Reinhard Gouw's Journal

I officially ended my relationship with my 2 years old car.

It's an old Honda Jazz 2004.
It was known as Honda Jazz Futurepreneur because of the Futurepreneur sticker I invented and put on the back of it. There are only about 3 or 4 cars in UC with it back then.

Today it's officially gone. And it's gone gone.
It was my first car to drive and sure has thousands of memories in it.

I was graduating from high school when I got it. My dad bought it 2ndhand, as I was just learning to drive then. It's a great decision since I made scratches everywhere in the first few months. So I had this driver who taught me to drive (or re-taught me because I already took a course in middle school and completely blank how to). He only made me practice and accompanied for about a week and...he disappeared. Then I had to survive by myself driving around in the traffic. I wasn't the car-friendly type of guy so it gave me some anxiety but I literally survived.

Then just in weeks I started to love driving, picked up faraway friends, drove to Cali, and things and of course in the first few months, I bumped my cars here and there. Good thing it was in insurance so it's quite worry-free. I remembered making a woman on bike fell, hitting someone's car when trying to get out from parking, back-bumped someone's car while playing with my phone, thousand times getting on top of sidewalk, slicing the plates of rims. Such a horrible driver, eh? haha yes I hurt my car a real lot back then.
Not only that, I also seldom paid attention of its maintenance, hygiene. I even pissed myself in it twice. HAHAHA now you got me. I take this confession of shameful things I've done so that my car would go in peace. HMM.

Despite all the horrible things that me and my car had experienced, it's filled with great memories. Like I can drive anywhere, like I can carry my things...........uhhh forget it. Not only these clearly obvious things, but other explainable things. It has took me and watched me on my 2 years journey since I entered college. It even knows my stories and secrets since I sometimes talked to myself in it (peculiar, I know) and some of them happened inside it. Well I hope it won't tell to anyone. Believe me, it also made the lightings in some area in Citraland happen where before my car dropped by, it was pitch dark. How? Not a sharable story. haha. My car is a legend.

Seeing that car walk away just saddened me just a little. Is it proper to fall in love with your car? I don't wanna know.

Thank you Jazz Futurepreneur for your heroic 2 years journey with this sinful psychopath. Love you and gonna miss you to the moon&back. don't share my secrets to anyone please.
I promise I will treat your replacement a lot better.
May you go in peace.
 
Yes, this post was a tribute to my car so don't blame the unimportant-to-you things. haha
No real wise lessons. Oh maybe just
Love your car before it's too late. (?)

It's a good day to be grateful.



Some things in my life turned around.

Last year I chose a path that I've been avoiding in the previous three years of my life. I made decisions that disappointed many people, including myself. Things in life started to change. Because of my anger, perfection, ego, and some ultimate choice. As I walked in that path, the thorns and bushes started appearing, left and right, it made me want to run and just screw all the riots. I didn't realize that as I ran faster, the thorns pops and hurts even more. Just near the end of the year, I stopped to realize that I left scars everywhere.

I started to learn that running and just punching bags was awful. I thought to myself, what if I try to walk slower? I never denied that this is not the best path for me. But I've been forgetting all along that it's still a part of my journey. I don't want to stand further in front, then look back just to say "what was that?" I want every road to meaningful. I want to be here.

As this year started, life started throwing lessons about mindfulness for me, through movie, through other things, and many things that I believe are incoming.
Mindfulness is about being here. Just being here. Right here, right now. With this laptop in front of me, with this 20:55 clock on 25th January 2014. The one I love is still with me, I lay on my bed in a house that I'm living in with my mom who is downstairs, my dad and sister that aren't home yet, and even my dog named Vodka who is alive and naughty as ever. I have good friends who I just had a good time with and they're there for me. I'm still in my favorite campus that is starting again soon. No worries about the next neither the previous time. No fast forwards. Who knows if those details change tomorrow, or the day after, or the month, year after; but it's definitely here right now and I should enjoy it before that happens. Because the only thing constant in life is change, and we can only do best by enjoying all the positive details that are inside the bucket right now.

this long speech of myself,
and
Today, I realize that changes happened. It brought positives in the bucket more than ever. Some speed bumps that's been worrying every now and then is slowly fading. Scars are starting to get mended. As you try to close your eyes to the negative and just slowly feel the beautiful details of your life in your skin, your eyes, your mind, and that feeling of the air flowing in and out of your nose. Just, wow. Life's beautiful and you're alive.

Let life forces try and take you down: people hating you, bad conditions, even your own bad thoughts, but always believe that there are always other positive forces you can latch onto. Once you do, life will seem better. Happiness is always a choice.

Just, God, serenity, thank you for coming down to this human who still makes bad decisions about life. I never deserved this but, thank you. I'm grateful for this day.



What can you be grateful for right now?

I just watched the movie About Time (2013) starring Dohmnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams. It was recommended by my sister as she told me it has good life lessons and made her cry and things. So I searched for the DVD for a long time and I just got it today, and straightly watching it when I got home.




Beware of spoilers!

