Friday, December 25, 2009
The Christmas Long Weekend
Hello guys, how has Christmas been treating you so far? All's good? I do hope you have a merry christmas. Mine is pretty quiet, which is not unexpected.Got naughty yesterday and took off earlier than I should have done. Was kinda a big deal for me but many people will see it as not a big deal at all. When I was on the bus, I realized how controlled I am and how I like things to follow the rule. Of course, still I like the rule to be bent my way if it benefits me, who doesn't ya? So yesterday I went to watch Avatar in 3D. Alone. Was supposed to watch it with Oshie but he decided to go home. Hope he gets the well-needed rest and encouragement from his family. Anyways, it's been a long time since I watched a movie alone. But I guess it's also been a long time since I last watched a movie. The last movie I watched was 2012 which was a month ago! When I realized that, I feel it's kinda incredible that I managed to stay away from a cinema for a month plus!
Okay let's talk about Avatar. Something must still be really wrong with me because just like 2012, after watching it I don't feel extremely excited or blown away and to think so many peple are raving about this movie. What I really like about the movie is how beautiful Pandora is. It's just an amazing world. The plants life were amazing. Cannot really say the same thing about the animals though. Although I will sum up Pandora as fluorescent on high, I still like it very very much despite that mockery I gave :P Pandora at night is amazing! Storywise, I cannot say much about Avatar. All are kinda too predictable, aren't they? Even though I don't like unhappy ending, I kinda hope the movie had an unhappy ending so that it wouldn't be too typical or Hollywood standard story. With so many imagination being poured into the world of Pandora, somehow imagination is lacking on the story. One that I thought was really strange was the fact that an alien life form will also kiss and make out and make love like human. I don't know, I somehow think that if there's alien life form out there, they wouldn't be like human at all. The Na'vi in Avatar is pretty similar like human in many ways, they sleep, eat, cry, bury the dead ones. All that is not really my kind of Alien. So anyways, as mentioned, I am not really that blown away with this movie but do watch it to see Pandora. It may not matter much whether to watch it in 3D or not. If you are not that totally excited about the movie, I think the 2D version will suffice :)
Okay nothing much to say. I woke up early today and as such I am feeling sleepy now. Merry Christmas everyone! My Christmas wish is may God have mercy on my soul. Take care all!!!
:) eKa @ 1:09:00 PM
Friday, December 18, 2009
Natale in Bianco e Nero
Si, io so che non devo scrivere il mio blog a quest'ora. Ma la verità è non sto facendo niente da circa un'ora fa. Sto facendo la mia cosa personale come cambiando le mie foto così che loro sono in bianco e nero. Ah, scrivere in Italiano è difficile. Dimentico molte cose :( Ho bisogno di cercare le parole sul dizionario. Comunque, domani avrò un piccolo esame francese. Sono pronta? Non lo so, penso di no. Sono stanca :( così stanotte voglio solo dormire presto e spero che domani tutto vada bene. Allora, ritorniamo alla terra e parliamo in Inglese :PKinda nice to be able to speak in another language, then I can write things that I don't want people who speak english to understand. Why don't I write in Indonesian, you say? I don't know. I miss speaking in Italian, I suppose.
Anyways, went to Singapore Botanical Garden after dark on Sunday with Vivy. It was my first time going there after dark. The park is large but in the dark it seems like it's even larger. Because it's dark, you can't see much, and hence kinda hard to be able to establish distance and what ahead and for directionally-challenged people like me, it got kinda frustrating to find our way around. Why were we there? Because I was curious about this Trees of The World Light Up thing that they're having. Suprisingly and luckily, Vivy was willing to accompany me :D
Basically there were a lot of christmas trees being decorated by local communities / organizations and some embassies. Kinda nice and interesting. I think they were encouraged to use recycled materials which somehow for me managed to ruin the idea of a nice comforting christmas tree. But I am just spoiled and high maintenance. So you shouldn't listen to my idiotic opinion there. Overall though, the people did become really creative and some of the trees were kinda nice :P I uploaded the pictures on flickr. There were some that I really like, like this orchid snowman and this wonderful setting.
I wanted to post some of the pictures that I didn't upload in flickr here. Then I got photoshop-crazy that I started to turn them in black and white. I kinda really love the effect (hence the word crazy). With christmas trees and christmas, you kinda like all the colours and light. With black and white pictures, all those colours are gone and yet I feel there's still a certain light and spirit captured in it. Many times I am never able to explain myself well, so if you don't understand what I mean, never mind :P By the way, is that sentence logically weird? Many times and never in the same sentence? How weird am I? Okay, okay, here you go :)
Actually, we are going to start in Orchard first. This first picture is of the decorations inside Ion's christmas tree. In case you don't know, you can get inside the christmas tree.
Then this is a section of Orchard light-up. This is the one near Tanglin Mall. I would just say it's the blue section :P
These ones are the ones from the christmas trees inside Singapore Botanical Garden.
Last one is the black and white picture of this from a different angle. In this picture, I am not liking the presence of the short lamp-post on the left. Oh well.
:) eKa @ 5:42:00 PM
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Lamentation of Being Away
I know people who I call friends who think that all I do is complain and I complain way too much, but this is my blog and I should be able to say what I want to say and screw those people who cannot be bothered to listen to me when I need to get things off my chest. I always write long sentence, don't I? It was only 1 sentence up there.Anyway, many things happened at home this week while I am here and in my life here, I have a week of nothing. Nada! So these are my lamentation of being away. Gonna start with the saddest one.
