Voila! There are big things and small things I haven’t backed up yet. Gotta flash back bit and bits.
The Move
So, it’s official. Mid of March, my elder brother’s family will move to Doha to reunite with him. It’s quite a sad thing in some selfish way, but of course I’m happy for him. Hope Jovan and Xin-xin with their parents can visit me or I visit them often in the future. It’s quite unlikely for me to be able to visit them though, First, my leaves this year is not enough for my needs. Second, it costs thousands to fly to Doha. Third, there is no diveable area around there. Forth, in summer, forty-over degree can practically kills me.
My Mom will go with them for the first month to help them settling down. Afterward, I ask her to come and stay with me, since my Dad is almost always here, I don’t want her to stay alone in Jakarta. She can of course visit my other brothers often, but in Jakarta, it’s difficult for her to move around without the ability to drive. Here, she can go everywhere and even picking up some computer and English course like what she always wants.
How it affects me except in emotional way of this moving, perhaps I won’t visit Jakarta that often anymore. Maybe the next meeting point for reunion would be here, although we have to seriously working on with the space. As long as we have the will, there will be a way, tokh?
The Freaking Lizard
I wrote before about my fear of lizard. But here we go, you see, they are ugly, with rubbery skin, bulging eyes and scary tongue. Beside the physical appearance, the have nasty habit of cutting their own tail, and the tail has nasty habit too to jump around. Hiiiy, jumping body parts! I think the lizard also don’t want to see my leg jumping around! So, spare my feeling, please. Other than that, cicak=lizard is stupid, because they always hide in the window or door frame, as the result, they would get squeezed to death. Or they could die from heart attack or whatever the hell I know, my brother found one ‘sleep’ next to him in human-like position, like flipped around. Maybe the main reason I hate cicak. Maybe because of two fine days, my cat killed them and left it around and it stuck to my feet. Horrible. Really really horrible. I prefer spider, maybe snake, or maybe even, komodo dragon.
Fortunately, my house here is free of cicak. I don’t have their source of food, mosquito. But once in a while we will have a visitor. There was a sighting of one small cicak in my house few weeks ago. It bothered me, I’m scared of stepping onto them, or squeezing them into the door frame or thinking about their tail jumping around or them dropping off on my shoulder. It’s gravity, I don’t know how they have those sticky hand and feet, but I know gravity works.
Then one afternoon, the cicak went into my bedroom. I went berserk and tried to chase it away with ‘hush hush’ and waved the broom like mad but to no avail. My mother in law came to investigate the noise, lucky, she is not afraid of them. So she whacked the cicak with the broom. Ouch, the other thing I scared the most is penyok living things. Huek, I could die seeing those. Then, of course the cicak ran to me. I had to climb the table, I hardly find myself out of control especially because of animal, but I didn’t feel the need to shame this time. So the cicak was smart enough to hide between side table and the bed frame, but the effect was worse. It was cornered, and she now could whack it with all her might. After a while, she said the cicak had gone limp. I actually felt sorry for it, and she would use something to drag it out.
The description below is graphic; it’s a warning for reader with weak stomach.
The limp cicak was dragged out with a piece of thin 3mm diameter circular wood I gave to her, yes, I’m accessories to a brutal murder, I couldn’t help to think that the wood would poke the lizard everywhere before she could find a point to drag it out. It was dark in there, I didn’t witness anything, but my mind tortured me enough. I tried not to think of Satay Cicak. Then when she managed to drag it out, it still tried to run but very slowly, and she of course whacked it again with the broom.
Oh my God…,. Hayah, it’s too much to bear lah, but I really admire people who are okay with cicak, we need more of them in this world.
So, that is one of my shameless day in front of a person I should have impressed. But to all cicak, I hate you because I pity the hard life you are, the way you are killed everywhere, I know you might help to prevent dengue, but please don’t come to my house and don’t breed too much.
