Refugee Posts

2006-04-02T01:55:00.000-08:00

These are the previous posts that I made on Friendster.
No chance to do formatting etc, but it's there!

Cheers :)

So This Is Christmas

2006-04-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : December 15, 2005

Currently, there are Christmas songs in radio... Christmas is around the corner...

Actually, I always wonder what is Christmas for me. I enjoy Christmas songs and decorations in town. I love seeing Christmas tree in our house in Jakarta with musical instrumental and colorful lights shining in the dark. Christmas party...can’t really feel that, Christmas party is always medium rare or too well done, there are almost always done in November and January, can’t feel the ambient...

This year, I can’t find my Christmas tree, a small pathetic one and hidden inside one of the boxes in my storeroom. I will need at least one full day to find it that I don’t think I have in these few days.

Last Christmas, I remember we went strolling along Orchard Road. It is always the most happening street on Christmas Eve and New Year Eve. People having fun, performances, choirs, greeting with strangers etc. Most people, on the street, I bet three quarter of them are not Christian.

At first, it was quite fun watching. Strangers were smiling with strangers. They had fun with those spraying ribbons and glow in the dark sticks. After a while, both of us were getting quiet and walking to the MRT station, sat and looked at the garbage on the floor. There were sticky colorful ribbons and their empty cans and soft drink cans everywhere. It was just too much waste of money and too much work for the cleaners. The amount of money spent on creating those rubbishes can mean a lot for needy.

But then again, maybe, it’s too tiring to always do the right thing? Maybe the world has become too crazy place that slightest reason is needed for celebration. And with celebrating, it might be good to remind us that there are always good things to look forward to.

The day after, tsunami happened.

So, the moral is,
Don’t waste your money on useless thing; use it for something more meaningful for others, or maybe for yourself when you need it in the future.
Or,
Let’s celebrate every good thing, no matter how small, as long as we could, because we never know what is going to happen tomorrow. ? ? I prefer to do both ways, balance is good and keeps us in sane.

And, it’s not everyday that we are given choices and be able to choose all.

Bla…bla…bla…

So my parent, my eldest brother with his wife and kid, are here.
It’s always fun to have them here. House is full. And the little chubby nephew I have is very cute. He is three years old plus now, so I don’t need funny faces and voices to get close to him anymore, like I always had to do when he was a baby. I watch him grow up half a yearly. Now I can make serious face and talk to him seriously, and I can see how serious a kid talks when he thinks you talk to him seriously. Watch their expressions and the way they think hard trying to impress or convince you. It’s hilarious! Mhhahhahahaha….

Maybe later I will talk to him about conquering the world. Remind me of the cartoon character, Brain, the lab mouse who wants to conquer the world with its friend, Pinky. I miss that crazy cartoon…

This nephew of mine is a sporty type. Can see it now. He likes to watch football, when he was smaller, he even said that he was Beckam’s son.
Come on….Beckam? Yuhhhh… Sorry for fans.
Oke, he looks better than quite a lot of people, but have any of you hear him talk? It sounds like Mickey Mouse after inhaling a tank of helium.

SO.. lucky these last two visits my nephew doesn’t care about the Mickey Mouse anymore (he is much wiser), he is addicted with my pool table and spends his time playing like expert although he is only one head taller than the table. To avoid him disturbing our game when we are playing, I allow him to clean the white ball whenever it goes in. It’s just an adult manipulation to make him feels important and involved. Kekekkeekekke…

One day, when I was playing with my brother, I saw him standing at the edge of the table and grinning from ear to ear.
When I asked him why, he said “I moved that ball and put another ball in the hole and you didn’t know.”
Duh.
He is smarter than me sometimes. Or often.

When we had lunch, we had a huge spare glass of Coke, my nephew pronounced that as his as he drank it first. He was sitting on my left, after convincing him that I’ll be the Coke guardian angel, I put the Coke on my right afraid he might drop it. My brother asked me to finish the Coke as he didn’t want the child to drink too much. When I saw him playing and busy with himself, I took a sip of the Coke.

Before I even swallowed it, he looked at me, grinned and talked softly,” Kow-kow, did you just steal my Coke?” I was freeze with my cheeks still bulging with Coke, didn’t know what to say.

I must looked very stupid that way…

Here, I found the good one.

Christmas is to give thanks and have those loved ones present around you or present in your heart.

_______________________________________________

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
- Origin Unknown

Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today might burn your ass tomorrow.
- Unknown

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
- Jesus Christ

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
- Mark Twain

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors---and miss.
-Unknown

Women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
- Robert Heinlein

First Impression

2006-04-02T01:21:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : December 08, 2005

Is it true? Am I so misleading?

For those who don’t know, I have another life. There is a place I like to visit at work, a cyber writing community where I make friends and learn harsh languages. :)
I stopped longing in for half a year, because bla bla bla…I talked about it in my earlier post, then last week, I started to show up again.

To my surprise, many of them are still remember me, and there were many warm touching welcomes flying around, make me feel really special.
Then I started to mingle around, throw jokes and post story.
I got two surprises today, from two guys who I considered as my best pals.
One was hoping that I wouldn’t be offended with his new story, as it was dark and nasty. When I read the story, I love it. He is a grandpa who most of his stories were about his grandchildren, sweet, childish and nice. And he afraid that if he wrote differently, I would scared of him.

Second, he is about thirty and handsome (!), decent and nice guy. He asked me what had happened when I was gone, because the new me was different, (I just posted one dark story), and I threw snappy jokes, when he remembered I used to be sweet and gentle. (Kekkekeke…)
I think back, maybe I was less frank because I was quite new and I didn’t know how was the style of their language then, and coincidentally, my old stories were ‘normal’ types.
And then again, I realized that many of my friends said that I’m not the same with my first impression. Most of my testimonials said so, mahahhahaha…
Of course I would be quiet when I first know someone, and smile politely, tokh?? Some said it’s my face, what about it? I was born that way…

If I haven’t known that person yet, I can’t anyhow picking or making fun of them, and I seldom talk with someone I just met. So, I might appear like sweet, quiet and gentle person (Hang on on your lunch, more are coming).
And they said that I’m not the right person to mess up with. Hmm….Coooooooooool…!
I like that one, really, although I’m not sure I have beaten up someone or quarreled with them. But, I think nobody will stand still if you treat him or her badly. Those Korean dramas with pretty girls keep being bullied and bullied, just smile and tearfully stand under the rain are not real, mind you. They are paid for that.

So, don’t believe on first glance. First impression matters, but first impression is the impression you get when you already spend at least one two hour exchanging words, not just looking from far, that is first glance.

First glance is hardly right (except mine, I always right.. mhehehe), so don’t believe in love at first sight!

______________________________________________________

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde

It is a good idea to be more intelligent that you seem. It is easier to appear more stupid than you are.
- Origin Unknown

It is better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
- Mark Twain

Don't be humble. You're not that great.
- Golda Meir

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
- Sam Levenson

Never get into fights with ugly people because they have nothing to lose.
- Unknown

You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.
- Homer Simpson

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of---but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Reaching 30

2006-04-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

December 06, 2005

So our office went for site visit on Monday.

Compared to schools I had attended, this one has so many facilities that made me drool; tennis courts, football, basketball and netball fields.
I stood beside the railing overlooking the blue basketball field and dreamt about those sweaty dazzling guys (they may not come in one package, I mean there must be a few sweaty-only guys…ew.. and few dazzling-only ones).
So, those sweaty dazzling were nice to see, but I wouldn’t like the idea to stand too close to them. They said the more handsome a guy, the smellier he is, while the more beautiful a girl, the trickier she is. Again, 1-0 for us.

On the second thought, school that huge might not always be good to. It would be difficult to bump into someone you want to bump to on the way, intentionally or not. Although I was also standing beside the hostel window looking out to the football field and dreamt about the same scenery. Wondering how many more years it takes before I’ll be too ‘mature’ to get the questions,” Sekolah dimana?” Mhahhaha….
But I think those kind of questions really depend on how blur the askers.

When I was in Senior High, I went to my youngest brother’s school, he is five years younger than me, and they thought that I was younger than him. Before my head became too big and my grin was wider than ear to ear, some customer in my parent’s shop asked me,” So, how many children you have?” Shit happens.

Hey, the girl who asked me was twenty years old and she had three kids dangling on her hands, that’s how it works for them…. Right? Right?

Anyway, other than age. I was asked one in the bus,” Neng orang Sunda atau Jawa?”
Buset. Muke Cina gini kurang jelas apa. I thought he was joking, but then that guy looked so sincere. Berarti apalagi kalo bukan katarak abis….

Or in here, I kept saying that I don’t understand Mandarin, yet they kept talking cing cong wa cong eh lah lah, ended up it was so noisy that I just said yes to everything and got don’t know what kind of food.

I was not angry, because they called me ‘Siomay’ or ‘Siaw-Mei’ and even ‘Ah-Girl’, which means Little Girl or Young Lady.

Katarak or not, sometimes I need that. Kekkekeke….:)

____________________________________________________

When I look at the smiles on all the children's faces, I just know they're about to jab me with something.
- Anonymous-

I don't shit in your office so don't write on my walls.
- The Janitor

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.-Philip K Dick-

You must understand, I am a dishonest man. And you can always trust dishonest men to be dishonest. Honestly.
- Captain Jack Sparrow-

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
- Kingsley Amis

It's All In The Game

2006-04-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date: November 22, 2005

My colleague just poured her heart to me. Whoa, I meant ‘curhat’.

She was in the mid of confusion about complicated relationship. She has not even begun, so it was just the game of shooting and answering.
Gosh, fifteen minutes I talked and listened to her, I realized, I might be too old for this game.
It’s a bloody tiring-mind-reading type of game.
I like this guy; does he like me?
He said this, what did he mean?
He wanted to hold my hand, should I let him or shouldn’t I?
If I said I was not ready, what would he take it as?
What would happen to the friendship? Would it be the same? What if I made the wrong decision?

P.S: Woman’s mindset is as complicated as a puppy tangled in long and long gulali. :)

Men might say ‘I want to pee’ and they mean it, but we might think that You need an excuse, you want to have sometime out, you need space to clear your mind or… something is trapped below, … and finally we think that you might really need to pee.

Sorry, I know this is not a crystal clear example. :)

Huayah!

Sometimes I looked at my single friend, and thought, It must be exciting to have those gabruk gabruk in the heart while playing in this game, but mostly I remember, it might be exciting, but much of the time it was also hurtful and restless. So, I think, I prefer this way. The fifteen minutes already did some damage in my peaceful mind, brought me back to the past for a while, and made me even more thankful than what I used to be, that I don’t need to play much anymore, I hope?

Many a tear has to fall
But it’s all in the game
All in the wonderful game
That we know as love
You have words with him
And your future’s looking dim
But these things your heart can rise above
Once in a while he won’t call
But it’s all in the game
Soon he’ll be there at your side
With a sweet bouquet
And he’ll kiss your lips
And caress your waiting fingertips
And your heart will fly away
(Nat King Cole)

Bombay....

P.S: Gue lagi laper berat, dikantor lagi gak ada cemilan sama sekali, akhirnya cuman ngemil teh (?!?) dan jadinya makin lapar…! Kemaren di Bali tiap habis nyilem makannya tempe goreng mulu slurppp, sekarang jadi makin pengen yang aneh2, tempe goreng, bakmi, bakso, martabak, sop buntut, pecel lele, otak-otak yang mahalan dan bahkan spesifik otak2 yang cepean… Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..laper laper laper laperrrrrrrrrr….

BALI BALI BALI

2006-04-02T01:13:00.000-08:00

Find the stories and picture from these links.

Stories:
http://apingpingaa-balisafari2005stories.blogspot.com

Pictures:
http://apingpingaa-bali2005.blogspot.com

Thanks :)

Music

2006-04-02T01:11:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : November 10, 2005

What is the meaning of music for you? Does it make or break your day?..

Music means a lot to me, in a flowery way, it decorates my life (huayahhh mana tahan…). It’s able to upgrade my happiness into very happy and sadness into the end of the world kind of sadness. Sometimes sad songs make me sad even though I’m in happy screen saver mode. It’s that power.

I’m not a musical person. Of course, I like to picture me wearing long black gown, with long long hair and play violin while everyone got carried away. Cool hah… …mhahaha.. too bad, the only musical instrument I could play is harmonica. Honestly, girls don’t look good or posh blowing harmonica huehhehehe… and to be able to play it, you need only half an hour to learn. I have guitar, Hubby’s friend gave it to me when he knew I wanted to learn guitar. But it ended up behind my couch…maybe put it in my next year resolution..

Anyway, I’m sure even the most unmusical person in the world has some soundtracks in their life.
Soundtracks, such as the songs that remind you for specific thing in our life or specific someone, or some of the lyrics just blow you away. IMO, heartbroken lyrics are the most powerful of all, it tears, breaks and puts some Tabasco in the broken heart. Ouch.

Not only lyrics, but the melody or instrumental could manipulate emotion too. Once, after haven’t been crying for years, I koblo koblo when I heard a wedding song. No, not because some unwanted or heartbroken marriage, but because I had such kuping pangsit that I didn’t hear the lyrics clearly. I though it was a sad song, indeed it was Hawaiian Wedding Song by Andy Williams. Mhahahha….
I shall not meet anyone who read this after..

It was one fine night, everything was ok, college was fine, I didn’t have a fight with bf or anyone, I had my dinner and I was not in debt of course. Maybe I was lonely, and when I heard that song, strangely it sounded sooo sad that out of nowhere, I started to menjiwai....doooh

Guess I was sad, feeling insecure, those might have piled up all along broke it through. It might be just a moment of emotion, but I thought differently after that, it made me realize something.

There are songs that remind me of some guys, friends, places or activities that I had done. The Christmas Song always remind me of one weekend in remote beach called Malingping (ada pingnya seh huhahhaha) while the resort was so cozy, homy and everything was like Christmas, although I wasn’t there for Christmas. There are songs I used to sing terribly with my friends, remind me of them of course, songs that I used to hear until the cassette was broken cause it’s the only cassette I brought when I went for that journey, remind me of the place and the trip, songs with lyric jussst exactly saying about what I feel about this person, remind me of the person.

And, or songs which have special story behind. It doesn’t have to be good, great, masterpiece; even the worst song in the world might mean something for somebody. Heard a Chinese opera song, horrible, but changed my opinion after a grandpa with teary eyes told me that it reminded him of his spouse. Once, I had this best friend and we went out in the group together. In a cassette shop, there was a song playing, and he stood in front of the cassette rack with dreamy eyes.

“Nice song it is.” I was tempted when I saw how ‘deep’ his face was,” Remember someone special?”
He took deep breath, still locked his eyes on the cassette.
“There is this girl, I just don’t know how to let her know.”
He stood there for a good few minutes and decided to buy the cassette for her.
Few days later, I received it and so did the magic words.

We didn’t end up together. I just always regretted why I gave him another reason rather than be honest that I couldn’t picture something more between us.

Since then, whenever I hear the song, I always feel guilty. But, he is still and always be my best guy friend ever. Hhhh…if only I could speak as easy as I could write..

So, anyway, picture says a thousand words. Music says tenth thousand more.

In a while, there would be Christmas song everywhere, and those twinkling instrumental from the tree, too bad there are no longer singing cards hehhehe…I love those twinkling cards! Bought a box of ginger cookies two years ago just because I could spin the box and let the music out. Well, ops…it’s spoilt now, …but the ginger cookies are still inside I guess.

Emm…cookies anyone?

Wehee….! Holiday is finally here for me!!

Counting Down

2006-04-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : November 06, 2005

Late for work on Friday, there were some problems with the train.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the train is delayed due to the train ‘fog’ in front of us.”
Something like that. Huh?

What? Fog? Where the hell am I? London?
Come to think of it, maybe it was train FAULT. Nahhhh. Make more sense.
(Note: person under medication)

On Friday afternoon, I was Kaput. My friend liked to say, “My body is not delicious.”
She used direct translation from Indonesian. So, visited expensive doctor in the afternoon and brought home a bunch of medicine. Expensive doctor means the one who is not covered by office insurance, those under insurance are often crap, they are expert with ‘we won’t tell you but we strongly believe it won’t work’ drugs.

So, there burnt my weekend. I slept, slept and slept. Every day almost 12 hours each day, the coughing drug was so strong that I felt as sleepy as crazy, I don’t like that sleepy zombie feeling, make me feel much more stupid than ..ugh…. my boss??
But I took all the medicines, cross my finger hoping to fully recover before H-day.

Anyway, I’m here in the office on Monday but still feeling crappy, I had to drag my feet to come.
Last week, with those Senen-Rabu-Jumat working days, every day is Friday, sooo nice hehehhee..

Tuesday night Monster-Bali Group gathered together. It was officially our first meeting with a complete member of this trip. I always think that we were ok, not so monster, but after that night, I was convinced that we deserved that name. We are easy to deal with if separated, but once we gather….
That night, we tortured the dive shop, meeting point. Then we went to Chinese restaurant and had a few-courses meal, until no other guests were around, didn’t realize, we were still laughing and having fun. I think the waiters wanted to kick our groins desperately. (Note: I don’t have)

So we moved to a nice coffee house and continued until pass midnight. As usual, we only spent few minutes to talk about what we needed to talk, the rest we were just ball-bull around and cracked jokes.
So, final it is. Four days to go.

I have decided that I want to try everything for every chance I have, end up, there are too many things that I like after I tried them.
I’ve never thought ocean could be such a magnet for me. Once tried, twice addicted.
They are like calling me, pulling my ears to taste their sand on my feet, sun and salt on my skin, and wind slapping me up and down (I’m trying to make it sounds romantic…, it doesn’t, does it?). We are so in love with them, until every time we visit one, all we want to do are kick out our heels, run to their embraces and swim with the waves.

When we stayed in Gold Coast for a week, we spent every afternoon in Surfer Paradise, baking our skin until the sun melted to the ocean. We didn’t really back out even though we met two head sized jellyfish next to us. And that was only the surface.

Anyway, being alive is to do what we like to do..
I won't ask much, not luxurious life and splendid posh holiday destination, but
a golden tan, happy faces and priceless pictures.. :)

Pasir putih ombak bergulung, membuih
Derunya sampai ke seberang, ucap selamat datang
Suasana alam tropika, kegembiraan aneka
Lelambaian nyiur pun memanggil nada suara hati
Bau hangat pasir menyapa nafasku
Sejauh kaki melangkah, tak lepas memandang
Ramainya orang bersuka, jaka dara tua muda
Melepas lelah jiwa sehari dan menghibur diri
(Pasir Putih, Kla Project)

Buset

2006-04-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 30, 2005

Buset!

Pagi2 udah apes banget. Bangun sebelom ayam melek (disini gak pernah liat ayam sih, tapi anak SD sini kalo disuruh gambar ayam, gambarnya chicken wing KFC, en KFC belom buka, jadi ayam belom melek…), langit masih gelap, mata masih sepet…
Biasanya pagi2 gini gak bisa molor di kereta, ehh, pagi ini enak banget dapet duduk dipojokan. Muka udah kecetak bentuk sticker kereta tapi tidurnya uenakkk….kebangun dua stasiun sebelom tujuan, en..tidur ampe kelewatan.. kunyuk, langsung sumpah serapah, percuma gue bangun pagi ngejar kereta manyun2 akhirnya rugi 15 menit waktu tidur berharga gue..

Habis selese urusan, mau ngantor, hujan gede. Hujan kayak gini mustinya gak bakal kelar satu, dua, tiga jam *sok tau*, takut telat ngantor, gue terobos aja. Hujannya gede, Jeck! Mana pake baju putih, akhirnya gile, free show, amal, nyeplak kemana-mana, kayak tikus kecebur got. Belakang bisa tutupin pake tas, depan wadaw, untung nemu tukang Koran, akhirnya terlindung dikit harga diri…

Nyampe kantor, hujan berenti, computer hang.

Kenapa sih hari ini????! Udah Senen, jelek lagi!

Takut masuk angin, basah2 kena AC, minum deh tuh jamu Tolak Angin bekas beli Jakarta, hehhehe, uelamak, pait, baunya kenceng, bwek bwek….

Btw, gue tau yang di Jakarta pada libur, tadinya gue sirik, sekarang enggak lagi! Mhahahhaha...baru tau gue ternyata banyakan loe pada disuruh ambil Cuti Paksa, Hahahhahha, nyahooo! Benernya cuman dapat dua hari kan?? Mendingan gue kemana-mana, mau ambil cuti kapan terserah-serah gue. Huhahahha, makan tuh libur seminggu!

Nyolod banget gue...emang..

Anyway, gue lagi kedinginan, nunggu kerjaan. Harus kelarin dua kerjaan sebelom ke Bali, dan kunyuk2 yang bertanggung jawab belom ampe tahap ngasih gue, masih disiapin, so gue nganggur en kedinginan! Padahal jarang banget kayak gitu, jadi jamu pait bau itu gak epek gitu? Tergoda juga mau minta cuti sakit...tapi perasaan baek2 aja deh, cuman dingin aja. Trus jari sakit bekas kejepit jendela, gile, gue pikir patah kemaren. Mau nutup jendela, jarinya nangkring di trelis, trus bam, gue hantem aja tuh daun jadi posisi jarinya keceklek diantara trelis ama jendela, kayak Z kebalik, yang diagonal jarinya, ngerti gak ngerti gak. Habis itu harus nanam muka di kasur bermenit2 ampe sakitnya ilang, biar gak cengeng. So, bisa cuti? :D

Bonyok dateng kemaren malem, belom sempat ngobrol2. Ntar malem mau ke kota ambil handphone Hubby lagi dibenerin. Duh.., males juga. Kemaren Sabtu kita udah keliling negara, hehehhe...dari ujung satu ke ujung laen. Cari stiker2 buat nama2in gear, trus tuker duit buat ke Bali. Hampir panik juga ngeliat seratus ribuan baru. Kok jadi kayak kertas kado buat Valentine? Warnanya pink, orange warna warni. Gue ampe panik telpon ke Jakarta buat mastiin, lha gimana kalo uang palsu? Dibawah box money changer ada anak kecil motong2in kertas kado trus ditukerin sebagai rupiah? Giliran yang ngangkat engko gue, orangnya buram, Blur King, juga,

“Hah? Seratusan ribu baru? Emang ada? Bukannya yang plastik itu ya?” We...gue jadi lumayan panik, mana udah dituker, untung nyokap yang ngomong akhirnya.

Saking lega, langsung deh pulang, lupa ngambil2in brosur jalan2 pesanan nyokap.

Minggunya, ke gereja, setelah absen berminggu-minggu karena Hubby lembur mulu. Abis itu nyari2in sesuatu buat dia. Ternyata sama cerewetnya ama gue, maunya yang kayak gini, dan emang sering banget, nyari satu negara, gak ada yang pas dihati. Giliran dapet, gak ada ukuran. Emang selalu gitu kalo disini, pilihan terbatas banget, pasaran dimana2. Kalo yang gak terbatas, harganya gila2an, tapi pasaran juga. Huh. Tapi kemaren semangat banget nyarinya, ampe rumah, ganti sendal jepit, keluar lagi. Tetap aja.........gak dapet.

