Archive for 2020

November was another roller coaster month, hopefully it’s the end of the ride. I’ve been in a long roller coaster ride since May. When I look back to May until November, there were a lot of things happening which makes me grow and learns more about living as human.

Thanks to those experiences which allowed me to feel various emotions and feelings, so that I can understand why someone does something in their life. There was strong feeling to just die and to leave this world, to turn into the sky or clouds so that I can protect the Earth. I only don’t want to make my existence into a problem for others. I did overthink every single thing, it made my head overloaded with so much unnecessary things and I wanted a shortcut to just escape from the pain, worries and all negative self-talks.

1. Reading List

Latin Made Simple

It’s the easiest book to learn Latin from the very basic with simple explanations, exercises, and samples. Compared to other books

2. Quote I Reflect On

Found a beautiful quote when I browsed YouTube. I want to always remember this quote because we are not separated from life. I have heard this many times before, but this quote opened my eyes.

“Life doesn’t happen to you. Life happens through you”

3. In The Playlist

Fujii Kaze – Seishun Sick ( Spotify | YouTube )

Shibutani Subaru – Kaze no Uta ( Spotify )

Shibutani Subaru – Mizu ( Spotify )

Shibutani Subaru – Earth Color ( Spotify )

Takahashi Yu – Beautiful ( Spotify )

Takahashi Yu – Niji to Kinenbi ( Spotify )

SECRET NUMBER – Got That Boom ( Spotify | YouTube )

Joe Hisaishi – A Sea of Clouds in the Moonlight ( Spotify )

Milet – Who I Am ( Spotify | YouTube )

4. Watch List

Kanjani Eight – Re:LIVE (Music Video)

Johnny’s WEST – Shouko (Music Video)

milet – Who I Am (Music Video)

Looking for Magical Doremi TIFF Stage Greeting

A-RA-SHI for dream version

Inoue Rei x Inaba Manaka – Bitansan

Coping with Anxiety and Illness | Eckhart Tolle

milet – The Hardest (Music Video)

Dealing with Conflicting Thoughts | Eckhart Tolle

5. New Skincare : Isntree Clear Skin 8% AHA Essence

What I Love : mild peeling, glycolic acid, lactic acid, no fragrance

6. What Happened

J-Storm opened official YouTube channel

It’s a surprise for everyone who has followed Johnny’s for long time when they do something digitally or internationally or both. J-Storm, one of Johnny’s artist labels, finally created a youtube channel which has all newest music videos from their artists.

J-Storm Official YouTube Channel

Johnny’s WEST new single and live announcement

One of my favorite male groups has new single to come out on January next year, titled Shuukan Umakuiku Youbi. Then their live tour WTrouble was decided to be streamed online.

7. What I Did

Learned Latin

I randomly picked a simple Latin book to learn more about this beautiful language. We have used Latin since the very beginning even though we didn't realize it. That's why I thought it would be so much easier to understand Latin than any other languages (I haven't done with Japanese yet lol). Even though I haven't finished the book, doing the exercises inside the book is fun. The pronunciation is so much easier for me compared to other languages such as France, Germany or Russian.

Wrote Down My Thought : The Future of Education System in Indonesia

It's actually a blog competition which prompted : If I were a leader, I would do .... for this country. Then I took education because I had something inside my head which needed to come out. You can read the blog post in Bahasa Indonesia here : Mewujudkan Sistem Pendidikan Impian untuk Perubahan Positif bagi Pendidikan di Indonesia.

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

Hello! It feels like the September Highlight was posted yesterday then I have to write the October Highlight. Yeah, I posted the September Highlight pretty late and I only made one post during October. Yet the views count was still around the same number as August - a bit less perhaps. So, during October there were some things happening. I had a short trip with the bosses. I bought some new beauty products and some new scarfs. I had to attend some wedding parties. I had to go here and there for some administration stuff. I also got high fever in the middle of the month. There were still emotional ups and downs too. The roller coaster ride was still going on. I captured some beautiful sky photos and videos too. During the full moon, as expected, it rained, so I couldn’t see the moon - even though I had seen how beautiful it was some days before the actual full moon, it was beautiful and bright contrasting the navy blue night sky.

