Home At Last

Upon graduating, I decided I would try to spend as much time as possible back home before I start working full-time. Indonesia is practically on the other side of the globe from Boston, and with only 15 days of Paid Time Off, visiting family in Indonesia won’t be easy. So I booked a flight from Jakarta to Boston in late August, giving me slightly under three months in Indonesia. And now here I am! Writing a blog post in the comfort of my own home. Home sweet home.

So what’s in store for me this summer? With three months back home, I have ample time to do a lot of different things. For one, I’m getting my scuba diving certification from Scuba Schools International (SSI). Becoming a certified scuba diver has been a dream of mine for quite some time now. Indonesia boasts the world’s most diverse marine life, so to explore Indonesia fully, I should be able to explore the underwater world too.

This past weekend (June 6-7th), I had the first part of the scuba diving lessons. It started off with basic theory, followed by practice rounds in a swimming pool, so that we’d know what we’re doing when we move to the actual sea. Lessons will continue next Saturday (June 13-14th), when we head over to Pulau Pramuka (part of the chain of a hundred islands off the coast of Jakarta known as Kepulauan Seribu). Listening to the instructor explain all the different equipment and all the things we had to do was kind of overwhelming, but once we actually went underwater and did all the different things, it turned out to be really fun.

Aside from scuba diving, I’m hoping I’ll get to explore parts of Indonesia that I’ve never been to before. I mean, I’ve never even been to the National Monument, and I’ve only been to the Java, Bali and Seribu islands! Haha. My big family will be visiting Raja Ampat (lit. Four Kings), a group of 1,500 islands off the Bird’s Head Peninsula in West Papua, which I am super excited about since I’ve never been to the eastern part of Indonesia.

Last but not least, reading is something that I really love, yet I haven’t really had much time for it during college, because obviously I was busy with a bunch of other things. When I was younger, I used to read a lot of adventure fiction books (I love Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Karl May’s Winnetou), and although I will still read some of those books, I also want to read more adult-y books (not sure how else to describe them lol). On the flight to Jakarta, I read Clay Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life under the suggestion of my dad, and I thought it was great. Here are some quotes I really appreciate from the book:

While you are still figuring out your career, you should keep the aperture of your life wide open. Depending on your particular circumstances, you should be prepared to experiment with different opportunities, ready to pivot, and continue to adjust your strategy until you find what it is that both satisfies the hygiene factors and gives you all the motivators.

Don’t be afraid to try new things— in fact, you should. Planning is good, but there are always going to be times when our plans don’t work out the way we want them to, and when this happens, we need to be ready to change.

A strategy—whether in companies or in life—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy, and money. With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your energy and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you. You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it’s effectively implemented.

As humans, we oftentimes do things in our day-to-day lives that have the quickest return on investment, even though it’s not good in the long term. Throughout the book, Clay emphasizes that truly implementing our ‘strategy’ means that we instead have to live our strategy in our day-to-day lives.

Right now, I am reading No god but God by Reza Aslan. I haven’t really progressed much though since I’ve been going out every day until today. I will hopefully start digging deep into it tonight.

Aside from that, I’m also trying to implant healthy habits (ahem, exercise) and learn things here are there. Of course, spending time with family and friends is also on top of the list of things I want to do this summer.

See ya later, alligator.

Indira