Minimalism

Alright, I've been wanting to talk about this 2017 resolution of mine for like... ever. But anyway here I am now! Okay so yeah this year I strive to be a minimalist. Not suddenly turning into one but I suppose slowly. Even if I don't become one, I want to implement this lifestyle into mine.

So at first I thought the word "minimalist" is only given to designs. Like you know minimalist house, minimalist clothing and designs. It was only until around last year when I discovered a video on Facebook about how many Japanese and Koreans are implementing this lifestyle. That's when I found out that there's more to just design that minimalism has in offer! And I became super intrigued by it.

What is minimalism you might ask? Well basically, my interpretation of it is that to be happy with you have and not wanting more. And not only that, I think it is also to be able to organise what you have and utilise them to the fullest. Also, minimalism is the art of getting rid of things you don't need.

When I was young, I used to have bombastic and ridiculous "goals" of my dream home. For example, I want it to be 3-story high, I want to have a swimming pool, a hot spring and jacuzzi. And I even want to have my own bowling alley HAHAHA. Too much playing Sims obviously (keyword: motherlode). And I want to own like 5 cars. One sedan car for those nights out, one outdoor car if I'm feeling adventurous, and a normal one for my family and so on. That is so ridiculous haha. 

But yeah basically as I grow older, I got introduced to minimalist house designs (interior and outer) and I fell in love with it. Like I realised why do we need so many things and grandeur houses when all these simplistic houses make me feel happy. I realised that being happy with what you have is the greatest joy we can have. So this was sort of my first "touch" to minimalism. I want less things.

And yup last year I came across that video and I was like wow okay there's more to minimalism! I looked around my room and I was kinda shocked at the amount of things that I have. That's when I started planning what to do and stuff. So the first step for me this year, was to donate my clothes. I emptied my wardrobe and took out all the shirts that I don't want to wear and so on. I gave them away to other people who might need them more than me. My wardrobe is now left with like 10 clothes or so.

When it comes to clothings, I've been carrying out this minimalist habit for years actually. For like 3 years or so here, I only own and wear the same clothes that I have. I will buy one shirt like a year. I have the philosophy that if my clothes are not torn and so on, then I don't need a new one. The same one goes with my bags. I've been using the same ones since I'm back from Singapore.

Next I collected the stuff that I don't need and sell them away. I know this kinda sad but since I rarely do photography now, I sold away my lenses... They are not sold yet though. But yeah, I'm trying to sell them away. I am even planning to sell away my camera but urgh I'm so emotionally attached to it. But of course, I am going to get a new one. But not a DSLR, most probably a mirrorless.

And of course I have re-organised my table as mentioned in my previous post. So yup this goes to my de-cluttering progress. I have a new favourite mantra now and it's called "clutter free".

I am taking this one step at a time of course. I would say that in today's world, it's kinda difficult to become a minimalist because well, we live in such a consumer-driven world. I don't think I'm fit to call myself a minimalist because I still own and desire more things. I'm still reading up on this topic!

But basically, I think minimalism is the art of....

"The less things I own, the happier I will be"

Which is my goal in life basically! Hah. As the years go by, I want my house to be as empty as possible mwahaha. Okay not blatantly empty but well just a clean, very spacious and empty house. I'm now even thinking of getting rid of my bed! I don't even own one actually, I slept on a mattress, that's all. I want to sleep on a futon haha. We'll see how it goes. But yeah I have a picture of my future house and it's gonna be empty hah. I hope to make my room kinda empty too.

Although I feel that some of the concept of minimalism conflicts with my hobby. For example I collect lots of physical records. I think this can be excluded right haha. I know some like "hardcore" minimalist who doesn't want to buy any physical stuff. So for music they listen to Spotify/iTunes, for books they use a kindle and so on. But hmm, I won't stop buying physical records, till we no longer have them.

Okay that's all for this post of mine! Right now I'm still trying to implement this lifestyle slowly. I think the first step will be room and I'm trying to tidy and empty it haha. There are lots of videos about minimalism on YouTube and blog posts on the net. I love to watch them! Alrighty, I hope you are interested in this too. It's gonna take a while but slowly but surely, I'll reach it! See ya soon.

Painting

Sunset - a time where the sky paints our hopes for a better day ahead.

Earthquakes

It's pretty scary with the fact that there were two earthquakes in the past twenty four hours here. The first one was yesterday at 4:47 AM and the second one just now, at about 2 AM. Both were kinda big, well big enough to be felt and for me to jolt out of my seat haha. Last night one was 4.0 in Richter scale. I seriously can't imagine anything bigger than that. Must be terrifying.

Which brings me to one memory where I did experience a huge earthquake once. I think it was when I was in Primary three here. It was during the school holiday and I was watching TV with my siblings at around 9 AM. At first the ground rattled and vibrated and we were both alarmed. And then it became bigger, so big that things started falling off our tables and my desks. Even my dad woke up and ran out.