The movie was about a guy named Tim who could travel back in time, as the men in his family line does. He used his ability to fix things that went wrong, or just slightly not perfect for him. He was doing it until 2 major events happened in his life.

First was his sister's accident. She was fighting with her guy and then got into a car crash. Tim went back in time with her sister to his teenage and make her get a better guy. It was a success attempt that her sister got a good guy (Jay, Tim's bestfriend) and evaded the accident, but when Tim got home, he saw that his little daughter was then a boy. His father, who inherited the same ability, told him that after having a son, a reckless change in the period before can change the time of making love, so that the sperm would be different and thus the baby would be different. So Tim decided to undo it to get her daughter back. Then, Tim learned that some things in life should not be changed. So Tim persuaded her sister to get a new boyfriend and mentioned Jay. From there things worked out for her sister just as it should be.

The second was his father's death. After Tim had his 2nd child, his father's cancer was getting worse. Tim told his father to repair that but it was his father's smoking habit since the time he hadn't met Tim's mother. He also said that a sexy smoker is her mother's attraction, so he couldn't possibly change that. Then Tim was accepting his father's death. Even on the day of the funeral, he's still able to come back to the past and spend time talking to him. Just some time after, her wife asked if they would have a 3rd baby for good reasons for the others. Tim was caught into a heavy contemplation because if he decided to have the baby, he wouldn't be able to return back and meet his past father ever again. It was a short moment until Tim said yes. And just before her wife gave birth, he returned to a quality time of him and his father and said to him that it's a goodbye. He kissed his father and his father took him to a memorable childhood day. They enjoyed their last moments together and Tim let him go.


At the end of the movie, Tim stopped using time travel and learned a valuable life lesson about time:

"We’re all traveling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride".

We can't travel back in time. We can't fix things to make the present better. We can't evade someone precious' death and enjoy more time with them. We don't know how much time we have left doing what we've been able to do, with the people we love. And yet we still spend our time worrying about unnecessary things that it blocked the present; our senses, our feelings, everything. We missed all the small details that we can enjoy.

"Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum".



When we get in a fight with someone we love and let the anger, the irrational thoughts take over; we forgot that we don't know how much time left we have with them. Can you imagine fighting everyday with your brother/sister/mom/dad/girlfriend/boyfriend/best friend, and 10 years from now how would you see that. I imagined living apart from my family when I have my own, and with this stinky attitude of mine I wouldn't be too satisfied about my past. Maybe we're not mature enough to see through that but we're back to the fact that time changes us. We don't really know if we'd just forget those moments or demand those moments back. Back to the quotes above.

What about you?


I hope you watch the movie as well because it's a valuable 2 hours to upgrade someone's life.

Howdy! How's your new year going? I hope it's been a good start!
So I spent my 00:00 playing fireworks and photographs in my Batu house. And this is a snap of it:

Captured with slow shutter by tedjomichael (IG)

Don't you feel that new year holiday is always the time when your out-of-town friends are back in town and therefore means let's-hangout(s)? Mine are back; the Malaysian, the made-in-the-US, the Jakartan, and another Jakartan. And they are up for paybacks for missing the now-hot places in Surabaya. It clearly cancels my "save money" mission again and again, but quality time always worth spending!

With Malaysian girl, Nella.

With the made-in-the-US, Virgin.

The Jakartan girl 2nd from right, Devina.

Suddenly I'm missing college. Those schedule arrangements, writing notes, walking in the middle of another sok-study youths, even picking up boring clothes to wear that day. Wow! I miss it a lot. A too-long holiday isn't always nice. There's a part of me that loves being busy. That's normal, right? I admit that I was too sucked up in love and hangout things in the previous semester that my GPA lowered. Well I'm clearly paying myself back this semester.

I found 2 phenomenons in Instagram that is quite interesting. Here they are:

1) I follow you follow back if you don't then I unfollow
Some IGers are following people to get followed back, and if they don't they'll cancel the follow. C'mon, it's 2014 already. Following people means you're interested in their posts. So if you think someone's post is not really interesting (yes, I softened the words) for you, well you don't have to follow. People have their own interests, so not following shouldn't be a social crime, should it? Not following someone doesn't always mean you don't like them. To be honest, I'm not the follow-for-follow kind of guy, even to my best friends. And I still love my friends in daily life. Friendship isn't defined by social media mutuals, right? (Now I bet I get unfollowers in secs..)

2) Girl go you pretty you prettier
When a girl take a selfie and post it, some other girls will comment like "pretty siss <3" or "uayuu ceee" and the poster will reply like "you prettier :*:*" or "kamu ya ayuuu ;))". I find this in almost every of my girl friends' Instagram. I never find "thank you emang aku pretty :)" atau "iyaa not like you ;)". We guys are like, harus tah? What if you think the other girl is not as pretty? Well what if I post a selfie and someone says "handsome bro" and I reply "you more handsome :)"? Don't even think about it. It's kinda gross.

What do you think?

I hope you have a great year ahead!
Good luck!