First Sunday in Jakarta and thoughts on chores

It was a busy, “normal”, family Sunday here in Jakarta. We didn’t have a helper or a driver, so we were just on our own. I did more chores than usual, but somehow I enjoyed it. Living like a normal family. 🙂

We started the morning walking to Sofia’s soccer trial. It was Jakarta marathon day so we decided to walk instead of taking a cab. The SCBD area is closed on Sunday mornings for people to jog/walk/bike.

a group class. it was quite interesting to see local women, mostly Muslim with their heads covered doing aerobics.

after half hour’s walk, we finally found the venue for the game. It was mainly boys so Sofia was shy and not very engaged. I know it must be scary to join a new group, so I kept encouraging her until the end of almost 2 hours of practice/game. The coach and I had a quick chat after it was over. It seems that many kids were away due to school break so there were not many girls yesterday. In a normal week, there are 3 other girls. Sofia is more motivated to continue because of this. I hope she enjoys playing soccer in Jakarta as much as in Manila. It’s a good sport and she has invested a lot.

we got home just before lunch. Hubby already cleaned and cut the vegetables and was still assembling the girls’ bed, so I cooked lunch and cleaned up afterward. Then I took Sofia to a playdate, her first friend in Jakarta, a Korean girl that is super kind. She spent 3 hours at her place and had a blast.

I took Lizzy for a quick visit at the market in the mall that is 50 m away from our place. Super clean and nice for essentials.

Lizzy has a trial mandarin online lesson, which she loved!!! What a relief.

I prepared a vegetable soup with tofu and egg, baked sweet potato, and scallion pancakes for dinner. Cleaned the dishes and the table.

I used to think that doing chores is a waste of my time, an opportunity to do something that gives me more pleasure. But honestly, I enjoyed doing it yesterday as it is quite nice to do those things for the family. A meal prepared by me, as simple as it can be, is more special for the family than one prepared by the helper. In Chinese culture, cooking for family/friends is a way to show love.

A newsletter that I am subscribed to just wrote about doing chores:

“ I spent most of my life dreading chores, but when I stopped seeing them as a barrier to a life well-lived, and instead as a crucial part of it, they felt less like a burden to me. The appeal of fast-forwarding until they were done, or being rich enough to never do them again, disappeared. At their best, chores remind me that life is worth living not because it grows and grows and grows in a linear way, but because it’s cyclical: always starting over, ending, and starting again. Fall always reminds me of this, too. Appreciating this has been one of the more profound shifts in my perspective. I used to feel a lot of pleasure from imagining that everything was going to be perfect in the future. Now I feel grateful that pleasure returns again and again in small doses, and that meaning is available to me through the cycle itself. Bad things always end, and good things always come back. It can be a lot less complicated than we make it..”