Our Last Days in Merced

In November of 2009 we relocated from Antelope, Ca to Merced, Ca. I was born and raised in Merced so I was entering familiar territory. To be honest, wasn’t too excited about the move. Merced is a smaller community with a relatively bad review. I have to admit that this time around it exceeded my expectations. I am sad to be leaving so much that it almost brought me to tears today.

Ian’s school seemed horrid at first. Kids were always in the office bad mouthing the staff, fighting, and just being typical brats. I was also insecure because my son has had troubles with speech in school and I feared he would experience ridicule from his peers. I didn’t like his teacher because he was sent home with a naughty note because he needed extra help. I even went the extra mile of having a meeting with her to scold her on her tactics. She felt horrible and changed the name of the form sent home to communicate with parents. Nevertheless, I feared that moving Ian from Antelope was a huge mistake on my part.
Five months later, I take back everything I thought of Charles Wright. My son started school there unable to retain the sounds of the alphabet. Now, he can read and write. He knows so many science facts that I learn something new from him each day. His teacher was the first teacher ever to seek me out in a crowd to tell me my son is amazing. He had enormous growth there. He excels in Math but always has. Recently he was given a project of having to create a Math Kite where he is given a number and he has to come up with equations to equal out to that number. He was given the number 1. Most kids did things like 3-2=1 or 6-5=1 but Ian did 200-99-99-1=1 all on his own.

His teacher was so sad on his last day. Her eyes filled with tears and she told me of how proud she was of him. I hugged her for quite a long time. Ian cried too because he was losing his favorite teacher and the great friends he had made at Charles Wright Elementary. She is such a great teacher who really does care about all the children she teaches. After giving her a chance I must say she is the best first grade elementary school teacher I have ever met.
Brittany has made lots of friends. She didn’t do so well in school but she is happy in this community. She says when she finally turns 18 she wants to move back here to start her life, opposed to Sacramento, which is a shocker I am sure.


It’s also hard because this is the first house that Iniya ever lived in. The house I turned a perverted male blow up doll into a memorable Valentine’s Day for my husband… (okay, that sounds weird but it was a joke). I feel were all happy here, or at the very least comfortable and content. I’ve grown close to my step dad. We love him. I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with my mother who just graduated college for the second time last night.

Obviously because she has been busy but it is nice being near her. Our cat Jakarta loves this house. I reconnected with old friends. We made a couple new friends. It’s just sad to be leaving Merced again.

So, where are me and my family going? We’re going back to Batam, Indonesia to stay with my father. The economic crisis took a toll on the Limousine business. I am going back to school to get my Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a concentration on Global Business Management (online classes). I will then be applying for an MBA program in California in a year or so. We’re going to save money while were there so we can reinvest in something that will work. Iniya, Ian, and Brittany will get a chance to see other parts of the world (Ian already has), exposure to different cultures, language, etc. It is priceless experience. They will get to know my father’s side of the family, our customs, our history, etc. It is still so sad to go. I have my concerns, my forever endless list of concerns… but I guess there are pros and cons to every situation. I just hope that when we come back we can settle into a stable and successful life. I love all of my family so much and I know these changes are not easy on everyone.

Honey Moon

This post is just to recap on some events that had passed this 2010 for me but I got a bit too busy to blog about. As I mentioned in previous posts, me and Mike became husband and wife December 2010. We couldn't really go on any kind of extravagant honeymoon because I was quite far into my pregnancy. Cruises were out and flights were out. They have requirements as far as pregnancy progression and most carriers do not want you to travel off land if you are beyond 25 weeks gestation. Las Vegas was out because of all the inside smoking and plus that is more of a "party" place in my eyes. Some place you may want to go if you are NOT pregnant and able to drink alcohol and watch boob shows. Anyway, me and Mike decided to do a California beach tour and visit Tijuana Mexico. We visited Venice Beach, Hollywood, San Diego, Morrow Bay, and Tijuana Mexico. Mexico turned out being much worse than Vegas by the way. Being the open minded person that I am and curious about the reputation that Tijuana had accumulated I suggested we visit a gentleman's club. I had to run to the bathroom and on the way to the ladies room I noticed approximately 3-4 nude females dancing on the table. Once I was done using the bathroom, Mike jumped at me and prompted me out of the area. Once we were out of there he told me that a stripper had come up to him tried to grab his croch and then tried rubbing her breast in his face. He told her to stop and she said that he needed to at least tip her. He stated that he had not asked her to do those things and since she had reached out to him that she should tip him. She became angry and threatened to make a phone call. He dared her to do so and I guess that was the end of it. Who knows the reality of the situation but either way I am confident enough to not read into it too much. We only stayed in TJ for the day and returned the following day for shopping. Not a whole lot went on but we extended our vacation and beach visits for a week. I guess the highlight or most interesting place to visit was Venice Beach and Morro Bay (my choices).

Iniya Pau Ng

Iniya Pau Ng
NOT PRONOUNCED "IN-YA PAW NIG"
CORRECTLY PRONOUNCED "EH-NIGH-YUH POW UNG"
THANK YOU!!!
Long story cut very short:
During the summer of 2009 I found out I was pregnant. Around 16 gestation I found out that I would be having a daughter. My pregnancy went very well, I was healthy. I gained a total of 25 lbs and had no problems with any of the prenatal testings. My son Ian was very excited to be having a sister and many members of my family were looking for to meeting this child growing inside of me.

Me and Mike got married in Merced County. It was a small court house ceremony but I was heavy in pregnancy and wasn't wanting to plan and go through a formal wedding at the time. We will be planning an actual wedding, and you bet I am getting the Bachelorette party of my dreams! We became an expectant married couple December 15, 2009.
To be quite honest, I hated being pregnant. I hated it to the core. I am so glad it is over and so very proud to be her mother. I am so happy to have my daughter here and the influence on my life is tremendous. I love her, she takes my breath away. Each and every day I feel myself falling more in love with her as I had with my son Ian.
This is her birth story:
On February 18, 2010 your father and I headed to Modesto for an ultrasound appointment. Once there the Perinatologist discovered that there was the amniotic fluid was running quite low and felt it was in your best interest to be born. He wrote a recommendation to have labor induced. We drove to Sutter Roseville Labor & Delivery Department to be induced. The staff was reluctant to induce the labor due to the doctor not being linked to their hospital. The on call doctor decided to go ahead and honor the recommendation and induce me that evening. At approximately 5 pm they broke the amniotic sac. Very little fluid seemed to leak. The contractions were slow to start but once they introduced pitocin they began to peak up dramatically. The contractions grew very intense and before low I was unable to tell when one contraction started and another contraction began. I was reluctant to ask for pain killers at first but after experience the full throttle labor I begged the nurse to administer something. Initially she gave me something through the IV. This had absolutely no effect at first and then the pain began to only get worse. The nurse gave me a second dose of this drug and still no effect was felt. She called the anesthesiologist to issue an epidural. I suffered through almost another hour of excruciating contractions. The anesthesiologist finally got there and began the epidural process. The epidural took some time to work and perhaps ten minutes passed before the nurse decided to check my cervix again. I was suddenly 10 cm dilated and it was already time to push. I could barely feel the urge to push at all but the nurse would notify me when I was having a contraction. In approximately four short pushes you were out! The doctor put you on my chest and you screamed. Iniya Pau entered the world on February 18, 2010 at 10:51 pm, weighing in at 5 lbs 15 oz and 17 inches in length.

Me After giving birth!


We brought her home and she is currently 2 weeks old. She is beautiful and such a great baby.

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 :(