All of us ran out of our house, including my aunt, grandma and cousin. It was so huge that we could hear the roofs rattling and parts of the zinc-roofs rattling super loudly. The ground shaking and it was just so scary. It lasted for a few seconds but it felt like it lasted for minutes. All we could do was just wait for it to go away. Once stopped, we went back into the house and it was really terrifying.

Back then, that quake was 4.8 on the scale if I'm not wrong. There was no damage thankfully and my hometown was safe. I will never forget that day. One of the scariest day of my life I guess heh. 

I can't really imagine when I hear news about quakes that's bigger than 5.0 on the scale. How terrifying it must be. Earthquakes are pretty scary but they are also a reminder what an active planet we live in. And there's nothing we can do to stop her. The planet is active and alive. And we don't seem to take care of her. Ah well, humans being humans. We forgot we live on a planet sometimes.

That's all for today short segment of a random memory. Be back soon!

Room Tour! (Kind Of)

It's Saturday night now, my usual chill out night! I think it's a good time for me to talk about my new room! Lets do the room tour as promised haha. Okay it's not really "new" because I just add stuff inside it. I really love how it turns out now, even though I was worried that it's gonna be weird haha.

Let's begin with my desk. So before this, there wasn't that extra compartment above. It's just this L-shaped desk. Most of the time my table is always messy because I have my books, my files this and that on top of it. Now I place my books and stuff above on that new compartment! :D And my table is pretty empty most of the time now hehe. It can get messy sometimes though. Oops haha.

I feel that the extra compartment helps a lot. It's not fully utilised now, as you can see there's only like 4 books haha. The small plastic drawer on top is my cables. Chargers, USB and so on.

Beside my table is this new drawer! Before this I used 2 plastic drawers. They are both 4-tiered. However this makes this part of my room very very messy and cluttered heh. This one really hides away the clutter (HAHAHA). Just kidding but it's actually more organised. It serves the same function as the previous plastic ones. Just more organised and also, I have an extra empty space on top of it!

This is the inside of the cupboard. There are a total of 8 compartments and they each serve a different purpose. Like this is my monthly report for the farm and shop. The other side of the compartment is my books and other nick-nacks like hard drive and so on. I haven't really organised everything well though. I still need to move things around to. It looks so much better now heh.

Before there's a desk-lamp, my table is really dark at night heh. So I bought this new lamp to write things. However it is super bright when faced directly onto me. So I actually turned it away and used the wood to reflect and spread the light around. And it works really well! I'm thinking of covering that wall (with wallpaper) with some white board/cloth. I think the light is going to spread better.

Last but not least, I'm gonna utlise this empty part of the compartment to hang some stuff. Thinking of hanging my headphone here so that it's easy to get it and store it. Also maybe some cables, and reminders and so on. I don't actually have a pen holder. And I wanna make the most hipster pen holder ever - a string stretched across this where I hand my pens at mwahaha. I only have 3 pens anyway.

Yup that's all for my room tour! One of my resolutions for this year is to be as clutter-free as possible. Trying to adapt into this minimalist lifestyle slowly. I was reading articles and watching videos about minimalist designs and habit in your work space, and how it can really improve your mood and productivity. So yeah, I hope I'm stepping into the right direction. Love how my room feels like now!

Okay gonna talk more about this resolution of mine on a separate post. I hope you had a good week and enjoy your Sunday ahead! Man, time flies during weekends seriously heh.

What To do With It

Hello! Okay this is like the continuation of my TIL post at the end of January last last week. It's about happiness and I wanna talk more about it as promised. 

A few days ago, I came up with this thought: 

"Everyone wants happiness, but no one really know what to do with it"

Makes sense? Okay let me ask you a question. When was the last time you feel really really happy? I'm talking about "real" happiness. Not those "short" ones like when you taste a really great food, or when you managed to catch a bus, when you see an old friend, when you watched a funny video or read a funny story. I mean real, genuine happiness. Like when you see something for the first time, when you achieved a goal, when you do something you've always wanted to do, and so on.

For me it's probably the birth of my nephew Stefan last December. Because we've been expecting him for a long time! Haha. To see my sister giving birth to him, and both are safe and healthy, it really makes me happy. It's like a mix of anticipation and relief mixed together. I can't stop looking at him, think about him and so on. But then again, this feeling lingers away after a while.

I feel that happiness is such a weird thing because everyone wants it. They want to be happy, we don't want suffering. Yet I feel that we do so many things that make us unhappy. Things we should avoid doing, we do them. And when unhappiness arrives, we feel miserable, and we crave for more.

