Quick Summer Update: Asia & Raft Accident

So a lot has happened since the last time I wrote in this blog... a whole lot. I find myself back in the United States... only working towards going back to Asia. I came back to the USA and met Mike. Who is Mike? He is my boyfriend of a total of five months so far and we have already had tons of good times together.
After we decided to commit to an exclusive relationship we went to visit my father in Asia. Mike intended to ask my father for my hand in marriage. It was done and accepted. My father paid for us to take a trip to Bali and also ensured that we had lovely wedding portraits for when we have our wedding in the states. It was a great trip and I was very excited for Mike to meet my father and see where I had been living for the last year. He also got to meet my extended family in Asia as well as my siblings. I think what shocked Mike the most was the traffic in Jakarta. Many people living in poverty ask for money by walking through traffic begging. There is also many cars that struggle to just find room on the highway.



A few weeks back we were in a rafting accident and I swore the man was dead. It was about nine of us on the raft going down the Sacramento river. I had drank a few cups of wine so I was relatively relaxed on the river. The current got stronger during one point and the rafts thrashed around quite a bit and a small BBQ pit landed on my lap. While struggling to get it off of me I was thrown into the river. I desperately struggled to get back onto my raft, and luckily I succeeded. It was a mellow cruise from there until we hit even harder rapids. The problem was that we had used a rope to link about 6-7 cheap rafts together, so the entire thing was very unstable. As the rapids got harder, we drew closer to this island in the middle of the river. Tree branches rose from the water, ripping at the rafts. The strong current along with the strong rapids threw our rafts into the island. I heard Mike yell and I looked back and he was thrown from his doughnut. The rest of the crew landed safe and we worked to pull ourselves onto the island. Mike was still no where and sight and due to the condition of the waters, we grew concerned. I remember looking across the water and sizing it up to see if I could possibly swim across and get help. I knew I would not make it and no one else was willing to put their lives at risk either. So it looked like we would just stay there until the rangers found us and got us help. Being that it was summer we were lucky enough to get sighted. Myself and Brittany were pretty much in tears for fear that Mike was in danger. Well it turned out we were resuced and there was approximately 4 news crews there to see us and film the incident. They made me look like an idiot on Television. The story showed the newscaster telling me "You are NOT going to win this arguement!" I was stunned because I had no idea what he was talking about but it looked like he was implying we were in some sort of debate before the cameras came on.
Mike was actually rescued before we were. He swam to shore but on the opposite side of where he needed to be. Overall, we ended up being okay. Least now we know even the adults need life jackets. Unfortunately, the next day a man who was trying to get his horse to cross the water ended up dying in the same area....

Extra Terrestrial Possibilities

I logged onto the Internet today and found an interesting article. Unfortunately I can't share anything about it because I am having difficulty relocating it. Anyway basically they found that another Galaxy much resembled our own Milky Way the way it had looked millions of years ago. Wish I could give you an exact estimate but again, I can't relocate that article. I also saw an article stating that there has been 1,000 UFO sightings reported in the USA this year alone. Unbelievable.

There has been other countries pressuring the USA to release and address information about their findings on international television. Other nations seem like they're ready, they're just waiting on us. So why would be holding back on information like this? If you ask me because they don't want to send the human population into total chaos. Also I think the USA probably has a lot of access to extra terrestrial technology that they haven't yet figured out and don't want it released to other countries, just in case they are able to figure it out first. Of course this would be like handing a lap top computer with full Internet access to Thomas Edison.

Take the Roswell incident for example. In 1947 there was an aircraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico USA. By standers and many eye witness claim to have seen an alien aircraft and the bodies of alien life forms both remains and living forms emerge from the craft after the crash. The USA government rushed down picked up all the evidence, tucked it away nice and neat, then made the claim it was some experimental surveillance balloon. The first newspaper article read truth from what was seen by hundreds of spectators! The following day the newspaper printed the government cover up story.

If you look up information on Alien Space Craft crashes, sighting, abductions, etc. you're probably going to see some sort of USA Government cover up. They simply have procrastinated long enough.


Take this video sent in from the Mexican government in 2004! Apparently, other countries are getting fed up and the issue needs to be addressed. There are tons of other very intriguing evidence. Of course there is a tremendous amount of B*ll Sh*t you will just need to do the filtering.

Now I am just going to answer some questions and make responses to common statements. Not that I am an expert because I obviously am not but I like giving my two cents. Just some common things I have heard get brought up in the past about the possibility of extra terrestrial life forms.

