Kuenza's Diary

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...

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...

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...

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 ti...

I am attending a talk. The speaker asks the audience, ‘how many of you are the first generation educated lot’? More than 70% of the audience’s hands go up. He remarks, ‘I am the first generation too’. The next question is, ‘who are the elites?’ A few answer that it is the politicians. He adds his opinion and then says, ‘we are the elite!’ Should I be happy? A mixture of thoughts run through my mind but it is definitely not happiness. He further adds that we come from farming background, and then, from nothing, we have become the elites – and in no other countries is there such opportunity. I am grateful for the opportunity I received as a result of the farsighted policies of free education. But a feeling of smirk sinks in me when our farmers, our forefathers who have been farmers, and my parents who have been farmers are called nothing. They might not have had access to western education and formal schooling but in no way were they uneducated. As I write this, ...