So yeah I came up with that thought. What do we do with happiness? Do we just show it to other people, share it with other people? But what do we really, truly do with it? Or do we just feel it and let it go away? Just like our thoughts and other emotions who come and go, like guests.

Perhaps we can never really grasp the happiness that we felt. Like everything in life, it is impermanent in nature. I suppose we just feel its presence and that sense of bliss. I once watched a Buddhist documentary in THIS Buddhist film fest back in 2012 titled Your Mind Is Bigger Than All The Supermarket In The World. It is a conversation between a monk from Sri Lanka and the film maker.

There's a quote which never leaves me behind. The film maker asked him, what is happiness? And his answer is that we feel happy when we, and our mind, get what they want. Unhappiness is the opposite. So yeah, maybe all that we can do with happiness is that sense of bliss to give us "what we want". Which makes sense because we all want it. And we can't do anything with it because it's just a feeling.

So I wonder if we can apply this to other emotions too. Like how we feel angry or disappointed when things don't work out the way we want them to be. We worry when we wait for something to happen. And well, do you realise that we can't really do anything with these emotions.

I suppose this is how we'll be free of suffering, when we are unbound from our emotions.

I know it sounds weird but... Maybe I no longer want happiness. And neither do I need sadness, anger, and so on. I hope that one day I can stop relying on emotions to justify my reality and life. That doesn't mean I will be an emotionless robot. I think we shouldn't be slaves to our emotions and feelings.

This is a really random thought. I hope you enjoy reading my insight! On this weird thing we all want.

Transient

 "Your life is as transient as the autumn clouds" - The Buddha

Yesterday, the father of one of my workers passed away. I'm still trying to fathom the whole situation because we met, I said hi to him, seven hours before he died. I do understand that he had a heart condition and she brought him to my hometown (from her hometown) to get a check up and to also take care and accompany him since he was living alone. Yesterday we sent him to the hospital for the check up and we discovered that there was an inflammation in his valve.

Late into the night, he lost consciousness and then I received the news that he passed away.

Seven hours. It was the time between the last time we met, and the time he left this world.

I wonder within this seven hours, how did he feel? Did he ever know what's coming? I was in deep deep shock when I received the news. It was that short. Life is really really unpredictable and really short. This even last night reminded me of the Buddha's words. Which goes like:

"Your life is as transient as the autumn clouds"

There had been a few occurrences like this that I experienced. I remember a few years back the same thing happened to one of our workers, who also died of a sudden heart attack. Same, I met him in the afternoon, we said hi as usual, the next morning, he's gone forever. There was also a time where my dad's friend, who was still talking and laughing with him at 10 PM, died at 11:30 PM at the same night.

Our existence in this world is really really short, when you think about it. I often wonder on our death bed, how will we feel? Even if we lived such a wonderful and great life, will we still feel that our existence in this world is such a short one? Earth has existed for billions of years and yet the average human life lasts for about 80 years. Compared to the existence of our planet, it is very very short.

Life is as predictable as the weather. We don't and won't really know what's gonna happen next. We hope for the best and embrace tomorrow like it is going to come. What if tomorrow doesn't come for us? The thought that we go to bed each night believing that tomorrow will come again and again is quite an amazing feat of this life. It is faith. It is trust, and hope. It is what keeps us going.

Rest in peace to him.

Upgrade!

Just a random post but I'm finally spinning vinyl on my new turntable, an Audio Technica LP60! You can really tell the difference between this and my previous ION turntable. I kinda regretted buying the ION one. It's an alright turntable but the tonearm always skips and thus the music playing is very skippy. To be honest I wanted to get the LP60 but two years ago it costs 3.2 million rupiah and I was like ouch. So I opted the ION instead. Well, I could have saved up a bit more heh.

Well kids, lessons learned, do your research first hah. But there are not much reviews about ION (negative or positive) so I went ahead to get it haha. It's okay, things happened! Now I'm looking to sell my ION one. Next LP in mind would be the LP120. But that's when I own my own house haha.

Spinning vinyls has been a hobby of mine in the weekends. Although I'm always listening to the same records that I own (depending on my mood). The sound is pretty much better. I'm actually looking for a better speaker. Something that I can use for my vinyl, iPod and CD. I do have a Pioneer receiver and audio player in my house but it's spoilt urgh. So yeah maybe getting a new one for my room.

I've yet to do a "room tour"! Haha. My room is pretty much changed now. More storage and well, it's kinda helping a lot. I now have an "empty" table all the time. Usually it's cluttered with this and that. The new cupboard is really functioning well and I'm very happy with it. I've yet to sort things out though, right now I'm just like putting stuff inside. I gotta sort them out neatly with different compartments for different things. My favourite two-word is now "clutter free". A self reminder for me heh.

Alright gonna enjoy more vinyl. Currently spinning Coldplay's AHFOD :)