Finding God in a strange church

Observing how people struggle to find their gods turns out to be my favorite hobby. Years ago, I wrote in the Indonesian students mailing list the things people do to find their own gods, like by being member of a church located in another city, or changing the denomination. I say 'god' without capital G as I believe what we are looking is our own personal god, not the God as written in the holy scriptures, but the one who speaks personally to us.

Last Sunday, I had the urge to see my own god. I felt weak and depressed after the talk I had before with some friends, which can be summarized to "why haven't you find a job at the moment, after being unemployed for so many months". Because yes, I have been asking myself too. There is no job out there yet worth selling my time to explore myself and to perform the experiments with Lrrr. That is it.

So I woke up early (for a Sunday morning) and biked to the Catholic church in the city. And alas - it was locked. The priest must be on vacation again, and they forgot to put the announcement on the door, again. What to do? In normal situations I would have gone home or spend the afternoon in a cafe, reading a book. But I desperately needed my god, so I entered the only church that was open at the moment, a Christian church called "City Life Church". From outside, it looks like the regular Protestant church, with some ushers standing outside with "You're welcome" printed on their t-shirts.

Inside, the band was playing worship songs with many Jesus' in the text. This is also typical Protestant: beside saying how great is Jesus, the song lyrics do not say anything much. However, the gesture of the singer, asking people to stand up and rejoice for Jesus, as He has risen and He wanted to be with us ... it was enough for me to make my eyes water. Oh, how I needed Him to speak softly to me and say that everything will be fine, that I am loved!

I deduced that City Life Church is a Christian church without a particular denomination, based on the songs (only about Jesus) and the attendees. There were many immigrants there, including me. We were people that do not fit into the normal Dutch churches. For me, it is easy to enter a Catholic church and feels a bit at home, but I cannot imagine a Somalian asylum seeker entering the Dutch Reform Church. The guy next to me had an Arabic Bible, and I could not believe that he is a Protestant. Probably Coptic or some other very old Christian. To gather people from various streams, the church needs to be as neutral and basic as possible, hence the Jesus-only text.

After the worship, the young pastor came to the stage for the sermon. The sermon was about going out and spread the good news, like how Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman. Then the praying - well, they pray for people who needs jobs and who struggle with their relationships. Very modern, isn't it? I liked this part. This is a part that I missed from Catholic church, the ability to react to nowadays problems. The pastor said, Jesus is working on giving you a right place, so that you not only can earn money but also be a blessing for the people around you. Hey, I like this! My eyes started to water again. So maybe that's why it is very difficult for us to find jobs: we need a good place.

And that was it. There was no confession, no communion, even no Our Father. Basic, I told you.

My thirst for god was fulfilled. Thank you, City Life Church! Hope lost souls like me can always find your door. That being said, I would prefer my Catholic church whenever possible. I missed the silence, the opportunity to have intimate talks with The Transcendent, the rituals. I am not a puritan, so for me church is not the matter of keeping it strictly by the book, but to connect with the spiritual me, the part of me that has grown from years of singing Gregorian songs and chanting Hail Mary.

(Back home, they adapted the Javanese tunes into the hymns. This was even better as I can connect the Javanese-me and the Catholic-me.)

But when the Catholic church close their doors, I know where I could turn to.

Color quiz

I get several calls from job agencies. Now thinking of returning to the 9-to-5 job gives me a strange gut feeling. Would be an entrepreneur suits me? Is postdoc a better option? So I looked at  a job search site to find a quick career match test. One of the test options is the color quiz from  this site. I took it and put the result below. I have to say that it is surprisingly accurate.

Your Existing Situation

"Craves change and new things, always looking for new adventures and activities. Becomes restless and frustrated when she has to wait to long for things to develop. her impatience leads to irritability and a desire to move on to the next project."

My comment: yes.

Your Stress Sources

Feeling empty and isolated from others and trying to bridge the gap between herself and others. Wants to live life to the fullest and experience as much as possible. she cannot stand any restrictions or obstacles put in her way and only longs to be free.

My comment: freedom to do things my way is always very important to me.