1. Book I Read

Atomic Habits by James Clear

2. In The Playlist

BLACKPINK - You Never Know ( Spotify )

BLACKPINK - Lovesick Girls ( Spotify | Youtube )

TRUE - BLUE MOON CHILD ( Spotify )

FAKY - half moon ( Spotify )

Yuki Kajiura - forest ( Spotify )

Yuki Kajiura - my long forgotten cloistered sleep ( Spotify )

Yu Takahashi - Fried Potato ( Spotify )

Yu Takahashi - ORION ( Spotify )

Sandaime J Soul Brothers - Sora ni Sumu ~ Living in Your Sky ( Spotify )

FictionJunction - Distance ( Spotify )

3. TV Drama I Finished

Unsung Cinderella ( VIU )

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon ( iFlix )

4. Place I Visited

Bandung

The weather was similar to Malang. They are both hot and sunny but the wind is cool. The water was similar too. The foods were nice. When I was there, it didn’t feel like I was in other city. It felt like I didn’t go anywhere. The place where we stayed was nice too. I watched K-drama a lot. We got delicious catering foods 3 times a day with big size. Haha. The best part of it was the foods were like being preserved, it’s still in their best condition after 2 days (I couldn’t eat too much food, so I split one box with co-worker, and save the rest for the next day - it turned out we still had much foods when we came back to Malang)

5. Quotes I Reflect On

“Money is easy to find. But once it’s wounded, people’s feelings can’t be easily healed even by using all the money in the world”

“Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can’t control whether you’re a potato or an egg, but you can decide to play a game where it’s better to be hard or soft.” (James Clear)

6. Journal Theme : Osushi!

7. Photo I Like

8. Foods I Tried

Too much black pepper beef and gurame asam manis (the most expensive snacks I ever had when I only watched K-drama all day long)

Gethuk with smoked scent and unique taste

Delicious catering foods (with big portion of rice)

Lasagna

Panna-cotta

*I'm sorry, I didn't take all the food photos because I was too busy eating them all

9. New Items I Bought

FOCALLURE Uptown Girls #2 Sakura In Dream

NIVEA MicellAir Skin Breathe Xpert

FOCALLURE Staymax Liquid Matte Ink Lip #2 Saipan

FOCALLURE Staymax Powder Matte Lipstick #4 Naadam

*I will make review posts separately for each product later

10. Beauty Product I Emptied

PURITO Green Level Buffet Serum

*I have talked how I love this serum endlessly in this blog, so I will also make one blog post for this one to include all details you may need

11. Products I Like

Because I got painful acne on October, a day before my short trip to Bandung, I chose to use my Etude House Soon Jung pH 5.5 Relief Toner and Etude House Soon Jung 5-Panthensoside Cica Balm in my skincare routine. It worked beautifully to calm my skin and reduce the pain. I found my acne got dried in the next day as it had reached its final stage without being too painful. Two products I used really didn't cause drying on my sky, it only makes the acne undo its plan to grow on my face.

12. Videos I Watched

Eckhart Tolle : Awakening from Self-Talk

rei - Call Me Sick | THE FIRST TAKE

rei x Shinya Kiyozuka - Shirayukihime | THE FIRST TAKE

Ryo Nishikido - Silence (Official Music Video)

Growing Rice in Fukushima | NHK World Japan

Alice in Borderland Teaser | Netflix

Alice in Borderland Official Trailer | Netflix

*can't wait for it to be available worldwide next month!

Chuuka Meisai CM | Nipponham Group ( 30sec | 15sec | Making | 30sec -osara ver. )

Sailormoon Eternal Tsukiiro Chainon Short Ver - Momoiro Clover Z

ARASHI - Whenever You Call Dance Ver.

13. What Happened

Fever Attack

I got high fever on October 17. It felt like I just had a marathon for some days, my body ached and even though it’s considered not too high fever, my normal body temperature is lower than average people, so it's a high fever for me. I didn’t take any drugs to lower the temperature. I only drank water a lot, it made me go to the toilet more often than usual, but the fever went down quickly. The fever had gone yet the pain was still there for the whole Sunday. On Monday, I had recovered and everything came back to normal. Then I got some off-days, where I suddenly lost my smelling and tasting. My life was peaceful lol. Any foods were the same. Even the most delicious food was plain. I didn’t know what happened but I had prepared for the worst. I didn’t go anywhere outside. When I had to go to work, it had been more than 2 weeks since my high fever. Even though my smelling and tasting ability hasn’t come to the normal state, it gradually comes back.

Blog Renewal Project

Since I started to blog again after a hiatus and on-off period, I want to renew the interface of my blog so that I can start fresh. The old interface has the vibe from my hiatus period which makes me lazy to blog. It didn’t take so long to adjust the new theme with everything in my blog, because the widgets like disqus comment box, subscription box, and sidebar images are still there. I needed to set the menu, linking, and fonts (which has been a mess since blogger renewing its interface).