"They're going to kill us! Those they don't kill, they will enslave! We must prepare for battle!" Okay the above statement, which I am sure you heard before too. Sounds absolutely ridiculous. If they were going to kill us they would have done it by now. As far as enslaving us? Hmmm, let's think about ourselves here. Okay, as we know we have a pretty tremendous history of enslaving one another and forcing each other to do our bidding. As time goes on through the industrial revolutions, social revolutions, etc have we not seen a huge decline in slavery? A huge decline in the need of manpower? Yes we have and it is due to the fact we replaced human labor with technology. Now if Aliens who are obviously light years a head of us are able to get to our planet and be gone in such super speed then don't you suppose they would have even greater technology to fulfill their needs? I think so. Or maybe they want to kill us all because they want to occupy Earth because they destroyed their own planet. Unlikely, if that was the case they would have done so long ago. Besides we're destroying Earth as it is. By the time we're done with it I don't think we will have any extra-terrestrial takers. We should prepare for battle! That would be ridiculous. Would we win? No. I mean it takes up 18 months for a round trip to Mars. To Pluto we wouldn't make it in our lifetime at the speed with our own space craft. Obviously they are from somewhere outside our Galaxy so you could only imagine how long it would take us to find them. Then we would die and never return to their planet or our own to share the new knowledge because we ran out of fuel, food, and oxygen before we made it. If they had that many sightings in 2008 alone, imagine how many others were seen over the years world wide. Return visitors. Super speed.

Why do aliens come to Earth? Well why do swim in the sea to study Squid?

Do they come in Peace and want to be Friends? Do we greet ant hills and try to be their friends? No.

Personally, I think it's very strange that people accept God and they don't accept Aliens as existent. There is more evidence of Extra Terrestrial Intergalactic neighbors than God. I'm not saying there is not a God. Don't get it twisted. I am however saying Religion is Bull and it's a primitive, controversial, narrow minded individual mini government that starts conflict and separation among people. If life forms outside Earth is proved then it discredits religion and not just one religion either.

There are things we don't understand and I believe there is an afterlife and a spiritual world. I also believe no monk, no priest, no matter how many times you meditate a day or how many out of body experiences you have had that you are any more aware of the meaning of life than anyone else. You just think you do. Religion in a nutshell is proof of humans inability to cope with death.

"My preacher can heal people!" Human energy. "I cried because I felt the holy ghost at Church!" Well I cried when I saw enthusiasm at Hillary Clintons speech at the DNC. Human energy. So monks have healed. Joe blow down the street healed others. Amazing things happen everyday by hundreds of different people. That still doesn't make them creditable in things like the meaning of life. The Universe has millions of unlocked mysteries and no one is able to unlock them all.

I think there are some people who have the ability to see a bit further than the average Joe and my guess is that just a tad bit more of their brain is functioning. Not enough to make a note worthy difference but I think gradually our species is gaining more control over their brain. Right now we only utilize a small fraction of it. Evolution of man continues!!! Imagine if we could use the whole thing. WOW. We'd probably be able to do a lot more and would probably stop fighting over dumb crap like racism, territory, religion, politics, and other crap.

Actually this stuff has always interested me. In 2030 they want to start pioneering to Mars. Send about 30-40 people there to stay for the rest of their lives. Spooky. Kinda cool. Okay I'll end my rant now.

Karma

Today we went to the Buddhist temple where a wise man came from Jakarta, ID to speak to the temple members regarding Karma. I didn't understand any of the presentation due to it being in Indonesian and I don't know that language. Following the presentation my family and I met with the man in a room of the temple. Apparently he is know for being able to connect his auroa with others and take a peek into their lives as well as their previous life before they were reincarnated into their current life.

I suppose he connected with my auroa and was able to tell me a few things regarding my life and its connection to my previous life. My father had to translate for me most of what he had said. He stated that in my past I was unstable in career and in love and I easily got bored and changed my mind without thinking. I guess this has been a trend in my past, not recent past but still something I dealt with before. He said this was due to my previous life ending with a lot of instability and it carried on into my current life and remained until it finished its course. Luckily for me, this trend of instability ended a couple of years ago. He also said that I had been through many great ordeals and that I was extremely lucky. Many times in my life I was in strange and even dangerous situations where my good karma stepped in and saved my ass. The good karma was collected from my previous life and that is was has given me so much luck in this one. In my previous life I had done many good things and have no bad karma to date. It was only the instability in the previous life that I died with that made things unstable in my current life, it was not bad karma, so he says. He also said that I was impatient and stubborn but had a big heart and extremely good fortune. Well, I am still impatient and I am still a bit stubborn but overall I think I made a lot of progress onto finding out exactly who I am.

