Answers

There are some questions, I'll never want to answer

And some questions, I'll never want to know the answer to.

Train

 Mangga Besar station

I just got back from a short trip to Jakarta today, as I got to meet someone with my brother yesterday! I used to love going to Jakarta, since it has everything. But with the recent jams and horrible road conditions, I don't love going to Jakarta and I only go there when I need to go there. But fret not, we have the train now! Like I've blogged last year, the government re-opened the Sukabumi-Bogor route last year. And from Bogor you can take the train to Jakarta, all in all, a 4-hour jam-free journey!

I love taking trains now. They are comfortable, convenient and pretty smooth ride too. My dream for my country is to have all major cities connected with railways, and also small but "significant" cities. Wouldn't it be great if public transport here is improved, and everyone would rather take public transport instead of driving their cars? Less traffic on the road I suppose.

And when I look at the window outside of the train, I realised how much potential my country has, to become better and stronger. I am not losing faith in my country but I am in fact always hopeful. And I always hope I can always be a part of this hope.

Still waiting for the Sukabumi - Bandung route to open though. That'll be awesome!

The Nights by Avicii

Currently addicted to this new song by Avicii. Discovered his other song from the EP "The Days" while listening to the radio while I was driving and oh gosh now I can't stop listening to this song. The Days is a nice song but I prefer this hah. Such meaningful lyric and I just love the beat. The song makes me want to jump and dance around my room while singing on top of my voice.

This song definitely reminds me of my Iceland trip. Because I told myself I don't want to grow old and ask myself "why didn't you go to Iceland while you're young?" Because I know when I grow old...

... when you get older your wild heart will live for younger days...

One day you'll leave this world behind, so live a life you will remember!

Reminiscing

December has always been my favourite month. It's the month that I reminisce the most, not only about the things that happened in the past year, but the things that happened in my life basically. Which is kind of a good thing because I'm finishing a side-project of mine which you're going to find out what soon enough. But at the same time all of these reminiscing is making me real sad too, because of course, I only reminisce the good stuff. And it makes me sad thinking about these happy times.

In the blink of an eye, 2014 is going to pass by us. Another year is ending, and another one is coming. December is a great month to look back too and well... It's been a cool year I suppose. Too early for my 2014 review hah. I've been thinking a lot about this year, the things I've learned, the experiences, the memories and so on. Which is quite overwhelming to do. Perks of being a sentimental person.

Like every other year, it's a bittersweet moment to look back. But a hopeful one to look forward!

Sunshine

It all takes one day of sunshine to make people sick here. Well we believe that if the weather changes really quickly, say it rains today and it becomes hot tomorrow, and it rains again the day after tomorrow, it's a perfect recipe to fall sick. So it was pretty sunny on Monday after a month of rain. And on Tuesday it was just cloudy (and not raining) and today it was drizzling. My dad and I were feeling kinda feverish just now. Perhaps this is the reason why, or maybe we just have an infection.

I spent three years of my life studying biomedical science and one of the "goals" I had before entering this course was to break the beliefs we have here that involve sickness. Like the term "masuk angin", which literally translates to enter wind, or wind entering the stomach, which is a condition when you feel bloated, nauseatic and have headaches etc, usually after you spent some time outside in the wind. I want to know what causes all of these, and I haven't! Should have made it my FYP.

And I'll name it "The Investigation of "Masuk Angin" Syndrome"

I successfully did a study though, to how garlic can cure pimples and boils. Cause here that's what we do, use garlic on pimples and boils to cure it. And we (Kai Xuan, Candy and I) did prove it back in year one in our microbiology group project! So cool. This is a reason why I love science heh.

There are a lot of taboos and beliefs we have here which I'm always interested to investigate. Like how we shouldn't take a shower after exercising (which is what I always do when I was in Singapore), or how we should avoid aircon and winds when we are sweating (another thing I always do). And one of the most unfathomable one is that eating too much eggs will give you boils. I actually did a research on this and came with nothing. I even found a site where it suggests applying egg yolk on boils as remedy.

I often realise how a lot of things are much of a contradiction here and when I was in Singapore.The weird thing is that when I do all of these "taboos" in Singapore, I don't necessarily feel that they are taboos just because I'm not back at home. But when I am back here, I always take these precautions seriously. Because somehow being back at home seems to increase the chance of these situations to really happen by 200%. Perhaps it's the home-cebo effect, I would call it.

Ah well, there are lots of mysteries we have in life.

Goodbye November

 

 The last light of November

2014 where did you go to?

Great Music of November

It's the time of the month again! Didn't really discover lots of music in this month, but there are some music which I really enjoy listening to, or have been waiting for a long time to be released hah.

Alright here goes!

Great music of November:

- Get Away by Chvrches

- Dead Air by Chvrches

- Where You Go I Will Follow by The British Expeditionary Force

- For by Nils Frahm

- No Good In Goodbye by The Script

Get Away is a song by Chvrches which is part of BBC Radio One project called "Radio 1 Rescores: Drive". It premiered on end of October I think, but the song was released in November. The first time I heard the song, I fell in love with it right away! I just love everything about the song; the melody, the beat and the lyrics. I think it suits the movie too. Dead Air is a song from the Mockingjay Soundtrack. I was so happy when they played it in Singapore during their concert!

Where You Go I Will Follow by The British Expeditionary Force and "For" by Nils Frahm are from a free online compilation album from Erased Tapes Record called "Erased Tapes Collection IV". I was listening to Olafur Arnalds' album again when I discovered that slip of paper which comes with a code for the download so yeah, silly me for not realising it comes with the code! Anyway I love the first song for its catchy beat. Somehow the song reminds me a bit like Sin Fang heh. As for the second song, it's a pretty cool song and it somehow reminds me of my days in Iceland. I don't know why.

I just got the time to properly listen to the new Script Album.Well I mean I gave it a listen in the car when I got it but not a proper one hah. Anyway I really love the whole album, especially the song "No Good In Goodbye". I used to think that "Superheroes" is the best song of the album but after discovering No Good in Goodbye... I think this is the best song of the album. The Script is just so great with their lyrics and the lyric of the song just touched my heart in many different ways.

Alright these are the great songs I discovered in this month. Can't believe I've been doing this for this like almost 11 times (since I started this new "habit" in March heh). Well so far 2014 have been a great year of discovering music. And I'm pretty sure 2015 will be a great one too! It's always fun and a great pleasure to discover new music. Some music from my favourite artists and others, from new artists I discovered. Music is something I can't live without, so yep, this journey of discovery will never end for me. Till the day I die hopefully! Life's goal: to have a library of music CDs when I'm old :P

Which brings me to my next point...

I went to HMV when I was in Singapore to look for some new albums, and some old ones. And guess what, they don't have it! When I asked the store assistant he just told me "Oh we don't stock (insert artist name here) here". Okay I know sometimes I listen to bands that are kinda unknown but the bands I was asking for are not really unknown (e.g: First Aid Kit). I think my biggest fear is coming true: that they will no longer stock CD albums in the future. Well okay maybe not in Europe/America/Australia. But HMV is like the only (kinda) complete place where I can find albums. Don't tell me I'll have to travel to Australia to find CDs heh. Or maybe I was just unlucky that they're out of stock.

One of my wishes is to actually open up a music store in my hometown. I want to revive the CD era where people buy CDs of their favourite musicians. I think I'm the only person in my family who still collects CDs. Oh well, I will still collect CDs no matter what. Until one day (which I hope will never arrive) when all musicians decided to turn all of their works to be available only digitally. But I think that will happen in a very very very long time later.

Or I hope it will never happen, ever.