Udah lama gak ngomong2 tentang pilem. Kan sekarang sering nonton DVD gara2 rental,
Gara2 nyewanya unlimited, yang kacangan juga ditontonin, habis yang bagus suka gak ada atau disewa orang, en mampir tokonya suka buru2, jadi asal ambil aja.

Malcolm In The Middle :
Ini emang suka nonton di TV dari dulu, sekali ini pinjem Season pertamanya. Lucu banget, tuh anak2 cowok badung banget en bonyoknya juga rada gila. Hahhaha, kalo nonton yang kayak gitu, jadi malah pengen punya. Huehhehehehehe...
Emang sih nakalnya sadis, tapi setidaknya anak2nya tahan banting, mandiri, nekad en gak nangis atau jerit2. Aduh, kalo anak kecil jerit2, langsung pengen sumpel pake bantal.
Dulu pas sakit gigi akut, yang ampe gak kebayang, ada anak2 dikereta, lari2, nabrak2, jerit2. Doooooh...! Sejak itu..... (ce-e-lah..)

Seinfield:
Namanya juga sewaan, ya season pertama juga. Tuh orang cara ngomongnya aneh bener, tapi ceritanya lucu seh, hehhehehhehehhe...

Lady Killer:
Pacenya lamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, ampe gemes, cape ngedengerin Tom Hanks ngomong. Leleeeettt.

Multipicity:
Ala Michael Keaton. Cowok bermata bagus. Lumayan.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind:
Idenya bagus, tapi plotnya gak mulus, apalagi depan2nya susah bikin orang terus tertarik. Cuman Jim Carey keliatannya normal. Tumben.

Serving Sara:
Mattew Perry. Surprisingly, lumayan lucu.

Aviator:
Waduh. Kirain bagus, kok ada sih filem kayak gitu? Udah itu Leonardo ngomongnya pake jepit jemuran dihidung. Males banget.

View From The Top, Law of Attraction:
Sambil maen game gila2an, curi liat semenit dua menit, juga ngerti. Kopong banget.

The Animal:
Lucu tapi norak dan maksa.

Finding Neverland:
Like this one, and the actor. :)

Million Dollar Baby:
Good, and the actress.

Hitch:
Gue pikir Will Smith nyebelin, tapi filemnya gak sejelek yang gue kira, malah gak seklise drama biasa. Cuman gue menolak dia dibilang, Tall, dark and handsome. Jauhhh...

My Big Fat Greek Wedding:
Apaan sih??? Katanya lucu. Enggak. Katanya drama. Enggak.

Harry Potter and The Soccerer Stone:
Zzzz....z..z....lemong., lambret bener..., gak kelar nontonnya.
Sejak nonton Chamber of Secret, gue kapok nonton HP di bioskop. Waktu itu, bioskop penuh dengan anak kecil, rame banget, trus mereka semua tuh hapalin bukunya, jadi tiap adegan udah diomongin dulu sebelom muncul. Nanti gini..nanti gitu...
Padahal gue udah lupa bukunya kayak apa, pengen enjoy, jadi ancur2an.
Bukunya sih baca semua, tapi yang kelima bacanya tiga bulan sebelom yang keenam keluar, en setengah buku pertama boring banget.
Yang keenam asik, baca e-booknya, lumayan dua hari nganggur dikantor. :)

Emang paling sebel kalo nonton apa2 udah dikasih tau akhirnya. Apalagi TV sini suka telat, jadi giliran ngebrowse ternyata seasonnya udah laen/ pemenangnya udah keluar, atau ada temen bangga trus ember sana sini. Pengen jedotin rasanya. Gue masih dendam dulu filem Sixth Sense ada yang ngomongin akhirnya gini gini, padahal kan itu ceritanya! En gue gak nonton ampe sekarang. Huh.

Tadinya pengen cerita soal Bali jaman dulu, buat bikin gue tambah semangat (benernya gak perlu) ama buat ngisi waktu. Tapi gara2 bawel, udah kepanjangan.

Hehehhehe.... sepuluh hari lagiiiii.....

Time has changed (Doooh..!)

2006-04-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 28, 2005

Another person, that makes it more than half a dozen, had complained again about the size of my pictures, I mean, the size of my face in the pictures. I’ve tried to put in bigger face, but I pulled it again.

They say, if you have your pictures all over the house, it’s a good sign, so you are a confident and social person. I’m confident, I’m quite social, but I’m not maniac…Hehehhehehehe…

I don’t really like seeing my pictures being displayed. It just feels strange that there’s someone looked like me and do the same thing with me and I can see her looking at me even when we are not catching our eyes (I’m being an idiot, right?). Anyway, I felt like destroying the TV in malls when they captured the images of people passing by. And believe it or not, I haven’t watched my wedding video, can’t help it.

I’ll try.

I read from newspaper, that tomorrow we might be able to see Mars. I’m quite skeptical about that.., from my house there are too many buildings in the horizon, my bedroom window is even worse, I can see my opposite neighbors digging their nose. I can always go out, but not in the mood. But I’d love to see Mars.

I think I believe there are aliens. Mhehhehe…It’s just to naïve to think that we are the only living advanced animal in the universe. See, we have Mercury to Pluto around the sun. We have many other sets like that inside the galaxy (Bimasakti?). And there are many other galaxies, then there is one and only civilization? In Earth? Yeah, right.
I always like astronomy, my category of astronomy is looking at the stars, the positioning, collecting pictures of planets and space exploration. That’s why I was very pissed off to know that moon landing might be fake! How about a little girl’s (now kind of ol…ehm...more mature) dream to become astronaut?

I don’t know whether it was a dream or not, I think it was.., I saw an UFO (sounds like a dream right.. Mahhaha :)), flying in the sky behind my house in my home town. It was a saucer shape (predictable), silvery with red lights. The thing is, I had never watched or heard or saw anything about that before. I didn’t even know it was an UFO.
My younger brother also told me one day, he saw something round, red and very huge in the sky. I waited in the deck with him until our sleeping time, but didn’t see anything. He was seven maybe eight that time, he wouldn’t lie to me, unless, maybe, he saw sunset? :D

Or, maybe, he saw Mars. Hmmmm..

But, no matter how I like space, I hate Star Wars and Star Trek. Hate is a strong word and I use it. I know it’s not fair, since I’ve never watched them fully. But I sure can tell that I hate it when I couldn’t stare at the TV/movie screen for continuous five minutes?

Out from space. Jump.

I feel world nowadays is in favor for women.
Let’s see.

Woman wearing man’s cloth: Tomboi, Sporty, Sexy, Masculine
Man wearing woman’s cloth: Bencong, Crazy, Nuts

Woman being extreme: Feminist
Man being extreme: Male Chauvinist Pig (MCP, I swear, this is a proper/formal term here)

Women tell dirty jokes: Dirty Jokes
Men tell dirty jokes: Sexual Harassments

Few days ago, I had lunch with two girls and one guy. Out of nowhere, we were talking about anatomy.
G1 : I always think that female’s anatomy are created nicely. They are in shape; everything is proper and designed well. But for guys…it’s like…
G2 : I think so too… they are ugly.
G3 : Out of shape.

G1 : Yeah, I think they are not well arranged…
G2 : Like they were created in the rush.., last minute work…
G3 : And low budget.

I remember one of my friend (Hi, if you remember) told me that she wondered why men are associated with extreme and adventurous sports, while their anatomy are definitely not as practical as girl. Like, horse riding. Isn’t it…uhm…uncomfortable…uhm….ngeganjel???

G1 : Yes… I agree. I don’t think they should always be the one who associated with those type of sports…I mean.., they are attached with…hmmm…on… here and there....
G2 : Not proper..
G3 : And low budget.

My guy friend just sat there speechless, all he could do was grinning. I think three of us, from different characters are just nice to be combined as a group. Group from hell. Today we’ve just cornered another guy. He is a very very neat guy, and we convinced him that he would find a wife with opposite character; sloppy, dirty, kinky.... We had analyzed, testimonials, living samples etc…at the end of the lunch, he wanted to be a bachelor forever…

Living here, I think women have much more advantages. Men say, it costs a lot to get married, but costs much much more to be divorced. Women here comfortable wearing short skirt, tank top, you can see my belly, you can see a lot, you can see everything if you try harder, but for the men, they can’t enjoy the sights too obvious. They can’t stare intensely; they can’t colek2 or suit2 if they don't want to spend sometime in jail. That’s why when they go to neighboring country, like Batam, I used to meet respectable-polite-well-dressed looking Singapore men behaved like the most extreme abang2. “Suit-suit…Ah girl! Lai-lai.. bla … bla.. bla…

Middle aged men here, are famous for their wives (in plural form). Not too far, my dad’s friends, two at least, my ex-boss, they have two wives outside the primary marriage, and they are strategically located, in different countries. But it’s not really the privileges of men only anymore. There are lots of cases where middle age women, keep toy boys in other country too, again, like Batam. And they pay all their affair expenses with their husband’s money. Nah.

Happy Lebaran for those who celebrate, for those whose today is the last working day until don’t know when. Enjoy… :)

Senses

2006-04-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 26, 2005

Visited Funan IT Center on Saturday and Sunday, not for shopping or gadget seeing, but to meet few people. Saturday we went to few places; Ausa shop to get the replacement for my broken octopus; the spare regulator. The outer plastic had been broken, can be used but not safe. I couldn’t figure out what caused it, it was located near my chest and I didn’t feel being bumped into anything (If I did…ooops! Ouch!), turned out it happened to other customers too (product faulty) and I got replacement from softer material.

We met Froggie there. Hadn’t met him for quite sometimes, we had quite a lot to talk about, as usual, he cracked us up. From Ausa, we went to Funan, visit a dive shop there and then Army market (Singapore version of ITC/Tanah Abang/Pasar Minggu) to buy something, then off we went to another shop. Very productive day indeed. Busy busy busy.

Sunday, we met another person in Funan, settle few things and buy traveling toiletries, all cute and mini size.
Yesterday, I did some paper preparation, printing, clipping, and chopping for homemade logbook.

Just remember that next week is holiday week. Sniff, but we only have one-day holiday for Lebaran. One day! It’s not even enough to visit original siblings. I envy those who stay in Jakarta, Malaysia etc. While you are having fun, remember us who stuck in office.
Next week we also have Hindu holiday, Deepavali. So, work Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Tuesday and Thursday off. Weekend, work, off, work, off, work, weekend. How working mood it would be?! :)

Talking about that, there are too few holidays here, lah! The longest we have is Chinese New Year, how long?? Two days! T-W-O! Pedit! It’s not enough to touch everyone, hugs, kisses..mhehehe…yiii…

But frankly, I hate being touch by people I’m not familiar with. I hate being touched accidentally or (not!) by strangers. There is one colleague of mine, almost everytime she passes my table, she would toel my neck. Damn..! It sends goose bump all the way to my brain. If she was a he, whoshhh….Super Sanya Tiga…!

“What’s eating you? Bugger off!” I told her somethingggg like that, but few days after, she would forget that I don’t like it. I also strongly don’t understand the purpose (and the purpose why abang2 monyong like to toel girls at any chance they get. What is so satisfying about a finger tip but make them a low and annoying human being?).

So, I hardly, almost never, hold hands with my girl friends. I would taken aback when they did it to me, or wrapped their arms around my shoulder, but slowly I knew that it should be a good sign, that they felt comfortable with me, and I learned to get used to that and expressed my way of feeling comfortable with them. (by picking on them (nyelaaa))
But actually, it would be good to have more touch with friends (the right kind of touch of course) and family. For us, we never get used to hug each other. No wayyy…. except with parents on our wedding days?

The only usual touching thing we do is punching each other. Not only action, but it’s also awkward to say “I love you” in my mothertongue language. I discussed this with my friend from the same hometown and we agreed it doesn’t sound humane. Kekekeke.

Imagine if I hug my brothers and say I love you, they would look at me as if I was crazy and say,

” What’s eating you? Bugger off!”

Maybe I’ll teach my kids (ce-e-lah, standing by the window looking at the future), so they can use hugging to communicate. It says; I miss you, I love you, I care about you, I’m here for you, I’ll be your friend always, Count on me, ..bla… many things that are difficult and too complicated to say in words.

Out of topic,.. (Anyway, I have never had a clear topic).....

My friend has just broken up with her boyfriend. I had a chat with the colleague who gave me 50 snoopies (in my old story) and found out he doesn’t intend to get married at all. I’ve seen the way my sister coped up with her husband and kept straight face however others might say that she made the wrong choice. I’ve heard my colleague and boss fooling around outside marriage and they treated it as fun.

My friend : If a man tell me that they would love a girl from personality instead of appearance, I won’t believe them, at all.

My colleague : I don’t see the importance of marriage. I love my freedom, and the idea of sharing my life with another person doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

My other colleague : It’s ok that I fool around, as long as I always go home and my wife doesn’t know. Anyway, I never treat them (affairs) seriously or have any feelings for them. It’s just for fun and variation. In that way, we would be happier in our marriage.

My boss (previous): Looong story.

Hmmm.

If only I could say this one is right, this one is wrong, but there’s no such thing. Everything is in shades of grey, relative and different in every case.

But I still believe there are ‘personality’ nice decent guys and girls everywhere, so I could only tell my friend not to give up or make do with the wrong person in a rush. (What a preacher I am! ;)

UK Requirement Anyone?

2006-04-02T00:58:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 25, 2005

My Gosh!
I’ve received the UK Requirement shit for the third time in these few days only.

My advice: If you receive and want to forward it to me, try to screw it three times, then print, burn and drink it. It will increase the amount in the cheque THREE TIMES and enhance your sex life. Try it. You have nothing to lose except a drop of ink, a match, and a glass of water. Deal?

Count me out FFS. I’m allergic to cyber cheque.

Update: This email comes in different name. Basically they ask you to send it to as many people you can and you'll receive check with crazy amount from Bill Gates, multiply such as multilevel marketing.

Twinging

2006-04-02T00:57:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 21, 2005

Wadaaww.....
Have you even seen time moves? They said time flies, but sometimes it’s stuck, don’t ya think?

Just like when you are in the middle of Distance Family’s Reunion, Class and especially WORK! I like it when I’m busy, weeks fly by, and suddenly weekend is coming. Especially when I already passed Monday and Tuesday.

This month I have been quite busy, sometimes very. Today I suppose to be busy, but I have been having headache since Tuesday! Enyut nyut nyut nyut, I can sing Jingle Bells together with the rhythm. The headache came after 3 pm, and lasted for few hours. Then the day after I would wake up feeling fresh, but headache again in the afternoon…Very bad pattern ....If I had headache in the morning, I could off from work, recovered and played at home. Not the other way around, I kept coming back to work and tortured every afternoon.

Maybe because I worked too hard from morning to afternoon (tsk tsk cough), I was super concentrated and ignored everything else, that’s why I kept looking at the monitor, and that’s the source for headache. And of course, I couldn’t work properly with headache after 3 and kept blinking at the time.

2 hours and 48 minutes more……

bzzz…bzzzz….bzzzz……
(make coffee) (yawn) (check email) (go to toilet) (yawn) (sneeze) (self massage)
(peeping at colleague) (clean up the cubicle)

2 hours 47 minutes and 58 seconds more….

So, I write blog. But I’m not a blogger.
My friend said that I blog. It sounded very strange for me. Blog sounds like something being stuck in the toilet bowl and blogger sounds like loose pants.
I only write to kill time and make my brain works. I write stories, but not too often, as for stories, I need to take it really seriously. I need to do spell-check, grammar, and spin my head to think whether my choice of vocabs are presentable. Then I’ll have to post, and do the revision from comments that I got from my writer friends. Bla…

For Blog, ugh..can I call it Twing? Sounds better. So I’m a twinger. For Twing, I don’t care what I write and whether they are presentable or not. I twing as if I’m talking to my friends or talk to myself. Crazy twinger.

See? Time walks faster when I write.

So, yesterday yesterday, we had an interesting lunch conversations. My two colleagues talked about their experiences with kids. Interesting? Yesss..

A lot of funny stories to share, and we ended up talking about child education. Interesting? Yesss…. Until the attention was switched to me, about the difference between how parents educate their daughters and sons. I was the right target, all fingers were pointing at me.

“So…Were there any differences between how your parents taught you and your brothers?”

Let’s see. I grew up with three brothers although actually I had four. We used to climb from first to second storey by water pipe, and walked like Superman through the top of the fence and even, balcony railings.

Me and my eldest brother liked to go to forest opposite my house (actually it was just an empty lot with few trees), collect leaves, flowers, worms and insects for magic potion or pets. I was more of the cheerleader, as I don’t like insects and flabby flubber worms. We made a house at the abandon balcony, hid food and blanket there.

Once, four of us went for a train ride, we converted the room below the stair into four-seater train, we lit candles and match. My mother screamed like mad and hugged us together. I remember she was crying. Actually, there were many containers of flammable explode able benzene around our seats. And I remember I dropped a burning match once. The story still sends shiver down my parent’s spine every time we remember. Lucky, however busy she was, she realized that suddenly all her four kids were not around and looked for us.

Anyway, we also played girlie thing quite a lot, masak2an, actually it was masak beneran, so we took food from the kitchen and sold it in ‘restaurant’. They played along very well and kept coming back to my restaurant then.

Khehehhehe… So, back to parent education, I envied them the most.

They didn’t need to do housework. They didn’t need to tend the shop. They didn’t need to be home by 6 pm. They didn’t get any censorship. They didn’t get scolded when they climbed trees..
But after all the restrictions, I told my colleagues I’m glad I was brought up that way, and maybe I’d do the same to my daughters, with all the echoes of agreement.

Whua…then we started to compare and joke around. And again, we talked like adults. If you were to start your sentences with, “Youngsters/Kids nowadays are….” Then that’s it. You have moved to another generation.

We talked about how kids nowadays can have girlfriend/boyfriend since Primary School.
My friend’s comment were priceless,” Primary School? Gosh…! I didn’t even know there are differences between boys and girls.”

For me, I thought by having a crush with a boy, I would get pregnant. I was worried for about few weeks and didn’t even dare to look at that boy.

.....

Yay! It’s 5.30 pm now!

Friday is special, usual working days (Mon-Thurs) end at 6 pm, but Friday…..5.30!

See, twinging is a good spare time.

Happy Weekend Guys!

Ol' Good Friend

2006-04-02T00:54:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 20, 2005

This friend of mine is the most nyolod of all. Name not included because of identity protection :D.
So, he (is a HE) called yesterday and asked to meet. Too bad I couldn’t make it, but we managed to have a short chit-chat.

Why is he nyolod? He always complains.
Since the beginning of Majapahit, every time we met (and it was quite often then), he complains.
Most of the things were about me as an Aquarius.
He complained that I didn’t wear girly clothing; he complained that I didn’t bother to decorate my self like Jakarta lagi Agustus-an, wear something extra, lipstick, bracelet, necklace, eye shadow, kolang, kaling, genta angin, angklung….

As usual, I never listen, I only need to roll my eyes and yawn. Come on brother; don’t make me become something I don’t want to be. Just because other girls do that, doesn’t mean I have to, that’s why I was born as an Aquarian; I like things people don’t, I wear things people don’t, I put my cloth at the back of my cupboard when it becomes a trend. Like now, because of the Hong Kong’s Disneyland opening, many people wear Disney shirts. I have been wearing it since I was able to buy them with my own money! Now I look like them. Huh.

And Now, I’m better. Although not half as good as what my mum want me to be, although I wear pants to work everyday, I’m better. I swear. I buy skirts, many of them.
I buy hair clips; yellow, pink, cat, bear, beanies, although I use the black one errr…5/7 a week?
I dress special on special days only, parties, or when I feel that I want to, why can’t I?
In that way, I can really looked special those days, right? :)
I wear necklace, I have girl watch, I have girl bag (although still backpack), and I wear funny socks.

What did he comment?

That’s good. Now you have much more girly appearance…
When are you going to wear earrings?

So, yesterday, unable to see me, he still managed to ask through telephone.

So, do you wear earrings now? When are you going to have baby? You know that you should have baby now since…

Arghhh…I tried. There’s no way to stop him. I tried to ignore, to absentmindedly scratching my butt while he was talking, but he never stops.

Cerewet.
Bawel.
Rese.
Biarin.
Bodo.
Ogah.

He doesn’t care whatever my response is. Kepala Batu.

But I sure like to meet him. Although he complains, he compliments.
Few months ago, never seen each other for years, he told me,
You are not getting older. You still looked as pretty and young as before.

Awwwww :)

That beats all the complains. Mhehehhehe.

Angel

2006-04-02T00:42:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 17, 2005

Does anyone know

why is it so easy to cry on that shoulder

and why those handtouchs heal my wounded heart

make me laugh even before my tears dry?

Finally can rest my heart

safe and warm

as steady as the dawn looking forward the sun

Is that you, my angel?

Sleeping by my side?

.

2 years 4 months solemnization
2 years celebration

Dayang Weekend

2006-04-02T00:34:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 16, 2005

Dayang (14-16 Oct)

Finally! After being postponed few times, we made it.

Although minus the gang, we couldn’t wait for better opportunity. Friday night, we gathered at Joshua’s shop and met another groups. This time, we were minority, so we needed sometime to know other people.
Around 9.30 pm, we departed to Mersing jetty. Reached there at 1 am, and we needed to wait until around 3 am for other operator who shared the same boat. At first, tried to catch some sleep in the jetty, but moved to the boat later. It wasn’t a really good sleep, cramped and noisy, but still managed to rest.
Reached Dayang at 8 am, transferred to Aur, opposite island and moved all the gears to a smaller boat, consisted of our group only. Had some breakfast and off we went for the first dive.

The cooling wind and clear water woke us up. For the fifth time, we were quite familiar with the dive sites, things we would see etc. Although there were many rumors about sighting of exotic Manta Ray, we didn’t hope much, our intention was only to get into water.
The visibility was considered good, surface was calm, water was clear and blue, and the most important, I could recover the feeling of flying, weightless and soundless. It’s a beautiful beautiful feeling worth all the travel and time. Seeing beautiful fish are bonus, but getting into water itself had become some kind of calming therapy for me, I can fly!

We saw Napoleon humphead, the trademark of Dayang, I also saw a small family of them swimming together. We saw usual nudibranches, those pretty colorful invertebrates, this time we saw quite a lot of purple and spiky ones, plus the ordinary black with white spike, but this time they have orange and green version.
Snails, and hermit crabs, Hubby watching one of them busy having its lunch.

Something we had never seen before in Dayang, box fish, this yellow boxy and jutex fish was incredibly cute, they were small, only a size of my fist, with very busy tiny tails. They have bright yellow color and black polka dot. The funniest things were their faces and behaviors. Obviously, they were not smiley, but kind of sangar wannabe and they were curious. They scared of you, but they kept peeping time and again because they were curious. So we just stayed there and watching while they were busy going up and down behind a rock to watch, hide, watch, hide again. Kekekkeke… Hilarious. :)

Saw a small little cuttlefish, moray eels, school of yellowtail barracuda, parrotfish, a huge triggerfish circling around hoping to get some bites, dead tiny crab, tiny sea cucumber (like the size we used for cooking), and usual huge and many kinds of them everywhere.

