So yesterday was my last jobless day. Oh wait a minute, that was not quite true. I was still supposed to be working for EF English First Tegal. But anyway, it was my last free day and I was inclined to have the maximum fun as much as possible. (Though I'll still feel like I'm on holiday anyway for the next two weeks. Since now I'm staying at Panorama Cottages -- where my office is -- for free while my Italian employer and his fiance are going away in Gili Trawangan for 2 weeks. And I am still on my training period for these two to four first weeks so I'll be working only until lunch time.)

Yes, you read it right. I'm on the training period. No matter how experienced I am in teaching or graphic-designing, I am a new-born baby in journalism.It is still 07:29 in the morning now, though. So I haven't figured out yet how exciting or how boring the new job will be. I'll know it in 2 hours. Fabio's ex-assistant will do the training.

Anyways, I spent my last weekend with Pam and Felix most of the time. It is a good thing to have to distract my mind from thinking about the guys who have passed my way these past few weeks. It still feels weird to adjust myself to a different state of mind and situation in almost every week. And right now, it feels weird not to see Mark around. I wouldn't say that everything always went smoothly when he was here. But I wouldn't say that it was bad at all, either.

Oh well, let's get to the point of this post. I had quite some fun this weekend. Friday I took Mark to the airport and byed him. I directly went back to Seminyak to Fabio's place with all my suitcase and other smaller bags. He and Inga (his fiance) had waited for me there. In overall, I quite like the small room in the attic that I am staying now. It's actually Fabio's personal gym, but Inga had turned it to be a more comfortable place with some well-designed lamps and a basic mattrass and pillow. They left for Gili the next morning.

Saturday, I met Felix and had a late lunch with him. He looked and sounded troubled, though. Apparently there were some problems with his girlfriend, which surprisingly had something to do with me! Strange. I don't feel I know the girlfriend that well to be one of the causes of the problems. I only met her twice and she seemed to be OKAY all the time. Anyway, that was his problem to solve. I was all ears, though.

Later on, Felix and I went to Mc. Donald's Kuta to wait for Mariza and her boyfriend to come. I needed to give her her flashdisk back. She didn't recognise Felix at first (long term memory loss?). Then Pam joined us, too. So yes, it was quite a crowd.

In the evening, after Mariza and her boyfriend left, Pam, Felix and I went for another meal (it was really killing me to eat so much in a day. Cause oh! I ordered another late lunch at Mc D too!). We went to this cool place on Oberoy street (not sure if it's the right spelling but it sounds like that) to a Morrocan restaurant that was featured on TV the other day. The prices were high, but they matched the taste of the food and the surrounding, I think. There were also belly dancers, with whom Pam was practising the dance! Pretty fun..

Sunday morning Pam and I were looking at some places that rented motorbikes. To our surprise, most of them had no available motorbikes. While it's actually the beginning of the low season! We found one finally for Rp 35,000 (is it a bit overpriced for a low season?) and headed to Nusa Dua. I was going to teach Pam to ride this motorbike.

I refused to sit in the back of the motorcycle and instead watched and instructed Pam to do this and that for her first lesson. She was very nervous at first, but she felt more comfortable later. I could see her excitement every time she made a progress. I have to say it was a pretty good first attempt of her, considering she can't even ride a bicycle very well!

We went to Ubud in the afternoon/evening. I met Felix' other friends -- Yuki and Ina from Jakarta, who just happened to have a vacation in Bali now, and Yuki's Australian friend, Mark. YES, another Mark! I can't believe how uncreative these parents are when it comes to giving a baby a name! I definitely won't call my son Mark later.

This Mark, however, speaks Indonesian so very well. He's funny, too. Everyone enjoyed everyone's presence and though at the beginning of the dance show I felt so sleepy and tired (there were speeches for the whole first 2 hours! and I did indeed sleep on Pam's shoulder!), the dances were pretty nice. They had to be. All this performance was conducted by Guruh Soekarno Putra, the son of former first Indonesian president. That explained why the ticket was so expensive. Gotta thank Felix for the treat, though. :) Dank je wel, Meneer!

Guruh Soekarno Putra

Balinese dancer

A bit about the other people... Yuki laughs all the time. A sweet personality she has. The laughs were in a good proportion, as in they more like contagious than annoying. So that was good. She works at ABN AMRO Bank Jakarta. While Ina is amazing.. Being 37 she is now, single, free, very well-educated and friendly, I could understand why Felix had a huge crush on her a few years back! That also explained why Indah, Felix's girlfriend wouldn't want to come with us to the dance.

