Work-a-holic!


workaholic |ˌwərkəˈhôlik; -ˈhälik|
  {noun, informal}
a person who compulsively works hard and long hours.

C’est moi. Ese soy yo. đó là tôi. That’s me.


I don’t know how it started; what caused this characteristic to grow on me and grow up with me. Was it the effect of having a Working Mom? (Just FYI, I love the fact that my Mom is one and I’ve never felt abandoned contrary to popular beliefs). Or maybe because I have always been raised to over-achieve?  (Another FYI, I also love being raised that way, again, contrary to popular beliefs). Or what?

I work better when it’s crowded, when I’m in the middle of a crowd, amongst other busy people, in a busy ambience – I just do. Once, I went to TRS Diner at Cilandak Town Square, to work on a presentation for a Training Session I’m giving to my Juniors in the Organization I’m in: BSO Band. The setting of a Diner is just the perfect amount of ‘crowdedness’ it takes for me to concentrate.

Then, I thought of these facts: I’m a Uni Student, 19y.0, I’m on a Weekend, outside of my house, and no I’m not hanging out, I’m doing a task that is not even mandatory by my Uni or something. I’m doing a task I chose to be responsible for because I wanted to. An extracurricular task, if you will.

That sounded ordinary? Haha! Well, it would be if that was the only extracurricular thing I took around that time. It was early 2012, I was handling 1 organization and 3 on-going events. But in 2011, I was in 2 Organizations, handled approx. 8 Events, and yes I’m still a Student. Imagine that. And yes, 2011 was the best year of my life to date.
It was the best year of Ardelia Apti’s life.

I’ve never been more tired, sleep-less, troubled, more pissed-off on people, but heck, I’ve never been more alive.

Having work, a lot of work, is what keeps me sane. It always have, it always will. To keep thinking, moving, multitasking is what keeps me grounded, is home to me, is what normality is to me.

To have my brain occupied, to have my heart filled with so much disappointment but then with so much joy, to always be close to what passion is, to what I’m passionate about, is what I live for. Why do less when you can do more? Why settle for one kind of happiness when you can achieve so much more?

To work is to see how you can do, change, how you can create something for yourself and for everyone else. To work wholeheartedly is to be able to produce happiness out of your own efforts. To work flawlessly is to do something, to hold on to something, that no one can take away from you.

It’s you, it’s your work, and it’s only yours.

What’s so hard about working when working itself is your passion?

To people that say being a workaholic, or to work all the time, makes you life-less, makes you a robot, I say they just have not found their reason. They just have not found the beauty of work. They just have not found who they are and how great they can be in their work. With their work.

I am a proud workaholic. Yes. I am.

Small talk about Eco Fashion




          It has been a year since I had chit chat together with Dimas, my old friend, at Starbucks FX. At that time, we talked a lot about everything; love-life, our activities, and fashion thingy (this is actually the topic that he is interested in). He was really good at making me laugh even when we disscussed about serious thing. Hahaha. Other people at this coffee shop might think we were a couple since we looked enjoy the conversation very much. How could we not enjoy it after we hadn't  seen each other for a long time?
         
         What I still remember is his happy face when he told me about his job (he was a junior journalist in one of local fashion magazines in Jakarta). He said that he really loved the job because he often had a chance to meet awesome people.  
           
            The most interesting part of our conversation was once Dimas told me about eco fashion issue. Since It was a new thing for me at that time, I was so curious to listen every little thing he said about the issue.
          
          At first, he told me what the eco fashion movement is. According to him,  new era of eco fashion has been rising lately. He described how everyone seemed to be going green in fashion, from famous celebrities to ordinary people (Yeah I agree with him as I can see many fashion magazines talking about why we should be 'green'). He also said more and more consumers taking into account the enviroment when buying fashion products. They start considering not only about free chemical usage in fabric, but also the welfare of labors who produce what they wear. So, he told me that eco fashion is now defined more widely, not limited to enviroment problems.

