Medication

There are times when I strongly believe that drugs contribute a lot to the familiar ‘sick feeling’. Of course you have to be sick first, but when you started the drugs, you are confirmed that you are sick, because the feeling those drugs give you. At least I know it applies to me.

I was down with fever on Monday and Tuesday, so no need to work for me. But instead of relaxing holiday, I slept and slept, even when I was not sleeping, I lay down half asleep. So it was not really fun, together with pooping all the pills that make my hands heavy and dried tongue and continuous hibernation. I never been a fan of antibiotics, but I had to admit that I was saved by one again. The painful burning feeling every time I swallow was not a match to numerous lozenges, until I popped two pills of antibiotics, it got better and disappeared really fast, the only thing is I am stuck with the rest of ten pills I have to finish.

Why antibiotics always come with ‘must finish?’ There were many many times in the past that I ignored it and simply forgot about it. Because keep swallowing pills when we are fine only keep the sick feeling inside, like now. It gives me side effects like feeling sleepy, weak, gasping breath and always like dehydrated. I have three more to go and have to match my schedule with the seasick pills I’m about to swallow starting tonight.

I remember when I was in college, I had one painful teeth that I desperately wanted to get rid of. So I went to the University dentist, free of charge, and asked the doctor to extract it out with all their might. The dentist refused, and said we had to get rid the pain on the first place, so she gave me two sets of antibiotic and asked me to see her the next week. I’m not really resistant to them, as I said, so I spent one week feeling like zombie. The next week, the pain was there, it was not really painful, but painful enough for me to recognize the pain and made me said yes when the dentist knocked it with tiny hammer. So she gave me another sets of antibiotics, another week, another appointment, another zombie. The third week, nothing improved, so repeat all process.

She was desperate and I was starting to think that I should run away, but I guess I had to stay in hostel during that month, so I didn’t consider to get treated outside. On the forth weeks she decided to try, and guess, she didn’t have the strength to pull the teeth out. She asked me to go to Salemba, where the UI Faculty of Dentistry located, armed with letter from her and my medication history.

Before I decided to listen to her again, I found that after the unsuccessful extraction, the pain was gone and I had the chance to go home, so I just went to the nearby dentist to get rid of that teeth.
Again, my luck, the dentist was very young, no offence, but young dentist really scared me, especially after these two. Hell, all dentists scare everyone.

So this dentist found no problem and started to inject me with local anesthetic. At one point, I was jolt and I guess the needle punctured the wrong nerves. When I sat to wait for one minute for the anesthetic to start working, I felt terrible. I felt that my left eye keep jumping, or everything captured by my left eye jumped wildy, grey black white and everything was shaking like a rodeo. When I closed that eye, everything was normal. My Dad and Brother looked at me as I was a strange creature. They said half of my face was pale like hell, I told them because everything was jumping! The dentist’s face was paler than mine, I think he started to shake and maybe thought of a way to get out of the country, and luckily, the jumping stopped and the faithful teeth was thrown away. Fiuuu. To bad for my brother, for him, it was almost worse. The anesthetic failed on him numerous times, and the dentist extracted his tooth without any painkiller.
The dentist is still in operation until now, ten years after, outside our house complex. Everytime we passed by, there was a flash of wild memories. He..


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I die by the help of too many physicians.
- Alexander The Great (on his deathbed)

Medicine is the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence.
- James Bryce

A good listener is not someone who has nothing to say. A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.
- Katharine Whilehorn

Library - Children Section

I visit Public Library three times during my five years stay here, the last two visits happened yesterday and two and a half years ago, make it pretty decent math for primary student, and I went there because I had nowhere else to go. It makes me wonder actually, because I frequent bookshop quite often, no as often as I used to, but it takes a fair percentage of my time. Maybe because it’s hard to find the books that I want from library? The books are everywhere in the e-catalog but it’s either on-loan or nonexistent.