Your Restrained Characteristics

"Finds satisfaction in sexual activity, but is emotionally detached which prevents her from becoming too involved."

Giving more than she is getting back and feels misunderstood and unappreciated. Feels she is being forced into compromising and even her close relationships leave her feeling emotional distant.

His arrogance causes her to take offense quickly. Only those closest to her know deep down she is sensitive and sentimental.

"He is able to find satisfaction through sexual activity, but can be restless and emotionally distant so she never really gets too involved with others."

Current events leave her feeling forced into compromise in order to avoid being cut off from affection or future cooperation.

My comment: Whaaat??? This is certainly not what I felt with Lrrr. This sounds more like what I felt when I was in the previous relation. But it was like a decade ago! However, I also feel that I am emotionally distant, and I am only open to a few people.

Your Desired Objective

"Highly optimistic and outgoing personality. Loves to learn new and exciting things, and craves new interests. Looking for a well-rounded life full of success and new experiences. Does not allow herself to be overcome with negative thoughts or self-doubt. Takes life head on, with enthusiasm. "

My comment: yes, yes, yes! Well, I have many negative thoughts, but I fight them.

Your Actual Problem

"Fights resistance or limitations, and insists she is free to develop in her own way. Rewarded by accomplishing things on her own, with little to no help from others."

My comment: Is this a problem?

Your Actual Problem #2

Is afraid she will be held back from obtaining the things she wants leading her to act out with a hectic intensity.

My comment: yes, I am afraid to be stuck.

Emptiness

Empty.

I fell rather empty and clueless. So I decided to write to keep my mind flowing.

Still no job. I haven't had any worthy interview since last year. However, I keep on trying. There are not many jobs around that suits me. I also feel that I am thinking too much in making a CV and a letter. Speaking of which, at this moment I am not very satisfied with my CV. It is always like this. So I am satisfied, then become dissatisfied, then perform an overhaul, fix the CV, satisfied, become dissatisfied ... I guess that's just how people grow.

Lost.

I have two CV formats, one for industrial job, and another for postdoc job. I don't think I am going to apply for postdoc job, but I like my postdoc CV so much. It is compact and looks very smart. An overhaul will be required to give my industrial CV the similar feeling as my postdoc CV.

Another important milestone: I officially own a company now. Yay! I decided to make it official when Lrrr asked me if I would like to help his company setting up a experiment design to check if their new idea can be realized. As a company owner you can have a tax deduction. Maybe I should be happy and enthusiastic with this idea, but I cannot help thinking that finding a paid job is my ultimate goal. Maybe I needed the external approval. Geesh. Shame on me! Counting on external approval to prove my self-worth! Maybe this is my problem that I need to solve at this moment.

I also have found that expressing my unhappy feeling works. I have quit mentioned it to Lrrr as he has seen enough and I don't think he can take any more of my negative emotions. But expressing can also be done by writing, or in my case, drawing.

Fall.

Another thing that I still need to find out is my story. I think I am lacking a personal story - who I am, what really interests me, what can I do. At this moment I am just chasing approvals, as I am lacking the self-esteem. But I am working on that.

To move on?

I visited my PhD supervisor today to talk about his postdoc offer. I haven't make up my mind yet, so I wanted to see how I would feel there. I did not feel really good there - walking through the lab gave me a kind of dark feeling. I have seen my former colleagues who are still struggling to finish their thesis - my competitors in the job market. I also met the professor who was one of the main examiners for my thesis defense. We have dinner together, my PhD supervisor, the examiner, and me. The examiner said that he was not surprised to see me there, and he will be surprised if I stayed as a project engineer (thank God, so it is not only my illusion that it was not for me).

Despite the good things that I learned - if I took the postdoc there then I could teach a class, supervise a PhD researcher, and maybe take a teaching qualification - I feel like coming back is a backward move. Please remember that this is my feeling, so not a well-reasoned thought. I had a great time there, but going back seems like a desperate move. I also feel that the postdoc will be too similar with my PhD.

Feeling should not determine the decision, but it is still a part of the reason of decision making. I read somewhere that people take better decisions if they based it on their feeling, as our feeling contains many information that we save unconsciously.

