Jul 17 - How His Brain Works

A pattern book for my journal and other crafting activities. This is the 5th one he got me.

A collector's item Pokemon card from the costume edition that I told him was super cute a few weeks ago.

A Hello Kitty doll cause he loves blue dresses on me and that I'm always on my phone according to him (not true).

So this is his line of thinking:

Logic 1

"She loves the four pattern books I got her for journaling. This would make a great addition to her collection! I'm buying this."

Scenario 2

Logic 2

"I remember showing this card to her and she thought this one was super cute. The black one looks like me and the pink ones look like her. Also cause zij heeft het druk so it feels there are two of hers in this relationship. I'm buying this."

Logic 3

"This is BASICALLY HER! 1. It's Hello Kitty. 2. It's a cute little doll. 3. It wears a blue dress. She always makes me choose a color and I always choose blue. 4. It's holding a phone! She's never not with her phone. I'm buying this."

Fine, maybe it's a tad too feminine to be his chain of thoughts. But did I mention everything was a just because gift?

Luckiest girl ever, I think so too.

Jul 16 - Engineering Hearts

His flight in with Garuda was initially booked for Aug 13, allowing him to arrive in Jakarta in the morning on the 14. A few weeks ago, due to slow demand for international flights, Garuda decided to reduce the frequency to twice a week. His got dragged three days in advance, scheduled to fly in on the 10. We felt so lucky his boss is a reasonable man, so it wasn't a problem to add a couple more days into Luis' planned annual leave.

This morning, he sent me a screenshot of, guess what, another change. Now he's scheduled to fly in on the 8. I'm thinking Garuda is now reducing the flights to only once a week (my heart sank cause it would create another chaos with his siblings whose work nature is not as flexible as his, but we'll deal with this later once we have heard from them).

How does this recent development make me feel?

Pre-Corona, this would be the best thing ever! Aug 8 is a Saturday, thus no problem with his work there. So why am I not jumping for joy, knowing I have two extra days with him? The answer is because I do not even know whether or not I'll end up having him board that plane if the partial lockdown policy is still in place.

Pre-Corona, I would have trouble sleeping literally starting from the night he booked his flights, from the excitement of having him come to me! Sadly it's not the case now. While usually I would have a note full of activities and food I wanted us to do/enjoy on his upcoming visit, this time around I cannot look forward to it too much..... except if I'm that ready to experience one hell of a disappointment.

Crazy to think I've engineered my heart so much that I'm not even stoked for my own wedding day. (insert a sad smile here)

Jul 15 - Big Mouth

Last picture taken during his visit in March

Today is exactly one month before the Batak/church engagement (and the mark of my last month of being 27). Borders are still closed for foreigners without KITAS, and Schengen countries no longer welcome Indonesian citizens without PR. With literally everything related to our wedding still all up in the air, people are wondering how I manage to not freak out.

I did. We gave our everything for 6 years before we finally received my parents' blessings. It took our last strand of hope, and effort, to not listen to those who did not believe in (long-term) long distance relationships. We've gotten this far, only to be faced with yet another hurdle right before our eyes. Of course I freaked out.

But one day I just came to realize that none of this is personal. This Covid-19 shit affects every single person on this mother earth - well, probably except for those living completely out of reach from the civilization. Granted it varies for everyone in forms, measures, and magnitude, but it's not like this pandemic was designed only to crush our dreams of getting married on our chosen day. How important are we, really, to think that millions of lives vanish just to continue keeping us apart?

From there on out, it has become crystal clear that worrying does not reduce a liter of this uncertainty we are forced to deal with. We can only wait and see. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And all the other messages you've read off those overpriced bumper stickers. I would much rather focus on controlling my feelings and learning to accept the fact that there's a strong likelihood we won't be able to get married on Aug 22, or this year at all.

It's not personal. So I am calm.

Also cause it hasn't happened.

For all we know at the end of the day my big mouth could be of no use whatsoever when the heart is too broken to believe a word coming out of that mouth.

Hope not.

May 5 - Plans, Plans, Plans

Here's to addressing the elephant in the room. Hmm, more like the world. Like on every continent there is.

Obviously we have set our big date to be on Aug 22, 2020. It was supposed to be a jam-packed, crazy day: holy matrimony in the morning, Batak wedding in the afternoon, gala reception in the evening. Well, the hotel for the Batak wedding called last week to inform they're closed down until Dec 2020. That leaves us to the other 2 events, but the current state of the outbreak honestly encourages me to cancel the gala reception altogether.

Heck, I'll be lucky if we can still do the holy matrimony at all. It's not so much that we're worried the church would, too, stop officiating marriages, but if Luis still couldn't fly in later in August, I wouldn't have a groom to say I do to! :D (PS: It's been established that Luis has only 2 tasks in this whole wedding fiasco: 1. to halve the expense with me and 2. to show up on the d-day and say I do. With the efforts I've put in, in making sure the wedding is the closest to what we (I) have in mind, I'm certainly not going to give him a hall pass by foregoing 50% of the expected work coming out of him, hahaha).

I often joke that, seeing how well we've mastered the key to staying sane in our close-to-7-years LDR, maybe we should just attend the meeting through video calls. Install a giant screen at the altar, have the other party ready to roll, and exchange vows through the camera.

This is a challenging time for so many reasons. One of them, our wedding plans. Subsequently, our moving plans. Cause any change made to the original plans would result in other plans. How many times can one person say the world 'plan', really. How many times can they make and amend them, really. Keeping our fingers crossed that, regardless of this seemingly-endless chaos, everything would turn out okay.

Mar 4 - Life Happens

Can't believe I hadn't been posting for 1.5 years! 

The year of 2019 was by far the busiest set of 12 months of my life. So busy that I couldn't even keep a journal. I was on a business trip to Singapore with my new boss, discovered a new soulmate (hey, Allie, if you're reading), experienced total sakura-coma following a 10-day trip to Seoul and Tokyo with my girls, achieved my all-time lowest weight on scale, celebrated my 3rd work anniversary, went blackout drunk in Bali which was a sobering incident on its own, received an overdue promotion, planned and completed another big-ass Eurotrip, met colleagues in our Amsterdam office in person, parted ways with some of my fave people at the office, and paid my respect one last time to a dear colleague who lost her battle to cancer. All that and I chose to give in to my, uh, mind of the flesh, trading precious memory book with a few extra hours of sleep and mind-untangling.

It was also the year my parents gave Luis their blessings to propose to me and so he did, in the most magical city of Budapest, Hungary. (Thinking about it never fails to jelly my knees - everything was simply just perfect. Maybe I'll share it here one day.)

How I wish I had documented the different flows of feelings and emotions running through me during each specific event, but I guess sometimes life happens. It overwhelms and lets you keep only truly the memorable ones to stay in your memories.

Of course I forgot to use the better quality camera(s) and show the correct hand. What do you expect? Everyone and their mother already know I'm not that smart.