It was a good evening. But they dropped me back to Panorama pretty late, too. I was tired but it was a good tired. What a way to end a vacation. :)

7:09 am

reading: The Runaway Jury - John Grisham

OK, after vacationing in Lombok and Bali for 2 weeks, I went back to Surabaya on the sixth of September, to be there for Veve's wedding and take the pictures. I was in a rather bad mood to leave Bali, but promise is a promise. I had to go home.

It was fun to meet old acquaintances, friends and ex-workmates again after a while. A reunion, indeed. My ex-boss (Vera) and ex-colleagues at Excellogix were there. Vera even pulled my hair to make sure that it was real. She and the others always knew me as a short-haired person so they were pretty amazed that I grew my hair this long. Not surprising, I am still amazed myself everytime I see my own hair in the mirror every morning. They also made a useless comment about how weird it was for a photographer to wear sexy skirt while holding a huge heavy camera (I was using Nyo's -- oops, Lusida's -- camera). Shut up, guys. This is to prove that lady photographers can also look nice at the same time they try to make great photographs.

Then there was Lilik, a senior at Uni. I haven't seen her for ages, not that I cared that much. But it was cool to catch up with someone you almost forgot that you knew her. (haha.. Nyo, don't tell her that I said that!) Anyway, she is the Director of Studies at EFN Jember. So, in that precious supposed-to-be joyful time, we were comparing EFN Tegal and Jember, the books each school used, how many teachers and admin staff were hired, etc. Weird.

Anyway, back to the focus of this post. This wedding somewhat touched me. I followed the bride, Veve, from early morning to the late night. She looked so happy and comfortable (at least in the morning and early afternoon), and Hendry did, too! I have never seen him so smiley and excited. His unexpressive face suddenly changed to a brighter childlike one. It's amazing how such an event could change someone, huh? And still a lot of people in this fragile world think that marriage is only about a signed piece of paper.

Alright, I'm saying this not to make Hendry embarrassed, but this is the most important part of this post's issue. The wedding at the church was beautiful. Especially when the bride and the bridegroom had to declare their vows. Hendry went first. And to everyone's amazement, he was crying while he was struggling to say each word clearly. Veve was busy wiping off his tears with tissue. And after a rather long while, he managed to finish it. I eventually looked around and saw a lot of people in the church, women especially, cry with Hendry. I also realised that I was holding back a heavy amount of tears in my eyes. I swear they almost fell down my cheeks when the melancholy feeling was suddenly forced to change to a bewilderment. How was it not? It was Veve's turn to declare her vow and guess what she was doing... She was laughing out loud all the way when saying the pledge. She obviously had the same difficulty with Hendry to finish the vow, but with a completely different reaction. Again, I observed the other people in the church, and though they looked confused at first, they changed their frowns upside down and smiled with Veve in happiness.

It was just so beautiful. Made me think as well. Will I ever get the rare chance to experience such an ideal lovely wedding? Honestly, I am doubting it. Being twenty eight now, more experienced and bitter, I've lost a huge percentage of faith in true love and relationship. It needs two people to work on a lovelife. Will I be lucky enough to find one who will love me and be committed as much as I do?

8:30 am

Are you superstitious?

I want to claim I am not, but the fact is I am sometimes. And as long as I can accept weird things that happen in everyday's life, that'll just go fine with me.

But there's something disturbing lately.

I always woke up at the same time.. 05:05. Three days in a row now. Could there be any meaning of it?
I happened to talk to Mark recently and he said it was nothing to worry about. He said it was just our biorythm and subconscous. Is it?
It could also be, he continued, a sign of our lucky number. Well... five is never my lucky number. Should it change now?

Why do I have a feeling it has something to do with a natural disaster?

7:06 pm

First of all, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!

Second of all, I celebrated the independence day a little bit differently today. Last year I went to the town square to take pictures of the drum bands and the flag ceremony and all the competitions held in Tegal. This year.. I mean this morning, I retreated myself and enjoyed more time taking it easy.

I did still take pictures. I had this vision to make pictures in whities. So I asked Ayu to wear her white clothing and while she was doing that, I decided to add a little complication on my look. I wanted to curl my hair, again, as proven from the last time I did it, I looked quite splendid!

Well, I came to Ayu's room after washing my hair and borrowed her Phillips Hairdryer. I put some gel on my hair and started hair drying when suddenly its fan pulled my hair and it got stuck in it!!!

I turned it off and asked Ayu to get my hair off the hairdryer but she failed to free me from the stupid thing. She said I should cut my hair but I said, "Hell, no I won't!"

I struggled with it for about another 10 minutes until I gave it up. I took her scissors and (weeping) cut my precious precious hair.

Now I have to go to the hairdresser on Sunday to have it redone. Huks.

When can I stop being clumsy?

7:27 pm

Listening to: India Arie

---

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