My feeling is however biased, troubled, murky. Actually I want to scream: why on earth can't I have an interesting company research job? (imagine all capital).

By the way, are you doing a PhD? Start looking for a job one year before you defend, so you have enough time to reject jobs you don't like. Plan one evening a week to work on your next job.

Less stupid mistakes, please!

I just realized I made a stupid mistake. A professor emailed me to arrange a Skype interview for a postdoc position, and in answering him I misspelled his name. Very, very stupid. He has not answered my email, hopefully due to the number of appointment he needs to arrange. Hopefully he is forgiving.

But I was really nervous yesterday and wanted to beat myself. Sometimes I just lost my focus and making these small yet annoying mistakes. However, I remember that that is not very good for my self-esteem, so I cleaned the house instead. Today I decided to look in the internet if there is a way to reduce such stupid mistakes.

And I found this article. Basically, Mulainthan and Shafir suggested that we sometimes forget that we are doing activities that need huge "bandwidth" that we don't have enough space in our brain to remember that we need to bring the keys before leaving the house. Realizing this can help us to prepare and prevent doing the same stupid mistakes in the future.

Here are the mistake-reducing steps they suggested:
1. Realize it's not you.
2. Understand when you are "drunk" (i.e. have used all your bandwidth)
3. Plan your mistakes in advance.
4. Identify your repeaters - yes, we tend to repeat the same mistakes!
5. Revamp your calendar - or throw it out.

Interested? Just read the whole explanation in the original article.

Update 22/1/14: I received a letter saying that I am rejected. I refused to blame myself.

I took a difficult decision, should I repeat it?

It has been a while. What happened? Lrrr was ill for a week in December, then I caught a cold, and I was busy writing some job applications, then the holiday season came.

Lrrr gave me a beautiful paint set from Winsor&Newton for my birthday.

I also made an important decision to halt an application process as a process engineer for an engineering company (I mean not a production company). An agency asked if I would try the position. I did the interview. After the interview I sent message to my parents, pray in a church, and called the agency to mention the decision. There. Done.

Now I am sitting with the same thought: my PhD advisor offered me a postdoc position in his lab. Although I would like to do research (also as postdoc), thinking about doing research with the same professor who knows me from deep inside, whom I know from deep inside, is rather disturbing. I know him too well, and our hierarchy has been carved by years of working together, that it will be difficult for me not to see him as the almighty boss.

But a job in research is a job in research (is it?)

Ok, I need to meditate further about this. Now I want to share some drawings. I have been inspired by Heleen Cornet who made beautiful watercolor paintings of the rain forest of Saba Island. She spent several weeks in a tent in the forest to make the paintings. I admire her capability to capture the colorful shades of the forest. You can see the banana tree and heliconia that I made based on internet pictures.

Maybe I need to go outside and bring my paint set with me.

Grateful, despite everything

Posted originally in kojiberry.wordpress.com on 10/08/2013

Update: I scanned the drawing above and adjust the color using Photoscape. After finding Photoscape, I am no more satisfied with iPhone picture. It depicts Zwolle in a sunny day.

Nearly two weeks ago I left my job as an project/process engineer. Not having a job is never easy, especially because you'll never know when will you have a job again.

During my 1.5 years working here, I have realized since the beginning that this is not the job I want to do for the rest of my life. However, when I was applying for this job, I also realized that despite my long study years, I have gained little experience on life outside academia. I have taught chemical engineering subjects and supervise plant design, I had no idea about the real "engineering".

Now I know. And that is a valuable experience. Now I really understand how money is being made in the engineering. I have learned to apply my engineering knowledge. Being a foreigner, I have mingled well in a "very Dutch" environment. Not unimportant, now I really can say that I know what the heck "project management" is. Looking back, I am sure that it was very good and healthy for me to do a job that was completely different than what I have done so far (researching, writing, teaching). It has enriched me. The fact that it was a relatively small company was also an advantage, as they let me do the real work directly without first following several courses, as that would be the case in large companies.

