What Would Jesus Do?

It is ironic for me to say, that most Christians these days act exactly like the way the Pharisees did to Jesus Christ when He was still alive. They mocked and judged him, plotted against him and in the end punished him to death. They were the self-righteous bunch who thought their religion was above everything else, and anyone who dared not following should be abandoned and left forsaken. Cast away, like outcasts.

Do you think this is untrue?

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Part Two: The Micro-teaching

After the interview, I was booked to prepare a thorough but need-not-to-be-too-extensive micro-teaching demo for a class of thirty students, and I had a week to do so. Preliminary, I was given a specified topic as to what I’d be teaching about and mine was about taking orders from guests in a five-star restaurant environment.

Initially, I was told that my teaching duration would take about one and a half hour, and I was expected to write a lesson plan of how the students would learn the topic effectively. Powerpoint presentation was a must, as well as some internet research, but I was told not to get too overwhelmed because the students and the academic director as well as the senior teacher would understand that I wasn’t familiar with the company’s procedure in serving their guests. On the other hand, they wanted to see how my teaching would be effective to the students.

So during that whole week I surfed the net and looked for instructions, information, details and processes on waiting tables and taking orders.

You’d think that taking a guest’s order would be easy. Wrong. There were so many steps that in the end even I felt that if I were the student, I’d definitely feel quite frightened to know that it wasn’t as simple as it looked.

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Part One: The Interview

Being unemployed sucked. And it sucked even more when realising that doing freelancing job wasn’t enough to support the kind of lifestyle I had. After being unemployed and trying to do make it out there as a freelancer, I finally realised that I – expectedly enough – was not an enterpreneur-type of person.

So I tried to get back into the employment line.

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My Dream Destination

As a person who loves to dream about exotic places, I often browse the net just to look for beautiful pictures from all over the world. But there are no other images that I love the most than those of Santorini in Greece.

The first time I saw one of the photographs at TrekEarth capturing the white little houses that scattered all over the island which had the expansive view  of the Aegean sea in contrasting bright white and navy blue, I couldn’t help but thinking how it’d feel like to really be there.

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Weltschmerz

Sometimes I wish I could just escape – just fuck off to some remote area where I could make a significant difference to the world. Teach the children in the jungle, conserve endangered species, be a tree-hugger – whatever.

I need a purpose for my life, and right now I feel like I’m going nowhere, and yet my mind is everywhere, thanks to the technology called television which enables me to waste about 60% of my time getting in touch with the world.

And what I find is not to my liking.

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The Journey to Cisayong

Remember how last week I was writing about the beauty of Cisayong? Well that was only the jist of it.  The previous post was dedicated especially to Ecky and Sam, so this post will talk more about what we did in Tasikmalaya. ‘We’, as in Elyani, Parvita, Toni, Yefta and me.

Deciding on transportation was a bit of a fickle but once we were set, we were ready to go. Parvita agreed to ride with us in our tiny green Karimun Estilo all the way to Tasik, and Yefta agreed to drive. I told him earlier on that I’d gladly take turns with him but of course, he’d have none of it.

When we’re about to leave, and I was literally getting on the car, one thing crossed my mind and all of a sudden I freaked out; the cupcakes! Yes, Anita had ordered 53 cupcakes with messages on each especially for Ecky and she asked me to bring it to Ecky’s wedding, and they were supposed to be delivered at 8 in the morning, but we were about to leave at 9 and the cupcakes were nowhere to be seen! I seriously don’t want to imagine what would happen if I didn’t remember about the cupcakes. In the end we had to drop by at the bakery to pick them up, adjust them a little so that they won’t slide around in the back (there will be some crazy, sharp turns as we got nearer to Tasik, that was what I’d been told by Ecky)….

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The Beauty of Cisayong

“How great was the power of God Almighty that He was able to destine Ecky  from Cisayong, Indonesia, with Sam who came all the way from Australia to meet and spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife.”

It was what the MC of Sam and Ecky’s wedding had said before they got officially married, and I agreed wholeheartedly. Looking at Cisayong and all its terrace padi fields, the fish ponds and the small roads where some parts were not even touched by electricity, I couldn’t help but think whether it had ever crossed the mind of Ecky’s mother – who had spent her life in the very village that I was standing in – that  her daughter would end up marrying someone from a country that is a thousand miles away from Indonesia.

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MUI Wags the Dog’s Tail Once Again!

I have to hand it to the Majelis Ulama Indonesia aka the Indonesian Ulema Council – these guys really know how to make Indonesians sound even more stupid than we already have. First, they made a fuss about Yoga and decided to ban the sport since it had the “Om” chanting which they said, referred to the religious ritual of the Hindus. And then they changed their mind. And then they were revising the ban and decided to go ahead with it. The irony of this whole thing was that almost none of Yoga practitioners in Indonesia actually ever chanted anything during their Yoga activities. I don’t doubt it, since it would be very hard trying to maintain a Matsyasana position while breathing in and out with rythym and trying to go “Ommm..” with any breath that is left from your lungs.

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