Eat: Bandung

I went to Bandung, a city in West Java, last week. Aside from being the most attacked short vacation place by the ever ravenous crowd of homo jakartensis, Bandung is one of my favorite city in Java. Good food, nice people (except when a loco local tourist from The Big J cut in line), cool T-shirt shop, easy to get around (except during weekend or holiday where all the cars on the street turns "B" instead of "D", the local car sign).

However, I had a nice lunch. A steamy three colored rice (white,brown and red rice), grilled fish, lalapan (raw veggies) and a to-die-for sambal (red chilli paste). To made it perfect, I ordered a hot sweet tea, a must for true Indonesian.

More or less, like eating a steak with a glass of good cabernet sauvignon. But in the middle of the on-going battle, I spotted something that made my stomach lurched. About 30 metres from me, there lies a staff housing with a quite bizarre facade.

I truly wish it was some sort of a sick joke by someone with too many toilets available. It's better than picturing a mental image of the function of it while I was tearing the grilled fish with sambal. For some people with weak stomach and even weaker hygenic, they will pay the bill and just leave. But for me, the greedy sapimalas who adores food, it was just something to amused myself with, while I sipped my hot sweet tea. I'll just fondly remember the place with 'that restaurant with toilet facade'.Tee-hee.

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The Final Goodbye

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

Losing someone who was a true meaning of those words is painful. For 15 years, my aunt, Lanny, has fought with all her might, the malevolence cancer that eating inside her. Bit by bit. She has to injected a shot each morning to her belly. She has undergone all kind of therapy. She lost her hairs many times. Yet still, her warm smile rarely left. It was a prominent feature of her lovely face. Typing ‘was’ is hurting me. I still can’t believe that she’s gone. Even after I saw her sand dune of bones. 59 years of life inside a granite jar.

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Annual Triviality of Being New Person

Another party. Another year. Another massive hangover. It seems that this sapimalas, essentially, never become a new person. Not unlike thousands of party animals I encountered in 66 or dejavu yesterday (or to be exact, few hours ago, between dawn and sunrise), I betrayed my new year’s resolution each year.

On the last day of December, I habitually writes a resolution on my journal. To lose the unwanted few extra pounds. To stop social smoking. To cut the alcohol units into minimum. To find a worthy lover (who doesn’t cheat behind my back or living so far away that our relationship was almost virtual). To appreciate myself and treat my body as a secret temple and all that. To do something for society I live in. To stop biting my unpolished nails. To stop secretly bitching toward another female cow who wears legging even tough she was fifty and those poor souls who never read Vogue in her entire devastating fashion faux-pas years. You know, that kind of resolution.

And not unlike millions of other living soul, I seldom follow it. Resolution becomes a triviality, pretty much like the hunt of fictitious nuclear weapon in Iraq. It is something we hope we’ll be able to change about ourselves in the coming years. As it happens, we gloriously failing each year. Not just because of the lack of determination but sometimes it also failed because of the circumstances we are in besides the sheer insufficient of courage. For instance, it require a certain amount of courage to quit your current crappy job or even ask your crush on a date.

As a result, we still spend each New Year’s Eve attending the same party, with the same crowd, in the same club, drinking the same drink and blow the paper saxophone to another year passing by. Just like that.

As for this 2008, I only have one resolution:
To stop making resolution each New Year’s Eve.

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Visit Indonesia 2008: Blessing in Disgrace?

It was meant to promote Indonesia as a major destination in South East Asia. It was meant to boost the feebly dropping number of visitors to Indonesia and keep up the amazing race with tourism giants like Thailand (14 million visitors) or “Truly Asia” (18 millions). It was supposed to show Indonesia and not just Bali, to the center stage. Then, something happened to the $96,000 campaign.

A fatal grammatical error in the slogan (someone apparently forgot to put a definite article or possessive pronoun) which has appeared in billboards, government website and even plastered boldly on Garuda’s aircraft.. The firm agreed to change it at no extra cost (duh!). Someone would get a good hard spank and perhaps, fired.

Nevertheless, I find it a little bit odd. Is it perhaps part of the campaign strategy? I seriously doubt there are no person in the government or the design firm who didn’t realize the serious mistake. Maybe an Englishman is at the moment browsing internet and laughing (“Look at this poor country, darling. Blimey! Such a bloody mistake. Hey, we’ve never been to Indonesia, aren’t we?).

But then again, perhaps $96,000 should firstly be use to pay for the whole member of Tourism Board, a proper English lesson.

Below is the correct silent re-launch of Visit Indonesia 2008 logo.

Mazel Tov!