I also need to mention that the financial support I gained from this job was great. The salary was not really high, but good enough. Usually I don't have many expenses but at the moment I finished my PhD contract, I was busy with my driving lessons. My motoric is not very good, so I needed many hours.  The salary allowed me to finalize my driving lessons and get my license without being broke. And I could spare some money to buy my very first car.

This job did not challenge me intellectually and it turned out to be a good thing. Whenever I came home, my body was exhausted but my mind was not ... so I still had some brainpower left to write my thesis (with the help of energy drinks). My PhD advisor was not so happy that I took this job before finishing my thesis, but hey, I was not the one who had 25 PhD students (and hence no time to check the chapters).

But I cannot avoid disliking my job. It is not only that I missed the chance of learning new things (I will talk about this in the next post), I also had the feeling that my time here is not blessed. It is like the one above is telling me "you should be here right now, but this is not your place". Why did I thought that I was ought to do the job? Because of this: when I started working, my first client was a research institute that just ditched my job application. I felt like somebody was making a joke of me. And why did I realize that it was not my place? Because all but one projects I have been working with eventually turned into a no-go. There were no big issues (failure in fabrication or so), mostly they just suddenly thought that the project was too expensive and they didn't want to continue. Or they just lost interest in the project, which was quite possible as the projects were mostly research-related.

So when the engineering manager said that "your future is not here, you have many capabilities but you cannot apply it here.." before saying that he was not going to prolong my contract, it was a curse and blessing at the same time. My original plan was to quit after finding another job. However, it would also give the impression that I am ditching them because they are not good enough for me, so this could leave a bitter aftertaste. This is not an ideal ending since they have treated me very well. Not to mention that it would feed my arrogance. But now we can say "goodbye" in a courteous way. No guilty feeling on my side.

As Lrrr have said it, I am free. I felt relieved.

When the manager finally broke the news on my last week via the mail, it came as a surprise to my colleague. Some colleagues gathered round my desk and said that they were sorry to see me go. Very sweet.

The last day was rather difficult - I have prepared to say goodbye, but it was not easy to prevent my tears from falling. I cleaned my desk, than started shaking hands. First I said goodbye to the technicians in the construction hall. I have spent many long hours with them, so they knew me quite well. Then to fellow engineers and the managers. I have worked closely with some of them. Too bad that at that day my direct superior was in Russia for a project, and the engineering manager was ill. My direct superior sent me an email from Russia, and the manager even called me to apologize that he could not give the farewell speech. Both were thanking me for the work I have done, and mentioning that they will sent me a reference letter. I have not received the letter, but it was good enough that I could use their names as my referees.

Then I took a last look of the company, wiped my tears, and drove home.

I am grateful that I have been given the chance to do the job, that I have decided to took it, and that it ended well.

My dream comes true. Too bad it was a nightmare.

Originally posted in kojiberry.wordpress.com on 09/01/2013

As a non-native speaker, I sometimes wonder how the Englishmen came out with the idioms. I am not familiar with all of them, since what I wrote were usually technical papers and the language in such papers are very straightforward, nearly boring. My instructor in English scientific writing class mentioned that the style in scientific papers used to be more elegant, but since nowadays the scientific papers are also read by people coming from places where English are rarely used, the language should be simplified. Hence, the boring style.

(How I miss writing the boring technical papers!)

My boss has decided that I am not suitable for the job I am doing and my temporary contract will not be prolonged. The idiom of today is therefore: being laid-off. I was aware of this (that I am not suited for this job), plus I felt terrible at my job, so this was not something that came out of the blue (hey, another idiom!). But it still sucked to hear his criticism over my work. On the other hand, I did not get the job I applied for since there was someone else with a better background knowledge. Probably he/she has studied organic chemistry. These two less-than-nice news came at two consecutive days. It was heavy. Luckily I was already planning to go to a music festival, so at the festival I was dancing and jumping and screaming and crying.

Good news: I am free from the job I don't like.

Bad news: I will be unemployed. My pride is hurt.

(I am very, very, VERY lucky that at the moment money is not really a problem. Lrrr* works and I can live with less.)