Colorful Christmas tree, these Christmas tree are common in West Malaysia, but I found that for some tourist, they were quite impressive with these. So, it’s maybe one kind of soft coral, tiny and shaped exactly like Christmas tree; they have many different colors, and grow on the top of hard corals. They will shrink themselves into the hole when approached.

And of course, what I like about short weekend trip, we can always find lots of nemos. One anemone could house family of nemos, big and small. The great thing about nemo, they always able to look straight to your face or camera. And it’s always entertaining to see them dancing with the anemone, we like to fan the anemone slowly with our hand and watch them running out and in.

On the second day, the current was very strong. When we went down on the first dive, I saw everyone was like flying around, and soon I had to grab on the rock to avoid being drift away. So, we were holding horizontally because we were swept by the strong current, waiting for others to decent. It was tough and funny, imagine a bunch of us, holding to dear life, while our body and legs were flapping behind, I was carried away few times, but managed to swim back, until now, we still feel the pain on the fingertips, aches on the ankles and legs for fining.

We made some new friends and had good chats on Saturday night while enjoying BBQ dinner, we turned in quite early while some stayed late for beers. Almost lost my slippers. We ate dinner on the beach, with sand on our feet. As usual, I never kept my feet calm, so I dug and buried and made pattern in the sand unconsciously. When we left for transfer to the opposite island, Hubby asked, “Where are your slippers?” Then I realized I was walking footless and I left my slippers on the island, so I had to run back and gosh, they already re-arranged the table (we united three tables together for the big group) and I lost the position of my seat (that’s how bad my navigation skill), and worst, I remembered burying it under the sand! Lucky I found half, and the guy who tended the resort helped me find another. Lucky….how would I make it back to town slipperless?

It was a good Sunday morning, woke up feeling fresh and brushed teeth in the deck while looking at the ocean, hearing the waving leaves and the singing birds. It feels good and a must to be out of town once in a while. It rained in between the second day dive, and after lunch, we headed home.

Unlike the usual hot day, we had the nice cooling weather; it helped us sleep better in the boat. It was jam in the immigration, so we had a long queue and finally made it back to home around 11.30 pm, washed up all the gears, unpacked, showered and had a dead-like sleep.

Mumpung

2006-04-02T00:32:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 11, 2005

Mumpung bos masih berkeliaran dimana2, gue nulis lagi ahh.. Sekale-kale mau nyobain pake bahasa Indo, biarin aja kalo ada temen yang kagak ngarti, salah sendiri gak ngarti…. :)

Belom sempet nulis, udah ketangkep…tapi biarin ajahhh, nguantuk…

Tadi makan siang ama 3 temen, dua cewek dan dua cowok, rencana di kepala habis makan siang mau mampir ke Yakun en ngopi bentar, bukan ngopi sih, tapi ngais lemos tea…tapi ujung2nya lunchnya jadi puanjang, gara2 pada berdebat..

Awalnya sih cuman gara2 komentarin cewek cakep, trus end up tentang affair.

Salah satu, panggil aja X, yang baru aja punya anak, ngakunya dia oke ama Open Relationship, bahkan affair setelah kawin, satunya lagi si Y, protes, ngatain kalo pikiran kayak gitu benernya salah, soalnya dia bakal nyakitin istrinya atau mungkin ngancurin keluarga orang laen…
Benernya masih fun pas disini, gue ama temen cewek gue cengangas cengengesan aja, tapi kok lama2 ngobrolnya ampe tingkat international, tau2 gue denger agama ama politik dibawa2..

Ujungnya sih benernya gampang aja, X itu orangnya emang agak kacau, cara2 berpikirannya abeng banget (abeng=abg sini), jadi dia tuh lebih kepada memudahkan semua masalah, gak pusing2, hal2 yang beda pun suka disamain.
Kalo si Y agak konservatif, orang Indo juga sih kebetulan, jadinya dia kalo ngomong suka serius menyertakan nilai2 moral dan keagamaan, kedengerannya gak sebosen itu sih, satu konservatif satu liberal tapi masih dalem porsi anak muda, Ya dua2nya aja menurut gue udah beda langit dan bumi, so pastilah gak nyambung.

Yang konservatif itu lumayan menikmatin debate kayak gitu, tapi saking asiknya, dia jadi agak2 intimidating, sedangkan si liberal jadi rada pusing gara2 maksudnya ngobrol ringan jadi berat. Lama2 jadi agak sengit dan rame…namanya juga hormone testosterone pada mau ngunjukin diri depan dua cewek cakep…(cough cough kroaaaak)

Kita berdua coba menengahi, temen gue sih lebih berusaha, kalo gue banyakan, enjoy aja ngedengerin, lagian nengahin dua cowok lagi perang mulut hamper sama aja kayak nengahin dua dogi lagi berantem, :D …musti pake semprotan aer…
Ya udah, waktu gak memungkinkan, debat dihentikan. Pergi makan jalannya cowok-cowok cewek-cewek sekarang jadi misah, jadi jalan co-ce co-ce deh…untungnya, herannya, cowok kalo sewot asik2 aja, habis itu oke, whuahh..kalo cewek mungkin jadi marahan, cakar2an, gaplok2an…, gue belom pernah gaplok cewek sih, tapi gue yakin…gue bakal menang hehehhehe…

Temen cewek yang ini orang baru, aslinya dari Hongkong, haha..jadi inget lelucon lama yang ngatain sesuatu itu mustahil pake Hongkong, misalnya…monyet dari Hongkooong, pale loe dari Hongkooong, eh, lama bener ke wece, wecenya di Hongkong ya…
Tapi asik juga orang yang satu ini, sama gilanya ama gue, jadi klop juga, masih muda (25 taon… :)) jadi becanda ama dia kayak becandaan dengan temen kuliah ato sma… Habisnya, yang seumur ama gue disini rada2 udah pada serius…apalagi cewek2nya, temen gue yang laen waduuh…gue becanda yang rada aneh dikit, dia udah kagak ngerti…dan ngeliatinnya kayak bu guru matematik…ampe gue ciut juga

Kemaren aja di perempatan lampu merah ama temen yang Hongkong ini kita ketawa en bisik2 ampe lemes ngeliat encek2 pake celana warna toska ojreeeng, udah itu siencek usaha lagi nyari baju yang maching, trus ada sisir gede mencuat2 dikantong belakangnya…kekekkeke..

Yang agak penting, dia gak terlalu feminim, walaupun jauh lebih feminim dari gue, tapi gue gak berasa terlalu kebanting2 lah…kalo yang satunya suka bikin minder juga, bajunya udah kayak arisan, gaun pesta pun dipake2 ngantor, sepatu hak, kolang kaling, gue jadi kayak anak teka sebelah dia, apalagi pas rambut pendek gue baru bisa diekor kuda, kan kayak ekor kuda lumping doang, buntut tikus, sementara dia pake gaun berenda2, kuku warna warni en muka disemen…gile lama gak nyela2 orang gue pikir udah sembuh resenya gue…masih aja….

Waktu ke kawinannya dia aja gue ampe setres dua bulan, ceritanya hotelnya yang paling wah disini, so kapok gue nyari2 baju, tas cewek buat bawa dompet ama hape, kan aneh gue pake backpack…tas cewek tuh kagak ada gunanya, hape, dompet, ama tissue doangan, trus harus ditenteng2, gak bisa dicangklek, kalo gue lupaan…jualan ginjal deh kalo hape ama dompet ampe ilang....trus bongkar2 lipstick adanya lipstick yang gue beli pas pertama kali kerja, udah lima taon…waduuh..,expired gak she gitu2an?

Foundation aja gue pernah beli diembat nyokap gara2 gak pernah gue pake lagi, trus sepatu juga pake sepatu pas pertama kerja, yang pernah bikin gue jatuh di Kuningan, untung masih tokcer…,gak pernah dipake siihhh..,sempat cari2 sih, mau beli baru, tapi sepatu cewek gak ada yang napsuin..,buntutnya ngeliatnya sepatu lari mulu..pokoknya udah lebih parah dari cari kebaya-an pas wisuda….untung buntut2nya dibilang oke, ama temen2, kebayar juga sedikit, tapi gak mau lagiiiii..

Dulu aja ada satu juga merid, berangkat dari kantor, nyari terusan yang simple ama pake tuh sepatu, duhhh, udah kayak ufo, orang2 juga kaget ngeliatnya, dikira orang baru, giliran pas jalan ketempat pestanya (waktu itu boxing day, sehari setelah Natal, jadi jalanan lagi rameeeeeee banget) harus nyusup2 ama lari2 diantara orang2, tapi canggih juga, gak jatuh, gak patah, bukan sulap, bukan sihir…

Selaen bokis2 diatas, gue juga mau cerita tentang anak kecil…, bukan soal reproduksinya.., gue bakalan punya ponakan ketige…hehehehe…feeling sih bakalan batangan lagi, rame amat batangan..,benernya kalo ponakan gue cewek, pasti gue bakal royal banget, abis barang2 cewek lucu2 dan imut, baju2nya, sepatu2, maenan masak2an.., mungkin end up gue simpan sendiri…

Kemaren pagi2 dikereta, lagi suntuk ngantuk2 sebelah gue ada anak SD ngerjain matematik, iseng2 gue intip, soalnya gini Mr. Liu beli dua printer ama lima scanner, totalnya $3600. Kalo harga printer dua kali lipatnya harga scanner, berapa tuh printernya?

Sianak jawabnya cepet banget : $3600 x 2 = $7200

Aduh, gue udah ngelotot aja, kasihan ntar diomelin guru, mau kasih tau, takut diomelin maknya atau disuruh jawab2in yang laen, atau dikepret depan orang2.

Kan benernya
2p + 5s = $3600
2p = 4s
4s + 5s = $3600
9s = $3600
s = $ 400
p = 2 x $400 = $800

Bener gak tuhhhh….weeee…bangganya bisa jawab…,padahal dulu bikin soal gituan enak juga, pas udah kelar, kayaknya segala masalah dunia udah terjawab. Dunia gak ribet kayak sekarang…

Kejadian anak kecil di Mrt ada lagi, ada dua anak cowok, cakep-cakep tapi badung2. Pas gue lagi mau maen game dihape, mereka langsung nyerusuk duduk sebelahan, sambil ngintip2 yang obvious banget, yang jidatnya ampe nempel di layer handphone.

Trus yang kecil nanya, “Mau maen game yah?”

“Ee….,” otak gue berusaha proses cepat, kalo gue bilang iya, mereka pasti ngeliatin, nyorakin. Kan malu kalo gue gak menang, ntar diledekin rame2 depan orang banyak. Akhirnya gue bilang kagak.

Tuh anak masih ngotot. “Masa kagak maen game sih? Kenapa?”

“Gak punya game..” Kunyuk itu langsung bisik2 ama kakaknya. Yang namanya anak kunyuk, bisik2nya juga bisik2 raksasa, kedengeran semua orang.

“Eh, eh, masa katanya dia gak punya game.”

“Alaa…alasan aja kalo gatek, handphone kayak gitu masa gak ada gamenya.”

Trus mereka ketawa2 nahan2 sambil ngelirik-lirik. Lumayan rame ampe orang2 kayaknya nyadar. Ampun deh, gue pasti dikira manusia purba yang kagak ngerti teknologi. Gue langsung sikut Hubby yang lagi setengah molor, biar ada temen sok cool…

Kerjaa kerjaaaaa…

My Prayer

2006-04-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 10, 2005

Mo-hooo! I’m free for today at work.
And another mo-hoo. We are holding our tickets for Bali. So it’s confirmed.

I hope nothing bad is going to happen to Bali anymore.

Nothing bad is going to happen in Jakarta, Aceh, Menado, Indonesia, Philippine, Iraq and the world anymore.

I hope no hurricanes, earthquakes, natural disaster and epidemic are going to happen anymore.

I hope those suicide bombers-to-be realize that it’s not fun for their family to see their heads being assembled and used in mix and match game from TV, I hope they know that their family feel the very much same pain of losing with the families of victims, I hope that they know that what we need to fight for is not human, but demons in our heart and minds.

I hope there are no more religions and races in the world.

I hope all the rich, whatever their races, realizes that they don’t need to show off every brand they have to impress friends and to gain personal satisfaction, while they were chatting and driving through those poor who live in 2 x 2 cardboard house.

I hope everyone can resist temptation and give thanks to whatever they have.

I hope to live in fairyland, I hope to be able to go anywhere safely, talk to everyone in the same mind language, and see colorful neighborhood with no fence and trellis.

I hope to see peaceful faces in churches, mosques, temples etc and the faces stay when they leave those places.

I hope there would be no more war and poverty and sickness in the world.

I hope, one day, that I can exterminate all my fears and my worries.

I hope one day, I won’t be afraid with humans anymore.

My every night prayer only consists of few sentences;
Please bless my families and friends with safety, health and happiness.
Please prevent them from sickness, accidents and sins.
Please make me a better person tomorrow and living in the better world.
And thank You for everything I have, body that functions, roof over my head, food on my plate and loves that I have.

Is that too much to ask?

What Tittle?

2006-04-02T00:27:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : October 09, 2005

Weekends come and go very fast. Heard someone said that this morning.
Previous week had been very hectic, a lot of things happened yet nothing was really happen. Confused? So do I.
Hubby work yesterday weekend and the weekend before :”(, so I was alone and loneliiiiiiiii. The story is to be told later.

For my personal and other’s experiences, I concluded one thing that I’m not too proud of, as I’m pretty sure that the idea is not original anymore; Bosses are idiots.
If you happen to have smart colleague, and he/she was then being promoted to boss, BAM, that was it, he/she lost their intelligence and became idiot.

Here are some proves:

1. They only know simple math. 24 hours a day equal to 24 hours working. You don’t need to eat, sleep, drink and sh*t.
2. They postponed the deadline from Friday evening to Monday morning and they proud of doing so.
3. They are sure that you work hard because you are dedicated, there won’t be any possibility that you expect for raise.
4. When you told them that you were not in speaking term with them, they thought you were joking. I Su-eerrrr.
5. They are crap in management. Big time.

Hosh.
And talk about this make me an idiot too. :”(

Last last weekend when Hubby came home late at night, he brought news about Bali. I didn’t know, as I didn’t watch TV. It was really really sad news. For what I read, Bali’s economy had just returned back to what it was before Kuta bombing, and now it happened again.

Butet, representative from Bali, sms-ed Hubby to ask whether we are still going there. She said she understood if we canceled it, she said that she already gave up and speechless. I felt very sorry for her when I read the sms, I guessed that must be what every Balinese and Indonesian felt.

So, on that Monday, my group ‘Monster’ gathered for dinner. We met to discuss about our plan and celebrated Cynthia’s birthday. The discussion took less than ten minutes. The plan is to stay. Bali, we are coming still. I was relieved and love my friends for that; maybe that’s what we can do for Bali.
Got stomach upset that night, so we left earlier and missed the rest of the celebration after cake-cutting. Absent from work the next day although I knew what was coming, I would be busy as hell on Wednesday! And I was right.

Boss asked of course How are you, are you feeling better…I opened my mouth wanted to say Are you sure you are worried about me, not my work?
but he beat me, he did the saying first, So, how about this deadline…. Hmppph.

Okay. So I was alone again on weekend. Actually my lunch mates organized a day shopping trip to Johor, Malaysia. It was very close to my house, only less than half an hour away. At first I said I might go, since Hubby would be working anyway. But I finally said no.

Imagining shopping..arghh…shopping with bunch of females and males would ended up walking without direction. Waiting for those shopping active girls and of course not feeling comfortable to shop and try clothes my self. I guess I’m really not a social person anyway. I hardly go to office function, I had enough meeting them at work :D, I think it depends on activities. I only enjoy clothing shopping whole-heartedly with Hubby and my Mom, the rest; usually I would only become a waiter.

Wait. Wait. See. See. Watch. Cheer. Opinion.

Anyway, I think something is a bit wrong with my social thingy. If I saw an old friend or anyone I know in public place, I would hide and maybe, run. That’s mostly my first reaction. But after a few, uhm, hundred meters? I would come to my senses and maybe greet that person. Mhehehhehe…or better, if the person saw me first and gave a tap on my shoulder, I might jump but it would be okay. So, if you see me see you and I disappeared, please wait for me to come back.

I was caught one time by a guy friend and he asked, “Hey, am I that ugly?!” Cute guy and cute question.

So, on Sunday morning I purposely made a trip to next Mrt Station, to go to specific Supermarket to buy a softener. I don’t mind walking extra miles as long as my laundry smells that good :).

I know, I know, I’m turning into a house freak. Khehehe…but the supermarket was so full, I wonder, why there were a lot of bored people like me, that Shopping In Supermarket on Sunday Morning was highlight of the weekend? Huh…and worse came to worst, I couldn’t find the softener. Huayahhh, so I left empty-handed. Of course I had other things to buy, but not so important and the queue was like lonely river flows to the sea…

So I’m getting more expert in house keeping things. Saturday, I cooked, washed, cleaned house, ate, and bathed in three hours only. :) So, before twelve, I was free for the rest of the week. Of course, that depends on what time I wake up.

And, I love Finding Neverland.

WTF

2006-04-02T00:25:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 28, 2005

Watched Amazing Race Family last night. I love that show because I love to see the places they visit and the activities they do, the dramas and manipulations/fake reality add some minus but maybe selling point. This first episode of family race was very noisy; there were few groups whose members screamed like hell all the time.

This is one of the reality shows I’d like to be in, khehehhee…but it looks scary because it makes couples fight. By the way, I think on the Second Season, three years ago (?), I logged in Internet and found some Made-In-Sgp Amazing Race quiz. So we had to answer few questions, guessed the winner correctly and we might win $10.000!

Wohoooo!

So I did some research to answer the questions and on the weekend, me and Hubby (forced) purposely went to IKEA to count the crossing bridge’s steps.., that was one of the questions., of course they didn’t say ‘IKEA’ but some Swedish building bla bla bla. So all my answers were correct, including the winner, which were two young guys, but I didn’t win…! :”(((

I can do a lot of things with $10.000! Go around the world for a year.., well maybe not enough…buy few properties, not enough also., let’s change it to one million! One million rupiahs, well…. can buy 200 plates of pecel lele, not bad.. and maybe few gerobaks of peanuts. :)

This morning I went to work in war mood. Especially because I had the dark2 thing in MRT. It’s been so long since I had it. So, it was like sudden extremely tired, out of breath and blurred vision. I had it a lot in my Junior High, because we had flag ceremony every Monday! In Senior High, only once a month, in college, never. First year here, I said yes when an Indonesian Embassy officer who was very helpful with my documents asked me to join the flag ceremony on 17th August 2001. But, bad me, I never appeared because…I couldn’t find white skirt! I think I should wear white-white or something like that. :D

So, back to the dark2 thing, if I feel that, I have to find a seat immediately, lucky I got a seat on time. Actually I don’t know what causes it to happen. I strongly believe it happens when I stand for a long period of time, but on rare occasion, it happened when I was walking or climbing. If continue to stand, everything would turn red and double.

So, I felt kind of moody, sleepy and finally, I had to sneak out to buy…large Café Latte. Ouch…but it worked very well, now I’m caffeine loaded and awake. Tuned in favorite songs, then somebody sent me a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Indian’s version, it was very funny.., and it restored my mood completely. :)

Internet attachment, yesterday I was pissed off reading about the demonstration plan. I don’t say the person who sent it would do it, but of course we can make it stop on our hand? Read between the line and I suppose we should see that those provocateurs never care about small people. Dream on. They do it on their advantages, politically or economically behind their masks. WTF. Indonesia only lack of one thing, wisdom in all level, educated or primitive. Huh.

Also, I still wonder why my smart friends, still sent those emails…’if you send it to 10 people, you’ll get what your wish, if you don’t, bad luck for life time..’ or twenty points of bad incidents happened to those who ignored it.

Luck and bad luck yourrr head! First time, I received that kind of letter when I was in Primary School, of course I was scared, what did I know, I planned to copy it 20 times but I was more tempted and spent the money for ice-cream. Then one of my friends who was scared also, asked my Math teacher. And he tore it in front of us, when all of us were holding our breaths with eyes almost dangled out from the sockets. He became my favorite teacher.

So, I can’t believe friends on my age still send it around. Whatever types, however pretty and nice the opening of the email, I won’t appreciate it and person who send it. Not even those pitiful emails asking for ‘if you forward it, this company would donate bla bla’ after a long story of a dying child. If it wants to donate, then donate! Hoax.

Or free phones, freebies etc, and the most heartless one, video of the beheaded hostages. Stop forwarding it. What would the hostage’s family feel if they see it?

Hope everything is going well in Indonesia today.

My Weekend

2006-04-02T00:23:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 26, 2005

I love Spinelli’s Cafe Latte (sp?), I dooo! This morning I had one, actually I’d love to have it every morning, but it’s more expensive than my lunch. So, I only buy it to treat myself when I’m extra sleepy, tired, and looking forward a not-so-bright day.

Leo couldn’t make it on Saturday, so met Uka only and went shopping after that. Bought a mesh backpack and storm whistle. Uh-uh, I thought storm whistle was a rare thing, I had never seen it before, so I pictured the conversation would be like this,” Waaah, you’re looking for storm whistle? What’s that for? Extra safety? That’s an impressive caution, but unfortunately we don’t have it here, so you have to place an order, we’ll send it, and you can collect it six months later.” Honestly, I thought that, ;p, since I didn’t see anybody carried that before and I hadn’t heard a single person here talked about it. Mhehehehe, on the contrary, it was hanging everywhere in every shop and it looks like common whistle, so disappointing. >:|

But anyway, I got a nice backpack mesh, so hopefully it ends the day I have to carry that bloody heavy bag with one hand or one shoulder. A little bit extra shopping needed to be done next week and that’s it.

Went to Hubby’s church on Sunday. Hubby’s church, because we take turn. One week is my turn, Catholic Church; the week after is his. Mine, his, mine, his. Although the practice is more like, mine, skip, skip, his, skip, his, skip, skip, mine…Our churches are quite alike, same root, and we’re practical, so we don’t lose sleep in this difference at all.

