A place where I can live, breathe, talk and see

Don't you ever feels that these past few months has been so weird and unexpected? Since November last year I feel like the future is so unpredictable that I wouldn't make any plans even for the next 3 months. Its just too risky.

And its just not fit my liking as newlyweds to unable to plan for anything. I need to plan. I need to collect money, I need to get pregnant, I need to buy a house, I need to buy a car, I need to save to get a proper medical care, and I need to save to be able to give our child the best of environment, food, health care and education.

I can't even take advantage of my free complementary honeymoon stay at Banyan Tree (YET!) and I'm too timid and cautious not to book any cheap promotional airplane tickets for August and beyond.. This whole thing becomes more and more overwhelming to me.

But as for now, I'm just drifting away with the current, and silently pray that I will still have my job tomorrow ..

Come to think of it, it's satirically funny. So now I really realize that the world IS round, and so does wheel.

And how does this affect my so-called "married-life" ?

I do feel changed after getting married. And with all the retrenchments looming around, and pay cut breathing down my neck, I'm most certainly are changed.

I become obsessed with saving, I get irritated easily, and I can no longer be happy with the sight of the stars, or by the vivid greens of leaves. It used to be my secret longing and indulgence.

I'm trying to be back to my old relaxed & grateful & easy-to-please self, and try to see even the thinnest silver lining in the skies.. :)

Yesterday is the first day of Chinese New Year. The first day of year of the Ox.

As the few last days of the year of the Rat hasn't been very nice to me, I have high hopes in this year of the Ox that I'd have a good fortune throughout the year.

Despite of my high hopes and how grateful I am if I really do have a good fortune this year, my human greed part of brain is telling me, how lucky and how much fortune can I get in a recession time like this?

In a global recession, can it actually be a recession? I mean, we can say that it's a recession if someone is having less than the other. But now, everybody's money is lessening. So the entire world is getting poorer, and when everybody has less, then it should still be normal right? :)

I've been trying to understand God lately.

What I've read, seen, experienced lately has either confuse me or scared me. And both are not some kind of feeling that I fond of.

It all started with me trying to find God. And I browse through shelves of books on spirituality, from Buddha and Dalai Lama to Mother Theresa and Eckhart Tolle.. But then I ended up with a biography of His last Messenger, Muhammad. Because I thought, if I really wants to find God, I should start with the closest person to God, which is Muhammad. I read Mohammad's biography, and found how life, even Muhammad himself, as the best amongst humans, are vulnerable. And how Muhammad, is guiding his life and path to the real victory by having a strong faith in God, and surrender everything in the Hands of God. And how our judgment, is so short-termed, shallow and stupid, and truly, most humans don't know the REAL good thing when it's standing right before him.

After that, I read this books titled The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. This book, really is a revelation. It actually is a non-fiction book covering the main theme of what happens to the earth when human beings disappear. But for me, the book manage to covers not only the scientific aspects of what happens to the world after we're gone, but also the human nature and it evokes a deep religious and philosophical thinking. In short, a really good book. :)

Quoting from the book :

"I can't imagine a more appropriate setting." he says, "to describe what amounts to genocide. In my lifetime, millions of people slaughtered in death camps, from Europe's Holocaust to Darfur, are proof of what our species is capable of. My 50-year career has been absorbed by the extraordinary loss of huge animals whose heads don't appear on these walls. They were all exterminated, simply because it can be done. ..."

and, :

The matter is more complicated than a killer instinct that never relents until another species is gone. It involves acquisitive instincts that also can't tell when to stop, until something we never intended to harm is fatally deprived of something it needs. We don't actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky. Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own.

While reading the book, I get too carried away, at some point I even hate humans. :)) And I start thinking about God again, about Angels, and what did they think about humans, and are they ever regret for choosing us as Khalifah's of the World..

And I became really curious, about what God's plan behind all this.. Why God let us humans slaughtered all the magnificent creature that He once created? Why God let us human to keep on doing damage in this world, suffocated His other perfect creation to death, hunt them to extinction, and poison the entire Earth?

If I were God, I'd be very disappointed. I'd be very angry. But I'm not God. And I know that God has the most beautiful plan for all of us.

When I started my search of God, the Economic Crisis has been looming around for a couple of months. And now, as the Great Wall of Capitalism is falling around me, one of it's gracious brick fell right smack into my right foot, not enough to hurt me, but enough to startle and wake me up.

My friends got laid off right in front of me.

I knew that people being laid off, and I knew that the economy is bad, but looks like all of those things are only happening in TV. In my little world, nothing could go wrong, and I could live forever.. :P But this, really got me thinking.

This job, which I consider is pretty good; the one job that once got me thinking about re-assessing my wedding plans; the one job that I could count on; the one job where I can actually see it as my ladder to the peak of my precious career; is nothing but a mirage that can disappear anytime now.

And now I really understand, that life IS vulnerable. And we shouldn't count on anything but God, and only God. Because God can turn one life's around in a single second, and we have no power whatsoever on our lives. That's why, just like Muhammad (PBUH), we should just try our best, and always have faith in God, that God would never neglect us, and will always provide with what's best for us.. :))

And what relates Global Warming with Global Economic Crisis? Very easy. This Global Economic Crisis, I think its God's beautiful way of fixing human's harm to Earth and teach all of us to be a better person. In a hard way.

No economy, no factories, no pollutions, no CO2s.

This is even better than Alan Weisman's extreme solution of exterminating humans from Earth. And my friends, who were being laid off, are all part of God's masterplan to revive Earth to it's glory.

With a lower income than before (or no income at all), humans are trying to adapt by consume less, recycle more, and .. I don't know. Maybe have more time to spend with their families?

It's not that bad after all, right? :)