I read much, much less than what I used to be, maybe because of computer and reading through monitor make my eyes produce some repellent enzyme with books. It’s true, it’s sometimes unbearable to read those tiny letter although I desperately want to. That’s why I have many unread novel in my rack, one because of that, second because I have quite major preference changes.

So yesterday, to pass sometime waiting for Hubby, I tried to look for the new Asterix, yess, comic book for this old girl, there are few new titles I found in Kinokuniya. I still hesitate to buy them because first, it’s ex, second, original language in English is not as funny as when it’s translated to Indonesian slang. But as I guess, I couldn’t find any in the library, found some old titles but couldn’t locate the real book. So I just hung out in the kids section, bent half of the body because of low rack to look for them times and again, in the process, I found many interesting books. So I kicked off my shoes and parked on the floor.

Children fairy tales, I have never read Little Red Riding Hood or Hans and Gretel before, so I found a short version (or is it that short?) and I read it… oh sweet children classic…MAN, THEY ARE HORRIBLE TERRIBLE SCARY STORIES, FOR CHILDREN?! Why on earth people regard it as sweet and innocent when a kid has to sew up an animal tummy and push an elderly to be cooked alive? I didn’t get it wrong, right? Other version even said that Little Freak who cut up the wolf’s tummy. I have a lot of children book, actually I started late, read children book when I was already a teenager and hm…close to thirty, but at least Enid Bylton’s books teach kids not to scream (which is a bloody great idea), to be honest bla bla and the cruelest thing Hans Christian Anderson did was to make a duck ugly!

So I shoved the classic crazy children book to the rack and found some others. There is a story about four kids who dive to find treasure. Damn it, can’t they leave something for me to do after they occupy all the toys in Toys R Us?
There are few interesting books with nice big fonts for these eyes. Borrowed Mark Twain’s and Pippi Longstocking, few magazines with a lot of picture for more eyes friendly read and would come back for more that I planned to borrow in the future.

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I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.
- Rodney Dangerfield

Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.
- Unknown

I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
- Emo Philips

Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
- Unknown

When all else fails, look cute.
- Jim Davis, "Garfield" comic

World Cup

So it’s World Cup. Since it’s a fever everywhere, maybe I have to write something about it. I’m not a football fans, and I’m definately not a football fan’s fan. Maybe I prefer other sports with more scores, such as basketball when I don’t need to bite the table’s edge until the goal finally happen.
But I do agree that football is a classy sport, it’s the same or not bigger than Olympic, the ugly sides although opposite with ugly are the infamous pretty faces around that make girls turn their TV on, the other ugly side that is indeed ugly is the bets. Okay, it’s very tempting, I bet once, he.. but I can’t remember who won and I’m sure my friend didn’t even organize it, he just said, in my previous office, who want to bet against this... Then I bet this..that…I can’t even remember whether there were some money exchanging, not very professional gamblers were we?

I prefer to bet into something more fun, like whether this guy is meeting his girlfriend, whether this little kid in the mall belong to that family or the other, and the bets involve something like lunch, drink or so said, pride and dignity or sometimes millions of virtual dollars are involved.

I remember the last World Cup I also bet in office for Brazil, but like that;

“Who do you think will win?”
“Brazil.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Sure!”

And Brazil won.

“I win! I win! Pay me up. Fast.”
“Okay, you win! But do you realize we forgot to decide what to bet?”

So I gain nothing, not even pride and dignity.

Other happy marry memories about football happened during my university time in hostel. My hostel in specific and University in general are popular with scary ghost stories happening around, from first hand to don’t know how many hands and recycled stories. From the bravest until my last year, the confidence dropped and dropped and night time sometimes could be difficult to pass, especially during holiday seasons when I had to stay in hostel for some reasons, there were times when I would be the only person around or with some guys who stayed far away upstair. That’s why I like football time! My room was located exactly next to TV room, so during football season, I would either be too happy because there were so many companies around or too noisy to sleep. It’s fun also during sleepless night when exams was knocking and when we were buried in between assignments. Some warung also participated during football and exam time by opening 24 hours, so it was happening.

