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I believe we all know there are many activities traditionally tied to Idul Fitri and the mudik (exodus) period. Many travelled unimaginable distances and faced difficulties to get together with loved ones (travel expenses), various meals and snacks were prepared (food expenses), new clothes were purchased (clothing expenses) and gifts were given (other expenses) to commemorate this once-a-year event.

Without a doubt, there are additional expenses during the Idul Fitri and mudik period. The exact value will differ for every individual, but, according to surveys spending during this period can rise by 30 percent from normal days, if not more. That represents a considerable financial burden.

Ideally, measures ought to be planned ahead of time to anticipate the extra expenses, so they will not greatly affect our financial stability. Unfortunately, many are oblivious to this matter and may experience financial setbacks after the Idul Fitri and mudik period ends. Are you one of them? I really hope you are not.

In any case, now is a good time for a financial check-up to diagnose and ensure our finances are – and remain – in tip-top condition. A simple way to assess whether our financial state is healthy or not is to make a comparison between received income and incurred expenses over the holiday period.

If at the end expenses were lower than income and you have excess funds to cover daily needs until the next pay day, then you are somewhat able to manage your transactions. Congratulations! Be proud!

That being said, you are not off the hook yet. You are still required to revise your past expenses to identify which activities could be done in a more financially efficient manner. Thus, next year your financial transactions over Idul Fitri can be controlled more effectively.

If, on the contrary, your expenses exceeded your income and you are now struggling make it to the next paycheck and maybe even forced to take on debt, I will say no more. I am sure you understand that something is not right. Sadly, many status updates in social media attest to the fact that this situation is not uncommon.

Hence, my suggestions for those experiencing this; draw up a list of all your income and expenses and evaluate them on a monthly basis. In the beginning, this activity may feel both daunting and annoying. It is daunting, because you will face the truth of what kind of financial habits or errors you have been committing until now and how that disrupts your financial potential, and annoying as you need to take note of every financial activity. Try to remember even the tiniest transactions. Endure this process, as it refines your financial habits, leads to an optimal financial life with less debt and enables you to spare more of your income to increase your saving balance.

In the short term, this method can help you identify what went wrong during Idul Fitri and the mudik period and what needs to be done to avoid the same mistake next year. In long term, it will help you develop financial discipline and better money habits that will benefit your life as a whole.

Making mistake is very normal and one of many proofs that we are human. What is wrong is if we repeatedly make the same mistake and fail to do anything about it. Grow some curiosity about what you usually do and learn to do it better at every chance you have.

To a lot of us Indonesians, Kartini Day is identical to “kebayaan” or dressing up in traditional costumes. This is only natural as since primary school, Kartini Day was the moment our moms went out and about looking for traditional costumes to rent so we could win little trophies.

But do we really know who Raden Ajeng Kartini was? What made her so famous that a day is dedicated to her? What were the messages that she brought and are they still relevant today?

Kartini was born 137 years ago in colonial-era Jepara in Central Java. She was part of the Javanese aristocracy, which allowed her to attend a Dutch-language primary school unlike most of the children of her time.

But she was not as privileged as her male peers. As it was not the norm for girls to continue their education, Kartini had to stop going to school at the age of 12, from which age she had to stay at home until she got married – in an arranged marriage, no less.

She wrote letters to her pen-pals in the Netherlands about how she wished to have the freedom to learn and receive an education, and not just be bred and prepared for arranged marriages. These letters were seen as the dawn of the women's emancipation movement in Indonesia.

Girls today are much more privileged than the girls of Kartini’s time – I finished my bachelor’s degree and in 2015, Indonesia’s school participation rate is higher for females than males. There are more female than male students in university. Girls aged twelve and above are no longer forced to stay at home waiting for arranged marriages. So, we’re already jumping in joy at the finish line, right?

Not so much.

Although we receive better education and opportunities are relatively wider, we are not quite there yet in terms of gender equality. The fact is, despite the school participation rate, there are more men than women in Indonesia’s workforce. Out of the 34 coordinating ministers and ministers in the Cabinet, only eight are women. A 2012 McKinsey report stated that as we go up the corporate ladder, the number of women in the room significantly diminishes, with only 3 percent of CEOs in corporate America being female.