So, Sunday, there was a good preacher. Usually I don’t like preacher who only says let’s worship, all angelic talk but nothing more, or preacher who talk softly than suddenly scream out loud, I could only give that look ‘Hel-lo, somebody is trying to sleep here’, but I couldn’t say it :D. Churches are not meant for sleeping in but I do it in maybe 70% of my visits, but when the preacher is good, funny and casual, I would enjoy. :)

After that, yummy! We went to Indonesian restaurant, the name is funny, Ayam Penyet, sound like Chickens which had been sit on. It’s about 85%, but still great. I love the tempe goreng :”)), and Teh Botol, hehhehe...but the cook must be crazy, the chilli was damn hot and spicy, we were all teary-eyes, and I was almost extinct. I can’t even take moderate spicy, let alone this chilli from hell, but still, we had good meal. So good until I took nap that afternoon. After graduated, I had never took nap since, I don’t like it, because it makes me feel a bit more stupid when I wake up. :) Blur, a little out of direction and way too smiley and friendly. :)

On Friday we went to Gramophone and became its member, so for 30 dollars, we can rent unlimited dvd for a month, 3 dvds per taking. We watched Fahrenheit 9/11 (finally) and it took my breath away. Politic is filthy, what to say. I believe there are thousands and thousands of conspiracy everywhere to be discovered. I haven’t closed my jaw since I watched documentary analysis saying that moon landing was fake. FAKE! And I had a file full of cliping collections about that when I was in Senior High.

We watched Spanglish from Adam Sandler, I thought it was a comedy, but it was drama, quite a good one, the third one was disappointing. Living Seas, music by Sting, there were few breathtaking underwater videos, but that was it, they repeated it over and over again. It only scratched the surface of what they wanted to deliver.

Okay, we finished three dvds in one day, and on Saturday, we went back to the shop. But the door was half closed, so it was a rolling door, and only one third of it was hanging above the floor. We hesitated for a while, then I decided to sneak in. Woah, the guy almost jumped when I ‘crawled’ inside. It was a restock day, so they were closed. Hiks.

I keep going back and forth, no sequence here.

After rented dvd on Friday we dropped by James’s shop, same building, did some price check on things we wanted to buy. It was torturing, visited dive shop on Friday night while everyone was prepared to leave for weekend. So we had to walk through mountains of dive bags and found James inside the shop. We had quite a long chat, he shared his story about diving in Menado, it was killing us! We were drooling; eyes were popping, while he enjoyed himself talking about pigmy seahorse, and whale! They saw whale from the boat, too bad they were not fast enough to jump down. The rest of story was too much to take……… :”O

Yay, my father-to-be colleague had become a father on Thursday. Last time, the exciting question was ‘boy or girl?’. In modern technology, we have to find another thing to ask. So our questions was like, “Ehm, how long was the baby’s hair?” I almost choked when my other colleague asked that. Mhehehe. What a funny question.

FRUUAIIIDUAAYY

2006-04-02T00:21:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 22, 2005

IT’S FRUUAIIIDUAAYY!

Last time, there was a radio DJ who always shouted like that on Friday afternoon, half an hour before I went off, but that funny guy was transferred.

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with Uka in the morning and Leo in the afternoon.
(after making sure that Uka is not in My Friends), Actually we could never call him Uka, he was my supervisor then, so we always call him Pak R. He protested, but gave up. :)

It’s been so long since I last meet him.

I cut up my account so that only Friends can view my profile and blog. Khehehhe, so I can gossip more about everyone. :) Actually, I’m a bit hesitant to talk about private things to be read by people that I don’t know (GR dikit gakpapa :)), my Friends are all so on that my second degree is 100 times bigger than my primary Friends. Salute for you!

But this thing is so uncontrollable for me, I’d like to find friend from Junior and Primary, and I can’t even trace any of them except my best friend. She is married, no Internet, and I’m not able to call her as many times as I want. Every time I called, there would be baby sound effect in the background. Hayah…I wrote letter many times, but lost in the way.

Indonesia’s addresses are always mess-up, all those RT/RW bla bla give me headache. I remember my parent’s shop; we had to give a number by our self because it was numberless. So, we put 88, good number, mhehehe, only to find out then that there were at least three 88-s along the road.

So, we still had to count on that Jurassic Park’s address, imagine we had to add ‘Samping Gang Kancil, Desa Neroktok, Dekat Jembatan Tol’. So, I had to admire my two friends who made it to my house without help :), but neahhh, not so fast, it actually quite easy to find with the shop’s name, right? Right?

So, my letters never made it, I was left with telephone to contact her, and I can only make it few times a year, and worse still, she also lost contact with friends.

All my Pontianak’s friends, mostly far away from Internet access, I think. Those who had emails don’t have it anymore, and they don’t stay in the same place. I don’t know how to contact them, I miss them :”(….And I don’t think they can find me through Friendster because I’m aping, I don’t think they called me aping then :D. I can’t remember what did they call me!

Except that, I’m also a lazy bum. My friend count is still almost the same with last time. I have mood to use Friendster only when I’m in office, and my office limits my access, so I can’t anyhow browse, look and add friends from friends!

So, what am I talking about?

Leo, will meet him in the afternoon. We have some shopping to do, three of us want to buy some proper compass and surface buoy, additionally I want to look for Storm Whistle, don’t know how it looks or sounds like, but from what I read from Forum, it’s good to have at least one in the group for safety. I also foresee good chat with Leo, we haven’t met for two months I guess, last time we used to meet on Saturdays while patronizing dive shop and stopped by for peanut soup breaks. :) Every one has been busy since then, working, entertaining parents and in laws while they were here.

Count down for Bali, less than two months to go. Have to start exercising so that I can fit in if I ever have to wear two wetsuit plus one vest, I heard it’s going to be so coooold. I’m also excited to see how our coral looks like now. I also like to meet the group, although we can’t find more people at the moment, five of us won’t be less fun, and more, I can’t wait to fly again! Me so miss water… :”(

I was browsing old files, and suddenly remember that I laughed for good few minutes for this;

There was a menu displayed outside a Chinese Seafood Restaurant in America. :)))
Crap : $21/lbs.

Bambinos

2006-04-02T00:20:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 20, 2005

It’s Monday again!

Argh.. Weekend and weekend passed by without water. :”(

Morning I had to rush a deadline, skipped breakfast and had a late lunch. Not eating was fine, but the difficult part was to fight the urge to go to toilet ><. After finishing the work, I found the toilet was occupied. Huh, so I was just sitting here feeling…(sorry)…crappy. :)

Alone in the weekend, Hubby worked OT. So, I did the weekend routine; cleaning, moping, laundry etc. After that played games for hours and watched old vcds; Life Is Beautiful and Edward Scissorhand. Still love them. Bored with games, waiting for Commandos 4 to be released. Hubby bought me two Doraemon DVD previously. We watched few stories. On the second story, he suddenly asked, “Hey, why they use ‘shit’ word for translation?” We sat there started to laugh, then my eyes were popping up catching the word ‘f**k’. I pointed it to him and a second later, (we were eating), I almost nyembur nasi looking at the a**hole word. Holly molly, I didn’t know we could find this type of translation in Doraemon. We still have one and three quarter of DVD, gotta see what else can we find later. :)

Didn’t have chance to post, so Tuesday…

My colleague is in the middle of waiting for his baby to come out. So, I feel excited for him too. There are two married girls in our lunch group, both are ‘newly wed’ kekekeke, always feel like that. So the males like to question us about when we are going to have babies. With new government bonus (although I think nothing is really fantastic about that, and it only works for Singaporeans), they try to bring up the number of babies, because Sgp is reaching dangerous statistic about no enough babies. :) So, since then, we can see pregnant women everywhere. I’m scared of bumping into them, as I always walk carelessly and like to stumble myself. If I saw them, I would take a big round so that they are at least a meter from me. Worse, on rainy day, the pavements are damn slippery, gotta grip tightly on Hubby or if alone, I will walk behind grandmas. Hehehe, in that way, people would think that I’m a courteous person, instead of young person who walks like grandmas on rainy days. Oh, and pregnant women like to put their belly right before your nose in the train to get your seat. Sometimes it’s quite wobbling if you are tired, have jelly-like leg and low blood pressure darkness, but we don’t have those condition written in forehead or shown in our belly, so have to give the seats up, but face it, they are carrying a person, so of course, they win.

So, back to baby thingy, my this female friend says that she doesn’t see why she need to have baby. I was quite surprised myself, I thought she wants, but not now, like me, but what she said is meant for forever. It was quite fun to hear them debating, her and my father to be friend. They were making their points although I don’t agree that she viewed children as investment, and that with the amount of money needed to spend on a child is more than enough for retirement. When money involved, everything sounds ugly. I’m sure if my parent thought that way, I would be flying somewhere between the stars, wehewww, I mean, I won’t be here.

But I also don’t think that having a child is a have and see condition. It’s very nice to see cute, well behaved and well taken care of nephews, friend’s child etc, but for having own child the responsibility is heavy! My colleagues said, have one first, if you don’t have time, put it in Jakarta. It sounds like I go to Toys R Us, pick a Barbie, if I don’t have time to play, I keep it in cupboard. Crazy head! The difference of having one or two is not much, but have and don’t have is like heaven and earth.

On my brother’s wedding, a cousin came to me and asked me this cliché question. I always think this kind of question is only some kind of icebreaker. Admit it, they don’t really care; they just need something to talk about. If my parent won’t be cursed for not educate me, I would have said,’ Ow.. cut that crap.’

So she was quite ‘concern’, she was only few years older than me I guess. She said,“Don’t worry about everything. It’s not a difficult and big decision; look at me. I have three kids and we’re doing good. They grow up well.” While one of her kids was trying to punch and struggle his brother, yelling and screaming, another one was grabbing two handfuls of souvenirs without permission and drooling onto the guess book.

After saying that, she turned into her kids and pinched them, “Hey, you guys! Be quiet! Wait until I get home and slap you hard in the heads!”

Yawn, I wish from twenty to thirty is 20 years. Too much things people think need to be done between this span of life. Graduate, get a job, get a boyfriend (proper one), get married, get enough money to marry, enough money to buy house, and have kids. Holly molly

My Littl' Secret

2006-04-02T00:19:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 13, 2005

I watched March of The Penguin on Friday night. It was beautiful and actually made me sniff..sniff..sroot…koblo koblo koblo, something I haven’t done on movie since I can’t remember when. I had no idea that penguin’s life is so tough, those little funny adorable birdies who couldn’t fly, but their love lives are as complete as human being.

Recommended. Watch it. Ask me for tickets. Wait long long.

I just read about the hardship of octopus also. After mating, the female was left alone; she would take care of the egg alone, without time to hunt and rest, so often, she would die of exhaustion and starvation when the eggs hatch. I think it has potential to have good story with eye catching title “Being Octopus”, “Being an Octopus Girl” or “*** you all **** male **** chauvinist Octopus”. Just a harmless idea.

Feeling excited today. Just developed a rough plan for future, something that would need at least one to few years to accomplish, something that need youth’s courage and strength and would make life complete. No. Not babies.

I’m those kind of lazy bum who don’t like to think about future and keep saying ‘cherish the present’ to cover my laziness, mostly also to keep me happy-thinking. Future for other people maybe means more money, more status. But future that I’d like to jump in may be the other way around, but one think I sure that I will retain, improve and make better is the happiness. :))))

After all, that’s what everyone need. Ssst.

Mid-Autumn Festival

2006-04-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

September 12, 2005

Blab blah blah..

Feeling upset today. Miscommunication, misperception with my cousin, a lot of things I want to talk about but I can’t say it.

Anyway, bless me; I have Hubby, my permanent source of relief and strength. It just feel so right, if a spouse/bf/gf is a source of sorrow instead of relief, something must be wrong on one or both.

Here, two bloggers were detained, because they were writing about racism things. I don’t know how bad and shallow the way these two guys wrote, but hopefully the government and society have good reason to detain them. Religion discussions had been done to death, I think if some governments go and check the writing website I like to visit daily; they wouldn’t have enough jail. Some racism discussion of course end up ugly, fights and arguments, but some also result in smart discussions when everybody is agree to disagree and there are shades of grey instead of black and white. So I’m quite convinced that these two guys crossed the line a bit too far.

Anyway, I’d like to share more on happy things. Like Pontianak, Singapore has strong Chinese tradition. Now we are entering mid-autumn festival, time to eat mooncake and light up the lantern. In Pontianak, the tradition is stronger. Like my family, on the fifteenth of the moon (Lunar Calendar) we would set up a table in the deck or yard, filled it with all kind of pretty and new things, and spend the night gathering with family, chatting, sharing story and watching the moon. It was my favorite time of the year; me and brothers would built windmill from Bombix (cheaper and simpler version of Lego), our display would be the highest and prettiest among cousins. Mom and dad would fill the table with moon cake, cookies, new toiletries, flowers etc.

It was fun because the deck was covered with vinyl, we could jump, climb, lie down, play hide and seek and hear stories from my late grandma, who seldom visited our house. The moon would be beautiful and full. I’m impressed with Lunar Calendar, it’s always accurate, whenever it’s full moon, it must be the fifteenth. Unlike our Dutch Calendar, full moon hardly happens on fifteenth.

Okie, so now I miss the tradition, we still do that, but now it’s much more simplified, and I always miss that since I’m not staying with my family. I think Sinciapo’s tradition is not as much as mine last time, they celebrate it only with mooncakes and lanterns, if I’m not wrong. And psst, I don’t like the mooncakes here. It’s different and very sweet.

Two years ago, my Dad received couple of boxes from his friends, so me and Hubby had to finish it. Tell you, it was tough! The most that I could eat without goose bump is a quarter of a cake (one cake’s diameter is about 10 cm), while one box consists of four mooncakes and we had many of them, non-stop gifts. To add to the pain, my colleague also held mooncake party, and even my office. After that year, I forbid any kind of mooncake in the house, so far so good, but I still have half a month to go to keep an eye on my Dad. :)

Lantern. Actually, we had lantern in Pontianak only on Capgomeh, the end of Chinese New Year. Apparently, they play lantern here in mid-autumn festival. So, yesterday, I brought Mom to the Lantern Festival at Chinese Garden. It was quite impressive; huge, bright and colorful lanterns around the park. From all type of dinosaurs to flowers and fairy, they had it. I wanted to bring my nephew last year, it was Hello Kitty theme, but we didn’t have time then. Mom was very happy; she likes to see this kind of colorful and beautiful thingy, too bad Dad couldn’t join us.

Now the lantern made by plastic/fabric and bulb, instead of paper and candles last time. I agree, paper, children and fire are dangeroussss combinations.

Since I talk about Pontianak, I’d like to share my concern. In Indonesia, we know kuntilanak, the infamous ghost originated from Pontianak. In here, they call kuntilanak as Pontianak. I’m very upset, it’s my hometown! Just because of some misinterpretation, they call the ghost Pontianak. At one job interview, a lady almost bulged her eyes out when I said I was from Pontianak, coincidentally I had long hair and red eyes from lack of sleep, mhehhehehhehe….frustating. Grr.

Just Another Thursday

2006-04-02T00:15:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 07, 2005

Tee-hee,

I think a lot of people would agree that watching news could be devastating nowadays. Last time, it could make or break your day, now most of them are depressing.

Oh, but, there was one news that made me smile few days ago.

Someone had invented the anti-rapist tool. It’s like a disposable condom to be worn by females (don’t ask me how), and it will hook to the rapist’s ……, only can be surgically removed. Therefore they hope it could help to reduce crime rate and catch them when they go to hospital of course. It’s good news for females; hopefully it’s cheap, reliable and safe. I can’t help but wonder, how if it is used for wrong intention? For iseng blood thirst crazy female, or wife who want to punish their husband for forgetting their birthday? :D (not me of course!)

But hey, out there, it’s possible! We never know how sick a person can be… If you read what, the anna what website, many weirder than fiction things could happen in real life. I only know this website because sometimes I read little entertainment news in the corner of the newspaper referring to them, I’m quite kepo about that web though, but dun have chance to check it out.

I want to watch March of The penguin, first documentary in Cinema, but still haven’t got time. Nowadays, movie creators are not creative. Sequels, prequels, super hero, comic resurrections, translations etc, mostly are not original concept anymore, they are running out of idea. Matrix, although disappointing, subjectively, I could see Mas Nunu. :) Lord of The Ring, I fell asleep on LOTR2, maybe because I watched it on DVD, but I skipped the third. Can’t imagine the LOTR marathon 3 x 3 hours! But many people love it, that’s why I heard they are making another long fantasy movie, forget the title. From comics, Spiderman, Batman, Fantastic Four, Sin city etc, didn’t have time to watch except Spiderman. I like Spiderman because I want to be one. :) Isn’t it cool to be able to jump around here and three :).

Batman is another thing.
Old joke :
Who is the most stupid in the world? Batman, because he has wings, but he can’t fly. Who is more stupid than Batman? Robin. Udah tau Batman bego, ditemenin.

Horror movie. I think Hollywood is not so capable of making horror movie. Those Candyman, Urban Legend, Scream bla bla are rubbishes, the last good one is What Lies Beneath, Hannibal not bad. Now they stalk on Japanese movie, The Ring, The Grudge (Originally Ju-On), Dark Water. Maybe I’m easier to scare now, I supposed to pay only half price for The Ring, then we have never watched horror again. Mhehehhehe…actually watching the movie is not so bad, it’s the feelings days after.

Even when I visited Body World Exhibition, I kept thinking about the dried face days after. It was an amazing exhibition though, so they preserved human body for medical and science I think. They have large collection of dried bodies, skeletons, skinless, body parts, body sections. It’s unbelievable how did they able to ship the fragile dried bodies with red nerves and tissue still hanging around, posing as chess player, footballer etc. They had pregnant woman and all ages of embryos, some with abnormally, smoker and coal miner’s lungs. I was ok with the skinless one, they didn’t look so real, but the ones with faces, skin still attached was scary, I got to play hide and seek to avoid looking at those. They also cut up one huge camel and completed human body into cross sections. And guys, be patient if you girl wants to visit restroom more than you, cause your bladder is almost three times bigger.

At the end of that day, I lost my appetite and had a dream talking to one of those bodies. Oh, and everyone can be a donor. It might be cool for some people to be an exhibit, but how if they only take your bladder and throw the rest? Hm…. And it must be a messy work, to dried up everything..ugh.., but have to admit, it was amazing.

Just had lunch with Mom and Dad, they dropped by to Garuda’s office nearby. Had lunch at Genki Sushi, but they were lousy! Almost every time they were late and today, they forgot my order although I reminded them few times! No regret, no explanation, no expression…had to ask them one sentence, why does it happen every time? Then they came back to life, apologize and cut the service tax. So, remember the magic sentence, one is enough. When I had lunch with friends there, everyone complained grundel grmbl we still had to pay full price because my friends only said …Your service is lousy… we are disappointed…one hour and you mixed up… no use, no use.

So now or a bit later I’ll be hungry because basically I had almost nothing for lunch.

>: (|)

Yay, one day to weekend! :)

Decapodan Flash

2006-04-02T00:09:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : September 06, 2005

Colorful nostalgic week indeed.

I came into contact with some of the ‘long time no hear’ friends, met my ex boss and even met my dentist who saved me from swollen face and 10/10 painful rate with his surgery knives a year ago. All of these above I regard as good friends, but other than that, I also had and still have unwanted visitor. Oh well...anyway, dun want to talk about that.
This time, Singapore is in the running of Yellow Ribbon Project. Exactly the same meaning with 70-s song, this yellow project is meant to educate people from giving ex-convicts a second chance. Honestly, I think, this is a good project but not an easy one. Even somebody without history can’t earn trust easily, so someone with history of course need to work harder and do not blame society instantly for rejecting them, but keep trying.

About the song, I think the title is Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree bla bla or Yellow Ribbon or Oak Tree? I miss seventies song :”( from Romacle Magic Music and Kiss FM if I’m not wrong. Radio in my office never plays seventies song, and now they keep advertising Cirque de Soleil. It’s very tempting, but the ticket can easily burn a hole in the wallet. Their theme this time is Quidam, means anonymous passerby; I think it’s interesting.

Go, not, go, not, not, not, go, go, go, not, neeeeeahhh…better save for other thing. But favorite song from Josh Groban’s has the same title, Cirque de Soleil, gotta avoid that for a while.

Anyway, back to Sinciapo, Sunday, Hubby, both mothers and me visited Sentosa Island, the only Singapore getaway, but not a satisfying one. We were desperate, didn’t know where to go. So, stricken by diving sickness, we bought the expensiveee Underwater World ticket again. We’d been there before, but mil hadn’t, and we were trapped in the rain, unable to go anywhere else. We thought it would be more interesting now since we could identify the fish.

But then again, it was disappointing. Now that we know, the only huge sharks they have are nurse sharks, those huge but friendly and loving type, and they live in far less than ideal environment; botak, tiny and shallow aquarium, poor sharky and friends.
The Musical Fountain was also so so. I remember it was better, maybe because that time we watched the late at night one.
But the important thingy is, of course, to be together, and at least it was better than those typical malls around the island, no wonder people spend money on travel, it’s too stucky in here.

Sigh…,just finished with dead line and again, I’m bored in office. Sometimes I remember my old office days back then in Batam.

My ex colleague knew that I spent a year in Batam, when she asked about living condition there, I told her I barely made it, which was true. I thought since I was working, I would be able to save and enjoy life, apparently, other than struggling with zero account at the end of the month; I also spent my entire savings from young to pay rent and food. But she told me it must be good to have those kind of worry-less freestyle life.

She was super right. Ten strangers, seven males and three females stuck in two houses, we went through thick and thin together. Our life was so simple; we only worried about the, ehm, laundry, everyone else in the office, Batamnese, could hear terrible groans from up stair every time it rained, because we washed every morning and left it to hang outside. We washed it manually of course, we had the collection of buckets and we pulled lines enough for ten people’s laundry. :)

It was more fun in the office; we were busy at times and had nothing to do more often. Then we played games, from Uno cards, sticks to even imitated TV quiz to pass through times, other favorite pass time was to play multiplayer games.

Holidays and Sundays were the most unwanted days (can you believe that?), because we didn’t know what to do or we know what to do but didn’t have money to do that. So sometimes we just visited the beach (free!) and played, posed as stranded whale or being buried in the sand. I can’t forget seven adults hung on a truck wheel and floated happily in the ocean, or rode the wooden boat and fought for the front seat. We were happy and childish. Or when we were luckier, we spent weekend in the nice resort outside the town, Nongsa and had barbeque, every little event, we could make it happening. That was why I tried my head out to have my wedding there with old friends for old time sake. Mhehehe..

We were close then, we almost always had meals together. The dinner ‘journey’ was beautiful because of the starry nights. It was much better than Jakarta and here of course, the sky was almost always clear and starry. We loved to sing while looking at the stars, remembering those we left in Jakarta. We had this front yard where we could build up a bonfire and roast (not marshmallow – expensive :)) sweet potato and corn.

Living together, every month we would gather some money and spent it on household. Ten of us shopped together at the market and bought household items like broom, mop etc. We led simple life, we didn’t even have TV in the beginning, so every night, we would sit together and chat, busy spanking mosquitoes or did some ironing. We played cards of course and grew quite expert with that. We played by millions, so at the end of the night, sometimes we earned or lost ten over millions, hehhehehhe..

Every Friday, four would go to mosque, and every Sunday, six would go to church. After church, we would gather together again for a lunch or went home and did heavy-duty wash: bed sheet, towel, jeans :).

