Listening to: India Arie

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So.. weekends after Stephen left Tegal seemed a bit dull. But I tried to make it as fun as possible.

The first weekend was at the end of the month of July. I couldn't really think of fun moments since that was supposed to be an emotional one. Ernie was leaving, for good maybe, to Malaysia. She was very busy packing and when she was not, she'd come by my room and we'd have the reminiscence of all the cool, stupid and crazy things we did in Tegal in the past 16 months (for Tegal standard, of course). We had a few lunches and dinners together and had fun teasing each other. So as said, it should have been a quite emotional moment for I might not be seeing her for some time now. But there was absolutely no room for sadness and being all melancholy about it. When you saw Ern's happy face, you couldn't help but feeling happy for her cause she finally was going for a better life and future.

Right, now the second weekend. TransTV was showing Harry Potter's sequence movies during the school holidays last month. I watched the first two (or three?) with Ayu and I found out that she also enjoyed the movie. The other day we also knew that Ebi, a new teacher here, loves Harry Potter, too. So we decided to go to Semarang to watch the newest HP movie (another point why living in Tegal shucks! We have to spend so much time, energy and money just to watch a movie)!

Anyway, we wanted to be adventurous by taking the third class train instead of the first or second ones, or buses. It cost us only Rp 16,000 for the three or four-hour ride and we arrived in Semarang in time for the movie. Ayu and I were lucky to get seats (we actually diplomatically "stole" others' seats but since the owner was a guy, he gave away his seats in order that the girls (we) wouldn't have to suffer sitting on the floor of the train like him and Ebi.

The priviledge of being a girl. Hihi..

In short, we had fun. The movie was cool, though not as dramatic as the previous one when Cedric Diggory was killed by Voldermort (Could you believe that I eventually cried when it happened?). And Daniel Radcliffe is not as cute as when he was younger. :P

Ebi was such a great fun, too! He's still 25, but he acts like a fifteen and a villager from somewhere.

There was this one time when we took a taxi and he sat beside the driver. He wanted to push his chair back and lean it a little so he could relax. But he didn't know how to do it! When the driver gave him the instruction, he got his chair pushed back all the way to the very far back and shocked me to death when it hit me in the back seat and trapped me there. Everyone was laughing, including him... until I told him to fix the chair so I could move again. He showed an embarrassed look and said, "How can I get it back?"

Oh. My. God.

I couldn't believe that this was the very same guy who dated a beautiful 10-year-older American woman!

Third weekend (last weekend) was a rather long holiday for EF Tegal standard. Saturday was a national holiday and though I didn't plan to go anywhere at first to save some cash for a better use in my real long vacation 2 weeks later, Ayu declared that she was going to spend her weekend in Cikampek and Jakarta.

Now I was not going to spend the whole 2 days off alone in Tegal. Ernie's gone and also Mba' Minda (forcefully asked, I suppose), that made Ayu my only housemate now. So I made an instant decision to go home.

I finished my classes at 20:40 (thank you very much to EF for giving me a regular 3-hour private conversation class) and I quickly packed a few things that I'd like to bring to Surabaya. Ayu rushed me off, afraid that I would miss the train. I told her to relax. It's always late anyway. So it was... an hour late. Hehehe... Not very surprising.

Anyway, I survived the 9-hour journey after being hollered by a 30-something-year-old guy who was sitting next to me and who kept asking for my number and somewhat "preaching" me about religion and ideas of life, love and marriage.. and how Javanese wives should obey and follow the husbands. Geezhhh...

I could have made the conversation big with my own eccentric ideas about all those stuff, but seriously... I needed my beauty sleep. I was overly tired that day at work and I didn't need another disturbance from a guy who tried to impress me with his "seemingly" educated Indonesian points of view! So at 2 o'clock in the morning when the train took a break in Semarang, I told him I was tired and sleepy and if he wouldn't mind, I'd like to rest for a while.

Mwah.

Gathering with a family when you don't actually live with them is always such a lovely thing to do. Michelle's grown up so fast. I bought her three pairs of cute clothing and I thought these clothings wouldn't last too long. The child's no longer a baby! Doh!

But she's made a big progress in her speeches. Long sentences now. She likes watching TV, as always, and her favourite phrase is of course, "Apa itu?" (What's that?) while pointing at the animals shown on NG on TV. She's soooo cute. And pretty. And clever. And adorable!

She asked me not to go back to Tegal, or if I did have to go back, I should take her with me. I said I couldn't, but I'd be back in 2 weeks. She was mad at me and didn't let me touch her until I really left. Huks.

There was no change in my sister and brother. Ita is still crazy and Michael is always nice when I'm there. He'd do anything to make me happy. Mum, too. Though making a daughter happy in my mum's perspective means to feed her with so much food as often as possible!

So yeah.. I ended up eating a lot (like 5 times a day.. man I was a freak!), sleeping a lot, talking a lot...

It was sooo nice to be home.

6:50 pm

So...

It's been a while since I wrote something about myself here (but wait a sec... have I ever written about anything else but myself? Ha!). Anyway... a lot of things have been happening... so many it feels weird to try to get back to writing (or typing in this case) here. But I'll try my best.

Alright, the last update you probably read about me was about the contract, right? I decided to stay working for EF for another year, with conditions. If you haven't read it, scroll down and read it so I don't waste a space here. :P

BUT... I seem to be changing my mind again due to the recent incident.

I got someone visiting me last weekend. Oh wait, to avoid confusion, let's start with a prehistoric story that happened 2 months ago when I was still off traveling in May.

So I met Stephen on a minibus that took us to the airport in Bangkok. I was going to Chiang Mai and he to Myanmar. During the 45-minute journey on that vehicle, I found him such a great person to talk to. Great sense of humour, great intelligence, great look (ha! yes, I didn't escape this fact, though I should hate it if he reads this post and gets all big-headed about it). Anyway, at that time, I wished I had met him earlier for I found Bangkok such a depressing place to stay for the whole 7 days I was there. But 45 minutes was still something to be grateful of, coz we exchanged email addresses and never stopped updating each other (with a lack of speed on his side, but that was not a problem at all).

Well a couple of weeks ago, he sent me an email telling me that he'd like to spend his birthday here in Tegal with me. I wanted to bang his head on the wall and slap his face (all tenderly, of course) to get him to realise that Tegal was not a place to celebrate birthdays (I never even spent my birthday here --> always escaped somewhere else, as well as next month, hehe) with its lack on beers, pubs and other entertainments. But since I couldn't do that via email, I had to be happy to provide him with just a brief explanation of Tegal negativities, hoping that he still wouldn't change his mind to come here (all selfish from my side, yes).

My wish came true. ;)

So Friday evening (last week) he came. I picked him up at the train station and brought him to my place. We didn't sleep that night, busy catching up with all the cool stories he and I had. I introduced him to Ernie and Ayu (Ernie stole his first birthday wish! grrr!) and we partied with 4 bottles of beer he brought from Jakarta. Beer in Tegal! Finally! Yay!

To make it short (which never is), we had such a great time. We played pool (he won, 3-2, he used 1 arm), Daytona car race (I won, twice!), card games (mostly he won), swimming race (he won, of course), did I miss something? A lot, I guess. But I really don’t want to give you the satisfaction of laughing at my losses.

Anyway… I like him (very much after having him stay here for almost a week). I think he likes me, too (who doesn’t? haha!) and we’re going to see each other again in Bali in August. Hooray!

BUT, let’s get back to the point of the discussion. We had a problem when he stayed at my place. I was called by the Centre Manager, Mba Minda, that he couldn’t stay another night, and he had to leave that very evening. It confused me at first for there used to be some people (guests of the residents here) who stayed over at our place, and there was never a problem. Well, if she said that it couldn’t be accepted culturally because Stephen is a man and me a woman, I might be able to accept it more easily. But the thing is… she mentioned that no other guests that had no blood relationship could be accepted to stay or even visit our rooms; be it a man or a woman… which again, a very inconsistent statement coming from her, unless you consider her maid who stays over a couple times a week has a kinship with her!
She said that we couldn’t trust any outsider to stay over for EF had so many valuable stuffs and important documents and we didn’t want our place to be spied (makes sense). But then… Is her maid exceptional or what? Don’t get me wrong, I am OK with her maid, it’s just so unfair for her to say those things while she gets to get whatever she wants to do!

