2010

Every year in my life, I managed to surprise myself by pushing my boundaries, conquer my fears, and be a better version of myself. In other words – “keeping my life interesting and worth living for!!!”

For me 2010 is the year of personal adjustment and intensive traveling. Well, I’ve never traveled so much in my entire life, like I did this year. In total I visited 12 places within the country either for work or leisure, such as: Tanjung Puting (Central Kalimantan), Cisarua (West Java), Bangka (Babel), Bromo (East Java), Medan (North Sumatera), Bali, Komodo Island (NTT), Yogyakarta (DIY), Lombok (NTB), Timika (Papua), Bandung (West Java) and Macan Island (one of the island in a thousand islands). And 2 countries outside of Indonesia, such as: Laos and Myanmar!

During my travel I met a lot of interesting people that in a real life I may not have opportunity to meet or even to engage with them. I also gained “inside knowledge” about the people, places or the countries that I visited and enjoying the beautiful-gorgeous-breathtaking scenery, right in front of my bare eyes just like the picture perfect in the travel magazine… OMG!!!

Although I’m not religious person – to be able to witness such exquisite beauty and the fact that I’m just a tiny part of the universe, it made me feels grateful and appreciates the life existence of God’s creation and I love Indonesia even more!!! VIVA INDONESIA!!!!

Of course 14 travels in a year could be overwhelmed experiences especially when I was juggling between work, relationship, my disease and personal adjustment living in the big city, like Jakarta! But it was possible … as long as you committed on it=)

In term of my personal adjustment living in the big city like Jakarta: I’ve to say I’m doing fine, means I know my way around the city (please bear in mind that Jakarta is huge place, so if I said I know my way around the city – it’s only related to South and Central of Jakarta, far from that I’m still lost =).

Finding “the right cycle of friends” that shares the same wild-craziness ideas and passion of life also helps me well-adjust to the city life. Even thought in the process of searching “the right cycle of friends”, I lost couple friend but I gained more friends in the end … What can I say; it’s a process of natural selection =)

If I may concluded my greatest accomplishment in adapting to big city life is that I managed to find a right compromise of the life that I love with the city that I lived in without haveto sacrifice my personal lifestyle and turned into the typical "big city lifestyle". Which I’ve noticed that most of them have tendency to lose their interest to explore the life beyond their box and that makes their life become more predictable. Hey, I only live once and being predictable is not in my life dictionary!!

Conquer my fears … For almost 2 years I lived with strange disease. It was started back in 2008 at my last day worked in Aceh and it keeps coming back ever since. Frequently out of the blue I got swollen left eye in my upper eyelid and it looks like someone beat me up.

Well, I tried to seek for professional treatment from several doctor but somehow none of them came up with accurate diagnose. That makes me gave up and tried my best to ignore it even though it was quite irritated me.

Until 4 months ago, I begin took it seriously when the Dr. said;”based on my CT scan result that I might got either inflammatory, mixed tumor or lymphoma”. The fact that none of these choices were better option, it scared the hell out of me! However I still managed to put everything in positive perspective and keep on searching for the right treatment.

In the end I just found out that I'm born with Atopy disease. Atopy disease is a genetic disease characterized by a tendency to be “hyper-allergic or hyper-sensitive” over certain substances. The irony part was I’m not even a sensitive person to begin with!! hehehehe....

The great part of my disease that the trigger could be anything, from: foods, dust, stress or the rapid changing of weather temperature - basically if my immune system was low the disease will appears.

Somehow I’m kind of think that my disease is like a blessing in disguise… Now I have a good reason to excuse myself over bad food, bad weather, or maybe bad man or people that I don’t like since I’m hyper-allergic =) …. So far there’s no cure for it, however according to the Dr. the person with Atopy disease could live longer by being more conscious with their body reaction.

The fact that I got this disease didn’t stop me from having a good time and traveling =)

Well, in general I’m quite satisfied with the whole year event was turned up in 2010 – I learn a lot and discovered so many things about myself =)

At the moment I’m still enjoying my unpaid holiday (in between contract) after my last contract was finished with OCSP (Orangutan Conservation Services Program). What is next for me? AMAZING RACE ASIA… I would love to be part of that race!!! …

Anyway guys,...

Keep on surprising yourself because you do not know the good things that you will gain out of it!!!! And try to live your life outside your box even so just throw the box away!!! (Quote from Mel Cee)

Once again thank you for your presence in my life and made my life becomes more colorful!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and enjoy your New Year Eve!!!....