I always knew that our time together wouldn’t be long; I could sense it since the beginning, when we held birthday party for three people together. I love that moment, and believe it would be the last, somehow, we couldn’t always be like that, we met by fate and stayed together, but would go separate way in the matter of times. It came when we had to move, the free lodging only lasted for two weeks, then we had to pay high prize. There came our problems, and there burst our savings. We didn’t lead luxury lifestyle, the most was we visited café few times, paid the entrance fee and held on to a drink until it closed, we loved listening to the live music and there was a great band from Bandung. Other luxury, of course, long distance calls for those in Jakarta. Made extra efforts to stay late or woke up early to get the discount rate, it paid off when connected but hit twice as badly when we failed to reach the person. It would be nice of course to receive calls and letters, which I hardly have. Anyway, I chose wake-up early method, because stayed up late could be quite creepy in the big house. We had numerous real horror stories around, and one of my friend indeed saw things under the stair (When I liked to spend time arranging the shoes on Sunday…oops..).

But we experienced the real scary story also. One night; a group of gun-armed robbers broke into our only neighbor's house, in that quiet estate. My friend woke up and went out to check what was wrong and he was told to head back to the house under a gunpoint. We just gathered whatever we had for weapon, and it was only a small thin kitchen knife. My girl friends were so frightened that they curled together and prayed. Four guys stayed around us, the other three slept in next-door house and had no idea about the robbery. Armed my self with wire hanger, aimed for eyes as taught by one of the guy, better than nothing, although I couldn’t imagine myself digging somebody eyes, but I was prepared to do anything for defense, as we didn’t have much choice. Gulp. With that we kept watching the windows. Lucky they never bothered to visit us.

The day after, we went to supermarket and I bought a big can of Baygon, it should make a good weapon, like those tear-sprays and although pathetic, vitorinox. I wonder why, instead of scared, I was angry with the robbers for traumatizing my friend. When we moved out, months after, I heard they kept coming back for the same house.

Sadder time, we moved house, almost ended up sleeping on the floor because basically we didn’t have anything but clothing. Through hard and soft way, we managed to bring out our bed and TV. The rest, it was depend on us, we made curtain out of bed sheet. Parents donate fan and traditional stove (kompor minyak tanah) when they visited. We ended up poorer and poorer at the end :). I don’t recall any unhappiness about lack of luxury though, but unhappiness of losing friends who thought and went different ways.

Although the company didn’t treat us good, I still thank them until today for meeting us together and landing us here. Anyway, we had chance to learn quite a lot of things. :)

PS:

Visit dentist again last night. I thought I already cool with dentist since my last year brutal experience, but I'm still afraid!!! Especially with the sound of the equipments. Maybe dentists would go to heaven instead of preachers. Old joke with little modification; because when the preachers talk, everybody sleeps. When the dentists work, everybody prays. :)

Hottie Days

2006-04-02T00:07:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 29, 2005

Came early to the office, and pulled up the window blind. Hopefully boss won’t pull it down again when he comes (the controller is located in his cubicle, and I’m about one cubicle away from the window).

Whew, the sky looks very cloudy outside, dark and sad. I think it’s about the time to rain, yesterday and this morning the weather was unbearable. It was airless in the MRT, hot and full of carbon monoxide, I wonder whether they turned on the aircon, see, the transportation cost was up again, but the quality is getting worse. When I was out from the train, standing in the middle of the field, I swear, there was not a single tree waving their leaves. No wind at all, and it was damn humid.

Sunny, dark, cloudy sky, rainy day, I love them all, but I lo-ve wind!!

Without wind, in this damp weather, I wonder whether I’ll be extinct in no time. >:"(

Anyway, I wonder what is this with the weather. There was another hurricane, even though we are supposed to enter rainy season, there are still jungle fires. And just found out not long ago there was an epidemic in India, dead cow, dead pig, flood, and disease. Storm in Taiwan to mainland, earthquake in Japan etc.

In Singapore’s Chinese calendar, we are in the middle of Seventh Month. Seventh Month is one of the still strong cultures here. So they believe, in the seventh month of the year, Gate of Hell is open and all the ghosts and evils are free to roam around. So this is the most superstitious month where people abstain from doing scary things, especially on the first day. During the month, they burn praying papers, and they erect stage in some places, where folks would perform: singing, acting and dancing, I think it was suppose to be kind of respect to the spirits. Some make this performance their yearly income, so they dress up, traditionally or formally and visit stage to stage to perform. People from neighborhood would come and watch. I’ve never been to the show (I can hear it clearly from my block up there), I know the organizer pays the performers, but I don’t know whether you need to pay to watch.

So, all the burning activities and flying ashes should contribute a little bit to the hot weather. Hey, I can talk a lot about weather; I thought it supposed to be a lame picked up line. :)

Nother thing, I don’t like construction activities. There are constructions going on in my block and under my office building. So, they cover up here and there, dusty and noisy, and cause human jam. Argh.. and of course, keep delaying their date of completion.

The one under the office affects me more. It was suppose to be a big pavement with water fountain. Every Thursday afternoon, there was line dancing by old folks. It was very cute. Those auntie and uncle dressed up and socialized.

Dress up; let me try to describe it. I always spotted this seventy years old auntie; she dyed her hair red, and tied it up at the right hand side of the head with those leathers with beads ribbon. She wore lacy dress and super short skirt, and pretty woman’s boot, red color. Most of the uncle wore cowboy head, metal belt, lucky luke’s type of clothing and cowboy boot. So they danced together, those stepped here, stepped there, swung back and forth. Sometimes they danced with Chinese song, but mostly they used modern country and pop songs. It was just fun to see these aunties with Maroon Five’s song. Miraculously, they could use the same steps with every song. :)

I always loved to watch them; I could hear the music before I touched the first story. It gave me nice feeling because they reminded me of Thursdays, one day to weekend. And it was fun to see those happy faces and their clothing. ;p
Sometimes, when it was rainy day, they move to the covered pavement, side by side with those outdoor seating from Spineli and California Deli, where those bules liked to sit and enjoy their coffee.

Now, during construction, at least a year, no more line dancing and they cover up the pavement up to the indoor roof so we can’t even see the sky. I spend mostly my days home-work-home, so practically I hardly see the open sky, unless I peep through my colleague’s cubicle or purposely take a detour to my apartment through a field. Screw constructions… grmbl..

Yesterday evening, we celebrated the combined birthday of three colleagues. We have eleven people in my dept; most of us are around 28, cough, my age. I met this colleague (she was one of the three birthday girl/boy), early in 2002 when I joined this company, she said she was 28, and now, three years later, she says she is 29, according to my math, this birthday she is supposed to be 32. :O

So why do people lie about their ages?

I think 30 may be a scary number, additionally; she doesn’t have a boyfriend yet.

But wouldn’t it worse if you are 29 with 32 years old-look? I think it’s better to be 32 with 32 years old-look, right? If you haven’t confused so far, - I think it’s better that you look your age rather than you look older than your age – (actually it’s not – because you lie about your age) – so isn’t it more flattering to be honest?

And, and, even if you look younger than your age, be honest too. Isn’t it more flattering when they say you look younger than your age?

Kekekkekekeke..

Most people still think 30 is a sacred number for girls, maybe that’s why. They say you have to get married before 30, have babies before 30 bla bla bla…

Even my modern thinking friends say the same, married or not married; I have many of them lecturing me about kids. Come on, I had enough from my family, I’m grateful to live far away from my aunties and uncles. Even my parents and mil had given up lecturing us. Some just don’t get the reasons. The idea of responsible to another person life is too selfish if you are not prepared, right? Some say, if you never try, you don’t know, or, if I can, why you can’t.

I have learned that we can never judge a person unless we are on their shoes. What we see may not be what they feel. Wrong things may be right if we change POV. : (l)

Hey, since morning, the Exit sign above my head keep blinking, something wrong with the light or is it a wahyu for me to go home?

These two days don’t do well for my mood, many undesirable things happened or will happen. Got to dig up all the cheer up mails and remember good things.

Good things, I’m always amused by twins. Mhehehhe, last weeks, I met four pairs of twins in one day. Kid twins is quite common, they dress the same way and walk hand to hand, or baby twins with tandem stroller. But these teenage twins that I met was sooo identical, only they didn’t dress exactly the same, but still same styles. They had same hairs, same eyebrows, same eyes, same height; I think it’s impossible to differentiate them except by, maybe, personalities.

The most hilarious thing, I thought I would never have this chance; I met a pair of twin nenek-nenek. Last time I LMAO because my friend told me she has twin grandpas. Now, these nenek-nenek were very close to each other, they dressed the same style with the same hairstyles. Mhehehhehe…

Other thing! Other thing!

I’m glad that many people read my blog. I want to thank the producer and the academy…no seriously, thanks for reading, :)

Above The Cloud

2006-04-02T00:03:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 28, 2005

It was the fifth time I visited Genting. This time was for in-laws reunion. :)

Genting is the entertainment city located at the top of mountain, Malaysia. I think it’s less than an hour from KL, six hours plus from Singapore. It is a popular getaway and holiday destination, people ran from hot weather and rigid Singapore for weekend or for a few days. Every time I visit, I am still amused about the concept and the founder. I can’t help thinking about a man less than my age, sixty-eight years ago, went for a hike to a mountain, out of nowhere, and decided to poured all his money and built an entertainment centre there, starting with the infrastructure, road, pipe, electricity. How did they transport all the construction materials and so on, how if nobody interested in it? It has breathtaking scenery and cold pleasant weather, but it could easily become an abandon project for its hard-to-reach location. But he was smart to build casino first. It was soon become a favorite spot for those die hard auntie and uncle, pressing their hand into the jackpot machines.

Anyway, I have my hat off for him. It’s now a nice accomplished dream. It has almost everything for entertainment; casino, game center, karaoke, theme park, cinema, live concert/show/circus, archery, shooting, bowling, cinema, pools, and other attractions such as Ripley museum, Snow city, shops, wall climbing even outdoor programs like hiking, rock climbing, games etc etc.

So me, Hubby, my parent and my MIL took bus on Friday night and reached there at 5a.m in the morning.

Hubby and me were cheated in our two previous trips. First time cheated, we bought outdoor theme park ticket. So, out we were, hoping to ride roller coaster etc. We walked around first to gather our will to ride it. Half of the roller coaster was floating in fog/cloud; of course we kept on wondering whether all the bolts were still in tact, surviving the cold and foggy weather. And then, the fog was getting thicker, and most of the rides were closed because of that. We were left with nothing to ride, except nenek bebek’s car and some water boat, which was also closed before we reached the front queue. Argh…. We stayed until the theme park was closed, ate a couple of cup noodles and steamed corn, made a fake queue in front of the rides (to create a hoax out of frustration :), took pictures which looked like we were standing in front of nothing, although actually it was scenery and coasters…with fog…

My next visits were quite short, so we didn’t buy the theme park ticket. The idea is, buy the two days pass, to complete each other in case the weather was not friendly for rides.
Now they have at least five roller coasters, but yesterday trip was also too short.

Second time cheated, it was around 10.30 pm, Hubby and me decided to enjoy some live music in the café, so we paid the entrance fee, which was quite expensive, and settled down for a drink. The band sang one song, and said goodbye. We joked each other about the meaning of goodbye.
O-ho, so they had a break, half an hour? Or there was another band.
But no band, no break, that’s it. 10.30 meeen! And it was supposed to be holiday season! When we bought the ticket, they only said the closing time would be 3 am, they never said, enjoy listening to the speakers. So we just sat there, stared at the empty stage angrily, and gave up after twenty minutes.

Outside, we had to walk through other cafes which had real live music up to their closing time, I was quite sure the bouncers stuck out their tongues behind our back. >:~p

So, basically, this time we were all right and since we had almost everything covered already, we finally decided to go in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not exhibit, we had only forty-five minutes before closing time, since we wanted to kill time before catching a movie after. It was quite interesting and creepy. I felt a little bit uneasy inside, and after we reached the closing time, nobody was around us, and it took forever to reach the exit, between those old artifacts, scary faces; man with blue face, man with gold nose, headless statue, standing African coffin with the ceiling leaves decoration ticked my neck at least five times and made me jump. Lots of creepy old things around. Hm…now I’m older, I’m easier to scare rather than my good young days. :D

And chastity belt! It was really inhuman! It was uhm…coppery rusty down there, damn all those middle age paranoid husbands! The cruel but funny, there was a rusty flat iron which goes around the head and neck and had another circle around the cheeks and the mouth, this was used to prevent a woman from nagging and talking too much! Kampret sexist…mhehehhehehe….Women never talk too much, they analyze…!

We are not into casino, so we only played games, shopping and watched movies. We took cable car ride and it was still as thrilling as I felt last time, although it was not meant to be. :) Hung in the middle of thin air and fog, high above the green, with a single cable, and other fat passengers shifting their bums here and there rocking the petite car could be quite a ride.

Many movies that week for us.

We watched Herbie and The Cave, these movies haven’t released yet in Singapore.
Herbie is about the racing Volkswagen, and old TV serials, it was quite entertaining to watch although very predictable.
The Cave, about bunch of lost divers in the underground creepy cave, was quite ok but many parts of the film were unbelievable.
We watched Constantine and 50 First Date in DVD previously. Constantine was quite good, and Mas Nunu as handsome as ever, mhehehhe…, 50 First Date was surprisingly romantic and had good ending.

We went back by a great bus with personal entertainment LCD. So we spent good six hours watching movies, play PC Games and music.

Toilet break. Good one.

Another thing, because of arranging this trip and spending time together with my parents and MIL, I cancelled dinner appointment with my friend Willy, visiting from Jakarta.

It was supposed to be the third time we met here. First time with, Christin and her husband, we met for only about two hours coffee time. Second time, with fresh news of his baby, we met for dinner and coffee talk, that time we spent few hours, although disrupted by book sale. I could never resist book sale, so I ignored him for about half an hour and picked up at least a dozen of books. He ended up buy some himself :). So, next time, bro.

He hardly checks Friendster, I think, so I will make my confession here. Gosh, I forget what gender his baby is. There are soooo many babies from friends of mine. I can only remember those whom I write and read about occasionally. The rest I forget about genders, names and ages. Even though I keep the pictures sent, it’s hard to guess a baby gender from pictures, unless they have moustaches. So, I always avoid asking,” How is your baby etc..” unless I know exactly what I am talking about. Of course I’m glad to receive those baby news and photos, but age rules, it’s easier for me to forget things now. :P

So, well, it’s Monday again….

As usual, I can only let out a long sigh, look at the sky from office window and picture my self rocking in the boat. Oh damn! Just realize that they closed the window blind! @%@$*^@$$

There's a single raindrop outhere

2006-04-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 21, 2005

Yes, there was a single raindrop on my office's window, although it was sunny outside.

I delete my previous post because I ranted, I don't like to recall the bad feelings I had when I wrote it, so removed. :)

It was just another Monday anyway.

They say: Yesterday is history; tomorrow is mystery. Today is present, cheer it, that’s a reason why it’s called present.

Why I Write

2006-04-01T23:58:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 17, 2005

Why I write..

When - Whenever I have free time at work. My work is weird, if I’m busy, I can bulge my eyes out staring at the monitor and never let go until I finish it. Radio and conversations around are enemies, I have to plug some earphone and listen to well, combination of Nirvana’s scream, Josh Groban’s steady voice and even Nat King Cole and those waving flipping around blues or even ew Sarah Brightman and Eminem, anything suits my mood. I do have wide range of taste. :)

But if I’m not busy, I can listen and understand every conversation around while following the tune of the radio, reading emails and digging my nose. Eps, that one is at home (or when I think nobody can see me).

Lately, my workloads are getting imbalance. Like now, I have free time almost every few day, lasting for few days also. Playing games, listening to music are not enough to pass time anymore. I’m not really a social person; I won’t go around bugging people and talking about things even if they want to have some company. I used to do that in my first office, but moving here, I don’t really know how to joke around. In Indonesia, I can say whatever comes to my mind and gain immediate effect, but here, if I want to say something funny, I have to think first, and it’s not that funny anymore. And Sgp doesn’t have many slang languages, (like those prokem :) unless we speak in Singlish. Now I’m quite good at that (I even forget how to speak properly!) but my neck hair is still standing when I speak or hear it, so nawww, there burst the option.

But I also not the kind of person who can sit and do nothing, it will kill me. I’m amazed of how a person can sit and think about nothing (most of them are males, I swear, I conclude this from actual surveys and confessions. Nothing sexist ;p). Since before kindergarten, I have a looong story in my mind that continues to go on until now. Whenever I’m free, I would continue, in my mind. I even can’t sleep without that.

So, arghh, why it took me so long just to say this; I love to write. Bear with me. I speak better with my keyboard.

And I plan to write down memorable things in my life, I’m just starting. (Evil grin).

I joined an online writing community last year, from there, I gain friends, I read, I write, I critize and being critized. It was fun; I couldn’t spend a day without logging into it. We were quite close to each other, we even have a special website with our real pictures all over it. When I was absent after being quite desperate during tsunami period; they were asking and care for me, I was really touched.

But few months ago, I stopped logging in, although I still check from time to time. Because there were a lot of new people came trying to create some chaos, post junks etc,. The other/main reason is I miss my online close friends, some of them have stopped visiting and I don’t know what had happened to them. Reality struck. We don’t really know each other. If I die or they die, we wouldn’t know. The sad thing was some of the friends were in their constant battle with cancer or something harder to cope in life. I guess I might take things too hard, but some of them were going through lives unimaginable for me. Those stay in UK and US, majority of the community, went through homeless situations, drugs, rapes, from serious things until small things like school bullies for younger members. From contacts with them, I understand how hard life must be for them, and it was like being pushed into my face, that those things are not only happen in TV. So, I take time out to clear my mind, I will log back in when I’m ready.

The Lion City

2006-04-01T23:56:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 17, 2005

First time I stepped into the land border, I was asked by the immigration officer, the plump fellow with thick glasses and greasy hair.

Come for what?

Ugh. I tried to spin my head to think what the guy was trying to say. He repeated again, a bit louder, impatiently.

Ho….holiday.

He glanced at my confused face for a while chopped and chopped and passed my passport. I said thanks and smiled at him, hoping for a smile back, but he was a bit deaf. He didn’t even look at me. Huh.

Today I get used to this breed of people, I almost become one of them, if I don’t keep reminding myself and go back home once in a while.

Typically,
They don’t greet, they don’t smile, they don’t say and receive thank you, mp3 and hand phones are their best friends.

I was interrogated once in the immigration in private room out of nothing, they randomly picked me because I wore belel jeans and T-shirt. I came here on weekly basis with Hubby to meet our boss before our work permit was done. I almost got into trouble that day. The week after, I put in the best blouse I had, make-up and I only need less than one minute for immigration clearance.

Sad but true, appearance is important here, not that I care.

Of course typical doesn’t mean everyone. I always have wonderful friends, colleagues, and luckily, I have good bosses, good landlords, good neighbors. Maybe they are good when they know you?
But except those people I mentioned, everyone else is playing hard to get. They are not exist to be loved. If I let them, they would make my days miserable.

Request for food to be specially served, they scold you. No luxury like djangan pake bawang, djangan pake seledri, togenya buanyakin, cabenya kurangin, mangkoknya gedein…

Tried few cloths, they question you. Wanna buy or not!?

Even if you buy something, fast, no bargain, but you hand in undesirable note, they scold you. One uncle refused to sell me a cd just before I gave him 10 dollar notes. He wanted 2 dollars notes. Exactly!

This note is fake! They don’t create ten dollars notes lah! No two dollar don’t need to buy! Go Go Go!

You can keep the change uncle.

Don’t want!

Of course I fake the conversations, I won't give away my hard-earned ten dollar to that crazy uncle, but more or less I had similar jackass impression in my head.

To tackle this kind of behavior, sometimes we have to make our mind just like them. The best remedy is to treat a person the way their treat us, and then they would listen. I don’t want to adapt this principle though. But sometimes we have to. Hubby practiced it once at the coffee shop. Usually the seller was rude and refused to admit their mistake if they mixed up the request, we felt it was useless to tell them anyway. Until one day, Hubby pissed off and questioned them about the order. He was not taken aback, he has that scary deep voice, and the result, kaing kaing kaing, they admitted their mistake and changed the food timidly.

He is a patient kind of person but he was fed up also. :)

Treat others like how you want yourselves to be treated.
Very true. And vice versa. Voila.
Treat others like how they treat you also. Mhehehhehe…I am not a saint. :)

As I observe, younger generations are much better now. They are more polite and friendly, especially around diver community. I can’t recognize nationality, we have the same passion and therefore, we have similar attitude. I’m grateful to meet them, being with them make me feel like home. :”)

So my rant is only about minority of Singapore. Other than bills, taxes, regulations, boredom, foods, apartment, arghhhh….I can spend a day talking about those which I don’t want to, but mostly I’m grateful that I can go anywhere I want without being in constant fear about my safety. I guess safety is the most expensive thing.

Grown Up Children

2006-04-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 15, 2005

Ordinary day in office.

I have a hobby to collect Disney miniature figurines. Miniatures, as the height of the miniatures are no more than 4 cm. I get it from those ball machines. Put a dollar in, and turn. :)

So far, I have quite a lot of collections. Because they are mini, they don’t use so much space; only at the corner slightly bigger than A4 size paper can hold many of them. There is a guy in my next-door department who likes to collect those things also, guess gender is not a point. Sometimes we exchange or give each other. He prefers slightly bigger figurines.

One day, early in the morning he came to my table, bringing a big bag and started taking out everything. Toys, many toys were scattered around in my table. He said he was clearing his house and wanted to give some of them away. There were many cute ones, including the snoopy series around the world from McDonald. Funny crazy guy, although I was nervous that my big boss would walk in, It was nice of him, so I picked the snoopies and he brought the rest back. He said since I liked the snoppies he would bring the rest of the series for me.

So, the day after, in the mid day, while almost everybody in my department was around, he came again to my table and brought much bigger bag and started to take everything out. He even demonstrated the toys, some of them were very cute, singing, jumping up and down, rolling eyes, tu tu train, basketball, astronaut, and all cute Disney characters. Because of the noise and the colorful thingy in my table, soon everyone was gather around.

To my surprise (I thought they would laugh), all of them started to play, some even asked for the toys he brought. Mhehhehehe, I guess everyone are only grown up children, we always has playful side, although maybe, some has more, some has less. :)

So, I have 40-50 over snoopy figurines from all over the world resting in my cupboard now thanks to him. ;)

Now I gotta find a way to shrink them into my desirable size, about 50% off. :)

Sipadan and Hockey

2006-04-01T23:43:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 15, 2005

Decide to write down Tengku Abdul Rahman & Sipadan Journey.

Preparation:
Nothing much, as Anthony had prepared everything and kept close contact with Alan, the Sabah side. We had our regular meeting to discuss small things, big things, etc.
First time meeting Cynthia, Leonard and Ee Chiew. We met Anthony and Froggie before, in fact, we had never dived without them.

A week before Sabah, we got the news that monsoon was over. From November to February was the worst time for divers stay in Singapore. West Malaysia closed for diving, so we were fasting for few months.

