Hello everyone! I hope all of you in a good condition. For those who celebrate Chinese new year, i want to say happy Lunar New Year 2022! I wish you all the best in this new year. I celebrate it also, since my great great grandparents came from China, although my parents and i were born in Indonesia. It’s also a national holiday in Indonesia since a lot of people celebrate it, and Tionghoa is one of our tribe now.

As i was a child, i was so excited when this day came. Yes, it’s because the red envelopes that we, as children, would receive. It’s like a jackpot once in a year. So many families and relatives would come to my house and gave me and my brother this red envelopes. Then we could buy somethings that we desired. Beside the red envelopes, i also remember that my grandma would cook a lot of delicious food and we gathered around the dining table and eat together as a family. How i missed those moments since it’s so beautiful. Now, i would like to pass this tradition to my children so that they also can experience those beautiful moments.

I usually cook more dishes too at the Chinese new year’s eve and we eat dinner together, to pass down this tradition even though i live overseas now. One of the special dishes that would be served in Lunar new year is thousand layers cake. This cake is pretty expensive in my home country not only because the ingredients (premium butter, a lot of eggs, etc), but also because of the process of baking itself. It needs a lot of time to bake, patient, and accuracy of time and amount of cake batter to produce a moist, beautiful layer and delicious cake. Since i like this cake, i try to make it again this year. Last year was the first time i tried to make it, but the cake was not moist and the layer was not pretty and thin. So i wasn’t satisfied at all with the result. It was not easy. This year, i tried again, and the result much better, although it’s a bit burnt, but the taste is fine. I still need to practice making this cake in order to make it perfect both in taste and appearance.

During making this cake, i learnt a lot of things. Some insight came to my mind and i found it interesting. What make us expensive or valuable is not only what we have, but also the process that we’ve been through in our life, which built us to who we are now. Just like the cake, what makes it expensive because not everyone has the patience to bake it, the accuracy about the right time to mixed the butter and egg, to put the next batter, so that the cake will be moist. This accuracy must be result of baking experiences. The process that has been experienced by someone, the mistake that someone has learnt from, the challenge that has been overcome, the problem that has been solved, all of those things will build someone ordinary into a valuable person. So to become a precious or special or valuable person, we don’t just need a fancy car, or house, or a lot of money, we just need to be a better version of who we are. Life experiences always give us a possibility to upgrade our value, or to be a person who is eager to learn, who accept our own strength and weakness, who admit our mistakes and learn from it, who respect our own experiences of life, who is open of changing. None of us is perfect, none also has always good time in life, but when life offers a lemon for us, we can always make a lemonade, which not only sour, but also sweet and more expensive when we sell it.

So if we are in our tough time today, just remember this is the time when our life, characters, our wisdom are trained to be stronger and better so our value would be more precious. We just have to open our eyes widely, since there will be a lot of lesson to learn in that tough time and have a willing heart to be changed, then we will be a better version of ourselves. Have a nice day everyone! God bless us all! Stay healthy and happy!