Happy New Year!!

Well, January 2023...

I keep telling myself to stop procrastinating, but... here I am, writing and posting this on the 4th day of 2023!

Anyway, my 2022 has been amazing! When it's already 4th of January, I thought it was too late to talk about 2022, but my 2022 was worth talking (writing) about.

Last year was a very special year for me. I had 3 main goals:

1. do at least 1 thing for the first time every month,

2. do stand-up comedy,

3. move to Bali,

and I did it! I achieved all of my goals! I know, they were simple goals, but it's still so satisfying to achieve them.

So, I've been doing a new thing or two, or three, every month.

In January, for the first time, I made mask lanyards from rubber bands, and I sold some of them. I also made and sold some bracelets.

In February, I got Covid for the first time! Yeay! It was great, because I was isolated in a room and had plenty of me-time. That was when I did stand-up comedy for the first time. I did it on Instagram live.

In March, I made my first digital comic that I posted on my art page on Instagram, @alavishpirate 

In the same month though, Mom got a stroke! She recovered very quickly and very well though.

I was supposed to move to Bali in March. I already booked a Yoga Teacher Training Program in March, but my boss wouldn't let me go until the end of June. Thank God! I can't imagine being in Bali, having my YTT, and Mom got stroke when I was in Bali, and I wouldn't be able to do anything.

In April, I... finally... watched Korean dramas! For the very first time, I watched a Korean drama. It was 'Reply 1988', and it was really good! I fell in love with the series, so when I finished the series, I wanted to watch another Korean drama. So, in May, I watched '2521', and it was also really good! Since the first 2 dramas I watched were really good, I kept trying to watch other Korean dramas, but none of them was good enough.

In May, I did 2 things for the first time. I posted my first stand-up comedy video, and that video was selected, so I also performed on stage for the first time.

In June, I went trekking for the first time. I'm not really sure if it was really the first time though. At the end of the month, I finally moved to Bali!

In July... oh, July was really special. I attended my first Yoga Teacher Training. I met the most amazing, loving, kind human beings there! I had the best experience in my life! I did a headstand for the first time, taught my first yoga class, and did my standup comedy in English for the first time during my practicum. I also went to the Aquatonic Thalasso Spa for the first time with my fellow yogis! It was amazing!

It was a very special experience for me, because I used to hate yoga before. I thought it wasn't fun, it was boring and I never had the patience. My experience in the Yoga Teacher Training at Loka Yoga changed everything. I really enjoyed every moment, I fell in love with yoga, I've been doing yoga regularly ever since, and yoga had helped me going through some really bad days that otherwise would drive me crazy. I'm so grateful for my Yoga Teacher Training experience. I've been writing about it and posted the first part in the previous post. Hopefully I will be able to post the rest of the story very soon.

In August, I went to Bali Comedy Club, another beautiful, positive community where people support and learn from each other. I performed on Bali stage for the first time. Also in August, my family came to visit me in Bali! What an amazing month!

In September, I reconnected with a very important person in my life, and I'm glad I did, for so many reasons.

In October, I went to a Halloween party at a night club... believe it or not, for the first time! I never liked parties and night clubs. They're boring. But the Halloween party I had was pretty enjoyable.

In November, for the first time I went canoeing, performed stand-up comedy for 30 minutes, got paid for doing stand-up, and took a sign language class! Four things happened for the first time! What an amazing month!

In December, I taught my first yoga class in Italian! I didn't know I could do that! I thought my Italian wouldn't be good enough, but it was enough for teaching yoga!

And for the first time, I got to watch Brazil play in the World Cup with some Brazilians! It was one of my dreams!

And... Argentina won the World Cup! It has nothing to do with me, but after 2 decades, finally, another South American country won the World Cup!

I've been having a wonderful year, but there are some other things too happening in Indonesia and all around the world.

From January to March, we had earthquakes every single month, mostly in Banten. We had many earthquakes. I also felt one in Bali in August, when my family was visiting. The worst was the one in Cianjur on the day the World Cup started.

Russia started a war against Ukraine at the end of February. Mahsa Amini, a girl in Iran got killed by the police for not wearing hijab properly. It started a huge, long-lasting riot and protest in Iran and some other parts of the world.

October was horrible! It was such a tragic month. It started with the Kanjuruhan tragedy in Malang on the very first day, and it ended with the Halloween tragedy in South Korea on the last day. Both tragedies killed about 125 people each. What a creepy month!

Then, there was the World Cup. It was the first World Cup that was played at the end of the year instead of the middle. Usually, World Cup started around my birthday, but this year, it started on November 21 (or 20 in Qatar). It was also the very first time a middle eastern country became a host, and it brought so many stories and controversies.

The day the World Cup started though, a lot of tragic things happened. Jason David Frank comitted suicide, there was a mass shooting in a gay bar in the US, and the Cianjur earthquake happened, as I mentioned earlier. And when the World Cup was about to end, Sinisa Mihajlovic died of Leukimia. He was one of the greatest players.

On the 29th of December, the most famous football legends, the only player who won 3 World Cups, Pele, passed away.