UNDERWATER HOCKEY

In those few months we picked up underwater hockey, which was a hilarious but serious sport, the sore muscles proved it all. The glove was made with ordinary glove with layer of dried white glue on the upper palm. The purpose was to prevent injuries, to be worn in whatever hand used to push the ball. Then, the stick is a boomerang shape (and size) made of wood. The ball is a heavy rubber ball, looks like hockey ball, short cylinder shape. Other things used are dive mask (not goggles, dive mask is the one that cover your nose also), snorkel and fins (preferably full foot fins).

The game is like this. Two teams, each consists of six players, using half Olympic pool size. The pool depth has to be minimal 2.4 meters. So one team stand on the edge, and the other team, with disadvantage, standing in the middle of the pool. Fins can help us standing, if we pose ourselves like ballerina. There were two goals at the bottom of the pool in each team’s position; the goal is made of steel, like a triangle with gutter in the middle (to push the ball in). It is about 20 cm high. The ball is put in the middle of two teams.

When the game starts, everyone will sink to the bottom and drag the ball with the stick. It can become a very rough game. Kicked by fins, hands hit by stick (which is why we used thick glue to protect it). The ball can’t be lifted from the floor/touched by hand, and hand without glove can’t be used. The biggest challenge for me was how to flip your self 180 degrees from the surface, head down, then made the body paralel with the pool’s floor, and stayed there and fought for the ball. Breathing and speed are the keys, and of course, endurance.

We looked like a bunch of hungry fish fought for food. The worst thing was by the time you managed to get your stick on the ball, you ran out of breath. When you wanted to surface to gasp some air, everyone was either above or beside you. Sometimes it felt like dying. :)

When a goal had happened, everyone had to swim back to their position. Before you reach the position or steady yourself, the team leader had shouted, “White readehhh (ready)”, and you heard sound the opposite site of the pool “Black readeeeeeh.” Then,”Three…two..one..GO!” Holly molly.

But it’s a good workout for muscles and lung. Too bad after monsoon we had never come back to play. I heard the group grew quite big and even went to competition, and now they have proper glove and stick.

Hmm.. I tend to talk about other things I remember along the way.

ATLANTIS BAY

So, back to a week before, we decided to go for a weekend trip, to test out our confidence and new equipments. We were not skilful at the last trip, as it was only our second, so we had to prepare for the big trip.

February 25-27, we went to Atlantis Bay. That time we tested out a lot of things, fins, BCD and camera. We didn’t have regulator yet, fortunately everything was good and smooth. I won’t go into detail about this trip, just one memorable point, as we saw four big cuttlefish circling around their nest, taking care of their eggs. It was an amazing moment; I didn’t dare to stay too close to them.

That trip we first time met Joshua etc.
After that trip, four working days, we were heading for the big journey.

TENGKU ABDUL RAHMAN NATIONAL PARK

Our original destination was Tengku Abdul Rahman (TAR) as we thought Sipadan was very expensive.

Friday, 5th March 2005.
We took full day leave. Since the week before, we put our gear back in the living room, everything we remembered, we threw inside to be arranged again later.
At around 3 p.m, Cynthia and Ee Chiew picked us up, we chartered a car, and it drove us directly to Senai, Johor Bahru Airport, Malaysia. From there we took Air Asia to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Anthony, Leonard and Froggy were in another car.

We met them in the airport, I thought we were going to be shy shy, but apparently not, everybody got along with each other, and we cracked jokes like old friends. Froggie showed us his sunburn (At the journey home from Atlantis Bay, he overslept at the sundeck for two hours). It was very bad, like second degree burnt.
Advice, don’t sleep in the sundeck after diving trip, because you will be too tired, tend to overslept, and your friends are also sleeping so they can’t remind you. :)

Anyway, we boarded the plane. Free seating, first come put their bums first. No food. Excess baggage. Budget Airline. The journey took four hours? Can’t remember.
We were picked up by Alan and Bob with two big foot jeeps, checked in at Daya Hotel about 9 pm. We walked around, bought some tidbits and had a dinner with a machine gun auntie.

What do you want to order? Fried rice, bee hoon, bak kut the, cha kuetiau, or you want to order some dishes, toge, kangkung, steam fish, and miss, what do you want to order, what about this guy, where are you come from, so you like toge, tea?…

Tea would be good..

What tea? Sabah tea? Chinese tea, hot tea, dark tea, cold tea, tea-oh-ping? Or do you want barley? Good barley, home made one…..

Well. It was a good introduction day.

Saturday, 5th March 2005

Woke up early morning, breakfast and we headed to Alan’s shop. Only Me, Hubby, Ee Chiew and Froggie were going to dive. Leo was not feeling well, he had been sick since the previous week. Cynthia and Anthony had to go to their theory class for rescue course.
Three of us except Frog would go for Advanced course, he is an Advanced already.

We chatted with Bob and Neville along the way. They are British and Aussie if I’m right. We boarded the small speedboat with another divers.

First dive, surprise surprise! We were imagining beautiful diving, but found out that the diving was quite a disappointment. Poor visibility. It was cold, around 24 degree. The corals were dull, most of them were dying and not many fish to be seen. The color of the water was not blue. The best thing we saw was only a big puffer fish.

We had our lunch at Pulau Sapi, on our own expenses. Hmm…not a good first impression I must say. So we proceed to second dive. Froggie was still with us as the lessons were like common dives.
Second dive was not bad. We saw school of squids, which was a rare thing; first time saw juvenile sweetlips and honeycomb moray eel.

Then that was it. Only two dives a day. Another disappointment.

PS: Somehow we were convinced that we were going to have three dives a day and lunch provided.

We went back to hotel, showered and walked around KK town, ate delicious bak kut teh. Strolled along kaki lima and bought local fruit, and chendol, how I miss this Indonesian ambient.

Sunday, 6th March 2005.

Today Froggie couldn’t join us. He was in different group with Cynthia, Anthony and other divers, three of us studenst would do the lessons separately. Leo went along, but he didn’t dive.

First lesson was deep diving. It was my worst dive ever! Because the weather was bad, the water was like...hum..miso soup. The visibility was 0.5-1.5 m only. We barely saw our own hand.
So we sinked down, me and Ee Chiew followed Neville. I didn’t want to take a chance, so I held on to his tank strap. Hubby and Joyce, Neville’s assistant, were behind us.

Without seeing a thing in front, we kept sinking. It was all mud,no fish, no coral, no blue color. At one point, Neville stopped, I thought we reached the depth already, and Ee Chiew was gone. I also couldn’t see Hubby, was so worried but I kept holding to Neville. I couldn’t see him also, as I only could see up to my elbow, it was only two of us in presence. We searched for the rest, and after a while, Neville led my hand to hold into something, apparently it was Hubby’s hand. Three of us with Joyce clang together, Neville brought Ee Chiew up I guess. So three of us held hands and floated in the depth. I think that time we tried to ascend slowly. I really couldn’t see them clearly, but I didn’t worry anymore.

After what felt like forever, we did safety stop and went up to the surface. Neville pulled us to the boat and told us he was very worried. It was his first time that he lost his divers, and he thanked us to stay calm.

We were exhausted. Lunch in Pulau Sapi, we were all frown. We were still joking, but very disappointed imagining that we had to spend our holiday with louzy diving and service from Alan though Neville and Bob were very nice and friendly.

After lunch, we did land navigation. The compas was not working properly. So, I had difficulties practicing my weakest knowledge of all. Navigation......Arghhhhh..
After about an hour, we boarded the boat again. We did the surface navigation, Cynthia and Anthony did their rescue course, Froggie aborted the dive, he was very pissed off with the water condition, so he and Leo stayed on the boat.

After surface navigation, we sank down. The water was freezing cold, because we stayed at one place. Four of us, with Bob, knelt down together, and pair by pair we did triangle, rectangle navigation. So, sometimes paired with Hubby, sometimes Ee Chiew, we had to perform the tasks. The visibility was slightly better, but still very poor. We lost few times, and hit a school of barracuda, and almost, a stone fish. Lucky, the barracuda was yellowstrip, not so fierce.

Poor Bob, because he was only waiting for us, he shivered heavily. It was better for us because we still moved time to time. I think that time I had small holes in my wet suit because I knelt down on sharp corals, I couldn’t see the bottom!

So, after the dive, we packed up and went back to main island. Night dive, our last lesson, was cancelled because of bad weather.

It was raining when we headed back to Alan’s shop. So we were running. Froggie, being a National Service man, sang a military tune to kept us running. It was very funny and cheered us up.

After went back to hotel, washed up, we had dinner. Then we gathered together in Hotel Lobby and ordered some beer. (planning not to dive tomorrow, not much, only one glass per person :)) We discussed about the holiday turned ugly, and desperately tried to plan something else. Cynthia shared a story about her wonderful dive in Langkayan. I think most of us were drooling listening to her story. So, we opened our map and tried to plan to jump boat. Either we changed the dive operator for better service or we went to another island, hoped for better diving.

At first, our choice fell on Pulau Tiga. Pulau Tiga was used for first season of Survivor Series, so it shouldn’t be worse than TAR, and it was located nearby. So, we asked around looking for information, and planned to go survey around KK as soon as the morning came.

Monday,7th March 2005

We went to Alan's shop in the morning. Five of us, except Anthony and Cynthia who did their course, went around to other dive shops to look for another dive location/better deal. So we went to Borneo Diver Head Office (Leo heard they have better price).

In BO office, we met a nice lady, Ursula. We had great conversations and laughs with her, she offered us a good deal to Sipadan. Something that we thought impossible, was made possible by her.

Sipadan is one of the world best dive site. Actually it was quite laughable to go so close to it without planning to dive there. We didn't plan it because Sipadan was not affordable (if we buy from Sgp). Ursula gave us good price and we decided to take her offer. We would keep it from Alan of course. We even chartered a van to send us to Semprona, where we could take ferry to Sipadan. The van cost as much as plane, and took ten hours instead of 45 minutes by plane. But we chose the van because we didn’t want to spend some time. We had to delay one day if we took the plane, because that night we still had to do night dive, and we couldn’t fly at least 24 hours after diving.

So, there born the best planners in the world. Hehehhhe….We signed up Dive plan for the rest of holiday, which was about five more days and booked a van. While having lunch, we shared tasks. Leo would go to the travel and picked up our air ticket back to KK (we went by van, and came back by flight). Four of us would go to Alan’s shop and packed our gears, we decided to use rented gears that night. After packing gears, we would pack up our belongings, checked out hotel, and entrusted the rest of un-use bags in Ursula’s office. Three of us student would complete our night dive and we pushed for certification to be completed by Alan that night also.

Alan was very anxious, he sensed something was wrong and kept asking us why we rushed him for certification. We told him we were planning to go somewhere else. After many interrogations (and we put all the blame to Leo, who was hiding in the hotel :D) he confirmed that he would issue temporary certifications that very night.

So, we waited for Cynthia and Anthony to come back. They were very surprised but very excited. They cancelled their night dive of course and went back to wash up at the hotel. We followed Neville to the basement and picked the rental gear, and headed for the dock.

First time night dive, I was very very scared. I always wondered whether I dared to enter it one day, and there came the day. My torch was very bright; I swore I would hold it tight.

Actually, thinking about departing for Sipadan that night helped me a lot. We determined to finish the course as fast as possible. I made Hubby promised to hold my hand during the dive; I didn’t want to get lost in the dark. Thinking about the miso soup dive made me shivering, if daytime was like that, what about nighttime.
Cut it short, we jumped in, and it was really really dark, as the boat didn’t has spotlight to help us shine into the water.
Surprisingly, the dive was good although I felt restless because we needed to keep the eyes on everything. There were many stonefish in the seafloor, so we had to beware. And one time, ugh, my first encounter with shark.

Hubby asked me to look in front, and I saw a baby leopard shark was resting on the coral, and a bigger one swam by. Nervous, but I was excited, we didn’t dare to shine our torch too long at them.

So, it was over. Mhaha, we could tell the rest of the gang proudly for that encounter. :)

In the boat, we were fighting with the wind. Neville shared his story with me, about his life and relationship. He told me this dive was his one thousand-th. Wow, one thousand dive, I was 2% of that…? He looked quite lonely that night, and told me his plan to go back to his hometown.

We proceed to the basement to wash our gears, time was ticking, but we tried not to look so nervous. We met Cynthia in the basement; she came for her certification (Anthony got his already). We asked her to buy some beers for Neville while we washed our gear. Ee Chiew went back to take her shower already.

After that, five of us, fresh Cynthia and Ee Chiew while me and Hubby still tasted like fish, sat in the class with Neville. We evaluated our dives, which felt like forever. It was 9 pm, and the van picked us at 9 pm also, we hadn’t had our shower, dinner..
But we felt quite bad to be parted with Neville. We had a little ceremony when he handed us our certifications. We presented him the beers, although we couldn’t drink with him like what he asked. He walked us to the hotel and said goodbye. Nice fellow he is.

After saying goodbye, we rushed to the room and showered. Everyone was ready, we were told to take our time as Froggy and Leo was already buddy-buddy with the driver, and he was happy to wait. We bought a cartoon of mineral water for our supply there (we had to supply our self in TAR). Leo bought us dinner, so we ate at the hotel.

MIDNIGHT TO SEMPRONA

At around 10.30, we started our journey to Semprona. Ten hours!
The van was spacious for us and our gears, so we positioned ourselves to sleep. I tried to wake up once in a while to take turn to accompany the driver. Middle of night, I felt the van went faster and faster, it was raining outside. The road was dark and scary; I had to remind the driver to slow down. The road was winding, at times we were worried because we were like tracking up and down the hill. There were certain height limit we couldn’t exceed for our safety.

At one point, the van went rough, I heard sound coming from the machine, the driver kept looking at the rear. I was full awake now, so was Froggy who sat in front of me.

Then, POFF…the was smoke coming up from the cockpit. All the light went off. It was a complete darkness. Everybody was awake now. We didn’t know what was going on, so was the driver.

We searched for our dive bags and grabbed my torch and Anthony, which were the biggest.

And believe it or not, we shone the road with those for the car to keep moving.

We did that for a while, and then the machine was dying. The driver parked the car in the road shoulder, and there it was. The car died, we were in the middle on nowhere.

Nervous and confused, the driver tried to contact its base. I understood the Malay language, and it sounded like we had to rely on our selves. Lucky, all of us kept calm, and although we were nervous, we tried to cheer our selves up. Froggie called Ursula to let her know what was happening. It was 2-3 am. There were few other trucks in the road shoulders. We couldn’t see any dogs, but they were barking continuously which made us felt really uncomfortable.

Finally, our driver went out and waved down few heavy vehicles. They only could help us by informing bengkel two three hours away from our location to pick us up. Then our driver went across the road and disappeared. We could only see the torch and wondered what he did. Few scenarios were forming in my mind. How if, we met somebody evil and they harmed us? How if (turned out there were drivers resting in their trucks) they were bad? How if our driver was bad too? The only weapons we had were diving knives and fins.

After what felt like forever, the driver came back with somebody else. Turned out he agreed to send us to Semprona, but we all had to squeeze in a Land Cruiser. But thank God! Although nine of us (seven plus two drivers) and seven big gear bags had to squeeze like sardine, we completed the last four or five hours to Semprona safely.

SIPADAN
8-12 March 2005

We reached Semprona about 8 am, hung around for a while, then we boarded a forty five minutes ferry to Mabul.

Sipadan island was closed for staying, since Indonesia and Malaysia were in the row to fight for it. Actually, we just found out that we were in the middle of conflict between them. There were soldiers and warship at the other side of Sipadan, while we dove on the opposite. Leo knew it, he didn’t tell us so we were not worried. Lucky everything was fine.
So, we stayed in Mabul, about 20 minutes from Sipadan.

Along the way, although we were very tired because lack of sleep, things were looking good. The water was so clear that we could see the corals below, and important thing, it looked blue down there.

After we were in the hand of Borneo Diver, we were treated like kings! Never did we had to put our hand to lift our gear back, they did it all. And they gave us twin/single sharing beautiful room.
Two super duper single beds, attached toilet, spacious space, sofa bed and private deck. Ugh…:”))
All the meals were excellent. Fruit, ice cream, food all day long, even on the boat they provided towel, drinks, tea, coffee and cookies. We were never been happier to be free from Alan.

We were asked for certifications, lucky us, we finished jusssst on time. I think they required at least Advanced level to dive in Sipadan.
So, after short briefing, there would be two orientation dives that day in around Mabul.
When I go for a dive trip, usually I’m not awake. I have to rely on my seasick pills so I’ll be high almost all the time. :) I almost gave up diving on my first trip because I was throwing up the whole day, fed the fish.

So, because I’m high, I hardly write anything. I can only write what type of fish I saw in the logbook, the rest I leave it in my brain. But Hubby encourages me to keep a journal, to write down and keep the memories safe, especially long trip. So far, all my stories are all back tracked, hopefully in my next trip, I will able to write it along away. :)

So, no date or whatsoever here yet in Sipadan. I’ll just write.

Back to orientation dives.
Good dive sites, they always have orientation dives for those who had never been there or just arrive. The purpose is to make you familiar about the water condition and for the Dive Master (DM) to see how is your dive pattern.

But, oh but…It was magnificent! Blue water and colorful corals were all around us. Fish…! Many of them! On the second dive, we were drifting because the current was very strong. Nudibranches everywhere! Those beautiful invertebrates and macros were Hubby, Froggy and Cynthia’s favorite. Leo prefers pelagics (big fish). I love both of them!

We were so excited, after TAR nightmare, we felt like jumping and shouting. :) We had our own boat that day, with Melvin as our DM and Black Horse as the boatman. All the gears and tank were put in the front and we sat in the back. When we reached dive point, Blackhorse would carry the tanks for us, especially girls. We geared up and did the back roll from either side of the boat.

That was only the first day around Mabul. Tomorrow, we would go straight to Sipadan.

So, Sipadan the next day.
Our first dive site was mid reef. My goodness!

We went down to forty meters! I was almost chocked with my regulator. There were fish and corals everywhere. Busy busy busy. Colorful. So many types and variety that I can’t remember. And…turtles everywhere. Looked up and down, turtles. And they were huge! At least 1,5 meter long and very big, and they swam in groups. Looking at them from below, saw their silluetes in the blue…I am drooling now.

Then there it was. Shark! Ups.. Sharks! They were…everywhere, not the small tiny ones we saw at TAR, they were adult black tip and white tip reef sharks. They were down there and swam up to us occasionally. I always thought that I would freak out when I see them, but apparently, they were beautiful and I didn’t feel a slight fear.

Visibility in Sipadan was amazing. We saw big leopard shark down there at 60-70 meters, while we were floating at 40 meters, we also saw turtles at the surface. So it was perfect!
It felt like the dive was always too short, when we finally did our safety stop, me Hubby and Froggie, others were drifted behind, we saw ehm…a school of grey barracuda. They were those scary types, they were swimming at one direction, and suddenly, they stopped, turned around slowly and all of them looked at us. It was so scary that we were ready to fin. Huayah…! My dear heart, those barracuda were so cool!

So everyday, all we did was dive, eat, sleep and shit. :)
We woke up early in the morning, had breakfast, and went to Sipadan.
First dive was always up to forty meters. Then we had a break at Sipadan Island, sitting in the beach with all the military and bunker around us, had tea break, cookies, and went to second dive, second dive up to thirty meters.
Then we went back to Mabul for lunch, delicious lunch and had a nap.
After nap we went for third dive around Mabul or Kapalai, then went back, tea breaks, cookies, ice creams, peanut butter. Then showered and had dinner.
After dinner, we played for a while. Sometimes played pool, or watched TV, talked and compared pictures for a while and went to sleep.
Yess….one shower a day. :)

On our third day, we had to say goodbye to Tatsuya, our Japanese friend who shared the boat with us, he had complete set of camera with all the strobes here and there, and his pictures were excellent. We took pictures together and promised to keep in touch.

I can’t describe all the dives in words, nobody will ever could. After every dive, we would talk and shared about what we saw, compared pictures and couldn’t stop grinning. Ee Chiew left for Singapore on third day, she had works to do, so I was the only one without camera. But it was a good advantage for me, as I had so many pictures taken by them. Mhhehehhe…

There were many memorable moments.

We were just descending for our first dive on the last day, then suddenly Melvin our DM banged his tank continuously and he finned so fast. We tried to follow as fast as we could, but gosh! He was like flying to the blue. We were quite far from the reef already. He kept putting his two fists in front of his eyes and pulled them to the right and left.

Then I saw it. Visibility was not very good as it was raining. So it was dark below. We were at around 42 meters and I saw whites. There were white things, many of them, moving. I thought, dear God! Holy Cow! There must be school of manta ray. After looking at them, we swam back to the reef, all panting and excited. Apparently, it was school of hammerhead shark, and Melvin was so excited because he said ha hadn’t seen them for a year. So, we were the lucky group, too bad it was our last day.

Another one, first time I saw school of jacks, trevally big eyes. There were so many of them until we couldn’t see the surface. I was so excited and used all my strength to catch up and swam inside the groups. Amazingly, they didn’t hit me once. When I turned around, my dear Hubby was there and gave me a best shot with his camera. What a coincident :)

Another, almost every treat after forty meters, we would float around the shallower reef and found bunch of sharks sleeping or resting there. Tried to lie down beside it, but it went off. There was big one circled around me so close, about a meter only. I was only need to stay as calm as possible, but they didn’t look unfriendly. Dig dug dig dug. Of course I was scared.

Didn’t know how, a fish with flat head that likes to attach itself to big fish, attached to me, to my tank or my leg. Maybe it thought I was one of the ‘big’ fish? It was hilarious, although I didn’t realize it; Cynthia managed to capture short video.

Attacked by triggerfish, I already write about it in my first journal.

Once we found a huge dead turtle. It had broken shell and lied down motionlessly in the reef. It was quite a sad sight.

There were many types of fish we saw there. Mandarin fish, crocodile fish, great barracuda, giant squid, boxfish, garden eels and many, many of them I couldn’t name.
Such a short four days. :”( we had to pack. Last day we couldn’t dive because of non-flight time, so we spent time around the village, bought souvenirs, strolling around the beach.

When we left the island, as usual, all the DMs would sing, 'I’m leaving on the jet plane…’ :D They sang it for every one who left the island.
Melvin just came back from his dives when we already boarded the ferry. He waved us goodbye from the pier, and kept make hammerhead sign. We promised him we would come back the following year.

We took the flight to KK, hijacked the van driver and had a very nice seafood dinner then flew back to Johor and took taxi to Singapore.

Went to Sipadan, I had best diving in my life so far. It could be either good and bad. Good things was obvious. Bad thing was like, they kind of spoilt the market around West Malaysia (short weekend trips). When we dived in West Malaysia, the DM had to work hard to impress us. Once DM James banged and finned tirelessly to show us a turtle, one small turtle, we gave him a nod and moved on. What an attitude. Mhehehhehe….the other thing was we kept thinking of going back there or other excellent dive sites. Of course we had restrictions, money and leaves. Always those two. Huh.