Now I pretty much been agnostic my entire life. I was exposed to Christianity in the United States but never got too involved in the religion. Now that I am here in Asia for a while I am being exposed to Eastern thinking and beliefs. Karma is a big way of life here and I always thought of Karma as being a large possibility. As far as Buddhism I am still a bit unsure. They say that it is the "logical" religion or philosophy but I beg to defer in some areas. For instance Karma carries on from one lifetime to the next. If your good karma is high you will be born into a good position in the following life. I suppose when you look at the world as a whole my position was pretty good. When you have a lot of bad Karma you may be born into a very difficult position. For instance, my cousin inquired about another cousin with this man tonight. A young distant female cousin of mine was born disabled both mentally and physically. The wise man stated he was able to see that in her previous life she was born a male who was very large, dominating, and physically abusive so her disability is an action of bad karma.

The reason I am a bit skeptical regarding Buddhism is that depending on the position in which you are born into may determine who you are and how you behave thus defeating the purpose of the whole rewards and punishments of Karma. Say you are born extremely wealthy, doesn't this sometimes bring out the worst in people? Greed, selfishness, lack of compassion to name a few. Another thing that bugs me a bit about Buddhism is that I am unable to see how the situations you go through in your current life are going to be related to your previous life by you. I mean are you suppose to accept the fact that you were born into a slum village or that your husband beats you day and night as a reaction to something you had done in a previous life? How is this going to teach you a lesson if you can't relate it?

I like to think of Karma as a more immediate reaction to an action. For instance, you get drunk and slap someone. The next day you're hung over in a jail cell with assault and battery charges. Or you do many good things, always treat people with respect, then it gets noticed by others and in return you are respected. Maybe you work very hard every day at your job and you earn a promotion or a bonus. I guess I don't ever think of it as deeply as the Buddhist monks or the Buddhist in general do.

The only thing I strongly believe is that if you are a good person consistently that you deserve good things. If you are a bad person and do bad things you deserve undesirable results from your actions. I also believe everyone is in charge of their own life. I screwed up pretty badly in my past and I could sit there and point my finger at someone else or I could admit that I had a part in it. I was fully capable of preventing things from going wrong and I didn't, so I don't blame anyone other than myself for the things I been through in life. I just accept them, as difficult as that was, and move on.

Another thing regarding Karma that I may have been wrong about. In the past I did many things that wasn't very nice at all. I suffered for it too. I sat on my ass the last couple years and felt horrible, not allowing myself much slack. Guilt and the inability to fix broken things is an absolutely horrid feeling. A good handful of people in the last couple years had advised me to forget it and forgive myself. Easier said than done of course. I felt I had to suffer through it because it was Karma and I was paying for the wrong I did by feeling very bad. I got to thinking about it a while back and I realized something very important. One of the key reasons why I didn't forgive myself was because I felt for so long I needed the forgiveness and approval of someone else in order to make things better on my end. A while after that I realized that the "someone else" wasn't the real victim of my actions, I was, and I had all the scars to prove it.

So what's the conclusion? Well I been told three times this year I don't carry any bad Karma. I have absolutely no clue how they know and I don't but whatever. I figure that the only way this could truly be is if I suffered from my own actions and no one else really did. Makes sense to me plus makes me feel a lot better. After all this, I feel pretty damn optimistic about my future right now.

Rainy October Days

Yesterday and today we have had unusually hard rain and very loud thunder. Sometimes it sounds as if the sky is falling. Yesterday we were on our way to the bank to make a deposit into my bank account when we noticed how flooded the streets were. Some of the roads were impossible to drive in without flooding your car. Luckily we didn't get into any accident. However, others were not so lucky. I saw a car turned completed over on the side of the road and about thirty men were there attempting to flip it over. I was a little concerned about them flipping it over with people inside of the vehicle. According to the Batam Pos this morning, which covered the tossed over vehicle, it was a rental car that had attempted to avoid a motorcyclists. The rain was so hard that the driver was unable to see the guy on the motorcycle clearly. He swerved once he got a glance of the guy on the bike and it ended up flipping over. It also said the reason they flipped it over so urgently without attempting to pull the passengers out was because there was signs of a possible explosion. It was a rental car and there were surprisingly no injuries or deaths. I wanted to post a picture but I forgot to take my camera in my purse yesterday.

