Hi! I am Firda, the proprietor of this here blog. Nice to meet you!
I am originally from Indonesia, but I’ve been a Canadian citizen since March 2011. I moved to Canada from Indonesia in October 2004 to be with the love of my life, to whom I’ve been married since May 2005. I haven’t been back to Indonesia since. I love living in Canada. I feel bad admitting this but the only thing I really miss about Indonesia is the food. Spicy, hot and greasy Indonesian food. Oh, how I miss thee.
I ended up here in Canada because my mother passed away. Her death triggered a string of events that brought me here. I do wish she were still alive. I’d still be living unhappily in Indonesia but at least I’d have her. My mother used to tell me not to go back if I ever had a chance to leave Indonesia, and that I shouldn’t worry about her because my brothers would take care of her. She’d be happy to know that I’m now living a happy life half the world away from Indonesia.
I miss my mother a lot. I miss her every day. Sometimes I miss her so much I cry.
I have the attention span of a goldfish and my interests are always changing. My current interests are geocaching and film photography. I will try to update my interests as they change (and they will). I don’t typically like mainstream music though every now and then you’ll find me humming to the tune of some top 40 song, but only because it’s so overplayed that it’s stuck in my head. Really. I don’t think I’m a hipster but denying the hipster label makes one a hipster so maybe I am one after all.
I love travelling. I love road trips. I love going to places I’ve never been. I have technically been around the world as I’ve flown to Toronto, Canada from Jakarta, Indonesia by way of UK and over the Atlantic as well as by way of Hong Kong and over the Pacific. I’ve been to 9 out of 10 Canadian provinces. The only Canadian province I’ve never been to is Saskatchewan. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it there the next time we can afford a vacation. I hate to admit that I have never been to Ottawa, the capital of Canada. I would love to travel around Europe some day, before I get too old.
I love winter. I love being able to see my breath. The winter light is always so beautiful. The night is never really completely dark when the ground is covered with snow. I want to do everything in the winter. Everything. Even gardening, which I always find tedious in the warmer months when I can actually plant something. I always buy a lot of seeds online in the wintertime, the majority of which never get planted. I used to dream of snow a lot when I still lived in Indonesia and now I live in a snow belt area that always gets tonnes of snow in winter. For me, winter is a reminder that dreams do come true sometimes.
I’m not a summer person. Not at all. When summer comes, I just want to hibernate.
I love being near the ocean. I love the smell. I love the breeze. The ocean in stormy weather scares me and fascinates at the same time. I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of it, but I love watching a stormy sea from the shore. I love watching the waves breaking against rocks from the top of a cliff. I love the way my lips taste after a boat ride out in the sea. I love watching seagulls by the sea where they belong. The sight of seagulls hanging around the mall parking lot in land-locked areas always makes me sad.
I started blogging in early 2000 before most people know what a blog is. The first time my blog won a Bloggie™ award, I told my mother about it and she had no idea what I was talking about and why I was so excited about it. The second time I won one, I’d learned not to tell anyone in real life because I knew they wouldn’t understand or even care. The third time, I was too busy worrying about my mother, who had become very ill by then, to be excited. Shortly after my mother died, someone from a national news magazine just had to call, not to express their condolences, but to ask if my mother’s death was just a publicity stunt to boost traffic to my blog. Classy.
I was unhappy for most of the first 30 years of my life. I’m trying to make the best of whatever time I have left on this planet to make up for it.
I shall end this with a picture of one happy moment in my life:
