Little House

The owner has lived here for more than 10 years. She allowed me to take some pictures and asked me to excuse her house for being so ugly. I said that it was a lovely house and she smiled :)

6 years old

This weekend, my mom and I went to Giant hypermarket for some grocery shopping. Why? Because we are Indonesians and Giant has told us that Giant is the place to shop for Indonesians (Giant: Tempat Berbelanja orang Indonesia).

It didn't hit me until I was there that this was a big mistake. Usually we go to Bonnet, a nice medium sized supermarket nearby our house, filled with all things we need and some things we may want. Hypermarket such as Giant introduces its visitors to a bazillion of things that we never think we need or want. There were more aisles to explore and my mom seemed to determine to get to know each aisles and the products it offered.

Aisle 1: Hello, may I offer you a nice new set of spoons with a reduced price? Or how about this salad bowl that will surely become the talk of the guest?
Mom: You know Me (my nickname), I think we need extra spoons. And look at that beautiful salad bowl!

Aisle 2: Good afternoon Mam, can I introduce you to this efficient and modern 2 piece drawer? And how about a rattan basket that will look good at every room in your house?
Mom: Me, hold on! Check out this cute drawer. Oh, the rattan basket is nice too, don't you think?

After 30 minutes and 2 aisles later, I got all fidgety and decided to wander around the place myself. As always is the case, I gravitated toward my favorite aisle, the snack aisle.

Hmm, snacks. Let's see, let's have some Chitato potato chips. What flavors should I have? Why don't we just grab one each peyo? Great idea self! BBQ, Roasted Chicken, Cheese, and Plain. Nyum.

What else, what else? Well hello Chiki! Only chocolate flavor but that will do. And oh, Chic-Choc Chocolate Biscuit Balls, heavenly! And don't forget, when you're on a break, you need Kit Kat! Let's grab several of those since I'm on a break a lot of times. And my oh my, they have Beng-Beng Peanut Butter! Slurpilicious!

The pile of snacks on my hands went higher and higher and it became harder for me to see my surroundings. So, I decided that I had enough of snacks to last for a week and started to look for my mom's grocery cart. That's called self-control people!

While I was on my way, I overheard a little discussion between a mother and her 6-year-old little boy.

Kiddo: Mom, can I have Jet-Z please? I want the plastic toy inside of it! Please, mommy, please?
Mom: No kiddo, you'll get sore throat. Plus, you'll get bored with the toys and leave it scattered all over the house.
Kiddo: Mom, how about this Panda Bear cookies? Can I have this, my dear Mommy?
Mom: No kiddo, no snacks for now, it's raining season and I don't want you to get sick.
Kiddo: *pouting* Mommmyyyyyyyyyy .....

As I walked passed the mother and the boy, the boy looked at me and my pile of treasures longingly. I pretended that I wasn't aware of the vehement envious stare while I inadvertently released a small snicker.

Poor sucker, you'll need to wait at least 10 years before you can have your own unprohibited snack binge.

As soon as I realized that I was schadenfreude*-ing over the misery of a little boy, I felt very bad.

Maybe I'm not ready for motherhood as yet.

This is not such a bad conclusion since I'm in no way near of being a mother. First, I need to find a boyfriend, and manage to fool him to marry me. I also need to convince my mother of the ridiculousness of a big wedding. Not to mention finding the perfect house equipped with a large TV and awesome sounding speakers. A big and beautiful book and CD cabinet is a must. And last but not least, a fast computer with TeraBytes storage capacity and high speed internet. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, motherhood and babies.

I finally found my mother held captured at the stationary aisle. I put all of my snacks inside the cart and sat and waited. Another 45 minutes have passed, and I started to get hungry. It's one o'clock pm.

Me: Mom, could you please hurry up? I'm hungry...
Mom: But I've only visited a few aisles.
Me: Well mom, if you had spent less time at each aisle, we would have visited every inch of this building by now.
Mom: Just a minute Me, I need to buy some oatmeal, frying oil, bread, milk, shampoo, .... *the list goes on*
Me: Oh my gosh, Mommyyyyyyyyyy .... *pouting*

That's when it dawned on me. Not only that I'm not ready for a motherhood, I'm still, at present, acting like a 6 years old myself.

Well done self. Well done.


Note:
*Schadenfreude: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

Who am I?

Hasn't everyone asked this question at some point in their lives?

Who am I? Where is my place in this world? What is the purpose of my life?

Well, thankfully for my sisters and I, we have our beloved mother who seems to know exactly who we are. In fact, she knows us very well, that she can give a succinct yet thorough description of each of us to any strangers with willing ears.

Meeting a client at a wedding?

The little one? Oh, she's studying abroad at states now. She majors in animation. She never had any formal study at art before, but she managed to get into a Top 10 art school in U.S. What can I say, she loves to draw since she was a kid.

Meeting an old friend at a funeral?

Well, my oldest daughter is in the states now. She received her PhD from Princeton. Now she's taking a postdoc at Harvard, Boston. Yes, she's very smart. She's always been no.1 at school since kindergarten.

Meeting a distant relative at a family gathering?

Oh, hi, this is my second daughter (pointing at me). She used to study at Madison. After she graduated, she worked for 2 years in Minneapolis. She went back last year to accompany us.

So it goes, my mom has an elevator pitch for each one of her children. Mine is the most boring one sadly. Usually the following conversation follows:

Stranger: Madison, Minneapolis? Where are those?
Me: They're near Chicago.
Stranger: Ahhh, Chicago, yes, yes. So, why did you go back? Isn't it nicer there?
Me: Ha... Ha... Ha... *awkward* Actually, no, I think both US and Indonesia are nice.
Mom: Well, my other children are in the states now, so she went back to be with us.
Stranger: Ah, yes, yes, of course.

Regardless where the direction of the conversation goes, my mom already has answers ready for any questions thrown to her. Any questions but one.

So, how many of your daughters have gotten married?

Bam! You can see her face expression changes from a glowing pride to a worried concern.

None yet.

Short with no explanation. So atypical of her. This translates to a code yellow for me.

Alert peyo, the forbidden topic has been touched and discussed. Be careful with what you say and do.

As if this isn't already bad enough, some of these strangers manage to hit my mom's central nerves when they start to takeover the bragging business.

Ah, I see. All of my children have gotten married. The last one got married 3 months ago. I'm so relieved now, no more burden. Now I can just relax and play with my grandchildren.

Tongue tied, my mom usually manages to mumble some insincere reply.

Ah yes... that's very nice... Congratulations.

When this happens, it only translates to one thing for me.

CODE RED ALERT! CODE RED ALERT! Stay away from the dangerous object. Keep a safe distance until danger has subsided. This may take 3-7 days, depending on the level of radiation. Do not attempt to trigger anything that may cause unwanted reaction and extended regrets.

So anyway, it seems that, no matter who you are, through the lens of Chinese Indonesian community, the only thing that matters is your marriage status.

If you're married, you're a worthy human being. If you're still single, well Missy, you're nothing but a worthless junk.

Such is the hard case of life.

A story about a boy and a girl

There was a boy and there was a girl.

The girl lived in the big city and lived a colorful life, filled with jazz, dance and parties. The boy lived in a smaller city and lived a simple life, filled with true friends and endless laughter.

The boy and the girl met by the game of badminton. They played together and soon they exchanged stories and laughs together. The boy fell hard for the girl. Alas, the girl's feeling was not the same.

The girl was already fallen to another boy in the big city. She was smittened by his suave dancing skill, smooth talk, and charming personality. Not long after, they became a couple.

The boy was crushed but he couldn't let her go. He knew that the big city boy was just playing with her heart. He talked to her family and found out that they had the same concern as him.

Finally from the words of mouth, her family found out that the big city boy was courting a much older lady. A lady who was rich and prominent in the city. The family set the girl up so she would see the affair with her own eyes.

She was devastated. At that moment, her family told the boy to propose to her. She was too weak to refuse.

The boy promised to love her with all his heart and he never swayed from his promise. It was not long before the girl was touched by the love and kindness of the boy. She finally loved him with all of her heart as well.

They lived a simple and quite life. They were not rich in the material sense, but they had each others love to make their lives felt rich and complete. As time goes by, they became a father and a mother and later, a grandfather and a grandmother.

A few years ago, the girl was feeling a bit unwell. She checked herself up and found out that she had a breast cancer. After a long cry on her drive home, she made the decision not to go on a medication nor to tell her family and relatives.

You see, her husband's recent foot surgery cost a fortune and her children were not in the best financial state yet. Not only that, she was afraid that her husband would worry sick and lose his health as well.

So she kept her silence. She only broke the news to one of her colleagues at work. The colleague was sworn not to tell anyone. Around Chinese New Year this year, the colleague could no longer keep her promise and told the situation to the girl's sister.

The sister gave the news to the boy. He was furious and sad. He begged her to go on a medication but she refused. The girl became very skinny. The cancer has already spread to the bones, and later to the lung.

Throughout this time, the boy was always on her side. Fed her, bathed her, accompanied her. Sometimes he cried, but he tried to maintain a strong appearance in front of her.

One morning, she could not wake up from her sleep. The relatives swarmed by, trying to come into acceptance that the time has come for the girl to go. The Hymn for Life was playing all day long.

Later that night, the boy gained enough courage to whisper to his girl that she could leave him and the children. The priest gave her the final prayer and she passed away.

After 42 years, the boy is now without the love of his life on his side.

In my life time, never have I seen someone who loves another human being as much as my uncle loves my aunt.

Farewell my dear aunt. You will always be remembered.

The Grilled Cheese Project

Had this conversation with vion this afternoon. Why? Because we are a couple of hardworking bees, that's why.

vion: I just realized that it's hard for me to trust people 100% at work. I think I can only trust a few people, you included... unfortunately.

peyo: Nah, I think we had arguments too while we were in the same project at college. Arguments and Food! Especially... Grilled cheese! Sigh, I want one now :(

vion: Did we? As far as I remember, we argued about anything except the project itself, didn't we?

peyo: Dunno, the only thing left in my memory is just that we ate a lot of grilled cheese!

vion: You know pey, I also forget the name of the class. I just remember the grilled cheese... Grilled Cheese... Hmmm... Nyummy...

peyo: Yeah, we only remember the good important parts.

vion: Man, are we really this pathetic?

peyo: So much for paying thousands of dollars for tuition.

vion: Sigh...

peyo: Sigh...

The Moustache wins!

The moustache finally wins. But never had I expected that the governor election would be this dramatic.

I've promised on my previous post that I'll give updates on the election. So, here's what has happened in the past week:

> The quick counts from 3 independent organizations have informed that Khofifah (not Karwo, the moustache) has higher votes by 1%. Since margin error is 1%, none of these orgs dared to declare the election winner.

> Khofifah party and her supporters were overjoyed hearing this and assumed her win. The bouquet of flowers and congratulatory remarks were sent to her residency.

Karwo and his moustache were still hopeful and believed that they would win. They had nasi tumpeng to celebrate. I like nasi tumpeng, especially the perkedel. Bik Yah makes wickedly delicious perkedel btw, which I'm going to eat tonight. Slurp.

> While waiting for the official vote count announced on November 11th, Khofifah made the headline news by throwing an accusation of vote manipulation in several regions by the Karwo side. Karwo disregarded this accusation and kept eating his nasi tumpeng.

> On November 11th, the day of the official vote count, Megawati posted ads in newspapers, requesting all of her party followers to protect the legit win of Khofifah. In other words, should Khofifah lost, she endorses her followers to go out to the streets for demonstration and some form of civil anarchy. They happened to be very good at this activity.

There's a whole lot of politics behind Megawati's strong support to Khofifah. Karwo is the candidate from Democrat Party, which happens to be SBY's party. Khofifah is the candidate from PKB party. Megawati's candidate already lost in the first round.

If Megawati wants to win East Java on the presidential election, she has no other way but to support Khofifah. Khofifah herself has announced that she will be more than happy to support Megawati on her presidential bid. Such sell out that Khofifah.

> In order to maintain safety during the vote count, the road to the hotel where the votes being counted was closed. This happens to be the artery road of Surabaya, so a lot of business was being forced to close for a full day. Traffic jam was everywhere in downtown, wasting away the precious time and gasoline of the people of Surabaya.

1300 cops and 50 soldiers were put to the streets. There were also several water canons and tanks with the biggest bullets I've ever seen ready on the street. Thankfully, no demonstration or fights between candidates supporters occurred.

I wanted so bad to be there and take some pictures, but I have to work and Bik Yah and my mom would lock me out of the house if I really went.

> So, the verdict?
The Moustache won by 60 thousands votes, a win by 0.3%.
Total invalid votes is approx. 500 thousands.
Eligible voters who didn't vote is 15 million people, which is 49% of the total eligible voters. Isn't this hilarious or what? Turns out, the people don't give a damn who becomes the governor. Ha!

> So, is this the end of it?
Unfortunately, it's not. Khofifah doesn't accept the result, and will bring her case to the court. Supposedly, according to the law, the court result should be given in two weeks time, but that has never been the case here. Let's take a moment to give props to our bureaucratic efficiency! Anyway, the governor has to be elected before the year end, so this whole election saga will have to have its end by December.

> Meanwhile, Karwo is grateful to the result and celebrate his win by shaving his moustache. Wait a minute, what?!? This glorious moustache?

Dude, I voted the moustache, not you! Now after you win, you're ditching the moustache?!?! So much for being grateful pal.

Oh well, bye bye dear moustache, you will always be remembered. R.I.P.