But actually we are very lucky. We live around the most magnificent dive sites in the world; Sipadan, Bali, Menado, Komodo, Papua etc etc. Those bules have to travel thousand miles to reach here. :)

The Black Visitor

2006-04-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 15, 2005

Singapore is not a friendly place for pets.

Those stay in apartment, equivalent to maybe rumah susun in Jakarta, like me, are restricted to small dogs. So, we can only have dogs like terrier or smaller. Those stay in condominium or landed house, higher class, can keep whatever they like (although apartments are slightly bigger than condominium).

Another, the cost of maintenance for pets are very high. From nutrient, vaccines, groom and food, all of them are more expensive that what I consume. I’m telling the truth.
See, I can go to a doctor for 20-30 dollars. I brought my hamsters to doctor when they were sick, they cost 50 dollars, EACH. (more expensive than the hamsters itself + food + cage). The cost of grooming a dog’s hair is about 40-50 dollars, while mine is 10 dollar. Mhehe…we haven’t talk about their food, shampoo etc…. :)

So, I can’t have a dog here. Expensive and I can’t have bigger dog, which I like more. And I can’t leave them when I go overseas, of course I can put them in dog’s hotel, but they cost…uhm…
Funny. I always pictured myself staying alone, with my dog, in foreign country and outside in the garden reading a book while a prince would come after traveling all over the world looking for me. Mhahhahaha….

The diffs are I can’t afford a dog, I don’t have a garden and I’m married. :) Not bad at all.

One day, there was a black dog outside my unit. It sat in front of the trellis door and looked at us inside. I opened the door and petted him. He looked well maintained, but sad and lonely. So we played with him for a while, and went out to go somewhere. When we came back, he was still there, sitting in front of the door. He was very well behaved, although he kept trying to go in the house. We called SPCA for that poor lost dog, who knew the master was looking for him.

The longer he was there, the more we liked him, we made him food, milk and drinks and he ate it in second. So when night fell, at dinner time, my mom (who was visiting) agreed to keep it in the house until we found the owner or the SPCA came, she even made him special dinner. She was not really into pets, but she can be very friendly and responsible once she likes them. But, when we walked out, he was not there.

We were worried and spent times searching in the apartment, running up and down staircases, lifts, gutters and even asked everyone whether they saw that black dog. One neighbor uncle told us angrily that the dog scared her granddaughter (because it took lift together with them (?)) and the other complained about him straying around and probably took a dump somewhere in the block. Complaints and not much help.

After searching few more times up to the neighbor block and walking the stair again and again, twelve stories, we gave up. Maybe he already went back to his home. We were quite sad, thinking that maybe we could keep him with us that night.

Actually, there were many offer and opportunities to have a dog if not for the maintenance cost and restriction. Hubby was offered golden retriever puppies etc from friends. We visited SPCA some times, and there were many dogs abandoned by their owners there. But the one I fell in love with was a huge gently female Labrador which was not allowable for my apartment. Huh..

The Strangers From Town

2006-04-01T23:38:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 15, 2005

One University Holiday, me and my mom went to Central Borneo, Kalteng, to visit my dad. He worked there and only went home to Jakarta once every few weeks or months.

At first, we spent few days in my hometown,Pontianak, West Borneo, to visit my grandparent’s grave, tasted the best food in the world, and met my junior high’s best friend.

From Pontianak to Kalteng, we needed two and a half hour flight, with…aeroplane?
It was a eight seater plane. I was seated at the co-pilot chair, next to the pilot, while behind me there were two rows of seater, three people each row. Gosh, the plane was smaller than Kijang!?

Full of confusion, before the plane departed, sometimes the pilot asked me to do things, adjust some equipments, opened and closed window, and the window was not like sliding up and down or more modern type, but those which you have to scroll a pipe (like car window). So, kletek kletek kletek, then window would then open or close.
Hehhehe, after feeling important and became the co-pilot for a while, the plane started to run. Then, what to call, turbine or propeller maybe, baling2, stopped moving. So, the pilot had to go down and did something. I looked around at the other passengers nervously. My mom was sitting behind busy fanning herself, because it was hot! Non-aircon mikrolet.

The flight was quite smooth, all we saw was Kapuas river from my hometown (longest river in Indonesia hehhe, I suspect it also visible from the moon, same like The Great Wall :) green, green, jungles, jungles for that 2.5 hours drive. Finally we reached the airport, moho, the view was indeed different from that seat. I saw a guy waving two round signs, commonly used for air navigation signs, in the ground as the plane moving toward him. Then he ran away, and pup, we were landed, no generous walkway for the plane, the pilot, now I admired him, had to be skilful enough to make used of the short road.

There we were. The place my dad spent most of his life, to feed us.

We stayed at the company/my dad’s partner house, which was big, located in the city and …. creepy.
It was a multilevel house, short stairs here and there, spiral stair, and common stair which had 50 cm, 40 cm, 30 cm, 25 cm, 50 cm, 25 cm, 30 cm steps respectively.

Knowing that my mom was a proper person, my dad did his best to make the house looked its best. He bought new beds and cleaned the house. But still, my mom was quite freak out.

I called it bat house. We slept at second story. Second story didn’t have false ceiling, so we had to stare at the wood block / roof support, which has quite a big population of uhm, bats.
The bats were hanging upside down staring at us. They were small in size, but still creepy, sometimes they flew down. One time, while I was sleeping, a bat flew down to my pillow. Strange, I was not scared, grabbed its wing, and released it. When my uncle visited us, he caught one, held it by its wing and banged it to the wall. That one, I was very scared. Cruel uncle.

The other creepy thing in that house was there were two big dark rooms in front of living room. Seemed like they were used for coal storage in the past. It was about two meters high, no door, and very2 dark. So, my mom and me tried to cut short every visit to the bathroom, which was located in front of that. To add to the ambient, there were dried animal decorations around the house, the living room wall and some of the carpets were dark maroon. My dad really had a strange partner.

(Update: there was some scary thing indeed happened to that house after my dad no longer stayed there)

Other than that, it was supposed to be a good house. Aircon, big TV with cable etc etc. But when my dad went to office, we stayed away from the house as much as we can, spent time in my uncle’s or walked around the town. It was a Dayak town. Outside the bad reputation it gained during the conflict with Madura, I always believe in their kindness because I heard story from their side too. They are gentle, kind, helpful and hand working. My dad is close buddy with many of them, and most of them, look pretty much like us. It was the community I proud to be with. So, I like to confess that I’m Dayak. Hehehhehe…

Spent about three weeks – one month there was quite relaxing. Not need to think about study, we ate those enormous yummy prawns and crabs almost everyday. Love it!

My dad liked to take us to nearby island to visit for temple or for fun. He could handle speedboat pretty well. There was one very small island where Buddhists liked to go there and prayed. I remember it was called Tanjung Keluang. My cousin said when they spent the night there, there were visited by ‘something’ that was scratching all over their tent. They called it ‘Nail Ghost’. Since then, people only went there for day trip.

Central Borneo was famous for its orang utan. There were bunch of foreigners stayed there to study them. They made friends with the locals; they even presented my dad with their book about orang utan. Sometimes, I do admire their wills to leave everything behind for what they love to do.

There were many islands where orang utans roamed freely because there were their habitats. So, one day, with my second aunt, fifth and seventh, many of the cousins, my mom and me, we chartered a boat and visited one of the islands. We had to go through a river. My dad was one of the team who opened the river for transportation, when he was very young. That river was full of crocodiles, black crocodiles. We saw a few floating near our boat. But our boat was a steady double deck boat, so we were not scared, and the crocodiles also looked calm, although they were huge. Uhm…

The orang utans, your brothers ;p was funny creatures. They followed us, begged for food, some played with the cats. One made my poor old auntie ran around because it was peeping her from the top of the toilet, lucky she was finished with her business. The was one huge one hanging from tree to tree, she looked quite fierce and wanted to scared us away, turned out her children were behind us. There of them, very small, each holding another from the back, walked together, it was very funny. They ignored us for a while, then, the last one walked to me and started to climb my leg. Of course I was terrified, then it looked like it wanted to be carried to the conservation house to have its milk lunch.

Journey With Kapa

2006-04-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 12, 2005

1996 is not so far away, but I don’t remember many of the details.

I had wonderful journeys with Kapa, too bad I didn’t write it down and now I forget most of the details. So instead of properly arranged, I will write whatever comes into my mind for my future reference. :)

Kapa is an organization in my Faculty, focusing on outdoor and fun activities. We had mountaineering, rock climbing, caving, kayaking, rafting, river crossing, and environment. At my time, the proportion was almost always female : male = 1: 4. Nowadays I heard they have more female…(and there goes all the fun? ;p)

I had been eyeing to join Kapa since my first day in campus. Although it was quite hard as I didn’t have any close friend to suffer together, I’m glad I didn’t back out.

PRE MEMBER
The Orientation

Divided by one-week class and one-week site orientation.

CLASS

It was an interesting paRt of the journey. I had to spend one lonely week in campus. Holiday time, nobody was around, and I had to attend class everyday.

I met some new friends, the classes was quite interesting. I remember CPR class, Environment Class which we had to perform a short drama :) (what is the connection with Kapa?)

Navigation class was the worst; I always suck in Navigation, until now. Why we have to count our life with that small little circle thingy that moves in whatever way it likes?

Lucky, the task was completed in-group.

There were many other interesting things to learn, I still keep the manual handbook. Like what we have to do if we encounter with wild animals, what could be eaten in jungles, knots, survival tips etc. We also had indoor practices like wall climbing, and if I don’t remember wrongly, we had our water class also.

Last day on class, we had to stay until pass midnight before we had another program. We didn’t know what to do, so we slept, talked, played paper airplane, read novels. We had known each other quite well; there were about thirty-five of us. Around 2 a.m, we were called one by one, the seniors called it M.I, it is a method to approach and put some ideology when your mind is flying high because of exhaustion.

So we had all the groups divided. There were seven groups; each group consisted of one female and four males. I had a great group with Willy, Handy, Ucok and Deddy. We had to prepare all the things we need for site orientation.

SITE
JATILUHUR

It was a long journey, we traveled by army trucks. Before that, we had to stand in the sun for about one hour with big backpack consisted of 5 litres water, rope, food, clothing etc. My cheap backpack broke that very moment, so Kapa lent me one. A lot of scolding, as usual, like military. :) We were introduced to seri. One seri means ten-time push-up with backpack. They were very generous with that I must say. :)

Water thingy

We had to cross the lake by swimming. The props were raincoat and dry leaves. We needed to fill the raincoat with leaves and tied them all together with plastic rope, that was it. I was the first one. Hell, finish first, rest first, dry up first, right? :)

When I was swimming, clinging to the raincoat to keep me floating, the seniors did their job, scolded, asked me to report, which group I was in blabla, it was good to keep me out of breath. Half way, water started to come into the raincoat, so I had to swim faster and reached the edge safety. Ha, I had a lot of time to dry everything in my backpack while waiting for the others. I think it was raining the night before, because there were a lot of laundries anywhere from everybody. :)

Next, we had to handle a traditional fishing boat and drove it to the other side of the lake, I thought everything went well, until I looked back and saw I was forty-five degree away from where I started. Then, we had to do the same with one-seater kayak, kayak was easier to control, but it was tedious to climb back to it after we did the accident drill. So, we had to climb from the back, moving while sitting and put the backside first inside the kayak, then the legs. Although everything was done under pressure, it was fun. Just pretended to be deaf and everything would be fine. :)

Next, we had to march the river as a group with rubber boat. It was hard to coordinate with about six to eight people on the boat; we had a leader to give the command. Left, right….Then the scenario, the boat would be upside down and we made it back up, alone. So, we had to stand at the edge of the boat, pulled the ropes attached to the boat and put all the body weight in our back until the boat flipped. Of course, when it flipped, we were turned upside down in the water.

It was a wet day, but the most fun part of the journey. :)

Climbing thingy

Rock climbing! The wall was divided into three. One for girls, one for boys and one for jumaring (hope it spelled correctly). Jumaring is the type of climbing when you use a tool hanging on the rope. So it is attached to your harness and you climb step to step by pushing it up. Just like those monkey toys or those climbing ondel2, :) I don’t know how to describe it. It was the hardest thing to do, arm strength was majorly needed, which was hard for girls.

Manual climbing was much easier for me. I finished the wall quite fast because the longer I hung up there, the more tired I was. That time, I also volunteered to be the first. So, the day supposed to be over for me, but the senior asked me to try the boy’s wall. It was more difficult and took longer, but I also finished it.

Rock climbing is easier than artificial wall climbing. We can use any kind of help, the crack, plant, root, the uneven stone protruding can provide good helps. With wall, everything relies on the points, and the scenery in nature is much stronger motivation to reach the top. Nice.

It was also my favorite day, the day I became black in color :)

Search and Rescue

For me, it was the toughest part of all. We had to navigate, and looked for victim, and the route was very steep. I remember we had to lie flat on the chest to avoid sliding down. The problem was with our backpacks. So we formed human chain, and transferred all the bags up to the ‘hill’ before we climbed ourselves. The guys were helpful; those sloppy, ignorant bad boys and easy-going guys were gentlemen in Nature. Hehehhehee :) Really.

The navigation. Arggghhh. We had to follow clues. Hmmmmm..Wild Amazing Race.

Survival Thingy

We had to survive for two or three days with one pack of instant noodle shared by five of us. The seniors took our food away. For me, I was quite ok; all the tiredness killed my appetite. But poor boys, they were hungry!

We did find some survival things, like jack fruit. One jackfruit shared by seven groups, I had one, one seed, but it was good. :) We also found a bunch of banana, and drool ourselves thinking about pisang bakar, so we heated up the fire and try to roast the banana. But, damn banana! It was not ripe enough and full of rocks! Don’t know what kind of banana was it…so with little ceremony, we threw it away.

One of my friend, managed to hide choki2, those long chocolate candy. He shared it with every group. Each group got about one fifth part of the fifteen cm choki2, and we boiled it with one big tin, so it became…chocolate soup. It was nice actually, counting on how desperate we were.
Once, we tried to cook salad. So we collected every clean-looking leaves and boiled it with our precious water. Turned out it was as bitter as don’t know what. :(
Hehehhehe it was so sad………….
At the end of second day, we gave up and shared the instant noodle. Honestly, it barely helped :)

That was all about food, about water, ... We ran out of water once, and what we did was stayed up all night to collect rainwater. Everybody was awake and having fun, I don’t know how but we were always happy. To make the water drinkable, in look and taste, we would throw in a pill of black Norit (to purify the water but the water will turn black in colour) or Nutrisari. :)

We had those performers who kept us laughing. They impersonated the seniors; we even had our own song. :) I remembered Michael and Idris the most for their performances.

Others

I guess we had to go to native’s house and befriend with them, asked them some questionnaires about environment things and made a report (what a damn thing to do in the jungle!)

The Last night

It was a cold bloody night. We had to be separated and walked to the jungle on our own, and reported to every senior we met on the way. Report means you have to shout your details to their face. Name, number, group, again, military procedure.
Stunts and series of pushup all the way. We got used to it at this point.
So, along the way, punishment, series, encountered with cow, snake, bugs, then we were gathered together beside the lake. It was freezing. We were ignored, until about two a.m, and again, M.I method.

I was paired with Ishak, and I think the senior who M.I us was out of mind. We had to sit half soaked in the lake while listening to what he said, answered questions, we were shivering. So, after what felt like hours, we were rush to one point, we had to cross the river by scaling through a rope, with position like roasted pig, with backpack. It was quite easy and I had to move fast to warm myself. Actually, I moved fast because the seniors kept shouting to go faster, because somebody was catching up. I didn’t know the one who catched up was me, I thought I was the one being shouted at.

So, again, wet and cold, we were rushed like sheep to run through the water. It was like endless nightmare, and damn hard to run through the water, I kept falling down until a guy grabbed my hand and we ran together. Duh…. :”))

Apparently, at the other side of the lake, every seniors was waiting for us. So, we were officially member. With small ceremony, we were served with sate kambing and all those heavenly food we longed for. Those fierce militaries became very friendly and human indeed. We were treated specially and blended in well. :)

Extras

On our first night, our group was lost. We reached a cave, which we didn’t know what it was. So we spent sometime resting and hanging around there until we moved on. After the orientation, we were told that it was a closed area; It was a haunted cave, as it was used as an execution place in Dutch occupation.

It was good not to know.

We were not allowed with any kinds of luxury. So for accommodation, we had to combine out ponco/raincoat, and spread it half a meter above the ground, so we could slip in and sleep. The ‘sleeping bag’ was indeed plastic used for body bag. Uhmpph… but that thing was very useful indeed. Trash bag was and is still used until now for the inner layer of the backpack, to protect the things inside.

There were always one or two nights when the senior would wake us up in midnight and asked us to move. Packed everything, included the hard built ‘accommodation’, stuffed everything in backpack (in the dark) and everything had to be inside backpack, no hanging things, no plastic bag. Then sleepy, tired, angry, we had to walk few kilometers before they allowed us to camp again. We didn’t camp after that of course, we were just lie everywhere comfortable :), but sunrise under the sky was magnificent. When the weather was bad, we hardly sleep, even if we already built a wall around us with backpacks, it would still damn cold anyway. Other than weather, we also couldn’t sleep when we did the search and rescue exercise. We had to camp in a very steep area, I remembered that we kept sliding down while sleeping. Mhe-he..!

MEMBER

After became a member, I could follow every activities and used all facilities.

Rock Climbing

It was so-called thing I was good at, although I also like the other section; I was advised to concentrate on this section more. Well, I was slim back then …. :)
So, sometimes, we practiced on the wall behind my faculty. I don’t like artificial wall, so I didn’t do it much.

The first trip I went was one-day trip. Can’t remember much now. It was a not so tall but hard route rock.

The second trip was to Citatah, we had to take bus at night and reached there in the morning. First route was quite tricky; we needed to count on the crack on the wall to climb. I have never used the magnesium powder, because my hands are never wet. It was a ‘dirty’ track, as there were many plants around. In the past, my friend Ridwan broke his leg because he fell from this rock. Lucky, I didn’t have many difficulties.

When I reached the top, I had the most amazing view I’ve ever seen that time. It was sunset, and the sun was upside down, because there was like a cloud above it. Everything was orange and it was quiet. I stood against the wall and there was a wide rock below me, so I could sit for a while. If only I had this thing behind my yard, I would climb it everyday to see the sunset, therefore, I would never grow fat! ;)

So, we called it a night. Next day, I had to climb without route. So, I would be the one who opened the way. It was for my practice. Rifky, a kind senior was giving me good mentor and guidance. So I carried all the safety props, hammer, all shape that I could put along a way and began to climb. Every time I found good point, I would plant in the hook that matched. Finger points, cracked points, I learned a lot that day. Until now, I’m very thankful esp for Rifky and Ridwan for their special guidance to make me better.

Too bad, and I seriously regret it until now, I didn’t put enough time on that. I was too busy with study and family etc, so I abandoned the next big project, Parang. It was a magnificent wall with almost flat surface. They spent I think about two nights there. If only I have the chance to do this sport again with those supports that I had, I strongly would. :’)

Mountaneering

Ladies Team, peak of Cikurai

Tati, Icha, Yenny, Grace and me.
It was five of us, all ladies, scaling the second highest mountain in West/North Java? I was told that it stood at 2800 metres high? Not really sure, but this is a perfect cone shape mountain.

We reached intercity terminal at night, and spent half the night there waiting for bus, so we slept at mushola. That was how safe was Jakarta. All girls, slept in stranger place. How I miss that time.
So we had long journey with big bus, and reached there in the morning.
We rode with ojek until the starting point. The team leader, Tati, started to navigate (ups) and we were out in our way. It was a long journey, and I must say there was nothing to see along the way. All dense jungle. The higher it was, the colder it became. So every break was only about few minutes, back to back without releasing the huge backpack. It was getting very cold that my can of coke tasted the best up there, out from natural fridge :D.

Then it was, one of the girl, Grace, kind of feeling unwell. She was having breakdown and confessed that she had pneumonia history. So, hand to hand, we had to..ugh..carried her backpack too. The journey was not totally smooth, there was a vertical route which we had to climb and one time, we had to walk by a huge tree that collapsed along the route. Route means half a metre to one metre wide path. Path is soil without grass because many people had passed it. On one side, or two sides, would be steep valley. Once, we dropped Grace’s backpack while we were scaling the vertical way, and it stopped at the edge of the valley, man! 80 litres backpack!

We took good eight hours to reach the top. By the way, we met another group of climbers. We didn’t go to the top yet, as it was already nighttime. So, we camped below the peak and spent the night there. I swore I heard the sound of ocean wave, I don’t know whether it was possible, but it was quite strong. We had hot soup and good meal. After the bonfire turned dim, it was very very dark. Scary? Uh, a bit.

Before sunrise, we eagerly left everything behind and climbed to the peak, and whew, it was the most beautiful scenery there (I will say this sentence again and again in my life hopefully :). We were looking above the cloud, high above the ground, to another mountain in front. The coolest thing was, the shadow of Cikurai was reflected at the other mountain as a perfect cone shape. We stood there speechless for a while.

The other group turned out to camp in the peak, they prepared breakfast and invited us. They were all guys, but very kind and friendly. We had roasted monkey nuts. It was very nice. Hey, everything tastes good up there!

When we reached the starting point, we took ojek down again. Journey down was scarier than anything else. Rode the motorcycle, sometimes to nowhere as it was the edge for the mountain before turning to right or left. Then, the ojek insisted of carry me together with Yenny as we were the skinniest, with two backpacks on the right and left hand side. We fell once. Ouch.

Although it was painful the days after, it worth every muscle. ;)

Environment

We had a few days trip to Thousand Islands (Pulau Seribu).
This trip was merely to conduct survey about the life of the native and maybe took further step to make it happened.

We gathered in Muara Angke dock and took a boat trip. I remember it was noon to nighttime. We had bad weather at night, the boat rocked like kora2, up and down. All the water went in and soaked the boat. I only sat in the middle of the boat with Handy, both pale-faced. Everyone in front us was either lying down or throwing up to the sea. The water level in the boat reached a dangerous height, and l reached my safety point, had to kneel down on the boat side and emptied my stomach also.

After that, the ocean started to calm down. We reached the island at midnight. Pulau Pramuka (l remember!) and all of us slept at the school hall. It was quite a developed island.

We went and stay in another island the next morning (I forget!), and begun our mission. Went from house to house, talked with the native about their ways of living, their times and purposes with the main island, their living structure and even their washroom.:) We learned that government has built a toilet complex for them, but they still preferred to do it traditional way; they built their washroom out above the sea, they said it provided good view to do their business. For the record, we had our own washroom then :).

I’m planning to dive in Thousand lslands in January 2006, don't tell me.... :)
Of course we will go to another island (l hope), we have 110 islands to choose from. Thousand lslands is actually consists of 110 lslands only, not even close to a thousand :).

It was fasting month for the Muslim, most of Kapa's members were Christians that time, but there was no such problem like racism or fanatics. So we were ‘fasting’ with them, we had breakfast at dawn and dinner at twilight, for lunch, we roamed around the island looking for warung. Apparently, the natives had multiple religions also, so no problem.