Even more, globally, women do less paid work than men and conversely, spend more time on unpaid work than men do. Based on the Indonesian human resources online community, Qerja, in Indonesia women are paid 87.64 percent of what men are paid – translating to a 12.36 percent pay gap.

Logically speaking, a fairer world doesn’t hurt anyone. Let’s take a look at what the impacts of ending the gender pay gap would be: for businesses, paying workers fairly boosts morale and improves public perception of the company. For the women, well, we get paid what we deserve; and for the men, well, you get paid the same, so no changes for you. Everyone’s happy.

Having more women in leadership positions, whether in corporations or government, also helps everyone. Men constitute only half the population, so if the senior positions are dominated by men, only half the population’s concerns and issues are being represented. We need different points of view, and having more diversity in leadership helps that. Furthermore, a Peterson Institute study showed that going from having no women in leadership positions to a 30 percent female share is associated with a one-percentage-point increase in net margin.

By looking past gender bias and appraising someone solely based on their own performance, we can have the right person for the job – not the right man for the job, nor the right woman. It makes sense both for the employer and the employees. Equal opportunities don’t hurt anyone.

So as individuals, what can we do?

First and foremost: recognize. Recognize that there are these gaps, and that we might have unconscious bias and stereotypes in our everyday decision making. Recognize that there is still, and always will be, room for improvement.

By recognizing this, we can step back before we make a decision and assess whether there are biases that could result in a widening of the inequality gap.

Secondly, but equally important, all of us have to participate in this. This is not a zero-sum game; no one loses. In order to make it work, we have to work hand in hand: women and men alike.

Unknowingly, it is women themselves that can be the harshest critics of other women. It is very easy for women to dismiss, disregard and disrespect others: working moms to stay-at-home moms, those who choose to marry at a young age and those who wait, career-driven women and housewives. The decisions we make in life, in our career and marriages, don’t make us less of a woman – they shouldn’t make us less of a woman. We make decisions based on our own judgments and different backgrounds, and we should respect differences.

And men are vital in the equation too: making up roughly 50 percent of the population, even with all women making it work, we’re still short of half of the population. This is homework for both genders.

Kartini wouldn’t have been able to obtain as much education as she did or learn Dutch if not for her supportive father. Kartini’s husband allowed her to pursue her aim of creating a school for women. Remember, this is not a zero-sum game.

Kartini is celebrated for her ideas that were ahead of her time – she challenged the norms of her day, which now might be considered completely obsolete. Being a modern-day Kartini is not simply dressing up in beautiful kebaya and matching batik, it is having the spirit to see whether today’s norms and social conditions should to be challenged and improved on.

Looking back a hundred years ago, we might laugh at the fact that girls could only go to school until the age of twelve. Hopefully, in fifty years, or even sooner, our grandchildren will look back at us, and laughingly say, “Funny, back then, they thought girls were not equal to men”.

As in every time period, there exists a separation between parents and children known as the generation gap.

Understandably, such disparity is inevitable: advancing technology, shifting views on pop culture and increased globalization all collectively widen the past and the present between parents and their teens. Improvements always make the traditional version of anything look outdated. Penning letters appears lame compared to typing emails, cultural traditions appear troublesome compared to the cooler pop culture trends, parents’ advice appear invalid compared to what friends and celebrities say.

Is there a way to close the rift? Probably not. But can we at least narrow the gap?

To do so, we need to take a look at the root cause of the generation gap. For the 21st century teenager today, our biggest underlying problem is our inability to effectively communicate our thoughts.

There have been many articles and discussions for parents on Teenagers 101: A parent’s guide to basic teenagers. But what about a guide for teenagers to help understand their parents? After all, a large majority of parents want the best for their children, but from the receiving end, these good intentions are sometimes taken as troublesome requests and limitations.

Fundamentally, teens need to change the mind-set that parents don’t understand situations that they are going through. Parents were teenagers once too. It’s unfair for you to give your dad the cold shoulder when he offers to drop you off at a dinner engagement or snap at your mom when she asks about your social life.

Before clamming up or jumping to conclusions, try opening up and engaging in some small talk, if you haven’t already had an open conversation with them. They don’t get your situation because you haven't told them the complete story and they need the complete story to be able to give you suitable advice. Sure, times have changed and your problems may differ to those of your parents’, but that doesn’t automatically discredit their wisdom.

Imagine life as a single-file bridge. Your parents have already walked a stretch of the way, but they cannot turn around to guide you side-by-side. Say there’s a hole in the bridge along the way. You’re about to fall into it, so your parents warn you, telling you to steer clear. But you, the young vibrant soul, want to discover your surroundings by yourself, and thus want to deal with the hole on your own terms. And perhaps you will pull through it, maybe even unscathed, but there’s only so many issues that you can resolve on your own and there will come a time where you need help and you'll need to look for that help.

Perhaps the reason we turn to social media instead of face-to-face communication is because social media offers an illusion of a “private” sharing space, since private chat screens are supposedly, well, private. But as every high school movie has taught us, nothing shared on social media — be it on Facebook messenger or on Skype calls — is never really confidential. So when we turn to our friends on social media instead of finding time to confide in our parents (or any adult figure), oftentimes we aren’t presented with holistic insight on our problems. Admittedly, age does not equate to maturity, but by default, the older someone is, the more experiences they’ve live through.

Why not recreate a “safe bubble” in real life?

Long journeys are a pretty good starting point, especially for those who are starting to reconnect with their parents. Try a car or plane ride. They work because these spaces form a closed space for you and your parents in a less formal setting, in a fresh environment as opposed to the daunting “we need to talk” bedroom or dining-room setting. In a car, it’s literally a metal box of privateness. You don’t have to feel self-consciousness about people watching you. A plane, on the other hand, is great because it’s a “public” place. But unlike other public places (like malls and restaurants), other people mind their own business and the hum of the airplane engine drowns out neighboring conversations. The best part? Your parents can’t flip out on you (at least, when you’re on a plane; in a car, they could drop you on the side of the road). And they also cannot avoid a talk. At home, on the other hand, they could break the mood by walking out of the room.

Now that we have a safety bubble, how to break the ice?

There’s two ways to go about it: the gentle, probing method, or the straight-up, direct method. For those who want to slowly set up the context and then ease into the more serious stuff, start with something general, maybe even ask your parents about the kinds of problems they encountered during their teen years. Then once you’ve established the mood, you can ease into the more serious stuff. On the other hand, maybe cutting the unnecessary perambulatory stuff and going straight into “OK there’s this problem and I kind of need advice but I need you to not get mad because I’m already flipping out myself” could prove a better route. Sometimes honesty can manifest through lighthearted humor: “Recently, I found this new thing called ‘being open to my parents’, and I’ve decided to give it a try.”

Of course, it shouldn’t take a crisis for you to start talking to your parents. Relationships are an investment. You don’t receive bank interest on your savings immediately; it accumulates. Building a bridge to narrow the gap doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a process.

You'll only have one set of parents. Sometimes they get a little too fussy, a little too nosey and a little too uptight, but they’re still your parents. Treat them with loving care, or else you’ll only realize their value once you see their empty chair.

Throughout our lives, we keep getting reminded that too much of anything isn’t good. Yet, oftentimes, humans have this bizarre tendency to overindulge in something that’s meant to be consumed in modest amounts. This is something I can vouch for, as I spend most of my time losing sleep over watching TV shows on Netflix, or eating too many fries in one sitting when I go to McDonald’s. 

Lately, young people appear to outstay their welcome in the social media realm. Lets face it: Almost everyone in this era can be categorized as a ‘nomophobic’ or “a person who has a fear of being out of mobile phone contact.” For example, when my phone’s battery is dying and I don’t have a charger with me, I feel like I am carrying a ticking time bomb that will explode once my phone switches off; and once it does, I feel disconnected from the rest of the world until I revive my device. 

But what do we so-called millenials do on our smartphones besides getting sucked into a vortex of infinite posts on our Instagram feed and tapping through Snapchat stories of friends that we’ve met once, two years ago? For 71 percent of us—according to the Pew Research Institute—not much. 

It’s something that we are all used to—checking and re-checking each of our social media accounts right before heading to bed, the following morning upon waking up and whenever we get the chance in between. Falling prey to this routine gradually made me realize that social media can be a deceptive lens to the outside world. 

