If you listen carefully, almost everyone has something valuable to teach you.

As I’m on my flight back to Townsville, I reflect on my experience travelling solo to Melbourne and Sydney. The best things about this holiday have been very beautiful and indescribable and will be something I will treasure in my heart forever. There were countless memories that I treasure, especially in immersing myself in the beauty of forging relationships with others or simply rekindling an old friendship. To name the many wonderful individuals that I’ve met so far that I feel to have been very fortunate and privileged to meet and have learned something wonderful from each of them:

- Sara’s mom (what a wonderful general practitioner and an all-around very compassionate and caring individual)

- I've gotten to know Sara herself better (she finally convinced me to watch Merlin and I ended up lying on her couch watching the whole of season 1 and 2 within a few days)

- Sara’s sister- Mary anne (impressed by her passion for food and the amount of love she puts into cooking and how close she is to her uncle- who I happened to also connect with- an indian who moved from singapore saying that he found singapore discriminatory and relating that to my experience as a second class citizen in indonesia and opening up my eyes to the existing discrimination in singapore that I’ve never realized before)

- Sara’s classmate Izzy (the most kind hearted and genuine person ive ever met- never seems to have anything bad to say about others)

- Jessica’s good friend Natalia Sutanto (Jessica is my cousin)

- Priscillas friend Anson (who was kind enough to drive us home even though it was out of the way)

- Claudia’s best friend Natalie (Claudia is my childhood friend that I haven’t seen in 10 years) whose mom is addicted to facebook and is actually so involved that she started making applications for facebook

- Claudia’s friend Sujin

- Claudia’s actor Gudi (talked to Gudi about black magic and ghosts and her love for surfing and being impressed that she knows a bit of bahasa indo)

- Claudia’s director of photography Carl (I just love how passionate and good he is at his work with lighting. He also taught me a few things about lighting and corporate videos and why they all look the same essentially)

This is on the set of Claudia & Sujin's short film called the Yellow Kite (Yellow because it symbolizes hope) . I love the wonderful lighting.

- Claudia’s good friend Patrick (who I truly enjoyed talking to about various artwork interpretations, singing karaoke as we are both avid John Mayer fans, life goals and artistic endeavours, relationships, having amazing engrossing conversation at chat thai and eating ramen)

An artwork me and Patty saw in Sydney- I particularly enjoyed this piece because it combines lyrics/poetry with anatomy (the pelvis) and nature (the flower drawn) and coincidentally, I just finished last semester learning about the reproductive system and its associated anatomy. Ironic, isn't it!

- Claudia’s close friend Patty (from Paddys market who is so extremely bubbly and cute and who gives off such a positive and optimistic vibe)

- Claudia’s guy friend Jason (who is a unique individual himself and we connected over smoking shisha and eating Mediterrenean food by the Darling Harbour and identifying with the fact that we don’t feel like we belong to any one particular culture since we moved around so much)

In addition to this, I have rekindled my old friendships (I am still amazed and really grateful how much we still connected after not seeing each other for over 8-10 years).

- With Jessica my cousin, I really valued her kind heartedness, her curiosity in reading personal development books and just being very welcoming. My fondest memories with her were of her making tuna sandwiches in the back of the car and us calling her gendok gendok- which means maid in Bahasa Indonesia. I will also never forget our time at Chocolaterie San Churro sharing that one chocolate churro dish and using our leftover chocolate as ink to draw some artwork on the dish (mind you, there were people around during that time of the day). Also kudos to her idea of taking a picture in front of the park map to pretend that we explored it as we got to Point Nepean Park and didn’t have enough time to explore it. Finally our best flower picture-taking contest at the Melbourne Royal Botanical Gardens that inspired me to take multiple shots of various flowers to result in a final beautiful shot I've titled "Perspective":

Perspective

- With Caroline my other cousin, my fondest memories were of our all you can eat moment when we were wolfing down all the salmon sashimi until the restaurant owner told us that they had a limit. I will also never forget our laughing non-stop shenanigans on the train home from Priscilla’s birthday dinner simply reminiscing of our time living in Singapore. Also, one of the memorable experiences was modeling our Country Road bags at the Cape Schanck Lighthouse with the sun setting in the back

- With Priscilla my other cousin, I truly envy her warmth and kindheartedness towards family members. My fondest memories were of us driving up the mountain in Mornington Peninsula and her driving onto the oncoming lane with her asking the road why it did that, then after a full day trip, supporting the idea of us going to karaoke for 3 hours.

