Women's Merit

Woman - The Most Intelligent Creature

I was talking to Veve when she was driving me to the office this noon. I paused to see what her expression was to hear my story when I saw her typing sms on her mobile phone while driving. I was suddenly freaked out and asked her to stop doing that. She said it was alright. She just glanced to the cell screen once in a while to see if she typed right. Still.. it was our precious life I was worrying about. You never know what could happen. I can tolerate calling while driving for you can just talk. But typing is a different case.

Nevertheless, I'm always amazed in how well a woman can manage to do some things at the same time. In that example above, Veve was (1) listening to me, (2) driving, (3) thinking of what she should type in the sms, and (4) the typing itself. Just like when I was still working at CDU, I was typing on the computer with my left hand, calling and trying to convince a potential student by sticking the phone handle between my ears and shoulder and typing an sms for my friend with my right hand. Marvellous!

Patience, Strong Feeling, Love

Talking in Indonesian term, who can love as best as our women? In the old times, even still now though not as many, men are free to take more than one wife. The wives should live happily and get along with one another. I watched a contest of Which Men Get the Most Wives a while ago on TV and shuddered. Each contestant - the man is usually an old rich guy - was so proud to show off their merry joyful marriage life and boasted on how well the wives communicate with one another and patiently wait for their "turn" to get the husband's affection.

Now now, that is absolutely obnoxious to me. But at the same time, I do respect people's cultures and beliefs, though in any way I can ever logically regard, it will never be fair for the women, to be such inferiors. My admiration, in the other hand, really goes to those ladies' patience and strong feeling and love for the man they respect (I have to admit that there might be other reasons beside love and feelings to hold on to such life). Cause I know I can never accept that in my own life.

Women = Fairer skin

My mind might be a strange sample of Indonesian women's thought. Let's take the colour of the skin as an example. Most girls and women care a lot about making their skin "whiter". Many whitening cosmetics products have been launched continously these past few years to meet the female customers' demand of a whiter fairer skin. Good strategy, of course, since these women are really dying to have less Asian skin. But I really can't apply it to myself!

Face it, we live in a tropical country with the sun shining all year long. We are blessed with nice tan brownie skin to protect us from skin cancer of having too much sunlight. We don't get to feel an extreme freezing cold like what the countries in the other side of the world have in winter. But why do we, especially women, always fuss about the sunlight gets through the glassy window of the car or house? Why do we wear jacket to the hot beach and cause ourselves to sweat heavily? Why can't we think that our colour is sweet and exotic as hell? Why don't we just accept ourselves as we are blessed to be?

My tan after vacation.

I'm happy with myself. I don't think I'm an inferior and that I should meet general people's expectation of beauty. I do care about skin's health, but I also consider my own pleasure. When I want to enjoy the sun's warmth and earth's beauty with my own eyes by laying on the beach, I'll do it. Doing that already made me extremely blessed that I live.. I breathe.. I enjoy.. and feel peace.

Appreciate what you have got first, then you can really appreciate yourself.