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The Departed

It seems 2007 took the best (and worst) kind of people from us. There were Anita Roddick, Ingmar Bergman, Luciano Pavarotti, Sidney Sheldon together with those from different field and axis, Bo Yibo (the ex-Chinese Communist Party leader), Khun Sa ( The ex- King of Golden Triangle), Kurt Waldheim (ex-UN Secretary-General allegedly involved in war crimes) and many others.

Just when I think there should be enough death already, a Benazir Bhutto was murdered. Shocking but yet not unexpected. Just when there is a fair good chance of democratic wind for Pakistan, a massacre before election happened. Oh, the sadness, anxiety, trial and tribulation of 2007! Enough to make a human-being cower and curl below his bed. But not this sapimalas. I’ll be looking for 2008 as a year where I should decide a lot of things. I just hope it is going to be the right one.

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Little Baby No More

I wonder of a mother who give birth
to a baby that could never be hers.
Still she raised the little soul,
years after terrifying years.
Until the baby no more.
And placed by a person,
flawed and angry.
Lack of love.
he said.
she said.

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Tropical Italian Santa and Distorted Jingle Bells

After the annual Christmas nausea, massive food and wine hang-over also last minute snapy shopping, I finally find the time to sit down and type. I hardly remember what kind of Christmas I’ve had before millenium except for the presents (I even need to double-check on my diary even for the last six!). Doll house when I was six. A plastic oven with velcro-ed carrot when I was eight. A complete edition of Japanese manga I adore when I was twelve. The present stopped when I entered the world of puberty. How dissapointing! I still love beautifully wrapped gifts which led my falling to the trap of my ungrateful brother last year. He beautifully wrapped an instant noodle (“Hey, you told me you like beautifully wrapped things!”). Sigh.

Things doesn’t get better. My parents give up choosing me gift around my teenage drama queen era (“But this cardigan looks old! And I don’t like this shade of pink!Yuck!) and continue giving me shopping voucher or “mentah”(means “raw” in English, but also could be use to tell someone “just give me the cash and I’ll buy whatever I like”).

The older I become, the less I enjoy Christmas. I feel it was greedily corrupted by consumerism. All the ho-ho-ho by fake Santa Claus with Chinese eyes, paid to have his picture taken by parents of innocent little screaming angels. Season Sale. And no beautifully wrapped presents below the tree. Sniff.

As long as I remember I’ve never had a romantic Christmas ala Hollywood. No brother of amnesia fiance who fall in love with me. No brilliantly located mistletoe. No fireplace with crackling wood and huge real life tree. For us, who lived in tropical world with no chance whatsoever of getting a White Christmas, the closest thing we get to the idea of romantic Christmas is to celebrate it with a bunch of family, preferably in decorated restaurant or party with a Michael Bolton Christmas record playing in the background.

Which we precisely did. This year, all four of us, went to Italian restaurant in Sanur area. Massimo was the name, obviously named after the owner. The guest was oddly mixed, what , with screaming kids and honeymoon-ed couple. There was a huge Christmas tree, decorated with green and red ribbons. The white columns covered in similar splash of Christmas spirit. Still, it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

So I gave up. Christmas, these days, just like Valentine’s Day. Overrated season, piously arranged by big companies and advertising industry. After my third glass of red wine and a fettuccine with lamb in pesto sauce, suddenly a distorted keyboard playing ‘Jingle Bells’ break my lamentation. Great. And suddenly to make it even worse, a falsetto female singing “jingle all the way, oh what fun….” Right.

Between my steak and the sixth glass of wine, I started to get used to it. Suddenly, a HOHOHO. A slim Santa Claus entered the room and the kids squealing in delight. What a joy to be young. He did his round, let adoring parents took his picture with the kids on his lap and giving, what else! Beautifully wrrapped presents! My heart starting to thud. I’ve been good this year. Graduated from uni. Made my parents happy.

When he reached our table, he gave away two parcels of biscuits and a beautifully wrapped present for me! I couldn’t help but grinning broadly and asked for having my picture taken with Santa (yes and I just graduated from uni. Like you could resist!). And suddenly I realized that Mr. Santa is Massimo himself! An original tropical Italian Santa. How surreal. Dali’s painting couldn’t be more surreal then that.

I went home, opened my “beautifully wrapped in red paper present” and found a wooden Wright’s airplane. Perhaps it’s a sign that next year, next Christmas, I would be celebrating some place else. Some place other than my 22 years of Christmas in Bali. Anyplace snowy.

It’s not a romantic Christmas but it is Christmas. Even with Italian Santa Claus, distorted jingles and humid tropical weather. Hohoho.

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