It’s Christmas eve tonight, but I don’t get the joy-celebration kind of feel I used to get when Christmas came. Year by year I grow and it feels like He wants to show me that Christmas is not all about celebration, holidays, and eat dinner with family. It looks like that from the outside, but there’s a deeper meaning of Christmas that He wants me to experienced as I grow up. 

The joy feeling of Christmas in my home has become less and less in the past few years. Christmas now feels like any other ordinary day. Particularly this year, for the first time in my 20 years of life, I can’t go to attend Christmas eve mass. I feel like something is missing, but I can do nothing as we are totally broke right now that we don’t even have enough money to go to the church. 2011 is officially one of the worst years in my life, coming second after my high school years. Not everything was bad but mostly were.

So here I am, spending a silent Christmas eve with my mom, which I think is not so bad because at least I still have her with me. It’s about accepting, feel thankful of what you have and what have happened. The good things, the bad things, everything is wrapped with the tears that keep coming from my eyes now. But then again, new year is coming and for me new year always means a new hope. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

pic source

Natalie Portman says, “I don’t love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful.”  These two words in Bahasa Indonesia have a quite similar meaning, but in English the meaning are quite distinct. 

Study means :

- To apply one’s mind purposefully to the acquisition of knowledge or understanding of (a subject).
- To read carefully.
- To memorize.
- To take (a course) at a school.
- To inquire into; investigate.
- To examine closely; scrutinize.
- To give careful thought to; contemplate: study the next move.
- Think deeply, reflect, or consider.
- To take a course of study, as at a college.

While Learn means :

- To gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of through experience or study.
- To fix in the mind or memory; memorize: learned the speech in a few hours.
- To acquire experience of or an ability or a skill in: learn tolerance; learned how to whistle.
- To become aware: learned that it was best not to argue.
- To become informed of; find out. See Synonyms at discover.
- Nonstandard To cause to acquire knowledge; teach.
- Obsolete To give information to.

In general, study almost always related to school while learn has a bigger scope and deeper meaning. But I put these two in a simpler words. Study = school, Learn = travel You can learn anything from anyone, anywhere and anytime when you’re on the road.

pic: Mark Brannan

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote: To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen – The Fairy Tale of My Life

Well, I have to say thank you to The Amazing Race~ now I know this wonderful quotation

I knew this would come, but all this time I pretend I don’t notice it. Everything will come to an end, eventually. And my current circumstances is no exception.  

Right now, I have two voices in my head. One who wants me to leave everything and start anew and the other one who wants me to stay. Tonight, I have discovered that once I get out from this house, everything will change. Everything that surrounds me now. I won’t be able to feel this kind of feeling anymore,  to see all of my pets whom I consider as my family, or to feel the comfort of home anymore. And I only have a few months left until it happens.

Throughout my life, I’ve lived in a couple of different places. Moving and leaving things behind are something I should have quite mastered now. But for this time, I don’t think I’d be ready to move and leave things behind because when it ends, it ends.

It ends because my mom said, once I get out and go abroad, she will move to a smaller place and live life on her own, while my dad will still be working on board until we don’t know when. And my current house will be open for rent, while all of my pets will *sigh* I don’t know what will my mom do to them.

When I leave, I don’t plan to go back. It’s not that I will go for good but I just don’t know when exactly I will comeback. After taking my diploma, I will work and live there. All I know is when I comeback someday, it won’t be the same anymore. It won’t be the same house I left before, it won’t be the same faces I said goodbye before.

This is the cliché reason why I refuse to do something real now. I just want to stay and be with them as long as I can,  because I know, now is the only time I have with them. I’m crying while making this post.

pic: factoryxii

"Undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man" - Luigi Barzini, The NY Times (1982)

I was just looking around my tumblr and randomly clicked the source of a beautiful Cinque Terre photo and I found a collection of amazing shots of places captured by John and Tina Reid. I was literally jaw dropping when I opened their flickr,  it was too beautiful. Too beautiful that I can’t handle it. The photo above is just one of their amazing works, witness more beauty here. 

They do travel photography but from what they wrote on their website to describe who they really are, “We are sometimes artists, sometimes photographers, sometimes writers, sometimes teachers and sometimes travelers but we mostly see ourselves as a pair of eyes seeing the world in our unique way, using photography to spread our vision”, one thing I know, those are the kind of jobs I would love to have in the future