So, enjoy! For those who want to bet, if you want some tips from this professional gambler; never bet for England, no matter how many songs they circle around with rumor that they win etc. Pick Brazil. Ho ho ho.

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Football…causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murder, homicide and great effusion of bloode, as daily experience teachth.
- Philip Stubbes

We do have the greatest fans in the world, but I’ve never seen a fan score a goal.
- Jock Stein

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence’s. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
- George Orwell

Furry Friends

I woke up with great difficulty this morning. The eyes stuck together, the pillow followed my head, even my alarm was too lazy to make significant noise, unlike usual.

My computer hung three times, so I made some hot tea, and found out my spoon was upside down, actually it’s not that bad, I can get a better grip and the spoon doesn’t hurt my right eye as much as it used to.

Saturday, we went to SPCA, stands for Society For The Prevention of Cruelty To Animals. Talk about walking into temptation. We’ve been there before but found hard time to locate it. Apparently the surrounding has changed a lot, for what used to be quite natural site with a lot of trees into construction site where we could see concrete, concrete and concrete, I guess that is the upcoming train track.

SPCA is a home for abandon animal, they provide shelter, vaccination, adoption, but the animals will be put to sleep if nobody adopt them. It’s better to adopt a pet from there because someone might save an animal’s life, and be sure that the pet has been vaccinated, sterilized on request and microchipped, unlike pet shop who sometimes never vaccinated their pets, and what you need to pay is only the cost for those. It can sum up quite big, but it's within the reason and safety.

Adopting from there is not just like walk in, choose the pet and bring them home. They have to make sure that you are eligible to take care the dog to avoid second abundance. The adopter also has to bring their whole family along to make sure everyone is involved and they can only adopt pets suitable with the type of housing. Don’t let me start with why type of housing affects pet adoption.

There were a lot of adorable dogs there. Some I could name are Jack Russel Terrier, Beagle, Syberian Husky, German Shepard, Labrador, Samoyed and Terrier. Syberian Husky is my favorite type of dog but I always think it’s a cruelty to have it in Singapore as the weather is really really not suitable even for me!
The Syberian Husky was huge and looked very cool but it seemed unhappy and distracted, unlike the active Beagle who jumped when someone approached its cage, or German Sheppard and Samoyed who chewed my hand happily. There were two anjing kampung, X breed, who looked very cute and enthusiast as they barked a lot.
The one everyone loved was a very small Jack Russel who was very friendly with very busy short helicopter tail. It was one of the two options acceptable for our type of housing, if we decided to get one. But instead of sitting there to let the temptation past, there was one family who really keen to adopt that dog but found out that it had been reserved.

It’s not fair. Go find the dog your house size. Be a man! Hush hush hush.
Chanting. Chanting.

Other than dogs, there were cats, a lot of cats, and there was one who looked exactly like mine. Sniff. There were rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs too.
Talking about guinea pigs, I’m quite scared of them now but the reason is ridiculous enough.

Singapore has one unique culture and they call it Pasar Malam. It’s a temporary market that shows up once in a while, everywhere in the country, sometimes it comes with tiny Disneyland. From the things, it sells from stickers to cars. The negative is, everytime it’s the same thing over and over again and it becomes quite boring. And it has this scary religious stall with maybe some kind of priests dressed in golden dress, do some chanting and burn some scented joss stick. I don’t know what they are doing but the feeling it gives when I pass by is hiii…. And one time I saw they put two guinea pig on the table and covered one’s head with a bowl, while the other just stayed there, didn’t move at all with blank look. The priests chanted etc, I didn’t understand the single thing they said but I had feeling that they were trying to do something.. not so smart conclusion.
Okay, I didn’t stay to watch so I don’t know what happened. Come to think of it, it’s really a ridiculous reason! I should find out why.

I love my new spoon.