Public figures died in 2022:

Jason David Frank aka Tommy from Power Rangers

(September 4, 1974 - November 19, 2022)

Pele

(October 23, 1940 - December 29, 2022)

Queen Elizabeth

(April 21, 1926 - September 8, 2022)

Sinisa Mihajlovic

(February 20, 1969 - December 16, 2022)

May they rest in peace.

Yoga Teacher Training at Loka Yoga: Best Experience of My Life So Far (part 1)

The Background Story:

It’s been more than two weeks since I graduated from the yoga school, and to be honest, I still have a hard time moving on. I met my cousin and her family the day after, I got busy visiting beautiful places, I joined a comedy club and did my first stand-up comedy performance, I met some new friends and they were amazing…, and I still think of my yoga teacher training days all the time.

I went to this yoga school in Canggu, Bali, Loka Yoga School from July 4 to 30, and it was the best 4 weeks of my life! It was such an amazing experience! I’ve never been so happy, I’ve never had so much joy. Oh…, I have so much to tell! Let me try to break it down one by one and hopefully give a systematic story of my beautiful experience.

First of all, let’s talk about the background. I hate yoga. I mean, I used to hate it. I tried doing yoga in the past. I watched some videos, followed some yoga classes, read yoga books, and damn they were so boring. However, I was always amazed by the yogis because they’re so healthy, peaceful, and have amazing bodies.

Seriously, their bodies are amazing: fit, slim, toned, powerful, and super elastic. They can do super cool and difficult poses gracefully and effortlessly. That was why I kept trying to do and learn yoga. I wanted to be healthy and have an amazing body. I wanted to look like that and be able to do those super cool poses!

However, since I hated to do the yoga practice itself (and any non-sports-game physical activities in general), I never really did it seriously. I went on and off with yoga. Earlier this year, in January, a yoga school advertisement popped up on my social media. I was interested, because it wasn’t just a yoga school to be a yogi or yoga practitioner, but to be a certified yoga teacher!

Hey! I could get a yoga teacher certificate? I would be able to teach! I would make money from doing yoga! And the school is in Bali! Now…, I’ve been wanting to move to Bali and live here since forever. Last year, I decided to finally do it. I still didn’t know what to do, but I decided to move. My New Year's resolution was to move to Bali, and suddenly I had the idea of what I could do!

I saw some advertisements of these yoga schools, but I didn’t sign up for any of them. I wanted to get to the cheapest one, so I started searching for a list of yoga schools in Bali. I found this site with a complete list of yoga schools in Bali, and I found Loka Yoga and other schools. Loka Yoga was the cheapest one, located near the beach, and in Canggu, where the comedy club is. It was perfect!

I was so excited that I signed up right away. I signed up for the first batch of the year, which was in March, because I just couldn’t wait to leave Jakarta…, or Tangerang, it depends. I contacted the school, registered, and paid right away. I remember the joy and excitement I felt after transferring the money. I started planning my Bali life. I will be living in Bali by March! Oh! So excited!

The next day, I finally remembered that I have a job, and I would need to tell my office and ask for a leave. In my defense, I didn’t work much back then, business was slow, and my office didn’t have enough work for me to do. So, yeah, I forgot I had a job. In fact, when I called my boss, I wasn’t about to ask for permission to leave, I just meant to inform him that I would leave.

He freaked out. He told me I couldn’t do that. He told me I should’ve asked him for permission to leave, I had to write the e-mail, and it would take time. For a start, he had a lot of projects for me. He told me I would be super busy until the end of June. I had to postpone my Bali plan. Thing is, I wasn’t sure I could cancel my yoga school. Would I be able to reschedule to July?

I contacted the yoga school. By then I already knew who I was talking to. It was Taryn Weggelaar, the founder and the main teacher. She was very nice and responsive to my messages. Before I texted her, I was worried that I couldn’t reschedule, and I might lose that amount of money I’ve paid for the school. However, she told me I could reschedule to July, and I was so relieved.

Yes, I was relieved that I could reschedule, and I didn’t have to lose my money for nothing. However, I was still upset because I couldn’t move to Bali as early as I planned. I had to stay in Tangerang for a longer time and it sucked. I didn’t live in the present. I lived in the future. My mind was already in Bali. Every day I could only think about living in Bali.

The closer I got to July, the more I got anxious about the school. I started doubting my destiny. Attending a yoga school in Bali seemed too good to be true. I was so sure something bad would happen, just like every single time I was ready for something good in my life. There have been so many disappointments in my life that I couldn’t believe that a real good thing would happen to me.

I started having these negative thoughts. What if this yoga school was a scam? I kept checking on their social media pages. I even started stalking Taryn Weggelaar on Google and social media. Okay, she is real, they are real, the school is real, but then I started to worry about other things. What if I didn’t get a plane ticket? What if the plane crashed? What if something else happened and I couldn’t go? What if it didn’t happen?

But it happened! On June 30, I finally left Jakarta, I finally arrived in Bali, and on the 4^th of July, school finally started! It really happened, and it was really the best experience I’ve ever had in my life!

 

(to be continued…)