A Fulfilling Day

Hi readers! In a blink of an eye, it's already mid-December; more than a month after my previous post, and less than a month before my departure to Singapore. How time flies indeed... Especially when you busy making the most out of the days you have left here in China. Today was an especially fulfilling one.

I started the day by giving a Dhammadesana (or sharing Buddha's teaching) in the Indonesian Buddhist Society's weekly service. For those who know me, you might (or I believe, will) be surprised that I did. I have never liked (and still do) speaking in front of a lot of people. However, I was offered to do it by one of the society's committee a week or two after the Kathina celebration. Initially I was very apprehensive, as you would have guessed. However, there is a part of me that would like to see myself do it, so I tried to convince the other part of me that is doubtful by asking her (the society's committee) to let me join them on a "Dhamma-prepare" session, which is a session conducted by the society's education committee with the Dhammaduta (the person who does, or in this case, will give Dhammadesana) to prepare him/her for the upcoming sharing.

The Dhamma prepare was - unfortunately - less than satisfactory to me. The Dhammaduta has not really prepared herself by reading the materials provided by the committee and the session was basically just discussing about the material instead of letting the Dhammaduta rehearse his/her talk. The doubtful part of me sort of like, "See, lucky I warned you!" But the other, better part of me was like, "Who cares? It was the Dhammaduta's fault for not preparing herself. If it were you (myself), the session would have gone smoothly." So when the committee girl asked me again after the session, I actually I would have said yes, but the doubtful part of me managed to convince me to tell her to give me some more time to think about it. However, I knew deep inside, after the words came out of my mouth, I have decided that I would give it a shot. So the night after I messaged her that I would do it. And I did not feel anxious like I usually did when I knew exactly that I would be giving a presentation soon in class. In fact, I looked forward to it.

The week before the Sunday I was supposed to give the sharing, suddenly there were a lot of things to get done. I was not really sure if I just forgot that the week was going to be busy or it just slowly growing into one, but starting on the previous Sunday, I needed to work on an application to get into a special software engineering project module in NUS (CS3281/2, to those who know) and the deadline was on Tuesday that week. Then there was going to be a test run for a programming project for one of my courses in Tsinghua on Saturday, and I have not finished the program yet. Then there was Chinese homework due on Friday. The Dhamma-prepare session for my sharing this week was on Friday as well, and the topic I was supposed to talk about was quite heavy. (Mangala Sutta, if you would like to know). Some of those things can't really be finished in a few hours (I spent a whole night on the program and it still did not work!) so yeah last week I did not really have much time to breathe.

In the end, all went quite well, though. I finished the Chinese homework as well (that was the easiest). I managed to finish the NUS module application (not as good as I would like, but it would have to do. And from what I know, NUS looks at GPA quite highly and seeing my current GPA, I am quite sure they will close one eye on my rather sub-standard application and offer me anyway). I managed to get my program to work (though not exactly how I wanted it to be, yet), as well as managed to read enough for the Dhamma-prepare to be useful for my preparation for the day itself.

Back to today. I managed to give a decent Dhammadesana (IMO; at least it was something I am proud, and I am not often proud of my own achievements. Inferiority complex alert). I was also very happy to  be finally able to see my elder brother again. He even shared pictures of me giving Dhammadesana to my family's WhatsApp group, which made me rather embarrassed but quite proud as well. I like him for doing such subtle things to show his care for me, despite not visiting me at all during his attachment to a university in Beijing. (It was a big deal, by the way. Because his girlfriend is studying in the same university as me, and staying in a building just beside mine. He definitely comes over quite often, but he did not even tell me when he did :( )

In the afternoon, I attended a TEDx talk in my university. It was quite a crazy thing to do, looking at how passive I was back in NUS. I did not regret it. Despite falling asleep when the speaker was speaking in Chinese (I could not understand and it requires too much energy to try to listen to them, especially after sleeping late in the last few days), the English speakers were very good.

One of the English speaker was a Hong Kong psychologist, talking about social media, how it impacts on us viewing ourselves, and how to curb the feeling of inadequacy resulting from scrolling through such "highlight wheel" (spoiler: try to think about one thing that makes you happy today. Anything, no matter how small/insignificant will do. Your brain will start to see things more in a positive and appreciative way, instead of comparing it with the highlight wheel we see everyday on social media). 

The other was a Tsinghua's architecture school's student from Netherlands, who talks about how the building and interior designs we have nowadays do not reflect the way we are supposed to live our lives. He compared to the architectures we have today with the way a nature reserve for gorillas in Netherlands was designed; he found that the gorillas are living in a much better living space than most of humans in all parts of the world. He also compares how people living in small flats are like gorillas living in captivity like zoos, and how the way we design our classrooms and workplace is not maximising our productivity, favouring an open, unconventional way (even sometimes wasteful in terms of space, in my opinion) to design rooms so that people interactions are encouraged, instead of inhibited by cubicles, rooms, or tables. It was always a joy to listen to architects who are passionate about what they do, sharing their views about why things are designed in certain ways and how they think certain designs are bad and what they would improve it. One thing that I really like about him is that he is someone who walks the talk, and not those Western imperialist who wants to shove their  Western culture down our Asian throats; he actually showed that in the past, Chinese buildings are also more spacious and are in line with nature as shown in pictures from the time of the dynasties, and would like to bring those back.

Finally at night I spent time with the other Indonesians studying in Tsinghua by having Thai food for dinner (which, without me even knowing it, I sorely miss!) We had a good time, though to be completely honest, I enjoyed the Buddhist society people's company more as the Tsinghua people are starting to get "clique-y" and excluded me from their gossips (which I don't really care anyway, that's why I still go out with them).

So yup, I guess I have just finished recounting the day which was definitely one of the most fulfilling one I spent here. I will definitely miss the feeling when I go back to Singapore, and I hope by writing this out, this will give me the motivation to put in the effort to relive the feeling.

All the best in your future endeavours!