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Happiness is a warm puppy.
- Charles Monroe Schulz

I don’t mind where people make love, so long as they don’t do it on the street and frighten the horses.
- Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I exercise extreme self-control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.
- W.C. Fields

My dog gave me a creep when he howled everyday at nine in the morning and four in the afternoon, long painful howl, consistently, everyday, until I found out that was the schedule of the ice-cream man.

Brochure People

It’s so easy to be impatient here. Is it here or because I’m getting older?

…

It’s here.

I’ve been unhappy in work for about some time now, sometime I bring my feeling home, most of the time I throw it away. When I’m off from work or during lunch, I always have impatient moment. Sometime I feel like pushing someone down the stair just because he/she blocking the way while I’m in rush, well, to be home.

Here, almost everything has to be done by regulation. The government teaches the people to queue for everything, how to be safe in the road, and even how to ride an escalator. So for those who don’t want to move, stand on the left, right side is only for mobile people. It felt super robotic at first, like a child being told not to do this or that, rather than use own thinking, but at least, we could feel the advantage for not needing to push rows of people to get to the top when we’re in rush. It’s good habit to be organized, however, it creates impatient people, those kind of impatient that maybe people from other parts of the world can’t understand. If I have visitors from Indo, I would have to tell them about the ‘unwritten’ rules so that impatient rude people won’t spoilt their day.

At times, the impatient people would be me. Hard to avoid, I’m become less and less stress resistant inside stressful environment. Nowadays, I also get easily annoyed by those brochure people. They are basically everywhere, mostly, among the crowded streets. Crowded streets are stressful enough with the number of people trying to get to different directions while standing on the same spot. Gone are the days when I ignore those who stop in the middle of the street to chat to their friend by blocking the whole circulation, although, still, I hope, I still criticize them with humor, but in the worse moment I have the urge to push them to the gutter.

So, brochure people, they hand brochure to everyone especially on the crowded streets as if it’s not stucky enough and they litter a lot. They seem to find better and better method, from just politely hand out and retrieve when rejected, to push the brochure in front of the nose and refuse to let you pass. The worst, although sometime we have good laugh at it, are those bullying brochure people who give their load of brochures to you when you don’t have the ability to refuse. Like, when Hubby was holding a box of monitor a while back, they just put the papers on the box. He didn’t have a free hand to physically reject the brochure, but he said nooooo all the way and they ignored him, some even gave double or triple servings for those poor victims.

Or when I was stumbling with my wallet, shopping bag, train card, key, handphone and could use five hands had I have them, they still tried to put the brochures on top of those things entangled on my fingers. They wouldn’t care if it dropped or whatever, once it went out of their hand, caused by them or not, it’s out of their responsibility. So, on Sundays, if we go to the most stylish road in Singapore, Orchard Road, on the underground tunnel, it looks worse than mm.. a primary school yard whose kids haven’t been taught how to use the rubbish bin yet.

Yeah, yeah, I know distributing brochure is not an easy or desirable thing to do, but everybody also have their own hell.

Now, s s s s s m m m m i i i l l l l l e e e e e e e e . . .
And pop in some Xanax.

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The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.
- William Clayton

Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?
- Robin Williams (from Mork and Mindy)


Don't look now, but there's one man too many in this room, and I think it's you.
- Groucho Marx

We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight, if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, "You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms."
- Elayne Boosler

To Fill The Empty Blog

On Saturday we went around unusual place in town. We went to meet someone, and the place was located near our previous office, so we visited the bird market, the one we always passed by but didn’t have a chance to go.

The whole rows of shops consist of bird shop and pet shop. There were many exotic birds that make me wonder whether they were legal. The sound, no wonder my uncle liked to say that a room full of aunties is compatible with a room of birdie. It was so noisy. Birds are not my things, but I had few bird pets in the past. My Dad liked to bring bird home when he worked in the jungle. We had colorful robins, I guess, and two I don’t know what type of bird who were very noisy and liked banana. They were kind of rude because when they asked for banana, they yelled, kroak kak kak ngk ngk, when they were happy, they yelled also. We had one beautiful and soft feathered colorful bird who always opened its wing wide when we scared him, and the last one was a pair of white cockatoo who sounded like Ou-A, Ou-AAA. One day, the male was stolen or missing, so the female looked so sad that my mom let it fly. It’s was not the best decision of course, as the bird might not survive in a city or caught by someone, my mom forgot about those factors, but she had its best interest in heart.

