Posts

My Sunshine

Waktsa ma ne la phai sang me la: these words that I heard keep coming back to me these days. It means, that the home would be dead in silence without children; it also leans towards meaning that it would be dry without any joy. My five year old son Tshewang has always been so curious. He had non stop 'why' questions that it would become impossible for me to answer sometimes but I never once snubbed it off as meaningless. However, once he started school, he became so quiet and he was on his iPad all the time. Oh, while I did not cut him off from asking questions, I did tell him not to talk to strangers or to touch other kids. This was purely because I wasn't sure about the culture we are in. When you do not understand the culture you are thrown in, you do not know what is right and wrong when it comes to interacting with people from that culture. There was also an incident at the park where he wanted to play with a little girl and he kept following her and tried holding her ...

Choices we make (are they for our children?)

When I wrote my post 'Your time comes when you are ready', I remember being overwhelmed with thoughts and feeling as if I couldn't type fast enough or couldn't get them out fast enough. I just felt like there was so much to say. But today, I don't really remember what thoughts I had. But as a person who likes keeping word, even if it is to no one in particular, I had the nagging feeling that I had not kept my word by not giving a series to it. So I am back on my blog today to do that. And even though what I am going to write today probably isn't what I was thinking then, it is part of the decision we made to move to Australia.  I am a person who overthinks. I go through the conversations I had, things people said, their expressions, their body language, their tone, and how I felt. It is also because of this nature of mine that I do not speak up before I think I know the person enough. This is just to say that I have been thinking about the decision we made of mo...

Is it the Age?

I can't help notice changes that are happening to me such as forgetting things, being fidgety, making more mistakes and losing confidence. I was never an outspoken person who seemed to exude confidence but I was also not a person who saw myself as lacking confidence. I may be an introvert but I did what I had to (I can't really say that for sure either because with people I know, I can talk a lot and some of them even find me crazy). I don't want to sound like I am blowing my own trumpet but I always did well in school (comparatively), topped classes, never fell below the mark required even when I thought I didn't do well and so got through my life being a student privileged for scholarships. That is why I am where I am today. Plus the sacrifices my parents and my siblings made to send me to school. [But it does not mean that I got very high marks like some top students do. I think students during that time did not do that well and I just happened to be little better. A...

Your time comes when you are ready

Thoughts have been rushing through me and they were just overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start and I aways pushed back. It is always when I am in the shower that there are ideas rushing out, sentence weaving on – and then when I am done with the shower, there is no time for me to sit down and write them down. So, they never found their life. I am hoping today will be a beginning to being what I have aways been – pouring my heart bare in words and letting that do the healing.  I haven’t even thought of what title I would give it. I just have to get them out or they will keep making rounds in my head until they haunt me. I think they will come into a series because I don’t like the writing to be too long. So, I will begin first from 2017 when our circle of friends started moving to Australia.  Some of our contemporaries will remember what we used to have called a nopkin.com. It was an online blog that our friend Sangay Tenzin (fondly known as Nopkin) started where people co...

This is Bhutan

Image
I moved to Adelaide, South Australia 10 months ago. This decision was driven by my belief that family has to be together and pursuing your career or following an ambition should not come at the cost of it. I made this decision knowing that it wouldn’t be easy – that, I may not have a regular office job that I am used to. Yet, as I do the manual shift jobs that I have taken, I find myself talking to myself that I would be contributing better by doing what I am good at; what I have so many years of experience in. But this is not what I was meaning to write about.   Most of the people I met do not know about Bhutan. They haven’t heard about it. They ask in uncertain voice, ‘Bhutan…?’ On top of that, saying my name is very difficult. They even ask me if I have an easier name that they can call me by. So, the other day, I told my four-year-old son that maybe I should call myself Kel from my initial K.L. and he was like, no mummy, your name is Kuenzang. And I agree. This is the reason th...

When I was on the Verge of Quitting

I am writing this post one year and one month after my last post. I buried writing as a past hobby, or a habit. I buried my urge to write as an excuse of being busy. Honestly, I just couldn’t organize my thoughts and I couldn’t seem to control my ‘choices’, or knew which choices were for me. I know I could never really be a stay-at-home full time mom, not because I do not like being with my children, or value my time with them as much as I value my time at office. It is because, I feel more meaningful when I am able to use the knowledge I have gained with 18 years of education and 16 years of work experience in work and the mundane routine job of cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and cooking takes away so much time but they don’t feel as fulfilling as the jobs you can do at office. But this is not to say that I undervalue the times that so many full-time moms give in rearing their families.    So, the reason I am writing this post today, after months of scattered thoughts...
  Am I a good mother?  This morning, we had a fuss because my daughter had homework and she remembered only in the morning. When I asked a few times the previous evening if she had any homework, she said that she did not remember. Maybe it was true. But this morning, when she fumbled for her math notebook, putting all the other things of getting ready for school like eating breakfast, dressing up etc. in the 1 hour we had, my husband and I both got angry.    It was not something that required our help. In fact, if we have to help, we will have to first refer her notes or the textbook. I am probably a person who gets impressed easily. I have never set very high targets for her. I have never pressed that she should be better than others. But I am glad that she seems to catch the lessons that she is taught in her class and she does fine on her own. On the contrary, she does not like me correcting her work. I sometime think that this is not good because it probably means...