this, of course, but i wondered why i came off to them like i was holding everything together just fine, when i was actually also ready to tumble down.

i wanted to give up everything at that time. including this blog, which i had abandoned for months.

and then earlier this year, i came across this article. reading the first way of its manifest in real life rang alarm bells in my head already.

sewing, and fashion, used to be my rock, my safe haven. it was what i identified myself with. seeing clothes or fabrics used to bring me joy, even to just be among them, not having to own them. when it stopped doing that, then what had i become? who was i?

luckily for me, i didn’t have to go to any doctor to get myself diagnosed for any depression, because the help came almost right away.

some time after reading that article, there came a shocking change at my workplace, something i didn’t think would happen. as with any big changes in my life, i was pessimistic about it at first. but regardless, i stayed, and saw through the change, day by day.

and days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. suddenly, i could see myself sewing again. i could hear the fabrics calling me again, and i started getting ideas and energy to sew things again. i tried sewing one skirt, and then another top, and another…. before i knew it, i got myself back. 😊

so what was the help that i got? it was first and foremost: acceptance. first, after reading that article and slowly tried to make sense of it, i accepted the fact that i might be experiencing some sort of depression. and the change that happened at work was, in short, a change of superior position. and lucky for me, and all of us, this change turned out to be the best. because she had that in her, too. acceptance.

we are not perfect. and we were all extremely tired at that time. but she listened to all of us and accepted us as who we are. by doing this, she made us feel worthy, and also feel at home, even when we are at work. she stood by us when the one before her didn’t.

it may sound small to some people, but to me, at that moment, it meant the whole world. if the change hadn’t come at that time, i probably would have had to go to a doctor, get some prescribed medication, and who knows whether i would be okay enough right now to sew, and blog, and live happily.

this acceptance, both from myself and outside of me, made me feel like the burden on my shoulders were lifted up. now i can finally turn off my ’work’-mind when i go home from work, not because my superior ordered me to, but because i know things will be taken care of. for the first time after about 1,5 years, i could finally sleep peacefully at night.

i’m writing this down here so that if i ever have the same problem again, i can read this post and know that i had once gotten through this. that i had learned to accept myself, and someone else also had given that to me. next time, if there ever will be, there may not be an understanding person such as my superior, but i hope by then i would’ve learned that self-acceptance is the key to finding myself back and being happy. ♥️

the real price of ‘cheap’

when i think about it, i’ve been selling things almost all my life. starting from when i was in elementary school, i used to sell name labels/stickers to my classmates, the kind that i ordered by mail with pre-set images & sizes. and then i as i grew older i moved on to selling Avon, Triumph lingerie and eventually Oriflame. these are of course the kinds that i did as a side job thing, but the real kind of ‘hard’ selling happened when i had a small boutique in Jakarta along with my 2 friends.

it was during this time that i learned the real price of ‘cheap’. or to be completely honest, i learned how annoying it is to hear customers bargaining for a cheaper price. i mean, i’m not gonna lie: i also bargain sometimes. but when i knew it firsthand how much work went into our own work (our boutique sold one of a kind clothings, specifically designed by yours truly, the fabrics all chosen by us three co-owners straight from the fabric shops, and all clothes sewn by one single tailor) and someone dared to bargain the prices that we carefully counted so that we got back our work’s expenses & effort, i found it quite insulting. i felt like saying, if you want to bargain, go shop at a market place.

but then i realized something disturbing. why did i feel like saying that, as if a market place is a good place to bargain when usually those markets (at least in Indonesia) are run by people who don’t even have much money. what makes it okay for people, including me, to bargain from an already ‘poor’ person? don’t we appreciate their effort? and instead, most people don’t even blink an eye when they buy overpriced designers clothings. ever heard of anyone bargaining at a Louis Vuitton store? of course not, don’t be ridiculous.

but why? what makes it okay to accept some high price for something that was created with the exact same effort & work, and for other things you just feel the need to bargain until the salesperson finally gave up their original prices and lets you have it for a lot cheaper price?

now let’s imagine how the process goes for almost every thing in this world, excluding fresh produce. somebody, somewhere, had the idea to create something. whether it be a piece of hairclip, a mobile phone, a computer game, or even a logo, after the idea came the work process. this could involve only 1 person or many people, time, effort (sometimes many efforts as there are no guarantees that someone succeeds after only the first try), the final production, and shipping/how to get the thing(s) to the sellers/straight to customers. in some cases, this whole process last hours, but in most cases they could last for months or even years. and all that process are in the end reduced as one specific product, what you actually see & purchase, of which you try to estimate the real value before bargaining and paying. how many of us can honestly say that we think about all the processes as opposed to just the end product before determining how much we are willing to pay for it?