Okay, despite the bird flu, people are still visiting bird market. Beside the bird market, there were fish shops. Some of the fish shops are the reasons why I’m scared of fish. They were dark, smelly with dark smelly and overfull water, sometimes they look clean but the fish are sick. So I avoided that kind of shop. My nightmare is when I see one or few dead fish inside the packed aquarium being bitten by another. I would refuse to go near within visual perimeter. Or once, I went to this festival where they had big children-portable-pool full of small fish, when those children could take as much as they could scope with the tissue base net. Because everyone was fishing, there was current in the pool and many of the fish were dying or died. But at least, the water was clean and the fish were small. But the one in the dark water bloated bitten fish shop….. Argh!

We found one very nice fish shop, I loved this one. They have nice, clean and beautifully arrange shop. Everything was clean, every fish was healthy, no dead one, no jumping out one, and there were a lot of type, even marine fish.

It was a fishy day, we went to another place, actually to hunt another thing, but ended up standing in front of live fish display, this time, for restaurant. Okay, I also hate fish display in restaurant and fish market, because some fish are so sick or they live in so packed aquarium that everyone stepping on another. This one, was quite different. The aquarium was quite packed, but not that bad, the water was clean and the fish, crab etc were healthy. We saw King Crab, the one we ate in Oz, the most delicious crazy cholesterol loaded crab. There were so many aquarium of it. Slerp. Delicious shrimp. Lobster and stone fish. Stone fish? Yes, there were stonefish for display, I guess it’s one kind of food. Those venomous fish, how did they catch it, cook it and eat it? I don’t know, I know timid puffer could kill as Japanese dish Fugu, if they are not properly cookes or the chef chose the wrong part. Stone fish! Surprisingly I didn’t see triggerfish, our sworn enemy, because I heard they taste like crab! : )

So that was the process we went through when we got lost in the mall. On the way back, while waiting for the bus, we saw annoying kids and adults. There were three kids sitting together each with gameboy on their laps. Suddenly, the one in the middle started to cry, so loud, so wide until we could see the green candy inside his mouth. The other two kids just rolled their eyes and continued to play. It went on for a while, until the mom decided to come out from disguise and talked to the kid. What I thought to be timid kid turned to be a monster in one second. He yelled, threw his gameboy which landed with painfully cracking sound, and looked at his mother with the most hateful look I’ve ever seen since I don’t know when. It was terrible, a very very terrible child. He kept yelling and cursing but I didn’t understand a thing. The mother was soft-spoken and tried to talk patiently which was something more heartbroken to see, then annoying adults came by, they were aunties who tried to interfere and disciplined the kid.

I agree the kid was damn annoying, maybe he deserve to be smacked, but strangers who try to interfere and show you how to raise a kid was too much of inconvenient.
See? Another sign. Doh.

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"Deleted by French Censor"
- James Gordon Bennett - US Newspaper owner/editor - Used to fill empty space in his papers during WWI when news was lacking

Kids

Passing through a rack full of tiny food made of plastic in transparent display, I thought hopelessly about how would I ever to afford that one day, to set up my own miniature kingdom (Insert crazy gigantic laugh here)
I like to look at miniature, now they have those very fine made Japanese miniature with impressive details and color, every kind of food, every kind of kitchen ware and even, I found designer chairs yesterday. The price, wow, the plastic food costs more than my meals and I don’t even understand what are the meanings of the texts written on the box!
I also like to press my face against the miniature army display, infantry, paratroopers, navy, commandos etc in their full suits and weapons. War, pfff, but the mini things are so cute with those realistic colors and finishing. But again, it’s expensive.