The feeling during September and August were around home and going home, then the feeling during October was around sleeping peacefully for a long time. That's why I listened to "my long forgotten cloistered sleep" in endless loop, haha. I really wanted to sleep for 1000 years, then waking up on 3020 would be interesting. What kind of technology will I see? What kind of people will live on this world? People would think that my wish is a bit scary, but I prefer sleeping for 1000 years with only nice dreams, haha. Then I understand why I can't live in the fairy tale as sleeping beauty anymore. There's no protagonist who wants to sleep for so long.

So that was my October Highlight, the busiest month of the year so far. See you on the next monthly highlight. Wish you a wonderful year-end!

Hello! Welcome back! It’s the first blog post after my blog renewal project and I like the end result. I decided to renew my blog after taking a break for some time since May. Many things have changed when I came back. Blogger new layout for editing templates, layout and text editor, some of my photos disappear, the font size changed, some links are broken, and I need to use my newsletter service better. Since I have no favorite colors, I can easily jump from one color theme to another so quickly, haha. I thought I needed to do some changes here and there, then this renewal project started.

What do you think about this new theme?

Since some things happened this month, I published this monthly highlight pretty late. It’s almost the end of October, and I already started writing the October highlight and doing my new sticker set for November.

1. Books I Read

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

2. Articles I Read

Shoshin : This Zen Concept Will Help You Stop Being a Slave to Old Beliefs

The Marriage Decision: Everything Forever or Nothing Ever Again

Comet discovered to have its own northern lights

3. Foods I Tried

Late night dumplings

Cream puff

Pastry taiyaki

4. Products I Love

In this world, I only love the pine scent or those scents which deliver hygiene vibes, so right now I'm in the journey of collecting of clean scented products available in the world, haha.

What I love : the pine scent, it last longer and has thicker consistency, so it has right amount of scent when dissolved in the water, affordable (might be cheaper than any other brands)

5. New Item I Bought

What I love : the long lasting scent and cool mint effect after taking shower

6. Beauty Product I Emptied

Krave Beauty Kale-lalu-yAHA

What I like : Vegan, Cruelty-free, fragrance-essential oil-colorant free, Glycolic acid 5,25%, Glycerin, Panthenol, Sodium Hyaluronate, Allantoin, Aloe Leaf Water, 100% recyclable

7. In The Playlist

Kiyohara Kaya - SKIP ( Spotify || Apple Music )

Buono! - Blue Sky Blue ( Apple Music )

Fujii Kaze - Kaerou ( Spotify || Apple Music || YouTube || My Thoughts About It )

ARASHI - Whenever You Call ( Spotify || Apple Music || YouTube )

Aimyon - Raw Like Sushi ( Spotify || Apple Music )

Aimyon - Her Blue Sky ( Spotify || Apple Music || YouTube )

Johnny’s WEST - Akatsuki ( CDJapan || Official Site Preview )

Ken Arai - SWEET PAIN ( Spotify || Apple Music )

HIRAIDAI - stand by me, stand by you ( Spotify || Apple Music )

8. Videos I Watched

All videos I watched are availabe on Youtube (and Twitter) :

Fujii Kaze - Kaerou (Music Video)

Fujii Kaze Talks About Kaerou

TEDxTalks : Sophia Hamblin Wang

Eckhart Tolle : Looking Through Disguise

Kitchen for Singles Season 2 ( Ep 6 || Ep 7 || Ep 8 )

Tokyo Girls Collection 2020 A/W livestream (only the channel link, since the archives are uploaded part by part)

NHK : Misao Kuwata Mochi Rice Cakes

NHK : Traveling Planetarium

Kanjani Eight’s Re-LIVE #わたしの Re ver. music video << must watch, since it has many cute fanarts featured in it

Subaru Shibutani - Subarashii Sekai Ni (blackboard version)

9. Television Drama I Watched

Unsung Cinderella : Midori, The Hospital Pharmacist (Fuji TV)

I always love medical drama, somehow, even though I don’t have any medical related background. One of the medical dramas I watched this month is Unsung Cinderella - led by Satomi Ishihara. One thing I noticed is that I always find Narita Ryo in dramas I watched unexpectedly. Maybe it’s something called fate lol

Watch here : VIU

10. Things I Did

Signed Up for Jenius

I have tried to sign up for Jenius some months ago, but it failed, then I said to myself that everything which is destined for me will always find me, so I let it be. I forgot it. In September when I went to a mall, someone from Jenius offered me help to sign up for free. It didn’t take long to get my account and the card done, and I got a shopping voucher too. I really wanted to sign up for this service because I want to buy my favorite artists’ live streaming tickets and subscribe to some streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix.