- With Claudia my childhood friend, my fondest memories were of our duet of Earth Wind and Fire’s September and Maroon 5’s Makes Me Wonder, of our late night walk to the Sydney Opera House and having a chat about future life goals. She is still the very kind hearted individual I knew from before. I will never forget the nights where we would stay up until 3am playing Monopoly Deal because none of us wanted to end the night losing.

- With Natasha my Canadian friend, my fondest memories were of watching her sketch while eating ice cream at the Crown Casino’s food court, and asking her about her artistic endeavours and her inspirations. And of course I won’t forget our memorable meal by the Yarra River enjoying our gorgonzola cream cheese risotto.

On top of my encounters with such wonderful people, I decided to put myself out of my comfort zone and made it my goal to have new experiences. That’s exactly what I did. To name a few things that I did that I consider as new experiences:

- going out with a whole group of Indonesian people

- Eating out alone and really immersing myself in the food

- Going to a life drawing and sketching nude models

- Seeing a film shoot and helping out

- Being part of a film as an extra

- Going to an art gallery and actually spending time to decipher the artists’ artwork and then discussing my interpretation of it with someone else

- Trying various German beers (I tried Mango beer at some point)

- Drinking at a pub alone in the middle of the afternoon

- Being in a party that’s being filmed at the same time

- Learning quite a bit about lighting and film making

- Going to club at a progressive trance place

- Sitting in a cadillac and being driven around by a complete stranger (Well it was Jason but to be fair, I barely know him)

- Being treated by a gentleman who bought me and claudia 2 dinners and 2 desserts consisting of tasting variety of hot chocolate (this gentleman never expected anything in return) and having a long honest chat about life

- First ever road trip with my 3 cousins

My wonderful cousins and I posing at the Cape Schanck Lighthouse

- First time at a natural hot spring- we didn't have time to get a proper dinner so we went to Coles, got various potato salads and some chips, begged for a plastic spoon from Baskin Robbins and sat at the mall bench devouring food. Proof: as shown below...

- First time riding a car with Priscilla driving

Since I have started to self-reflect more by setting aside quite a bit of alone time, I have come to realize that even though everybody I’ve met comes from completely different fields, we can all relate and still share a deep bond- Claudia’s friends are all artsy people, Jessica & Priscilla and Caroline’s friends are all business and finance people. It’s one of those moments that just take your breath away. I have also gathered newfound love for reading and in the process, discovering my true fascination with the human brain. This is after searching for my true calling or passion within medicine for so long. I feel like I have discovered a new me just from taking up reading for the past few months. I have also discovered the potential artist within me after visiting various art galleries and realizing that there is an artist in all of us. This reminds me of a quote that I read somewhere that says

“We are all artists, and life itself is our medium.”

It’s safe to say that this has been THE perfect holiday. It was just what I needed- to recharge and start afresh with these new perspectives on life after quite a crappy first half of year. I worked through it and now I’m feeling stronger than ever! I’m glad to be back in Townsville, having my own space and going to hit the books in a couple of days actually. I have truly been humbled by the amount of things that I’ve learned from this trip from everyone and everything. I have truly seen the quote I read somewhere in Melbourne in action that says “If you truly listen, almost everyone has something valuable to teach you”.

So here it goes to my new semester of making more meaningful friendships, complaining less and working on building stronger relationships with my parents and hopefully becoming a better individual and a compassionate future physician.