For this kind of things, it’s better not to start buying, even the tiniest part of it, because once it starts, it's hard to stop and unless you’re someone rich, it’s not worth to sacrifice hard earn money for them.
In the middle of my money saving look and see, there was a kid choosing many items for her birthday present, and two men who purchased Barbie dolls, yes, Barbie doll, I guess it’s Bonnie & Clyde collector edition. Hubby made funny faces when he secretly asked me, ”Are they buying dolls?”
“Maybe. Maybe they are collector, doesn’t matter.” I saw one young guy in TV with his Barbie collection, so I guess, if I could like army dolls, guys could like Barbie dolls too.
But after circling around the store for a while, I thought again, two young men buying identical dolls, so they would play the doll together like me and my friend during childhood, actually, teenager hood, it’s kind of weird, isn’t it…. ?

Okay, I don’t care what are their preferences, but I was disturbed by another thought when I saw that girl choosing her birthday present. I want this, I want that, you have to buy them for me…
I know, that’s a crazy thought, but, what if my children behave like that? How if they become spoiled brat like those kids I’ve seen everywhere? And kid’s toys nowadays are dry-pocketing expensive. My brother bought a Power Ranger’s sword for 50 bucks! And what was the fun of that? Sing sing sing, I hit you, I hit you again, oh, I’m bored. Another toy please! But have to be Power Rangers, or Barney or Leapfrog or something familiar from the TV.
My first nephew is considered a well-behaved kid. When he was younger, the only toys he wanted were ball and ball. So, ball is cheap, cute, and they are a lot of variations of balls. But he has two sets of grandparents, parents and a few sets of uncle and aunts. Soon, he had all the ball in the world. Now he moved to more expensive toys.

When we were kids, we didn’t have those kind of luxury, we bought most of the toys with pocket money, toys that most kids had were marbles, one-piece comic strip cut into thirty six pieces to be played as cards, and plastic characters like birds, cats, superheroes we used to hit into a circle drawn by chalk. Or chalk and match, to play the one or two leg jumping, or a row of rubber band tied into one string and again, one or two leg jumping. See, no wonder there were not fat kids around the neighborhood, but dirty, hungry and creative.

Spoiled kid? Try to whine and be whacked. But of course they were whinny and spoiled rich kids around and if we did anything or touched their food, they went running to their parents, who would come, pinched and cursed us the whole mile. But not to worry, we had our own revenge.
On our young ages, we had also learned that it’s easy to fool younger kids. Once, me and my brother sat together with my cousin looking at the dark attic. We tried to prevent him from going to the roof as we kept some of our toys there. So we started to tell him about the giant living in the attic, who had eye ball as big as stove and nail as long as a broom. The giant loved to eat children and so far there were two neighbor’s kids went up and never came back. In the middle of the horror story, my mom went up to the attic to collect laundry, so we told him that adults couldn’t see the giant and vice versa, but he was very hungry then and waiting for another kid to go up as the last meal he had was few months ago.
We could see our cousin eyeball swelled and swelled together with his mouth fell open. Since then, he treated us with great respect and of course, we enjoyed it.

Although simple, I remember there wasn’t a day without a new game. Although most of the games were wild and dangerous, we survived it. We, as in those twenty above who still had a chance to enjoy adventurous childhood. Nobody sued, nobody to blame if we went home with big wound on the knee and elbow. Of course there were consequences, I’m surprise to find that most of my friends around my age know the same brand of antiseptic. The teary-eye-hard-to-speak kind of feeling when the parents poured the antiseptic to our wound to ‘punish’ us. The worst, was the day after, when the bandage stuck to the wound and my mom would call other sibling, Go fetch the scissor, we need to open this up. It’s pure suffering, especially when we looked at the one who grinned from ear to ear, the scissor bearer.

I don’t have conclusion here.

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In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
- Erma Bombeck.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.
- Martin Mull.

No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
- Kingsley Amis.

Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
- Richard Zera.

Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep'.
- Joan Rivers.

Morning Mumbling

I haven’t been playing computer for more than a month. First, because I spoilt the machine for playing too long, then I haven’t had a mood or great game to trap me into addiction.

Actually I quite like to be ‘free’ now, more things done, more books read, more old hobbies explored. I even think to adopt a dog at this current minute, but I don’t think I’m ready. See, all my life, I have nine family dogs. I left two when we moved to Jakarta, three disappeared during riot 1998, one died because of car accident, two were adopted because everybody was everywhere at one time, and one was missing. Why on earth we had so many dogs? Except the first two, and the last one, the other six were adopted to take care of our shop back then. Every dog has special story, but I would need a hell of time to tell it all. They were all family dog. Family responsibility, although it often ended up as one-two person responsibility, but everyone was around for backup, on their own will or not.

So, to have a dog on my own, for the next twelve years or more, one mouth to feed, four legs to walk, going through teeth growing shoe chewing time, vaccination, care during vacation, teenage time, or to watch..eh..take care…eh..control the dog during mating season..blah., at this rate of thinking, no wonder I’m not ready for those little people.

Okay, I’m thinking of picking up painting again, something I left out since I entered Uni, or something I despise because of The Dark World of Architecture. But it’s undecided between mess-up painting and model painting. I could build aeroplane, tanks, traditional Viking boat and paint them too, only that, I don’t have a place for display when they are done, like many of my miniature toys are scattered hopelessly inside the TV console. For mess up painting, I could cut them into pieces and send it out to my friends, to add up to their junks. Hm…..

Don’t worry. This is only happen every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and every dates with number 1 or 2.

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Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
- William Faulkner

Art is anything you can get away with.
- Marshall McLuhan

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
- Linda Ellerbee

What do you mean we don't communicate? Just yesterday I faxed you a reply to the recorded message you left on my answering machine.
- The Wall Street Journal

When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.
- Steven Wright

My mind works like lightning, one brilliant flash and it's gone.

Don't drink to drown your sorrow. Sorrow knows how to swim.

Life is too complicated in the morning.

Manusia Super

Dari sekian juta menit gue idup, baru kemaren gue dikasih label Super Indonesian. (Eh, iseng2 ngitung, gue udah idup sekitar 15,4 juta menit!). Yang ngasih label adalah temen Indo gue yang kebetulan nemu disini. Dia udah tinggal lebih dari sepuluh taon dan sedang siap2 untuk menjadi warga negara disini dan dia tidak ngerti kenapa gue milih enggak.
Kalau mau tau tentang jelek2nya Indo, tinggal nanya aja sama dia. Dari jalanan sampai cewek2nya ampe kadar laku passportnya, dia bisa bikinin segala ngumpat2nya.

Dia cerita kalo dia langganan dipalak dijalan, dimall, kalo dia selalu harus kabur tiap hari dari tawuran dimana sekolahnya jadi sasaran, kalo hidupnya gak tenang ampe akhirnya dia milih merantau disini. Temen2 laen juga sampe heran kenapa pengalaman hidup kita berdua bisa jauh berbeda. Emang banget Jakarta gak aman, monyet juga kalo disuruh ngider2 sebentar juga bakal tau, setiap ujung jalan kayaknya ada aja orang brengsek yang mau merusak suasana, tapi kayaknya gak separah yang dia ceritakan juga kalo tiada hari terlewat tanpa dipalak. Terpikir, dia aja kaliiii.
Atau mungkin gue gak sesial dia dulu, untungnya sial2 gue lebih banyak Untung gak gini, untung gak gitu, tapi gue gak nyangkal emang susah buat tenang2 jalan dijalan dan perasaan paranoid selalu ada terutama setelah kerusuhan. Gue inget gue bawa gas air mata dan bahkan senjata buatan sendiri, pentungan kayu yang dibungkus kertas. Gue mahasiswa, bawa kertas gambar toh? Kalau ada yang macam2, kertas gambarnya bisa dipake buat benjolin orang kalo perlu.

