In this year's Chinese New Year, a best friend invited me to lunch with our boyfriends in a Chinese restaurant at Kuta. Then I realized I always fall for a person who loves books. This best friend, she's an artist, animator, illustrator, and florist. But apart from her "artsy" taste, she loves books and my scientific stories. More than any similarities I found between my ex and my current boyfriend, it's all the same: books. People who are thirsty for knowledge. From a young age, I always believed richness depends on something intangible. We discuss knowledge, skills, hobby, altruism, forgiveness, culture, and love. Those are things that are impossible to steal and mark our legacy after we die. How many rich people have died and are not remembered - but how many inventors died bankrupt,t but their legacy still lives these days?

Speaking of books, my ex-supervisor visited me last month when I was in the United States. It's been over three years since we last met in Washington, DC, spending time at a Chinese diner. Sipping vegetable soup in the middle of Cold Capital. This time, I brought her to a famous fish soup diner in Sanur, and we talked a lot about life and politics - as usual. She handed me a book she got from her husband as a Christmas gift. She said that book would be in perfect hands.

As an exchange, I handed her a book about Komodo, designed and partially written by me. I told her that the editor of this book was a friend of ours, and I forgot if I had already sent him a copy. She said, "Don't worry. Once I finish this, I will give it to him!"

That night I learned something.
I am too sentimental with my books. I treat my books as Moh. Hatta treated his books - but I forgot, those are just books. What matters is the knowledge inside it. Whether I have learned or written something after finishing a book. If I could borrow Marie Kondo's principle (though I don't agree with her method), we should possess only things that spark joy. In my opinion, those things are only intangible ones.

Something tangible is finite.
It's like when I had these beautiful, small, wild orchids bloom, and it lasted only for four days.
The flowers are no longer there, but the happiness stays.
So happiness is beyond the flower itself. It's something intangible.
In this new age, I have learned to see beyond the physical element of a thing.

I lost so many important books last year.
Now I know that I never lose them because I've read 'em all, and I'm rich with the knowledge.