So what about Rina? She planned to come to visit me on August 11th after A big persuasion from me. Does she have to stay in a hotel, too?!?!
Give us a break….
Now, it’s not that cheap to travel to Tegal from Surabaya (likewise for Stephen to travel all the way from Jakarta) and she has to stay in a hotel?! That’s ridiculous!

Minda said that this was a message from Ibu a long time ago, and she just “forgot” to tell everyone else about it. Well, if it were indeed the rule here, I wouldn’t even want to live here in the very first place! Does she think it is FUN to live at the same building as your office is? I mean come on… all the feelings you’ve got from thinking that your office is just 2 floors away! And does she think it is GREAT to handle the classes whose teacher is suddenly sick or needs to be somewhere else more important? Who else can they ask for a help to cover an abandoned class but the teachers who live in the same building???

I found it very irritating to know about this very late like this. I never liked living at EF, despite all the facilities. They may be able to buy me to live in Tegal a little bit longer with a nice salary raise. But when it concerns my precious social life, no amount of money could make me stay when I know that it only makes me depressed!

95% not gonna sign the contract! I’m glad I haven’t signed it yet!

3:38 pm

My joint blog with the crazy Grimm Brothers: Johann and Francois:

Nut and Tie

If you want to learn French or Indonesia, you should check it out. Might be useful for you. :)

8:15 pm

Change of plan. Some things happened yesterday when my boss was here and I had to make an instant decision of my contract.

These were my reasons that I gave her to quit the job:

A. I want to spend my birthday for a week in Bali in August and I do not want to take it from my paid leave + on 9 Sept I have to go to Surabaya for my friend's wedding (I'll be the photographer, so it's a job) + Mark is coming for two or three weeks in September and we'll be spending some time in Bali, so I told her it was impossible to sign another contract to break it in the middle like that for another month and a half vacation (and I JUST took my vacation);
B. I don't want to spend another boring year in this small town;
C. I was not satisfied with my salary.

Well, she made me say yes, cause:

A. She gives me the permission to take the vacation days again in Aug till Oct (that's crazy, but cool! Which company would really give its employee so many vacation days like that?),
B. She'll get me to work in her other branch in Jakarta starting from January,
C. She gives me a big salary raise.

I thought at that time I'd be completely dumb if I turned that down. So, I took it. I wasn't sure if I was taking the right decision, but things happen for a reason, right? And after talking to Rina, Felix and Mark (and mom)they all told me it was the best decision I could make at that time (flexible vacation time and the salary raise that is).
So now I'm taking it easy... More vacations to come and I'll still have a job to hold on to. I think that's quite amazing.

Though... I've also got this wicked idea to still keep looking when I'm in Bali later on. Who knows? :D

What do you think?

4:20 pm

watching: bridget jones's diary

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I've got a big attack of white hair on my head!!!!!

The other evening Ern came to my room and saw a lot of it spreaded among my other long black hair! I freaked out and asked her to weed it away. But since she: A. is impatient; B. has long fingernails; and C. is impatient; and D. is impatient, she gave up after pulling out around 5 to 7 strings of hair. She also kindly informed me that there's still so much of it.

I'm devastated.

I hate to admit the facts that:
A. I'm getting older.
B. I may be stressed out right now unconsciously (though I feel quite happy, or have I just been lying to myself?) that it grows the white hair to contrast my black one.
C. My biological clock is ticking.

Gotta do something, gotta do something. Suggest me some ideas. Maybe dying it to purple? I could be the funkiest teacher at EF! ;-)

4:00 pm

mood: busybody

Capek deeeh!!!!!

Sometimes I just get too annoyed with the way it works here. I have a private student, Gaby, and she has a class everyday from Monday to Saturday at 11 in the morning. She's going to Singapore to study in July so she wants to improve her speaking skill by having a private conversation class as often as possible. The class is due to finish this week on Saturday, but she happens to be not available on the last day cause she's going to Bali for vacation. I thought it would be postponed sometime later, but she chose to have the replacement on Thursday, which makes me have to teach her for the whole 2 hours and 40 minutes. Well, having 3 hours classes in Tegal is not an odd thing, but 3 hours teaching conversation to one single student? What topic(s) should I give her???

Anyways... it seems like Miss Aya is interested to buy my Canon camera. I do love the camera, but I desperately need some more cash right now to prevent Citibank calling me all the time (read my post about the stolen credit card). So.. I guess I'm going to have a hard time letting it go, but I'll be relieved for a while. Ah shit.

6:13 pm

reading: blink - malcolm gladwell

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So it's been a week since I was back from my travel. It felt good to be home and see family once again before going to Tegal to fulfill my promise to my boss that I would work here for another month or two after my travel. The last update about it, however, was that Ibu seemed to misunderstand my coming back here. She thought I would sign another year of contract, while I will NOT.
I love Tegal for a lot of reasons, but I just can't live here another year. No way. It's like wasting my precious youth here. I could have gone off partying somewhere in another part of Indonesia after working hard in the day time.. while in Tegal, I don't pretty much have that luxurious option. It's OKAY, of course, if I could compensate it with some short-distance traveling in the weekend. But that's not possible, either, cause Saturday is a working day!

SO the boss is coming next week, and I'll most probably have to negotiate the whole thing again. But for now, I just know that there's 85% chance of me moving to another place, Bali most likely, to get another job and a new life. So Pam and Mariza, prepare yourselves. I'm gonna bug you both for a short while until I get a job there. Hahaha!

I realise that I haven't written too much since I was back. It was just so easy to write when you're on vacation. But now back in real life, though I'm still very reachable via internet, my actions are mostly limited to opening emails and answering them, that's if I have more time before the next classes. :P I haven't been active, either, on DeviantArt or Usefilm or FN. There are just so many things to catch up, so many people to contact and so many things to do.

I'm starting to get my normal life back. I wake up every morning (at 6 normally). Early, I know. But the window in my room faces the east and the sun just shines too brightly it hurts my closed eyes. I need to get some curtains on, but I just don't wanna bother. I am not staying here too long. If it wasn't the sun -- when it gets cloudy and rainy it's just so nice to curl up in bed inside my blanket and enjoy longer sleep -- it would be Excel, Mba' Minda's 2 year-old son, who would cry so loudly in the morning. I haven't got another new cellphone since I soaked my brand new one in the pool last month, so I practically don't have an alarm clock. I have an alarm in my electronic organizer but the loudest sound it can produce is just a squeak -- which is not a very big help to wake me up. But Excel could be my alarm. Though he chooses the time when he should scream and cry to wake me up. Can't say it's too nice.

Anyway, I really like being back in Tegal and meet Ernie and the other friends. We seem to have not enough time to share our stories (Ernie just had her travel, too, for a month; and she's got "deeper" but happy stuff on her vacation). Everything is going so well for her and I'm happy for her. Sometimes I feel a little (just a little) envious, too, cause her boyfriend lives (though not too near) pretty close to her. She's definitely feeling head over toes and it's just good to see her like that.
We were talking last night and we agreed that things really happened for a reason. I was meant to move to Tegal last year (though I felt reluctant to) and she and Pam were meant it, too. The three of us WERE MEANT to meet one another, cause though not even one of us shares hardly any similarity, we fill one another perfectly well. Religious, nice, but tough Ernie; Wicked, Japanese-crazed, unique Pam; and Cool, sweet lovely me!

It's good to be friends with them, and I hope (and know) that we will always be good friends, no matter how far we live from one another in the future.

UPDATE! (after being forced to mention his name here. haha):

My dearest unmet brother, Johann Grimm, sent me a really nice book of "The Best Places to Kiss in Paris."
It was such a lovely surprise, especially when I was so worn out after traveling thinking that I might not want to travel to Thailand again. But the book encouraged me in the way that Europe was still my main travel aim. I'm working on it, darling brother. If all goes well, it should be next year. Get ready to show me those places!

7:15 pm