Memang kalo dipikir, dulu, gue sempat berasa restless hidup di Jakarta. Tiap minggu bolak balik Tangerang Depok dari terminal ke terminal, untungnya gue hoki perjalanan gue seringnya lancar2 saja, atau mungkin gara2 gue terlatih masang muka tanpa ekspresi, setengah ngantuk dan gue yakin, jelek banget. Sering gue duduk didepan monyet rese yang gak henti2nya mengeluarkan kata2 dari nanya2 tentang sekolah, nama ampe rayuan2 cap Bandot. Gue sering berhasil masang muka ajaib dan kuping budeg dari pertama naek angkot ampe turun, untungnya sih orangnya gak berani berbuat lebih jauh. Kuping budeg emang ampuh buat jalan2 di Jakarta sendirian. Gue juga jadi inget, minggu lalu, kejadian jarang didunia, ada dua bandot yang berani godain disini. Dari mencoba duduk di meja yang sama, ampe akhirnya cerewet aja dari jauh. Cuman yang antik, begitu diliatin, mereka jadi anak alim diam dan langsung jadi sopan. Asik juga, sekali teriak, mereka bisa masuk penjara. : ) Kalo di Indo, palingan cuman ngumpat2 sendiri, tapi bisa pake bahasa keren kalo niat ngatain orang, kayak Ndas mu....

Mungkin perbedaannya selaen mengalami hal buruk, gue juga banyak mengalami hal baik. Masih banyak orang yang baik tanpa memandang ras dan agama, masih banyak yang suka bercanda tentang semua hal, ya, bahkan tentang agama dan ras tanpa terlibat emosi. Gue gak bisa lupa begitu aja jaman2 naek gunung, waktu masih jadi mahasiswa nyasar kantong kering, tentang mushola yang memberikan gue sama kawan2 lusuh tempat menginap diterminal antar kota, atau satu keluarga yang menyerahkan tempat tidur utama mereka tanpa ragu2 biar gue sama satu temen cewek gue bisa tidur enak waktu kita minta ijin tidur diteras, atau penduduk desa tetangga kita yang ngantarin makanan tanpa diminta pas orangtua di luar kota.

Bulan kemaren di Sam Ratulangi aja, ada Bapak2 gahar yang jagain mesin Xray buat cek-in, giliran nanya dan dijawab pake bahasa Indonesia, dia langsung loncat, ketawa2 dan jadi ramah banget, begitu juga dengan beberapa orang laen yang dengan leganya ngomong, Ehh susah susah pake bahasa Inggris tentang orang Indonesia juga.

Emang simple, tapi gue rasa artinya dalem. Selama masih ada kesan tertinggal, mungkin rasa memiliki masih ada. Mungkin juga orang bisa bilang karena gue belom kena batunya, karena gue jauh gue kangen, karena gue gak ngerasain penat2 macet tiap hari atau siap celaka tiap saat. Mungkin juga, kenapa tidak, kalo gue sempet tinggal diJakarta lagi mungkin gue orang pertama yang sumpah serapah atau siap nukerin passport gue dengan kartu gaple atau bawa2 basoka dibungkus kertas koran. Tapi Jakarta kan juga bukan satu2nya tempat tinggal, masih ada 13666 pulau yang bisa dipilih. Yang pasti sekarang gue gak mau nukerin passport gue dengan urat leher tebal yang jadi bawaan stress orang2 sini, atau laut, ladang padi dan kebo yang cuman bisa diliat dari teve, biarin deh kalo gue dikatain manusia super. : )
Kan, cita2 gue emang jadi manusia super, Spiderwoman!

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Ninety percent of everything is crap.
- Theodore Sturgeon

I'll have that one, please.
- Herbert Beerbohm Tree - in a post office, pointing at a stamp in the middle of a sheet

The grass may be greener outside, but you still have to mow it.
(Forget Who)