I have enough plans to occupy myself if I am unemployed between jobs next month, while looking for another job. Like making pictures. If you like to make water color/oil paint pictures then you must have noticed how much time it takes to make even a small painting.

Upon painting and uploading, I have made some decisions:

- I am not going to scan picture. I will photograph them with my iPhone.

- I will also upload my pictures to instagram, using the same name as this blog.

- I will use Photoscape to lightly retouch the pictures.

Enough important decisions for the time being. Weeks ago we went to the annual barbecue of our dear friend Eddy, who lives in a large farm. He plants Christmas trees, prunes, sunflowers, among others. I took many pictures with my iPhone with the thought to draw pictures from them.

Here is one:

The next step

I need to move on - my work contract will be ending soon. The logic step is to ask whether they would like to give me a permanent contract, otherwise I have to contact my "real" boss - the job agency.

This is not nice. I have to ask if they want to give me a contract, while deep in my heart I don't want to work there forever. The truth is I will leave if I managed to get a job in research. The confrontation about what should be the best option at the moment, and the realization of my own desire, weighs my heart. It feels like lying.

I need to do this within two days.

Update: The "lying" part turns out to be unnecessary. The place I am working now does not want to give me a contract, the main reason being that I am not suitable to the job I was intended to do. So now I can contact the job agency and say that, well, I would like to have a fixed contract with them. Not an ideal situation, but leaving the job agency would be less difficult as I will not see them everyday, and they are not going to invest that much on me.

On a better side, in two days I am going to have an interview, for an interesting job. I spread the prayers to the universe, and asking for them to be at my side. Which I believe they will, as the universe will give positive response to a positive request.

And my request is: Please let my career be the same as my calling. Let me have a job that will let my heart burst with passion, where every minute of hard work is not a minute of spoiling energy, but a minute closer to my goal. My goal is the creation of a better, greener, more sustainable world.

I end that with an amen.

A not so good start

Posted originally in kojiberry.wordpress.com on 06/02/2013

I made this blog with the intention to write about more serious things and also about my projects (paintings etc), but I have been feeling down for a couple of days and cannot think about anything else.

It is about my job. For more than a year I have been working in an engineering company while finishing my PhD thesis. I don't like the job as I am doing the same thing every project, and the nature of the job does not allow me to learn new substantial things. I miss research and determined to find research jobs.

But economy is not doing very well at the moment, and research jobs is scarce to find. Lately, there are several positions that suit well with my background. I sent my cv to all positions, and last week I had an interview with one of those. The lucky person having the position will be leading research projects, so she/he will have people doing the experiments and analyses, and she/he will interpret the result and make reports and presentations. It sounds really good to me.

And I hear nothing after one week - I have enough experience with job-seeking that I know when the interview is going well, the company will take around 2 days to sent the feed back. So now I am 90% positive that I blew up the interview, and I cannot stop blaming my self.

When I finished doing an interview, usually I can feel if I would be accepted to the second round. With this one though, I could not - I feel some plus and minuses, but it is difficult to weigh what the final verdict will be. It was a rather tough interview as all the interviewers were experienced scientists and project managers. I am not really good in explaining what my ambition was and how I could manage conflict, partially because what I wanted is actually to be a professor and I always tried to prevent conflicts.

Everyday that I received no email, my hope was dying a bit. Now the hope is practically gone.

I am also not sure if I can still count on the other positions I applied for. These two other companies are larger companies and it could take a while before they can make any decisions.

So today I am back to zero, opening the websites for jobs, thinking about moving to another country or taking a postdoc. These two options are really not my favorite ones. I don't like to live too far from my in-laws, as I am already very far away from my family. And postdoc fellows were not treated nicely - you have to work harder than a PhD student, earn a little bit more, but having children, when you are a woman, can cost you the position as there is nobody to cover your back when you are away.

But dragging my body to the job I don't like is also not an option - I am really, really afraid that I will be staying here, letting my brain and research capability die as I am no longer practicing it.

Help.

I am rather desperate now, but I have to keep moving. This is not the last post with 'job-seeking' tag.