            Moreover, Dimas said many world designers, including the ones in Indonesia, also began to take a stand for eco fashion. They support eco fashion movement through the use of organic and sustainable fabrics. Also, they put more concern on fair trade practices. Dimas mentioned Giorgi Armani and Gucci, the renowned brands, who have promoted the movement.Then, Dimas excitedly talked about Auguste Soesastro, an Indonesian designer who supports eco fashion, at Jakarta fashion week 2012.  He said that Auguste soesastro should be an inspiration to other Indonesian designers. He told me a lot how he liked Auguste's works.

           Our afternoon conversation suddenly ended by Dimas recieving call from someone which asked him to go back to his office. He looked a bit sad as he still wanted to say more about his interest in fashion.

 
        
 Sadly, this year I haven't had a chance to meet him because he now stays in Italy to continue his study :(




The Good Old Days



I was on my way to go to Fatmawati Hospital to do observation for my social research class, then I got message from my friend telling me not to go because one of our group’s friends couldn’t make it. Therefore, I drove all the way to TIS ( Tebet Indraya Square) to finish my other assignments. Yes, I was not having a good week since I’d had too many assignments during that very week. Planning on doing assignments plus having early dinner, I chose Marengo to spend my evening all by myself. Marengo has always been my favorite Balinese restaurant! I love love love their nasi campur vegetarian. Anyways, I wanted to try something else, other than nasi campur vegetarian, so I ordered urap bali and nasi kuning. While waiting for my food to come, I did my assignments one by one and started googling for some inspirations :p . My food came even though I hadn’t even done writing one single paragraph; then I ate my food before it became cold.  For those of you who don’t know what urap bali, it is boiled veggies such as spinach, long peas, cabbage and bean sprout, with Balinese spices. I had never ordered urap bali at Marengo before and when I tried it was good, but not as good as their nasi campur vegetarian. The urap Bali came in a quite big plate; if you order this food, you could share it with your friend. After eating half of the plate, I got back on my laptop to continue doing my assignments. I must tell you that I am waaaaay too easy to get distracted. In this case, I was looking at itunes icon on my desktop then I was tempted to listen to music for refreshment. I was searching the right music for my mood on that day; I scrolled the cursor up and down, up and down. Suddenly, it was like enlightenment, I wanted to play the libertines. I said to myself, “ oh how much I’ve missed this band!”. Digging their very first album, up the bracket, then played the entire track lists off this album. My mind got swayed from the libertines’ music; I was swiftly picturing this band when they were still together and when the first time I swore that I would love this band forever.

            I could proudly say that the libertines is one of a few bands which only have two albums but they’ve been influencing lots of bands now and then. Peter Doherty as the frontman and Carl Barat as the guitarist and also vocalist had something that is indescribable; they had somewhat an affair and they even confessed that their relationship was “ not too different from falling in love”. I personally love watching them together on the stage getting intimate and not afraid to show their love for each other. Okay, back on their songs, I was still glancing on my laptop screen and then hit forward button to the good old days. I was like, okay this song represents what I’ve been thinking about the libertines’ past. The. Good. Old. Days.
            Yes this is a cliché saying, but it fits the libertines and I’m sure it also fits everyone. Everyone has their good ol’ days; the days they don’t want to exchange with anything or the days they love to reminiscence when they’re daydreaming. I guess my good old days would be the days when I was on kindergarten. Why? The answer is simple, I didn’t have to do any assignments or catch up with deadlines. Life was oh-so-simple back then.  My life right now is pretty much like I’ve been chased by deadlines from day to day. Yeah I know my life is like every other university student, we’re struggling with our classes. The good old days, this title provokes everybody to stop thinking about their lives’ problems and take a look back on their lives when everything was good and on the right track.  Listening to this song could make me smile from ear to ear remembering the good ol’ days.
            Repeating this song on and on, then got back on doing my assignment plus finishing my dinner. I did love my nasi kuning, though as I told you before, my urap bali was just okay. Oh, I forgot to tell you another reason why I love Marengo; this place has wooden chairs and I love the ambience! It is not really a loud place, so it is nice if you want to eat Balinese food and also do your homework. The price is average from below Rp. 10,000 – below Rp. 100.000. 

“And it chars my heart to always hear you calling
Calling for the good old days
“ – The Libertines
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