Saturday, February 25, 2012

Finding Treasure -- Rimba Baca

It's not easy to find a good children library in Jakarta. I had tried googling with no success. So when I found Rimba Baca, a children library, I feel like finding a treasure.
Rimba Baca, A small children library located in Jl RSPP No 21B Cilandak, South Jakarta
Rimba Baca is located conveniently between home and Echie's school, at Cilandak, Jakarta Selatan, near RS. Fatmawati. If you knew Limma Bookstore on around 1990s and early 2000s, it had a similar ambiance, but smaller and cozier. The place is very homy, maybe because it's previously a house, with modern and simple style. Fully air conditioned, with wooden floor and small carpets. We could sit comfortably on the floor, on small single sofas or little table with little chairs.
 
The book collections are amazing! Hundreds, or maybe thousands, of books, wall to wall. The first floor is used for children books starting from babies to encyclopedia. The composition is around 60% in English, 30% in Bahasa Indonesia, and 10% in other language, including Arabic. The second floor is filled with adult and teen books. There are many unique books that I had never seen elsewhere.
 
You need to become a member and pay annually to borrow the books. But the membership is very cheap considering the price of the book. You could borrow 5 books every time you come, for 5-7 days. Or you could also pay per visit for reading and play in the art room.
 
The verdict: MUST VISIT!!! Echie loves Rimba Baca so much, she wants to go there everyweek.
 
Contact number: 021-7664517 or twitter account @RimbaBaca

Sunday, February 19, 2012

February Resolution: Work and Career

My February resolution my happiness project is Work and Career.

Why work and career? It is because:
  1. My career has been one of the important thing in my life, other than my family. For me, my career had defined me in one way or another.
  2. It's the time for yearly goal and target setting, including for the development planning. So putting work and career as focus in the month of February would be very timely.
  3. I would be traveling a few times. Since I would be spending my time alone at night, it would be best used for doing reflection about my career.
 There are 3 questions that become my focus on Work and Career:
  1. How to make my work more effective and efficient?
  2. How to build my expertise?
  3. How to build my network?
I will not get into too ambitious. I will just pick 1 or 2 specific things for each of the questions, and do every day (well... I tried to anyway...) :
  1. Process my inbox everyday. I used David Allen's Getting Thing's Done as a reference.
  2. Do 3 MITs (Most Important Task) first thing in the morning. I liked Leo Babauta's Zen Habit for decluttering your life, even though I'm still so far away from implementing any of it. :)
  3. Learn a daily lesson. There are 3 key learning area that I'd like to focus: self improvement on productivity, career development and expertise in human resources, specifically employee relation, labor relations and M&A (merger and acquisition). Every small article, page of the books or blogs I've read that day, I would consider that as learning.
  4. Share, share, share. Share what I've learn that day through discussion with friends, twitter, facebook, linkedin or blogging. 
I think these 4 list would make my February quite busy, while keeping my other list from January's resolution.

*the picture is taken from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/?CTT=97 *

Sunday, February 5, 2012

January, it was all about ME!

The month of January is over now. Time to sit and look back. Have I met my January's resolution lists? Have I been diligent enough to check every items before I go to sleep? What's work, and what's not?
 
1. Exercise regularly -- I found that I had sticked to this resolution quite diligently. I joined the classes that I found interesting. I walked in the morning either Saturday or Sunday. Yes, I missed some gym time when the workload in the office was high, but I compensated during the weekends. So I found that I'm quite good in meeting this resolution. But still could do it better.
 
2. Only eat when hungry. Only eat inspiring food. Eat it mindfully. Stop before full. -- This one I mostly fail when I'm home, on holiday. Too many good food, too many eating out. Had to admit, I could not resist the temptation. Frankly, I took this concept from Hypnolangsing. I joined their workshop last year, and I will share later on about the summary of their 5 Magic Rules. My problems in implementing this concept are: I loved to munch at any time. I'm easily tempted by snacks. I still need to practice the Abundance Mind, where you don't feel the need to finish the food in everybody's plate. So for this resolution, I will still bring it back to next month list.
 
3. To clean and care: Start a ritual before sleeping. -- Before the resolution, I was a lazy girl. I was rarely clean my face or brush my teeth before sleeping. Most of the time I forgot to put on night cream. Now, I'm quite diligent. Now, I only forgot to clean and care about 1-2 times a week. Good improvement, I said! But definitely need to be kept on the checklist, so I won't miss it.
 
4. Put on make up, before I go. Never forgot the lipstick! -- I had a habit on putting make up in the car, a few minutes before arriving at the destination. This resulted in feeling sleepy and actually slept all the way to my office. Now I made the efforts to look pretty before left the home, so that I felt more energized. It works!
 
In my January journey, I found that breaking my big goal to smaller goals, and then breaking it to measurable and achievable targets were helping me a lot. I am convinced that my big goal is achievable. Thanks, to Gretchen.
 
However, I also found that the list no matter how fancy they are, would not work if you didn't review it. My problem was that I didn't review my resolution list every day. Gretchen suggested that you have a Resolution Checklist, and you review it every night before you go to sleep. She even offered her template and her tool in the Project Happiness Toolbox. So I tried several alternatives:
  1. Printed spreadsheet. Not working. I don't like bringing a piece of paper anywhere. Kept on forgoting and end up as garbage.
  2. Spreadsheet on my computer. Not working. It's not always possible for me to open my Thinkpad before I slept.
  3. Journal book. The same with printed spreadsheet, not working.
  4. Gretchen's Happiness Project Toolbox. The internet connection is not stable and I have difficulties in updating it in my mobile phone.
So, my next task so I could implement February resolution in a more effective manner, is to find a tool, that I could access anytime, anywhere. Since I could not be separated from both my iPhone and Blackberry, I need to find the tools that running on either of the gadget.
 
Overall review: I loved MY HAPPINESS PROJECT! It's not fully working yet, but hey! It's the journey of becoming a better person that I'm looking at. And I think the process is showing a positive trending. So am looking forward to my February resolution list! :)