Write 瞳の奥の銀河 lyrics

I randomly wrote the whole lyrics of one of my favorite Flower’s songs titled 瞳の奥の銀河 which is translated as The Milky Way in The Deep of Your Eyes. I really love this song, because I love the stars, galaxy and everything related to the sky - beside it has lovely and warming messages for those people we love. I want to memorize more kanji, so by writing the song lyrics I love, I might remember some of them.

Joining Liebster Award

I joined the Liebster Award because a fellow blogger friend nominated me for this award. You can read the blog post and answer the questions in your blog or SNS in this post (the whole post is in Bahasa Indonesia, the questions are in Bahasa Indonesia and English) : Saya Dapat Liebster Award!

Trip planning

I’m going to have a short trip to Bandung in October. It includes everyone in my workplace since it’s the wedding ceremony of my boss' son. I planned everything 1 month earlier. I never did this preparation before. I got the right amount of time to buy other stuff I need for the trip because we are going to stay there for about 3 days. I thought I’d bring only a few stuff - by only seeing the list, I thought all the beauty products including skincare, make-up, body care, would fit in one bag along with my other stuff but it doesn’t.

Found old notebook

When my sister cleaned our super old stuff from the school era, she found an old hard-covered blank notebook. I remember that when I was in High School, I bought a hard covered notebook for taking notes in Math, Chemistry and Physics classes (then I also used it for writing scripts, song lyrics, and sometimes random stuff). I remembered that Dad needed a notebook with the same size too, so I bought one. Later, I found out that he already had a new notebook so I kept the notebook I bought for the next time when he needs it again. But I completely forgot it for years lol The book now looks like a really old one with some vintage effects here and there haha. I wonder what I’m going to do with it

11. Journal Theme : Oyasumi O-kun!

All the stickers I used here are sold in my shop I mentioned earlier. My most favorite one is the sheep, since it looks like cloud with face, haha. Of course, the cutest one is O-kun! I made this character on August, then I decided to make the whole set for my September journal. I hope O-kun will get enough and nice sleeps then get ready to do his activities with 100% energy the next day.

12. Photo I Like

13. Quotes I Reflect On

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." (Carl Jung)

"We can go home safely, happily, and peacefully" (Fujii Kaze)

I have been thinking about “home” and “going home” because mostly my dreams had a person I don’t know who brings the home vibes. So I asked myself, where that home is right now - I don’t want to be like this forever, wanting to go somewhere I don’t know. Then Fujii Kaze released the music video for Kaerou. Before that, I saw many things related to home and going home but it just brought me more questions, haha.

September is a magical month as I said before. When I ask a question, the answer will appear through someone else or something that passes by. Mostly the question dissolves by itself. That’s the magic. God always listens, so whenever you ask, He will answer through many things around you. I believe in magic, because God is magic.

I am okay, I will be okay, and I don’t need to worry. Everything is taken care of.

See you on the next monthly highlight.

Photo by Georgia de Lotz

Title photos and graphics by lailiving

Photo by Kento Hirasue from Unsplash

There some songs and music videos released on early September that I really like, one of them is Kaerou (帰ろう) by Fujii Kaze. Actually he has released the song in his album HELP EVER HURT NEVER on May 2020, but the music video was available on his channel some days ago along with English translation / subtitle in it.

These days I have been thinking about one thing that few times appeared on my dreams, that is “home”. I wrote about “going home” and “where is the home that I saw in those dreams” on my journal too. This brings some coincidences, more topics about “going home” that I found on youtube feed and randomly on SNS ads.

Another coincidence is that a blogger friend commented about Fujii Kaze on one of my blog post too, like wow, everything is connected and I’m given the chance to witness that beautiful connection.

I think I have never found a song that speaks about this thing so deeply. I always cry when I watch the music video. Everything is beautiful.

On his special talk about Kaerou, one of the thing that Fujii Kaze spoke that get stuck inside my head is : We can go home safely, happily, and peacefully.

This music video will absolutely be my September repeat. Something that makes me feeling lighter when I listen to this song is the part of lyrics that says : we both have nothing to fear, nothing to lose, we both have nothing at all at the first place.

There aren’t many things I can convey through words, everything in this song and music video, even about Fujii Kaze himself is beyond words (actually everything that exists in this world is beyond words – we can’t really know what it really is). So I captured some favorite scenes from the music video (honestly, everything is my favorite) below.

Everything is a gift. This world will keep revolving and rotating with or without me. This is not about only me. This life is not a burden or punishment or something that was given to prove something. “What is the use of hating each other?”. Everything is temporary. There is no point in bringing so much baggage to that home. There is no point to prove which one is right or wrong. There is no point to achieve something great for egoic fulfillment. Achieving something, doing something good, getting praised, having friends, are good things that we can appreciate in this life, yet they are not “the tools” to be happy.