I thought I could overcome jelousy. The fact, it is not as easy as it seems. Just imagine, you and the other is in the same state but the other one got better treatment that you. How would you feel? That is a shitty feeling I should face. And my self esteem went downhill like hell. I am sad.  

S urat ini merupakan res pon dari pesan dari seroang Pengajar Muda yang meminta masyarakat Indonesia mengirimkan Surat Semangat untuk anak didiknya di sebuah desa di Muara Enim, Sumatera Utara. Surat sudah saya kirimkan kepada yang bersangkutan.    Halo..Halo Prawindra Putri Anzari atau yang biasa dipanggil Moo. Apa kabarkah? Masih dingin di Danau Gerak? Perkenalkan saya Efi. Saya dapat terusan pesan dari teman soal permintaan untuk mengirimkan ¨Surat Semangat¨ untuk 170 siswa tempat kamu mengajar. Saya coba-coba cari nama kamu di google dan akhirnya menemukan profil FB kamu. Kamu mungkin sudah tahu kalau aksi Surat Semangat sudah menjalar kemana-mana. Bahkan, kalau lihat dari foto yang kamu upload di FB sudah ada surat yang datang dari beberapa negara di luar negeri. Hebat sekali pesan kamu bisa menggerakan banyak orang untuk memberikan motivasi buat teman-teman di Danau Gerak. Saya pun ikut tergerak untuk mengirim surat. Tetapi bukan untuk anak-anak SD itu, me

Before leaving home, I told my friend to make a memento for our journey. We share something in common, we are leaving the country, both with different destinations and purposes. Also, we are Minang, we raised with the concept of "merantau" not literally meaning for "traveling". Mostly Minang guys will do that. Leave all things behind and start to experience something new in life. Well, they all thinks merantau is guy thing, but we, women, also want to experience that.  So, one thing led to another and we decided to take notes of the journey in order to make me smile when looking back at it. If you guys want to check please go this www.raunround.wordpress.com . It is in Bahasa Indonesia because we want to keep the culture along where ever we go, Enjoy!

We all know that the media always has their own perspective about the perfect girl/woman. But, I hope you will not get bored if I tell you how media in Indonesia always change their ideal girl/woman. For the past, maybe, 10-15 years, media in Indonesia changed the criteria of beauty several times. No matter how many times it changes, I’ve never matched their criteria. When I was 10-12 years old, there was one commercial that I still remember untill now. There were twin girls, Santi and Sinta. They were walking by the beach, but Santi didn’t feel comfortable to walk with her sister. The main reason is she is not as white as Sinta. All eyes (read: boys) are on Sinta. The commercial never mentioned wether one of their parents are darker than others. The reason Sinta has a flawless white skin is she uses whitening lotion on a daily basis. Sinta shares her secret, in four weeks people can’t tell which one is Santi or Sinta. Both girls have white skin, Santi’s confident spike up ga