another form of bargaining actually happens without us knowing it. it’s the kind that happens within the work process instead. big companies bargaining sweatshop’s workers’ wages, sometimes even bargaining their lives. and that’s not all. a dear friend told me once that she used to do dozens of creative designs (let’s say clothing designs) per week to then be shown to a big clothing store company who will then decide which one(s) they could ‘buy’. usually out of 12 or 20, there would be only 1 or 2 that was accepted, and the payment for those creative designs were only bearing 2 or 3 digits at the very max. and then those big clothing store companies would mass-produce the designs and sell them for 5-10€ each. she told me this: “so remember, behind every cheap thing you see in stores, there is always someone suffering for it.” either the designer, the tailor, the shoemaker, the seller, or even the ones who prepare the raw materials, ‘cheap’ means ‘suffering’.

i mean, would YOU want to work your a** off and be paid for 2€ a month? no? then why would you bargain at someone else’s cost?

after all this pondering, i can tell you that i very rarely bargain for anything. if i go to a market place, i look for those who sell stuffs for a fixed price, just to avoid bargaining. i feel sorry for paying 3€ for a pair of nice looking earrings, but then again i don’t do it every month or even every year. and i suppose it’s still better for someone out there that gets paid for each sold goods, so as long as i don’t add to the bargaining part, i have to believe that i’m not making things worse.

sometimes, very rarely, i do still bargain. for example when going to Bali, and i knew that when my husband wasn’t with me, the sellers offer me cheaper prices (local prices) and when my husband was there the prices doubled up. well… excuse me for knowing the real price, then. but still, mostly i don’t have the heart to do it. not after realizing all of this.

our work and effort should mean something more than cheap prices. i hope in the future we can all start seeing more of the work & effort that goes to one product instead of just the end product. then maybe bargaining in all shapes will cease to exist. 😉

take it slow

in case you’re wondering (which i’m sure you haven’t been doing) where i have gone to for the past month, here is the answer: nowhere. i haven’t really been offline, though i have been lagging in terms of reading other people’s blogs & updates. here’s something new: i haven’t been sewing either.

it’s not another case of depression this time. it’s simply the realization of just how much clothes i have vs how often i actually wear them. sounds familiar?

usually one would have this problem when one buys clothes, cheap ones, clothes on sale, etc. but when one sews one’s own clothes, is that really possible? well, yeah.

you know how it goes. you can’t seem to stop yourself from getting a nice looking fabric–same thing that goes for nice looking clothes applies as well to fabrics–and you end up getting a few too many. and when you finally have an idea to make something, you open up your fabric stash only to find that nothing there is the right one for your idea! you quickly have to go out and get a new one. repeat by a hundred times.

and then you finally get to make what you wanted. you wear it with pride once, twice, and then you already have another idea for another sewing project, and you repeat the same process all over again.

i’m not saying it happens overnight, of course. i’ve only been sewing now for about 8 years, and already i can see that i have a problem. so i started ‘throwing away’ my old(er) clothes that i bought from stores, and by this i meant either giving them up for charity or bringing them to H&M for recycling. but still it seems that my closet is just getting more and more clothes.

i don’t know yet how it’s going to end, but at least i can tell you that i’m trying to reduce it now before it’s too late. i mean… i’m sure we all know by now just how ‘dangerous’ fast fashion is, right? dangerous for the environment and dangerous for the human resources. now if you thought by making your own clothes you can at least reduce that danger, think again. where do you think the fabrics come from? not all of them grow on trees either. there are still human resources, other than you, the seamstress/tailor, involved in the making of that. it makes me sad sometimes, seeing somebody make dozens of clothes a month, either for him-/herself or for others, and this is just because he/she can. of course i can’t tell just how hollow or full his/her closet is, but still… i think it’s wiser to not be excessive in anything, don’t you?

with that in mind, i am trying to be more careful in what fabrics i buy & what i’ll make from them. i no longer set myself to sew at least 2 sewing projects a month or at least 20 projects per year, or whatever, but instead sew something i actually need & will definitely wear for a long time. i hear you, i’m saying “good luck!” to myself as well! 😀

so anyway, to really answer that question as to what i’ve been doing for the past month, here are some things:

• read the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script book. i wish i could one day see the production of this, it looked great in my own imagination! 😉
• got a short social visit from my uncle and aunt, yay! it was their first time here in Finland and of course it had to be super windy when they were here. ergh! but at least the sun was shining, the foods were great (i again of course had to introduce muikkuja aka vendace to them), the talks were fun, and i was just so grateful that somebody from the family could visit me!we got to visit Suomenlinna – the Fortress island despite the harsh wind, enjoyed our walk in the city and the market square, and also went to the Helsinki City Museum, which is also very nice and surprisingly nostalgic for all of us (even though we come from a different part of the world!). they were really nice 2 days that i spent with them! and hey, that’s the second time this year already that i got to play tourist in my own (new) country!
• my husband & i and my mum-in-law taught our nephew to say our names, and he succeeded! he remembered who we were, and whenever we ‘tested’ if he knew which one of us was which, he always got it right! and he liked our names so much that my sister-in-law sent us a video a week after that, where it showed that he just kept saying our names over and over again. ❤ that feeling when somebody small who couldn’t really say much of anything yet suddenly kept calling your name is just unbearably lovely!!
• i learned how to make my first lasagne! also how NOT to make it, LOL. i only followed a recipe though, so it really wasn’t any rocket science. the first time i made it i only managed to put in 2 layers of the lasagna sheet, because the sauce were all already used up, ahahaha…. needless to say, i had to make another one, pronto, and with advices (and okay, a little bit of help) from my husband, i finally got it right this time. no picture of the first lasagne because it was quite embarrassing, haha! not that this second one is a good looking one either, but whatever! it’s a vegetarian lasagne with spinach and cottage cheese as the main content. it was really good for a beginner’s attempt!

that was pretty much it. of course there are other boring things like going to work and doing house chores some time there in the middle, and oh, watching some series in Netflix, but really… nothing else worth mentioning. :p

it’s time for me to take it slow and enjoy life as it is.

let’s talk about prejudice

i think i can say that i don’t easily get offended by comments from other people that has to do with how i look (= Asian, among Caucasians). since i’m not yet familiar with the Finnish slang words, i doubt i would even understand it if anyone were to offend me with any racist words. 😀 it’s useful to be deaf sometimes.

but i must admit that there are times when the “hidden” meanings annoy me even more than plain racist comments. and here are some that i’ve encountered more than once, and not just towards me here in Finland, but also towards my husband in Indonesia (again, as a reminder, prejudice/racism/discrimination does not only happen in the western world; it happens everywhere).

–“you must like working here!” said some stranger to me while i was at work. at first i didn’t think much of it, and just said something like, “sure, it’s a nice place to work at.” but then she went on to say how it’s great that “somebody like me” can have a job, because she was sure that i would not have the same opportunity in my home country. this was said before she even asked where i came from, and we were talking in the same language. i wondered then if my Finnish was just so bad that i immediately seem ‘foreign’ to her, but then i quickly remembered that i talk the same way to other strangers and they never react the same way as this person. so, i figured, the problem was not with my Finnish, it’s with this particular stranger i was talking with.

and then, as usual, the conversation would went on to this other person asking me if i live here with my family, which would usually mean my parents, my siblings, etc. to which of course i said, no. first of all, it’s really none of anyone’s business who i live with. second of all, upon seeing someone with different skin colour and different eye shapes, of course she would automatically think that i came here with my whole family for a better living. bring the whole neighbourhood to this rich country, steal the native people’s workplace & live happily ever after!

because–and this is an even worse thought–if i had married a Finn, i can’t possibly be working, right? i must be just a stay-at-home mum or shopping-all-the-time wife. the fact that i “like working here” when i wouldn’t otherwise have a job in my home country surely indicates that my whole Asian family is here and i have to work hard to make money for them.

this is just one example, though, and it incidentally happened here in Finland. but rest assured that i’ve seen and heard it many times as well in Indonesia, the ‘locals’ or ‘natives’ being defensive towards ‘foreigners’, thinking that they only want to steal their jobs, steal their land (still traumatized by colonial times, maybe?), etc. and in both countries, people can make these thoughts or beliefs hidden in seemingly polite words.