The Big Family
It’s not often, but on my visit to Jakarta, reunion dinner night, my first uncle invited everyone to go to his house. So the siblings, my mother and her three brothers (like me!) are to gather together with all the family they bring. The concept is quite unusual, something I don’t imagine will hear from my this uncle. He said that since we witness many unfortunate events happened to our relatives, we should treasure the time and gather together when we could. I agree with him. Since my grandparents are not around anymore, he as the eldest initiated the formal gathering.
It’s the first time we had reunion dinner outside the family, with bigger family as far as I can remember.
From the four siblings, there were as many as 40-50 kins. Their spouses, their children, the chidren’s spouse and their grandchildren. It’s amazing and I’ve hardly seen my uncle happier than that day. Every other uncles too, who used to frown and frightened us around, now we are bigger than them. He he.
Because every married cousins or siblings of mine all already have kids or expecting, I thought I would be the target, as usual. But surprisingly, no. It’s my youngest brother who brought along his two-months old baby, Nadia. Nadia has dark complexion and so ‘unisex’ face, the parents had tried to dress her so nicely. Pink shirt, flowery pants and even a pink hair band with big pink butterfly and big pink flower, bla bla, they still asked, Is it a boy or a girl? Gubrak.
So I guess, nobody can never escape from those type of question. Eh, maybe that’s why older relatives are so nosy, maybe it’s their revenge from what they had gone through?
The Class.
We went to our DM second class, which we learned about The Physics of Diving. It was crazy, the three old heads had to once again do some physic calculations, learned about pressure, atmospheric and gauge, bla bla, bli bli, and solved the essays. It’s more difficult for us because we didn’t study them in English in the past. So it was quite a head cracking lesson that day. Further more, the book I should have read and will have to, the Encyclopedia, I hadn’t touched until that day after the class. I hardly realized that it exists. It’s a book with not many drawings, very small fonts, and talking about the history, physics and physiology etc that have respiratory and cardiovascular drawing and even about Boyle’s law, Charles’s law, Dalton’s law and all we ever want to be is to become a better diver.
The book is contagious, everytime I read it, I will collapse into very very deep sleep. If you want to see three thirty and thirty plus adults cracking their head to solve the some simple math, you know where to find us.
The New Year
Even though when I reached Singapore, New Year has reached its eighth day, it’s not over until it’s over. We had lunch celebration in the office. We learned about one culture from Singapore, that they have this kind of food, with carrot, some kind of rubbery bihun, peanuts, miscellaneous thingy all mixed together with maybe vinegar or some sort of oil. If I get it right, everybody would gather together, holding a chopstick, and mixed all the thing together, up and down, up and down while saying good wishes. Sometimes it comes with shouting, Yammmmmmmmmmmm something. Me and my husband had the same reaction, although we were in different party the first time we heard it. So everyone would shout as loud as they could, the louder and the higher the chopstick, the better. We thought there was a riot or a war, honestly, it almost scared the crap out of me.
My friend told me, this is Lo He process, I don’t know how to pronounciate it. We didn’t shout as our department lost the head, the boss was joining another boss. So we just united our chopstick and played high up and down. Obviously, they were all very skillful, I couldn’t catch the speed and my chopstick fell from my hand and mixed together with the food, being tossed here and there, and suddenly, ‘Hey, whose chopstick is this!?!
I tried to hide but I was the only one holding one stick.
After that, as usual, orange party. Orange everywhere, the tradition is to give orange. Our office had four box of oranges, but no takers. Because the oranges were hard and not nice. They should ask my colleague to distribute the oranges, but instead I was the one because I picked up the call, wrong place and wrong time. Because I couldn’t carry all the oranges, I had to use the traditional bamboo basket, oh, my dignity.
So, those are my rojak stories.
I do realize I want to be somebody in always high spirit, although once in a while I’m down parachuting, I hope I always climb up shamelessly. : )
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Pain is the sensation caused when weakness leaves the body.
- USMC
Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
- Jacob Braude