Everyday, after completing our tasks, we would go to neighboring island, to learn a bit about the cultures. I remembered there was an island dedicated for the deaths, so they would leave the deceases there. If I’m not wrong, without burial. Because of respect, we didn't visit that island (Thank God!).

We visited a turtle conservation, while we watched the turtle being taken care of. Any sizes, I had nice pictures of that, but maybe in Handy's or Kapa's camera. :)

We also do some shopping, simple fishing kit; kite string, hook and bread for bait. We would sit at the edge of the pier and fishing. The water was very clear. They managed to catch some small fish, small grouper (yummy). When a fish was caught, it would die slowly and painfully (snif) so Dedih used umbrella to knock them out. Cruel...but fast. FYI, I only watched, didn't take part as I was afraid of fish back then.

Strolled along the beaches, played with water and....slept. Ocean air always knocked me out, no insomnia. Morning, noon or night, if l lied down, there was it.

End of journey, we happily bought dried seaweed back. We were accompanied by flying fish on the way back along the boat, lots of them. I wonder why I’ve never seen these flying fish outside Indonesia. And there were dolphins too. Nice.

New student’s Orientation

So it was my turn to be a bad guy :). Too bad I only made in on Thursday, they had been in site since few days before. So with few other friends, we departed on Thursday night, catch bus to Tangkuban Perahu, the Orientation site.

We met the rest of the group at one point there and moved to the main camp.

Main camp for seniors was a big tent with generator, so we had electricity, bonfire, kitchen and a lot of place to sleep. I remember D.B, Tri, Handy, Ison, Uni, Nina and many of them. On the first night DB showed me around the beach, he almost lost his slipper in the dark. I only met older members like Horis and argh..,can’t remember names. They were die-hard adventurer and cool. :)

So we had to station at ways passed by the students, gave them briefing and orientation, scolded them and gave them series. Hmmm :) any smaaall reasonable mistakes was enough to land them few series. Sometimes we took the post in pair or alone. Senior’s task was tougher, we had to keep contact with each other, made sure we delivered all the learning points well and catched up with student’s positions and conditions. Because I went there last few days, I missed taking care of water sport and rock climbing, so left Search and Rescue (Errrrgh..), Survival, Environment, M.I and few other programs I can’t recall.

On the days at site, we slept in tent, proper tent of course. But we were also soaked with rain one day, I remember sitting in the rain, with raincoat, but it was still freezing and cold, waiting for students in our post.
So, that night, the bonfire was full of hanging cloths, hehhehehhe…

Bonfire was always fun. First, the challenge was to light it up, wet weather, longer time. During that time, others would cook. As seniors, we knew what was good for meals ;). Hot soup was favorite, yummy. Forget about instant noodle, we were happily load our backpack with potatoes, veggie, coca cola, can fruit (great!), chocolate, and by the way, we had fully supplied by the main camp anyway. Before that, we built our tents.
After the bonfire was up, everyone became housewife and hung their wet clothing. We gathered eagerly to warm ourselves. We had meeting, small talk, jokes, stories and planning around the bonfire. The guys took turn to patrol ourselves from wild animals. We always had few members who camped near the students and we would deliver some food for them. In the morning, after packing etc, we burned all the rubbish before we turned off the fire.

One day, we rested on the empty house above the hill. From there, we saw Bandung. It was sparkling with light down there in the city and million of stars above. Guess mountain is the best place to see stars, everything was so clear. It was beautiful and romantic…… :” )

The Last Night

Whew, because the path was long, we were stationed alone. It was quite scary I must say. Standing alone in the darkness, complete darkness because we would only shine our torches when a student approached. And my cheap torchlight was died, so I didn’t have anything to light up the surrounding. The wind was strong and because I had to stay at one point, I was shivering. When I was a student, exhaustion and walking erased all the fear and cold. After a while, it was ok, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Every time a student passed by, I would asked them to shine their torch in their face, otherwise, how would I see them ;)…

So, few hours, we conducted the MI process, I was paired with someone (:"( I can’t remember) to brief two students.
We finished everything when the day came. So the students were rushed to run down Tangkuban Perahu hill and we officially did small ceremony for them.

Triathlon

I almost missed it, lucky I didn’t.

It was like a fun gathering, every section of Kapa took part. Kapa was divided by four sections; mountaineering, rock climbing, water sport and environment. I was in rock climbing team. I think it was only three or four of us in this team who participated.
Gathered around, socialized and there we went.

First round was running around the campus. Then we proceed to Poltek Lake. We had four lakes in campus; Balairung, Poltek and two nameless lake we liked to use for jogging.

In Poltek Lake, we did kayaking. It was fun as we tried to push each other down to water (sportive attitude ;p).
After that, we proceed to the Faculty again, and did the wall climbing.

We enjoyed hanging around as much as doing the activities.

My team came at second place, close behind mountaineering. Not bad at all, considered about the number of people was very far apart. And of course (cough) we gave way. ;)

Those were mostly my big activities in Kapa. We also did small things like small gathering, reunion, bonfire in campus etc. I remember I was locked in the campus’s toilet at 4 a.m because we had the longest meeting I had ever attended. Too bad the toilet was located in another building, and no one was around to help. Lucky, I could take out the hinges and the whole door away. Spending a night in toilet was too much of an option.

We had few cancelled rafting trips, simply because the season was dry, and the water level was not high enough.

I didn’t active much in Kapa after that. The main reason was because everything was changing. Riot. We lost our shop and dogs. Racial tensions. I became hesitant to travel and preferred not to worry my parents more. Then there were more class demands and relationship.

So there was it.

I always have a regret not to do more. It was the best time to learn and to experience things I might hardly have the chance to do again. Sigh… :”(~~~~~

Bored

2006-04-01T23:21:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 11, 2005

Everybody must have hidden place for himself or herself. When you feel out of place and want to take some solitary moment, where would you go?

Last time in UI, my favorite site, there are a lot of solitary places to hide from.

If I feel mad or sad, I used to have a quiet trip to Danau Balairung, sitting at the edge of river. Whew, I almost forget how it looks like. But it is a nice campus, beautiful at day, scary at night. At this lake, we can see a lot of things. Tiny frogs and half frogs in metamorphosis phase are the ones I remember the most. I liked to go there spending time when I supposed to be at class or just killed some free time.

Or, when I felt less lazy and had resource like bike, I went for a wild ride around the campus. It was a tough route; I had to use all my constipation strength to climb a wavy road, only to find I might lose control when it came down. I remember I was chased by four half-crazy dogs at dawn near remote UI’s library. Half-crazy dogs, what did I do to provoke them. I was only look at them, giggling and they went mad. Huh.

Or, when I had more money, I’d go to Timezone. Heheh. Played with my good friend during PA5, Nina, or with my bother, or alone.

If it was nighttime, I just turned off my light, laying awake and listened to my dorm’s noise, TV, conversations etc.

Seems like I had a lot of anger and sorrow during that time, so that I had a lot of getting-out ways. Well, teenager. Yawn.

The best part of the week was getting home or getting out on weekends. I kind of regret that I didn’t do much of Kapa’s activities, my university outdoors organization, not enough. I miss the activities and the friends I had there much. Although we still keep in touch, I can’t go with them as I like. We are in different place, and I will become old bloody member between those new bloods. There was one very interesting offer with those all old friends though, sailing for 3 months. I don’t know how they managed to do it. I’d love to, but I have to make my kitchen smokes. :) If I had gone, my boss would have sacked me for sure.

Although I sacrificed most of the things I wanted to do in order to go home, I think I would do the same if I had the chance to repeat again. Went home was always a good option, although I had to spend at least good three hours for the journey. I remembered few times I spent almost five hours on the road, from Saturday morning to noon. I even thought to myself, what the hell am I doing scaling five hours to go home for one and a half day?

But it was all worth it the moments I saw my dogs, after I opened the gate, I got to fight to avoid their paws landing on my neck and shirt. They were very excited and didn’t hesitate to show it. I had two options; I could run all the way to the main door, or hugged and played with them for a while, and, but, still had to run all the way to the main door.

These two dogs, male and female were named Bonni and Kiki, hehhehehe…cute. My neighbor also had male and female dogs, named Boi and Kopi. You see, simple names are enough for dog. You can name them Contanzaza or Shakespeare, but end up call them with Bleki. Bleki works for all dogs if you don’t know their name. :) I met a big Siberian Husky in Bells Beach, Victoria. He was waiting for his owner, who was surfing. I knew he must be an English speaking dog with name cooler than mine, but he didn’t resist when I called him Bleki and played with him. He was huge, but soft spoken, hehehhehe.

So, talking about Bonni and Kiki, I was hoping to get puppies from them. But Bonni had a one sided love. He was a handsome dog with strong figure and long eyelashes, a very adorable male. He looked very much like a fine Labrador or shorthaired Golden Retriever, but his love was rejected by Kiki, my average looking female dog. Kiki was small built, with black snout and twisted ears. Boi, the neighbor’s male dog, lost his wife due to car accident and with him, Kiki had an affair. Boi dag a hole between the fence and came at night to date her. Of course Bonni was very jealous and hurt, they fought every night during mating season. Bonni was a good fighter but Boi was a veteran dog, so they equaled with each other but gave good scars to their opponent. It was depressing to see this love triangle. We closed the hole, Boi made another. What to say, it was only soil instead of pavement. So, during my school holiday, I stayed up almost every night to protect my poor Bonni, he had so many scar in his face, I was afraid he would bitten in his eyes one day. Of course I sided with Bonni, although he was the one who wrong, but what did he know about etiquette? He had only one choice and he couldn’t have it. :)

It is dangerous to separate two dogs in fight; the only safe way is to spray water on them. That was what I did; I also took my dad’s wind gun to scare Boi away. Hmph…mating season. So tiring. :D

I wonder where Bonni and Kiki had gone after the riot. F*** rioters.

Of course except my dogs, I loved to see my family, and had warm meals. There was one very memorable time when I had to leave the house on Monday morning. It was Christmas, and we had to leave before the sun rose. So, in the darkness, I saw the Christmas tree with sparkling lights and Christmas instrumental. It was nice. My parents are Buddist but they bought a Christmas tree for us. First year we didn’t have accessories, so we hung it with angpau :)

I watched C&CF, it was a good one. Although Willy Wonka was sooo MJ, but Johnny Deep was good. Like him since Pirates and Chocolate.

Rant. Why everyone thinks Orlando Bloom is hot? He is sooo gay. End of rant.

My Journal

2006-04-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

Original Post Date : August 02, 2005

Lately, I have short memory :) I used to focus on details now I’m more likely to remember big pictures.., that’s why I start to write this to help me keep a record in case I forget everything! But only two months back-tracked as far as my goldfish memory can handle. :D At first I kept it short, by when I wrote, I remembered more things, so I better wrote it down also as a story.

Somewhere in May/June:
Kaleebso Live ON Board (End of May)

Live onboard at Kaleebso! Good food, so so cabin, so so toilet. This was our second dive together with Sabah group after Sipadan trip, minus Frog, Ee Chiew and Darren. It was supposed to be Kuantan trip, but because of time restriction, we only visited remote Tioman site and out of nowhere wreck. We needed to take small boat from dock until we reached Kaleebso boat. It was long, dark and rainy ride. No dry place to sit, we stood all the way, but we were excited. Reached Kaleebso, quite a big boat, we had short briefing, small talk and went to bed. The surface was quite choppy.

First day dives always lost! Lost buddy, lost Leo, lost Cynthia, lost DM. The visibility was horrible. First dive especially, no direction, no DM on sight, so after a while, we aborted it. Quite pissed off. Luckily Mary’s pisang goreng saved the day. We did four-day dives.

A little of cave-dive, it was fun but first time I lost my buddy. Kaleebso was also the first time LOB and survived mostly without seasick pills, not bad. Still remember the fresh feeling without sandy feet and sandy bed, that’s the advantage of LOB! I could brush my teeth at the rear of the boat watching beautiful sunrise, it was good as long as nobody was doing ‘business’ in the toilet, it would cause some disrupted scenery around the boat. Mhaha..

Other good thing about LOB, the cook couldn’t run away from us. After every dive, we would gather around the kitchen trying to steal some food. Managed to taste goreng pisang, sushi, sashimi, mango and chicken before they were sealed away. Also gained a new skill, now we can make sushi! :)

Second day was much better, two wreck dives, so no more lost divers, we stayed at one spot. First wreck, there were lots of baby nurse sharks, still babies as they only around 60-80 cm long, but a lot of nests, wonder where the parents were, snappers (have to take a good peek inside the wreck with torch), one shy and beaten grouper hidden inside the boat and nudibranches…Hubby found very pretty one, I called it wedding gown nudibranch as it had very nice and layered dress :) He also found hermit crab trying to disguise, when it felt safe, it ran sideways, very kanchiong and hit the sand here and there. It was very funny that we waste quite a lot of air laughing, this was the third time I laughed hard underwater.

First time, when I saw a father and son crocodile fish in Sipadan. They were so loving and sleepy with ugly long face that I found it hilarious. Second time was when we were drifting through Sipadan wall reef, and suddenly Anthony our dive monster cut Froggie’s way to look at something (don’t know what) at the wall, forcing him to do emergency stop, cursing and swearing.

Second wreck dive was cut short, a lot of sea urchin around so that I tried to stay further from the wreck, but curiosity kills the cat, saw a stone fish and tried to see closer, end up trashed by current and hit an eager sea urchin (lucky not the venomous stone fish!). It was quite painful, took out glove and saw black hole in my left index finger and blood came out, green color (red+ blue water=green, I didn’t realize this and quite surprise to see alien blood coming out my finger). So reported to buddy/hubby. He was trying to free a fish, which was trapped in the net, but abandoned his project to help me, then we aborted the dive. Better safe than sorry, although I regretted that we should free the fish first, totally forget.

Mhaha…poor finger, have to …. on it and hit it numerous time with booties until it numbed to destroy the thorn. Later find out Leo was also stung twice, on finger and knee, that was why he stopped diving once and bit his finger, but he said ok when we asked him. Another diver in the group was also kena, the current was too strong to predict when we were too close to the wreck.

Kaleebso trip started with wet transfer boat, ended with pouring rain. Me, Hubby, Matt and DM Alvin, first boat with all the luggage, were soaking wet. Then we had to lift all the luggage to the dock. Lucky second trip, they arrived dry, and no need to do the kuli work. Fortunately we brought extra shirt.

Others…(June)

Went to Exhibition and met Butet in person. We correspondence with her regarding the Bali trip planning. Bali, but a lot of other places which made us drooling on spot. If only we could afford to go to those places, have a long relaxed trip…maybe thrice a year? Fat chance? Fatttt… Adopt a funkeh coral in Bali. Ours is much better than Megawati’s. :)

Sushi party at Leonard’s house. He is a good sushi chef, we had good time making our own customized sushi, it tastes good with chicken! Us, Leo, Cynthia, Ee Chiew and Darren. Almost a complete dive monster group. Too bad Froggie was busy and Anthony left to pursue his own dream. Eat, play, talk.

July :
Dayang Trip. (1-3 July)

Feels like long time never gather together. Cynthia, Leo, Frog, me, Hubby were all over the place. Last trip with Dolphin dive center as Joshua wanted to set his own shop. We were very excited diving together again, maybe a bit too much and dominating for those other student divers, but we were friendly…and too happy.

That was a very late trip because we wanted to avoid the low tide. So we reached Mersing jetty at almost 2 am, boarded the ship, five of us cramped into small cabin and four of us, except Leo, surrendered to the power of sea sick pill. At around 4 or 5 am, the boat started to move, reached the island about 9, put in our belonging and stormed for the first dive.

Mhehehehe…durian party, free flow durian at Dayang. Hesitant to eat to avoid durian smell on our beloved regulator, but at night couldn’t run away anymore. Reason not eating was, I tend to have a fever if I eat durian without drinking salt water after that. But Colin and Leo managed to find salt and I left with no other reason, so enjoyed…! Too bad not enough durian left when I started.. Mho… Just find out Joshua afraid of durian. Alamak..where can we find a durian-hater Singaporean..?

About the diving…this was the fourth time we were here. The Napoleon humphead and school of it were still amazing. This time I was face to face with about 1.2 m humphead, and its teeth was very funny, looked like toothpaste ad, sparkling and white in front, tongos. I was tailing a humphead until I cornered it inside the rock, then suddenly I felt something big was coming towards me. I turned and saw another bigger humphead, quite an adrenalin rush, almost tabrakan kebo. Although I’m proud of my big forehead, they are not called humphead for nothing. :D
And we also saw a huge lobster hiding under the rock. Yummy.

Lunchtime. It was damn cold. Surface interval was always a suffering. Cold trunks, we were shivering in the dining area, the wind was very strong and the sky was dark grey.

Another memorable moment, Cynthia and Joshua were attacked by triggerfish. These moody and dower fish are very territorial. Hubby and me were also attacked by a titan triggerfish in Sipadan. Huge one. I didn’t know as I was enjoying the scenic safety stop. Luckily he managed to put his fins between him and the titan, but he was forced to ascend without having a chance to alert me. I saw him ascending and decided to spend few more minutes in the water, didn’t know the titan was behind me and pissed off to see its first target climbed to the boat, so I was the next target. I was really really lucky that day, the titan mistook my tank for my head; I was surprised to hear a loud bang behind me and then saw the titan. Apparently it attacked my tank and maybe it got swollen lips.

Hehhehhehe, more dower. I swam away; so did it. Surprisingly I was very calm, I was thinking, O-o, huge solitary triggerfish. Fiuh…my lucky tank. Still can’t forget the scar that our Sipadan DM Melvin showed us when he was attacked in the face by triggerfish. By the way, back to Dayang, Cynthia and Joshua managed to swim away from this time-clown triggerfish. There were many of them, and it was their mating season.

End of day dive, I did something (I already did in the previous Dayang trip and regretted it), I did it again and regretted it again. Me, Hubby, Leo and Ahwa jumped from the boat and swam to the shore, which was maybe 300-400 metres away. Gosh, it was not funny swimming without fins, bloody tired, almost gave up half the way but everybody were far in front. Hubby and Ahwa saw moray eel; they even managed to swim back to the boat, grabbed camera and took picture. Power! I was almost drowned, until finally I reached the stand-able part, Leo saw me and kept cheering. Mhahaha…what a shame.

Night dive was quite dig dag dig dag. Before he jumped to the dark water, Hubby saw the giant barracuda passed by. At least 1,7 m long solitary predator. Umph.., we encountered this giant few times before, but all the time I failed to see it. Either that I didn’t know it was around and didn’t manage to out-fin it. Others had seen it many times, so actually my main purpose of visiting Dayang again was to see this giant barracuda. But I also couldn’t deny that I was quite nervous.

So, jumped in. First, hubby, than me, we looked around us carefully with the help of two C8 torch. It wouldn’t be fun if we were not prepared in case the giant decided to taste a bit of our leg or arm. But now I can say, I am disappointed again! I didn’t see the giant, although I also might not know if it was swimming behind. I only could see as far as my torch could shine me. We saw shrimps, crabs, flat worms came alive at night. Put the torch into your chest, and play with your finger, you’ll see the beautiful red sparks dancing in the water. We call it uderwater firefly.

Talking about this giant barracuda, last week Joshua’s group was tailed by it for about 10 minutes. They were scared and decided to split into two groups. So, mission failed to see it, I will go back to Dayang until I see this giant, and infamous manta and whale shark.

Bangkok-Pattaya (8-11 July)

Although time and money was tough, we decided to have short family vacation with Nyokap, Bokap and Hubby. Rare chance. Work hard. Play hard. Life is precious. They (Bonyok) loved it, it was good to have some fun time together, first time to Thailand, we chickened out, instead of roaming by ourselves, we booked short tour. Tried parasailing in Pattaya. Peaceful, but a bit boring and lonely up there. Should have done more research and do my long life passion instead. Next trip. Next trip I’ll jump from somewhere much higher. Hm hm hm..

Tried bakmi jalanan ala Thailand, yummy! Poor little guy who sold the bakmi, he was merely around twelve years old, but had to stay up through the night to tend the stall. We used ancient-sign language to order the bakmi first night. Second night, he knew what we wanted already. When we left, I tried to say goodbye as it was our last night but I don’t think he understood.

First time try massage, uncomfortable at first, but relax relax.. :)

Being lifted by an elephant to take picture was not really fun. :) Elephants do have really friendly eyes. Learned that tiger indeed have very soft fur and large paws like my late German Shepard. Saw a poor honey bear had to keep drinking milk in order to pose for pictures.

Had a good swim at Pattaya. The beach was nice, but too commercialized. They put fence around to avoid collision with boat and jet sky, and clear the coral so that it was convenient to play and swim, but something was missing unlike if we play in the sea. No wave.

Grand Opening (16 July)

Joshua opened his own dive shop. Very happy for him, went for celebration, they drunk beer, our group were happy with a glass of beer or coke. From our group, Frog and Leo, me and Hubby only. Cynthia couldn’t make it, busy busy. Ee Chiew and Darren didn’t know Joshua, so only four of us. Sweet cool present for Joshua, hope he likes it.

Club Med (30-31 July)

Went for Hubby’s office trip. Tagged along. Never been to Club Med Bintan before..not affordable.,too ex for my wallet. Played monkey ball when the sun was directly above the head, humph…rained all day after that, so we visited local market and eat eat eat.. play pool… with..believe it or not… uang cepean….:) but if you bought the token from the resort, they sold cepean for 3.5 SGD. So we changed a pile of it at local market and played our heart out.

Second day, finally managed to book a dive. Located more than 30 minutes boat trip from Bintan, we jumped. We didn’t expect it to be a good dive, but surprisingly it was, and surprisingly it was cold….maybe because we didn’t wear proper wetsuit, as we only bought vest and short. The rental equipment was ok, and no need to wash yourself after that, mhehehhe….The coral was rich and healthly, a lot of things to see..Busy busy.., Busy to avoid sea urchin, many of them! Like sea urchin garden..Kapok, last time, it took me two months to recover from a single sea urchin stung in my index finger. There was a cute nudibranch who ran like hell when Hubby tried to take its pictures. I don’t know they can run! DM showed us a sleeping turtle under the rock outcropping. Have to sink as low as possible to take a peek. Big act-cool puffer, healthy red clark anemones, Stingrays, stonefish, nice soft corals and cute spiky schools of fish. Love it.

Others :

Not talking about work., my mind shut the moment I go home. Not talking about news, piss me off. Eat cow, mad cow, chicken, bird flu, pork, another disease, fish, salmon poison whatever whatever, even vegetables have exceed pesticide.

See news, bomb, flood, hurricane, famine, murder, robbery, rape, racist. Very tired. Never do online chatting for quite sometimes, stop catching up with my favorite writing forum, play games instead and do house chores, many of them! Long time never watch movies.

By the way, War of The World sucks. Surprisingly The Island is better. Planning to watch Charlie and Chocolate Factory.