–a stranger starts talking to you in the assumed ‘native’ language. some (Caucasian) people have tried talking to me in: Thai, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Indian, Chinese. if they were genuinely thinking that i came from one of those countries and wanted to make some kind of conversation to me, i can still laugh about it… though for the life of me, i can’t understand why they did it before asking where i come from. i mean, what if i was born in Finland and have grown up only knowing Finnish language?

anyway, what annoys me is when somebody just say, “ni hao!” or “konnichiwa!” or whatever else just as a way to ‘greet’ me when we pass by each other on the street.

also, making a stereotypical-rhetorical comment/question towards somebody who looks like he/she might come from a specific country falls into the same category. i once sat down next to a guy i didn’t know at the cafetaria of my language course. he wasn’t originally Finnish, and was also a student, just like me. i was being polite and asked if i could sit there since there was nowhere else to sit, and he said yes. and then the next thing he said, before anything else (asking my name or where i was from), upon seeing my lunch for the day (rice), was, “why do Chinese like to eat rice?”

and it wasn’t meant to be a joke, either. i think i only replied, “i don’t know, why don’t you ask a Chinese if you want to know?” with as cold of a tone as possible and ate my lunch as quickly as possible to get the hell away from him.

–“i’m not a racist, because i work with people from all around the world, of all kinds of skin colour, etc.” making a point of saying it to somebody who looks like a ‘foreigner’ does NOT make it sound genuine. i mean, honestly, why bring up the subject in the first place if you really are NOT a racist?

believe it or not, this came out from the same stranger as the one i mentioned at point #1. 😀 i felt like laughing inside when she suddenly said that. of course, when you spell it out like that, it must be really true.

rather than saying it, it would be much more believable if you would act it. talk to me without seeing my skin colour or my eye shape. 90% of the other strangers i meet everyday can do this, so why can’t you?

and to be honest, if you are just curious, i would feel a lot better if you just plainly ask. i never get hurt if someone asks me where i’m originally from, how long i’ve been here, and sometimes even why i came here. straight-forward questions like those are much better than prejudiced statements.

hope for kindness

a little girl, 4 years of age, ran around in an adventure with her slightly older brother in a store while their mum was having a conversation with a friend. meanwhile, another girl, 10 years old, was sitting nicely on a kids corner at the same store, drawing away as 10 year-olds do. when the mum of the first girl was done talking to her friend and ready to walk out from the store, she called for her kids… and noticed that the little girl’s hat was missing. the mum was upset, and scolded the little girl for being careless. she told the little girl to find it, and they all went to search for it around the store. after a while, they decided that the hat was truly missing and all the mum could do was say over and over again how the little girl should learn to be responsible for her things from then on.

suddenly the mum of the second girl came to the mum of the first girl, and said that her daughter had something to say to them. it turned out that the 10 year old girl wanted to give her drawing to the little girl, she said, “to cheer her up.” both the little girl and her mum said thank you to the older girl, and oh, how sweet she was! the little girl and her family finally walked out of the store, the mum no longer upset and the little girl was also skipping along, happy once again.

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a tourist barely got into a commuter train just as the door was closing. when the conductor passed, she told him in broken English that she needed a ticket and said that she was headed for the city center. the conductor was preparing the ticket when he noticed that the tourist was taking out a credit card to pay for it. he told her, “sorry, we don’t accept credit cards here in the train. bank cards or cash only.” the tourist was confused at first, because of her limited English, but finally she seemed to understand and started to look for coins. the price for the ticket was 5€, and all she could find was 3€. she again tried to pay the rest with her card, but again the conductor reminded her that she could not pay with any credit card.

another train passenger, who had been standing behind the tourist’s seat the whole time, asked the conductor in local language how much left was there to pay. after the conductor told him, this other passenger took out some coins from his own pocket and gave them to the conductor. right then, the train stopped at his destination, so he stepped out. meanwhile the tourist was still searching for coins in her bag, until the conductor told her, “it’s okay, it’s been paid now.” the tourist was again confused, “huh? what? who?”. the conductor tried to explain, but since the other passenger has left the train, the explanation died in the translations. the tourist just couldn’t believe her luck. somebody had saved her day.

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these 2 stories are real. i was a witness to both events. none of these went to the newspaper, because, well, they’re just ‘normal, every day thing’.

when November 13th happened, i almost lost faith in human kindness. i was greatly disappointed, my heart was broken by the evil acts of some people.

but then i remembered these 2 small acts of kindness. they happened long before November 13th, and i have never told them to anyone. maybe it was because i didn’t think they were important enough to share to other people. but on the other hand, i kept these memories to myself while remembering every detail about them, exactly so that i could one day reflect on them and remember that there is still hope for kindness.

and now seems like a good time to remember them. i am sure, other than these 2 acts of kindness, every day there are small acts of kindness everywhere in the whole world. when you think about it, wouldn’t that mean that when they are all combined, they are actually much greater and bigger than the evil acts? it’s a shame that they never make it to the news, but know that they are out there. and here, too. they are everywhere. they are real.

yes, there is still hope.