Nowadays, it’s so important for people to have a vibrant social media presence that much of their effort goes into maintaining an ‘aesthetic feed’. Convenient crops and filters allow users to reduce their experiences to little square stills to orchestrate the life they want people to think they lead. It seems as though they are giving up some good time in real life to show that they are having a good time on Snapchat or Instagram.

In hindsight, we can barely make it through a simple meal without exclaiming, “Hold on, let me take a picture first!” and then waste another four minutes strategically formatting the dishes on the table, not giving the slightest care about the people around us who just want to eat the food. Other than that, the advent of photo-sharing apps makes it a rarity to enjoy a gathering with friends without someone saying, “Let’s take a selfie!” (which, by the way, is never just one selfie). These are modern day examples of people who unplug from real life in order to document it—because they are convinced that their entire day will go to waste if they don’t post any evidence of it.

The fixation with getting “likes” and posting content that will be well received creates constant competition, where the quantity of likes and followers people have determines their self-esteem. The more followers they can garner to like their #selfie, the better they feel about themselves.

There are a few people I know who beat themselves up over not getting as many red hearts on their picture. To avoid that experience, they post pictures on Instagram during ‘peak hours’ for the sake of getting more approval. Some even delete posts that have hardly received any likes just moments after uploading them, out of fear that they will come off as unworthy. It is due to this mindset that people set unrealistic social media targets for themselves.

Such obsessive habits spell out a toxic culture of continuous self-assessment, resulting in serious declines of morale. Pakistani-American internet personality reporte and blogger Samia Khan in her TEDx Talk suggests, “This type of virtual comparison leads to feelings of inadequacy, leaving you feeling more pressured.” She highlights that the motivation behind this hyper-positivity and self-inflating behavior on Snapchat and Instagram revolves around the need to be ‘validated’ and ‘celebrated.’ 

“These affirmations are hugely powerful, because they influence and trigger the pleasure center in our brain—we’ll do anything for that little dose of dopamine,” she explains. Once we attain gratification by uploading positive posts, we yearn for it more and realize that sharing selfies and accomplishments is the best way to get it. But what we fail to understand is, that “what we see is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. There are greater, more personal realities looming underneath the surface”, adds Khan.

Technology is a boon and smartphones are exciting tools that have taught and will continue to teach us a great deal. We literally have the whole internet (which basically equates to all that’s important about the world) at the tips of our fingers. But this makes it easier for our phones to turn from useful gizmos into black holes, diverting our attention away from reality and directing it toward a torrent of information about the lives of people we don’t really know.

The photo-sharing apps on your smartphone are not meant to be used as social crutches. Use your phone when you need to do something specific, and put it away when you’re done. Don’t get so caught up in portraying a good life that you forget to actually lead one.

I recently had a small get-together with my high-school friends. The conversation between us revolved around reminiscing about our time as students way back then, jobs, keeping up to date with what was happening with our respective lives and gossiping.

And then this topic came up: Marriage.

A female friend said this during our meeting: “My parents are very traditional; they want me to get married before I turn 30."

Another friend chimed in, “You know this so-and-so is also feeling galau [insecure] lately because she’s still single.”

This type of conversation about relationship and marriage has become a staple discussion whenever I go out with my fellow female friends who are in their 20s. The constant chatter about it prompts me to wonder - why are we under so much pressure to get hitched before we hit 30?

Out of frustration, I once asked my mother about this and this is what she said to me, “There’s this stigma surrounding women who are still not married by the age of 30 being labeled as ‘unwanted’ or ‘left over’.”

It saddened me to hear her answer because it underlies the message that for us women, despite how hard we’ve worked to make a living, or no matter how well educated you are, you’re still a failure if you don’t get yourself a husband.

A survey conducted in 2012 by Yahoo! She Indonesia found that of 7,335 female respondents asked “should women get married?” 37 percent answered no, while 63 percent preferred to settle down because “It is women’s fate”.

During a powerful TED Talk on feminism, famed novelist and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses this same issue, saying “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.”

At the end of the video, she acknowledges the need to change a culture that doesn’t fully acknowledge the humanity of women, explaining that it is not culture that makes people but people that make culture.

If culture is indeed the thing that has shaped our mindset, then let’s change it. Culture evolves as society evolves. In the past it might have been an acceptable norm for women to just wait for a man to ask for her hand in marriage because back then women weren’t even allowed to go to school and had to be kept at home until a man agreed to wed her.

