#olalajournal

[silviayang]

Miffy bagcharm crochet time

Lego like Christmas tree

Random Sketch

Sunday sunset. And that’s all for today.

[silviayang]

I should make a journal diary, shouldn't I?

At first I wanted to give some printed out photos for my friend who is leaving soon for work overseas. Turned out that the printing place set the min 25 pics for the printing, so I added some more miscellaneous pics that I really like.

Well I guess I can use them later for making a journal or simply put them on the wall 🤭.

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Jennie's Wedding

Some decent pictures we got from Jennie's wedding. 😀

I was tired but super happy to see her getting married.

Being a bridesmaid is actually not an easy work to do. She is lucky she has me as her bestfriend 😚

[silviayang]

Found this lavender bar soap by chance. I always love the smell of lavender. So happy and looking forward to using it ☺️😄

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Summer album.

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Today as I was going back from work, a friend from China texted me and told me she is now seven-month pregnant. I guess she was really eiger to share me the news since she also sent me like 10 pics of her pregnancy 😄. They are very beautiful pics. I just never realized that the glow of pregnant women can be that real!

She also asked me to help her find a name for her baby later on (big responsibility haha..i mean I never name a human before haha). Well, I’ll think about it even though I still have no idea if it will be a baby boy or a baby girl because she said she could not just tell me yet. Perhaps it is something to do with the Chinese tradition.

Actually my heart leaped for joy over hearing the news. But I think what makes me happy is not simply because my friend is pregnant now, but more because of the fact that she thinks I am someone she would like to share this happy news with. And she bothered herself to show all those pics taken for her pregnancy memorabilia.

Don’t you also have this heartfelt feeling when someone thinks of you when they are undergoing something so big and memorable? Like you actually matter to them!

And I sometimes think it’s funny the way I became friends with her eventually. I met her for the first time over an event at our church. I never saw her before. After the church meeting was done, the lunch was served and we had to stand eating the meal because the chairs were not enough for all of us. I happened to be standing next to her and so I smiled to her and casually started a conversation with her. (I sometimes talk to strangers because I don’t like the awkward quiet moment). And for your information my Mandarin is not good and she does not speak English. But we managed to exchange WeChat and QQ id (I already told you I was in China, didn’t I?)

I think it’s because of the language barrier that we do not talk/chat much. We don’t talk regularly either. But still she invited me over to her home and her mother cooked me a lot of delicious Chinese food. She always lets me know when something important is going on with her life. She let me know she got a boyfriend already after I failed her once to be her “matchmaker”. She also shared the beautiful pics of her prewedding at this beutiful beach in her town. And when she got married, she still wanted to invite me to her wedding even though I did not stay in China anymore. She shared with me also the pics of her wonderful honeymoon in Bali. It was something I never expected she would do.

I think we make friends in ways that we can never tell. All I did was just smiling and talking about the taste of the food that we were eating (I did not complain about the food as far as I can remember haha), and that’s how we became friends! I count myself lucky that just because I smiled, I got invited over for lunch and another lunch and another lunch 😆 and became a “witness” of someone’s life important moment.

-S.Yang-

[silviayang]

Happy Holiday!!!

Last night I just landed in my hometown for holiday! There is this one week holiday in Indonesia celebrating Eid Mubarak. Being an office employee now, I realize that this holiday is the longest I can have in one year time. Unlike the times when I was in college, I could go back home twice a year and had like one or two months semester break. Now things are different. That luxury has gone as I grow up. Phew. I miss the good old time. But anyway, I am just happy that I made it home now! Being with my family and the feeling of being pampered with food anytime because my parents are afraid that their children who just had three-time meals per day would go to bed hungry. God, I am afraid I would gain weight speedily because of that. Another thing to be happy about is the fact that I bought another two new mystery novels at Periplus in the aiport terminal when I waited for my plane. I know I know. I bought too many already and haven't finished reading them all, but the thought that I wouldn't find the same copy of the books made me think "why not buying it now instead of never?" And honestly I never regretted buying them. The book that I am reading right now is pretty good. It's The Happiness Project. It's not a fiction actually but a self-help book telling how the author made a plan for one year to make herself feel happier. She writes it in funny way and enjoyable. I learned a lot from the book. For example I was taken aback when I read the line in the book that says that we should never do something for others. We should do it for own selves. All this time we think we are good if we could make or do something for the sake of others, but once the effort does not come along with appreciation that we might expect to get, we would feel disappointed. Hence, the book says that whatever we do, we should do it for ourselves because that would make us feel happy and far from disappointment. I think I will spend most of the time during this holiday reading the books that I haven't read yet. But still, it would make me feel I did not spend my money in vain.

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Last time I got the chance to meet my friends since college, Natalia and Jennie in Bandung and I could not help but thinking how my life would be if I could just get a job in Bandung so that three of us could hang out together on any weekdays after work hour, or at weekends! I would be lying if I say that I do not miss living there,,after all I spent almost five years in Bandung. And I have to admit that it is a very decent city to live, much better than Jakarta. Not that I hate Jakarta or anything, I just think that Bandung is more peaceful and the life there comes in a slower pace. People are kind and it's not that crowded there. Well, then I think maybe it's not the place that I miss but the company. For instance, I could be living in Bandung and still long to see some best friends that I have in other city. So it's the company that matters. But as time goes on, and we get busy with our own lives, I realize that we do not communicate as often as we did with our friends from schools or college. We chat and talk when something is worth telling or asking. And to some friends that I used to be close with, I haven't talked to them for years probably. Not that I do not need them anymore, but our needs and rhythms of life have gone to different paths. In short, people get busy. But once you get the opportunity to sit and talk with them, it just feels nothing is wrong with that "quiet" moment when we did not chat for some months. We understand that each of us has something to do and it's fine if we do not interact every day. I do not know with other people but I find myself lucky that I have so many open-minded people who have different points of view on life to be my friends. When we talk on some certain issues, we could debate and share our perspectives on feminism, to have or not to have kids, being a grown up, movies or laugh out loud over some old memories from college. I find that friends that I choose are not superficial and judgmental people who talk about me behind me. People who appreciate me and respect my choice as I do to them.