Deluded

By chance i caught the show called 'Helter Skelter'. It's about the gruesome acts of a man who managed to collect a group of people who somehow thought that he was God and all of them lived in a commune in a ranch, sharing everything. They would go into a person's home and brutally murder everyone in the house. Including a pregnant lady and an elderly couple. And they thought they did not do anything wrong.

That's their reality.

Reality could be so warped sometimes.

My time in Bali (I)

It was the most amazing time, the six days spent in Bali.

The weeks leading to it were hard. Between work and coordinating the itinerary between three other companions were tough. Considering that all of us were situated in different locales.

The morning we were flying off, I was a bit apprehensive abt the connecting flights. Would we make it catch the flight to Bali? I would then console myself by saying that we would be catching the early morning flight out of Penang and early morning flights are typically on time, if not early. And we already have ample time between flights.

Anyway, all the flights were smooth, other than a little delay of the Bali flight.

We got into Bali and met our guide, Ketut, & driver. And checked into our first hotel. The Pura Dewata at Seminyak. Ketut turned out to be a fun and flexible guide. He took us for a spin around Seminyak. Stopped at the memorial area at Legian where we had a little time to shop a bit and took some photos. Then proceed to Jimbaran Bay for sunset and BBQ dinner by the beach. The sunset was typical but the dinner was good. The mussels were to die for. After the food arrived, we kinda forgot about the sunset! It was a good, good start for a first day.

Second day started with a blast. We had breakfast at the hotel and met Mr Chee,Katherine & LeeMin! In Bali of all places! I was supposed to join Mr Chee and the gang for dinner just a few days before but I couldn't make it due to work... And I met him in Bali! Anyway, we proceed to Sukarwati and Ubud area for shopping, and onwards to Mount Batur.

Sukarwati was fabulous. This is indeed the place to go to for shopping and the time to go is early morning to get all the best deals! Tegalalang is a good place to shop for carvings! And the paddy terraces were nice too! ALthough if you have been to Vietnam, this is a mini terrace. But the concept of proper dining by the terraces is indeed interesting. I doubt the hygiene though.

We had the babi guling at the famous place in Ubud, Oka Kartini... It wasn't that good.

The rain came down heavily at Tegalalang shortenned our shopping spree. Actually, it was terminated before we managed to buy anything.

The road to the mountaineous area has tremendously amazing sights. The hotel, Hotel Segara, turned out to be rather nice. and cosy. The dinner at the hotel happened to be one of the best meals we had in the whole trip. The fried maggi was incredible.

The end of the 2nd day... All still good (other than the heavy rain in the afternoon).

Amazing and Blessed

Saturday was a good day for me. It was good reconnecting with some friends. It was good being a spiritual day. It was good being in the presence of really sincere and wholesome people. It was good being in the presence of people who only wants the best to happen. It was good to be the catalyst that put the factors together to get all those people to get together. It was good to have family and friends who helped get the event in shape.

The house dana turned out amazing. I had worries aplenty before the event. Would there be enough food? enough plates? enough utensils? enough cups? enough room? Would I get the events to go smoothly? Would everyone come? Would they be on time? Would they have a place to park their cars? Find my place? All in all, everything went smoothly. The number of people who turned out was just nice to fill my house but not too many that it was crowded and uncomfortable. The kids tended to get rowdy but I thought it was not too bad. At the very least, they were entertaining.

I think everyone got a dose of spirituality and hopefully left, after the talk, with a sense of what would be good to do to make their lives happier. I am very glad that Bhante agreed to grace this event and gave a thought-provoking talk. The responses he gave to the questions raised were really impressive. They really gave some points to ponder without being patronizing. I felt that he has really progressed exponentially since I last attended lessons with him. He really has a way of presenting his views in a way that is subtle but halfway through hit us with the realization that 'omg! that's it! that's so true! that might just be the way!'.

What a day!

Meeting old friends

Met an old friend who has gone on to live a really good life. A friend who had been a part of my growing up stage. Who had gone through uni together. Who had gone through some life changing courses together. Who had been and I'm sure still is a very giving, and wise person.

But now that his status has changed, I find that I felt awkward. The status as in, I'm a layperson, he is a venerated person. I'm happy that he is liberated, atleast from the more worldly stuff. I'm happy that he has gone beyond the typical paradigm of life. Just that, I now can't call him by his name. And I felt that I have to be more mindful of my speech. I can't just blurt out anything.

Anyway, it's all me. My issues. I just need to work them out. And working them out will only do me a whole world of good.

Blessings

I have been going through things that I have in life and seeing all the blessings I have. Wondering if I appreciated them enough, or I was taking them for granted, unconsciously. Wondering if in trying to keep my appreciation, I was happy doing those things. It's such a tough balance trying to keep things in perspective. Keeping people who matters in my life happy and keeping myself happy in the process.

Then, to me a simple life should be happy, but it's an effort to keep life simple. We had a whole life of conditioning of acquiring things and possessing things and this and that, that keeping a minimalistic style is an effort.

Just work...

My life has been work for the past couple of weeks. Hence, no blogging. To compound all things, my notebook crashed last weekend. Or rather, it was before that even.

Balance and Fairness of this Girl-Boy (Woman-Man) Thing

This is my analysis (I can't help it, analyzing things is what I do) on this whole dating and relationship stuff.

It seems the balance of relationship is always not on the side of the person who feels more (more often than not, it's the women). At first, it had been whirling in my mind for a while that the man always seems to have the upper hand. Then, when I looked around, I do have man-friends who are as equally as powerless in this thing we called 'relationship'. So, I guess in my previous relationships, I had been the one who had more vested (atleast emotionally) in the whole thing. But I believe in the beginning, it had been more on the side of the guys since they had to do the chasing, ehm, the courting, or whatever ppl wants to label it, and what a chase it was. So much energy and time and resources were invested by the guys to convince the gals that this is what they wanted. It was fun, I'm assuming on both parties had fun, else it wouldn't have ran its course to a full bloom relationship.

Then, came the 'talk'. It could be difficult or as easy as, 'I'm feeling really good about this, are you ok with me?'. Haha! Ofcourse, the easiness or difficulty of it all was all in my mind, since, I'm the one who put the label. It's only difficult if I had to be the one to bring the topic up.

As the relationship progressed, somehow the balance of power changed sides. Sigh!

That's my two-cents for now.