Kuenza's Diary

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This is Bhutan

- April 21, 2024

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 that I

When I was on the Verge of Quitting

- July 05, 2022

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, feeling

- June 02, 2021

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 that she would not

- December 07, 2020

We should never think we are wiser than our parents I have not updated my blog for one and half year. That is long. Way too long. I did not intent to update it today. I just lazily checked it because I was reading a friend’s blog and it made me think of my mine. Then I read the first paragraph of the last post, which is about my mother wanting to plant potatoes every year despite the yield being poor. And it is this plan of hers, her drive and desire to farm that wanted me to write a post today. So, like every year, last year as well, she won and we planted potatoes. In fact, our effort is minimal. We plant the potatoes. She sows pumpkin seeds, peas, and beans. And that is that – almost. We go twice to dig and weed, and then the third time to harvest. No tending in between. No fertilizer, no manure. So, what we harvest in the end is completely organic and gift of nature (I think) because we put no effort to maximize the output. And even for this travel that we have to make four times

My Mother's Sweet Smile

- April 30, 2019

Being a farmer, my mother has the obsession of staying occupied – all the time. And as a farmer, her concept of land is that it has to be cultivated or else it is wasted. So every year, we fuss over her plan of cultivating potatoes because while she considers it important, we don’t see it that way. And more so because the yield is less than the amount of seed used. But this time, last Saturday when she was making plan of going out in the field to work again, I told her that I would accompany her. This I must say is the result of my being in RIGSS (Royal Institute for Governance and Strategic Studies for one month). We have always tried to reason: we used to tell her that our main occupation isn’t this; that it is a waste of time; we even cited the bad road, the fuel consumption etc. But once she has put her mind into something, she will never give up. We have known her stubbornness and determination all this time, but still, every year, we would oblige to her only after

The Shoes of ‘the’ Man

- April 26, 2019

I vaguely remember reading a saying that the shoes that a man wears shows his personality. And when I challenged to write about the pair of shoes that one of my friends was wearing at an official gathering yesterday afternoon, I did not know that there would be so many articles on shoes and how they are linked to the personalities of the wearers. I typed, ‘shoes show the personality of a man’ on google and it says ‘ About 145,000,000 results ’. Anyway, it was by way of casual conversation that we talked about shoes suddenly. This person sat next to me, his legs crossed over one another, his shoes prominently visible at the hem of his Army uniform. My friend (a woman) sitting on the left of me remarked, ‘what kind of shoes are these?’ I must confess that I am not sure what she really meant – and what in or of the shoes really struck her. But I took out my phone and took a picture of them and challenged that I would write about it. And I said it nonchalantly without any thought

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