Yesterday I attended to K1 Playgroup in one of my fathers learning center. After Ramadan the Learning Center suffered a rather large loss, 30 children did not return. My father held a meeting to find out why children do not return ie; financial problems, teacher quality, etc. I guess my father wants to improve the quality of instruction in the Learning center so I went to introduce the online program starfall to some of the instructors. I also met with instructors on English pronunciation. I normally wouldn't consider myself a qualified candidate, at least not in the United States, in Indonesia being a Native Speaker is being qualified enough. I also agreed to assist in English classes Monday thru Friday so I guess that will take up some more of my time.

I am still taking Mandarin classes in the afternoons. For a while I thought it was a loss cause because my instructor does not speak English which makes it incredibly hard for her to correct me and explain things. I am picking up a little just from being with her an hour a day but nevertheless its no easy task. Studying Mandarin outside of my assigned class hours just doesn't happen.

Today not much is going on really. My father, me, Ian, my sister Stefany and my cousin Sonny went to the Mega Mall today for lunch. Now were kinda just hanging out watching Sponge Bob Square Pants and I sometimes log on to yahoo for updates on the Presidential Election in the United States and the Global Financial Crisis. Other than that nothing else going on. Rainy October days :(

The Dark Spot of the House

Downstairs is a room that leads to a bedroom at the far end of the house. It's a pretty bedroom, not too much decor, has it's personal bathroom, large closet space, and kept very tidy. Now, the reason I mention this room is because on several occasions there have been reports of strange sightings and noises emerging from that area. My father asked the maid if she would like to use that room but the maid declined and stated she wanted to sleep on the floor in the living room. She also refuses to be inside the house alone, instead she will sit outside in front of the lawn and wait until someone returns to the house before she re-enters. When asked about this the maid never comments.




The driver, a strange man with a uni brow, is known to have a third eye. Having the third eye means you are able to see the dead. The man stated there are two ghosts that occupy that space. There is a tall youthful man whose eyes gleam red wearing all black and an older woman with long hair. My sister Stefany claimed she had seen the man before and provided a similar description. Several reports from different maids regarding the spirits that occupy that room also matched the description provided by the driver. Some have said that they have had goosebumps and chills upon entering this bedroom and appliances and lighting has shut itself on and off inside this room.





They say that if any space is unoccupied for long spirits may settle in that area. The reason why they do not stay long if a person occupies the space is because they find the body heat to be rather unsettling. I noticed that when we returned from our week long trip to China that my bedroom made much more noise at night than before. I also didn't fall asleep until about 4 am. I kept hearing slapping on the tile floor as if someone was hitting the floor with their hand. I would turn on the light but was unable to identify the source. I also heard what sounded to be a finger nail scrapping against the wall and me and my father heard a man singing that night. What bothered me the most is I heard a lot of activity outside my bedroom door; foot steps, shuffling, etc. Pretty creepy. Within a few days the strange noises ceased and everything was back to normal.



The long haired woman had been seen peering down from the internal window of the master bedroom on several occasions. What she was doing up there, I have no clue. She has also been seen walking around the house on the stroke of midnight and sometimes responding to prompts by the living; for instance responding to questions that are not directed towards her, etc. Whether or not this is true, I don't have any idea because unfortunately I do not have a third eye and have no abilities to see the dead.

Mid-Autumn Festival & Halloween

The closest Chinese Holiday to Halloween is the Mid-Autumn Festival which just ended with September. It is also known as the Moon Festival. The traditional food of this holiday is Moon Cake, which is delightful if I must say so myself. Once upon a time only the emperor could eat moon cake, it was not a delicacy for the common man. Upon the fall of the emperor the moon cake was dispersed across the nation so that all could enjoy it, or so one of the stories about the Mid Autumn Festival state. The festival commemorates an uprising in China against the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty. There is a strong connection with the moon on this holiday and many different versions of the tale about a "woman in the moon". Due to the lightly lit up lanterns and how many chose this time to honor their dead ancestors, it is the closest holiday to the Western Halloween. Some of the Mid Autumn Customs are; eating moon cake outside underneath the moon, putting pomelo rinds on one's head, carrying lanterns, burning incense in reverence to deities, planting mid autumn trees, collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them to family members, and fire dragon dances. I only participated the burning of incense.