But thanks to our national heroine R.A. Kartini, who fought hard for education for girls, now we are allowed to go to school just like boys. In fact, Indonesia’s school participation rate is higher for females than males nowadays and there are more female than male students in university.

So why do we still have to stick to the old tradition that doesn’t represent the current situation of women?

In a touching advertisement by cosmetic brand SK-II that went viral a few months ago, I was so moved by the single young Chinese women profiled in the video who bravely stood up against their parents’ pressure and the status quo that label them as “leftover women”. One woman said in the video, “I have a great career, and there’s another term for that: ‘powerful woman’.”

Your success in life doesn't depend on whether men find you attractive or not, success depends on yourself alone.

Be independent, be a leader, get your dream job, pursue your passion, be who you want to be and love who you want to love.

If you’re still single in your 20s,it’s not the end of the world! Being single can help you in finding your true self; it’s also the time where you can learn to love yourself. No one can make you happy until you're happy with yourself first.

And no, I’m not implying that all young women in their 20s should put marriage on hold before they turn 30. If you do want to settle down, make sure it is because you love that person and you feel that it really is the right time for you to share the rest of your future with this special someone.

Let the decision come from your heart and mind, not from the pressure that the society places upon your shoulders :)

One day I had a conversation about life with two young friends of mine. They were in their mid 20s and full of energy.

I loved hearing about how they were dealing with the same things I dealt with. We each talked about how we had planned our life, including our career, love life, financial plans, ambitions etc.

Making plans is good because it means there is focus in our life. However, no matter how eager we are in planning our life, there are, unfortunately, things that we just cannot control.

Young people tend to make plans to study, score an ideal job or even get married by a certain age. Little do they know, the last one is something that is hard to plan for.

When I was young, I didn't set a target to get married by a certain age as I found the idea quite suffocating. What if I didn't meet a guy at that age? Would I get married just because I had planned it?

Planning to get married by a certain age when I didn't even have a boyfriend seemed too scary to me. I thought it would cause unnecessary stress in my life. Or, on the contrary, what if I met a guy way earlier before my set marriage date?

And not only that, when you are set on getting married or settling down with someone at a certain age, supposedly you pass that age and people start asking questions. Family gatherings on holidays from then on seem very hard to attend as you would have to answer that question again.

Nowadays, one is not only defined by marital status; unlike a century ago. Thus, making plans for your future, which include other people’s feelings, can be quite tricky.

When your plans fail to materialize, what happens? Perhaps you become stressed out, or worse, frustrated.

And all the fuss, for what? Enjoy your life instead. Go out see the world, work hard and prove yourself.

Then I remember my own quote:

"Planning your life into details and sticking to your plan doesn’t always work. Things in life do not go smoothly, and exactly as you plan. There are chances to take, risks to avoid, challenges to pursue and disappointments to deal with. Life is what you make it. Carpe Diem."

It’s really not easy finding someone who’s just made for you, logic plus experience tells us that there is no such thing as Mr. Perfect, but I believe that Mr. Right does exist..

For me, Mr. Right is someone who doesn't make sense for anyone else, who just doesn't work with others, but with you - everything fit perfectly. 

2016 was a devastating year for me, the worst heartbreak that I could possibly have.

On that moment I seriously thought that I would never be able to open my heart anymore. 

How could I open it if it’s only just some broken pieces?

Top of everything, kindness holds the top spot on my list — a characteristic I simply cannot live without.

And from the day one, it was his kindness that I straightly notice. 

Since he is such a family man, I guess it’s not hard for him to get along with mine.

He’s willing to take huge leaps to make sure my family like him and see how much he cares for me.

He likes my family and i like his family, and  i hope it goes along with his family likes me and my family likes him.

I believe life is so much easier when we have each other’s family’s approval and blessings.

You and your partner should have the comfort to talk and share about everything that is going on in your life,

from the daily boring routines to your biggest dreams.

You need to be able to share and listen, and it should be balanced between the two of you. 

It must be fun to have life partner that has lots of thing in common,

from favorite hobbies to the same food that we hate. 

the right one will never leave you hanging with “where this is going on” – kinda question,

because men basically like hunters, they always go hard for what they want.