I never really thought about it before but Halloween is a marvelous part of my American Culture. Dressing up in costumes of the dead, witches, devils, etc. The trick or treating, syringed filled jello shots, haunted houses on front lawns, jack-o-lanterns, it's all so absolutely wonderful. Plus, its pretty neat to think the spiritual realm and the human realm become closer on the 31st of this month. I looked up some of the actual origins of this great holiday and turns out it's thought to be the Celtic New Year. In the past the dead is honoured and feasted as though they were alive. With the coming of the Christian religion the day was turned into Halloween. Since the Christians were unable to prevent individuals from celebrating this holiday they just sprinkled holy water everywhere and gave everything a new name. ::Laughing:: This only names a few facts; I wouldn't be able to name or talk about them all because the holiday is actually made up of hundreds of different cultures and customs combined. It definitely evolved over the years!
Ian dressed as the Green Ranger!

Me Being Creepy!

One of the biggest things I miss is the Halloween store. I don't actually know why I miss it so much since it was just a store with a bunch of grotesque costumes and make up but whatever! I thought it was cool. Last year I dressed Ian up as a power ranger and me and Tina dressed up as dead people. We found a decent lit up street and trick or treated for a few hours. Ian was terrified but I guess that was the point. Anyway, other than that I didn't do anything else. No Halloween parties last year, unfortunately. No Halloween parties this year either. I think my favorite Halloween was the year of 2006. I hated that year in general but it was a fun Halloween. I took Ian to his pre school where they had an open house. Differen't classrooms were made up with different themes. One classroom may blind fold you and have you stick your hands in a bowl or grapes or spagetti. Another one may be dark and called a Haunted House which they have you walk through as staff grab at your ankles. Plus I went to a couple Halloween House parties which were okay. Don't remember much of it but I'm sure it was colorful. I think it was just neat that I could dress however I wanted to, have my hair a different color each day and not have to worry what people thought. THATS THE FUN OF HALLOWEEN! I asked my father what would happen if I dressed up as a dead person here and he said people would probably get scared and run away or think irrationally and shoot me. Well, there goes that idea!

Since this year I am in Indonesia and there is no Halloween Holiday I decided to do my best in keeping the spirit of the season alive in my own life. Indonesia is rich in spooks! And that's NO JOKE! So my plan is to collect all the ghostly scary knowledge and places here and share them on this blog, plus I should have some fun doing it. I already have a list of interesting things I'd like to share on here after I dig around a little more. There is even one area of this house I stay in that has had sightings and other peculiar happenings which I will get into a bit more later. This year I won't be doing any of the norm so I have a few ideas to compromise. One idea is I could buy a bag of candy and just hide goodies around my bedroom. I also plan on downloading some recipes online, maybe have Ian do some spooky baking or something. Who knows? Maybe I could even do some arts & crafts and decorate my bedroom with spooky stuff, not that it necessarily needs it, it's a little creepy as it is.

Traditional Indonesian Fish Market

The day before yesterday I went to an Indonesian Traditional Fish Market in Batam Indonesia. It was my first visit to a Traditional Market in this country and it was quite an interesting experience for me. The photo above is of a traditional fish market in Jakarta Indonesia. I did not take any photos of the actual market I went to for several reasons. For one, I already got tons of looks for sticking out like a sore thumb and because I am a foreigner there really is no reason to bring anymore attention to myself. The actual fish market I went to was an inside market and it was quite huge! Many lights and decor lit up the space of the market.

I stood there in awe because I got to see so many different creatures that I had never seen before! They had a huge array of sea life both big and small, alive or dried! Some of the things I seen...I wouldn't eat. Anyway, they also had pork heads hanging on stands, chickens and their insides, and many other animals waiting to be butchered and cut for consumers. We bought shrimp, medium sized fishes, dried baby fish, along with some vegetables.

The fisherman usually fish and lay their catch in ice for the following day. The fish lay in metal pans like shown in the photo above. If the customer chooses they may have the head removed, intestines removed, de-scaled, etc. For the larger fishes (which some are about as big as a medium sized shark) the customer may chose to have the whole thing or purchase only sections. It was very enjoyable, colorful, and somewhat nauseating experience.

I found it odd that many of the shoppers walked around poking at the fish. I asked my father why they do that and he told me that if a fish is soft then it isn't any good anymore and fresh fish should have firmer meat. Well, at least now I know how to pick out a fresh fish from a rotten one. ::smiles::