My uncle (my mom's older brother) passed away *sigh* I haven't gotten the full detail because obviously my mom is busy there. From what I heard, he fell down and became unconscious. He had an operation but he was still unconscious until in the end he didn't manage to pull it through. So that happened on Tuesday and each day from then onwards, I was dreading every sms that I got, fearing that it would be from my mom with a bad news. The message did come yesterday and there's a bit of a gloom and darkness in my world. I am not particularly close with this uncle, not that I am particularly close with any one uncle. But my mom was. It seems like they talked on the phone at least once a day. So I feel it's hard on my mom. Well honestly, I don't know how my mom is taking it. Is she composed and strong like the horse that she is or is she in total shock *sigh* Mom just said that they're flying out to Bangka tomorrow. It seems they decide to bury him there.
It's a shock and I was thinking that I have known many people who died suddenly like this. I prayed hard for this uncle simply because I didn't want my mom to be sad. But what we hoped didn't happen and my faith in God is rather shaken. It's hard to say that all is in God's plan when it seems like things are so unfair. What good things can come out from this? When someone dies so suddenly, you don't get to say goodbye. Your last moment with the person might be not a good one. So it's so unfair. My uncle had 2 children. None of them are married. When I think of my cousin getting married without having her dad around, it's heartbreaking. When I think about them having kids of their own and my uncle wouldn't be there to be proud of that, that's hard. So God kinda sucks right now and I know I shouldn't think this way. These are big moments in my family journey and the fact that I am here and not being able to go through this with my family kinda sucks and is selfish of me. It is selfish not having to go through this woe with them and I feel selfish because I feel rather glad that I don't have to see the sad faces of my mom, aunts, and uncles and hear them cry. Knowing that I feel that way in turn makes me feel bad :( Then it brings into point of how long I am going to do this? How long will I turn away from my family and friends and miss out on these moments in life. Knowing how frail life is and how sudden life can be taken away, do I really want to chase a life that will bring me further from my family? My answer is a selfish one and I DREAD the idea that one day I'm gonna regret it a lot *sigh*
Another big moment I miss this week, my cousin gave birth to her 2nd child, a baby boy. I missed out when her first child was bornt, missed out on the first birthday of that baby girl, and gonna miss out on her second birthday. When you talk about babies, you miss out a lot in a span of a year. For example, when I first saw her baby girl, she was quite a new born, she was still wrapped in cloth pretty tightly. The next time I saw her, she was already so big and learning to stand. The last time I saw her, she had already learnt how to run a bit and say some words. With me being here, I had also missed out on a lot of weddings of my friends from school. It's just so ... so make me wanna smack my head sometime! Some of them invited my mom in return and my mom was there for those moments, not me. The thing is, I went to the same school for the first 11 years of my education, so there's a lot of story and perhaps bond between these friends and isn't it nice to see how they have changed and grown from when we know them when they were silly and just kids? I wouldn't know actually since aside from a few friends, I haven't seen the rest since I always miss out on gatherings and wedding. But it would be interesting for me to see how they are now *sigh*
So speaking about friends from school. Today the school where I spent 11 years of my life had a bazaar. My friends were there. My teachers were there. To see the pictures posted by my friends in Facebook, I just can only sigh and again feel like I miss out on a lot of things :( Facebook has connected me with many friends from the school and even with my physics/biology/form teacher. When I saw them commenting on my status update, it feels really good, and feels like I still know them as they were. I hope the chance will come to me when I get to see them altogether.
This week, I had the opportunity of having lunch with a girl I got to know for only a few days now. You know, cheerful and bubbly people is kinda weird for me sometime. I remember that one lunch MarChe said, "So being gay (= happy) is a bad thing for you?" :D Well perhaps because I am so subdued so the level of energy that these people project sometime are just so overwhelming for me. Anyway so when this girl asked me for lunch, it did feel weird (since I have only spoken a few words with her) but I went anyway because she is so sweet, funny, and friendly. So this girl is 22 right and I felt that man this girl is so fresh! She being from NUS as well, I even feel that she's like the perfect poster girl for NUS. I have to say that she is so articulate and kinda wise (or perhaps naive which I will discuss later) that it's like a totally different type of species from the other early twenties that I have the opportunity of getting to know. She has a certain maturity that's kinda almost frightening for me. Perhaps since she is also able to point out my negativity spot on *sigh* I was wondering if it's the 5 years difference between me and her that makes us see things differently. She's like so positive, the type of person who speaks about reaching the top of the mountain, flying to the moon, and reaching to the dreams that we all have. She's the "yes we can" in Obama land. The difference between us in seeing things kinda make me wonder what is it that 'cause us to have different feel of life. I wonder if it's just her who still has the naivety about how things work or it's me being already broken with failures in life in the 5 years of life that I have that she doesn't. It sure is good to be able to feel positive like her and I know I was once that girl as well. I was once the girl who climbed mountain (not literally) and felt like soaring to the sky. Something has changed dramatically in me. It's kinda easy isn't it to talk about reaching out to the sky when you are on top? But when you have fallen many times when you climb a mountain, when you realize that you are not even climbing the mountain that you want, somehow those failures have damaged me quite badly. Sometime I think I am a brilliant person who should be achieving more, but most of the time I feel I am not good enough and to feel you are inadequate is so limiting. It's the dark hole I am in and regardless of what people analyze it to be, I have been in this dark hole way longer than many people think *sigh* and you know sometime I just wish people would stop telling me how wrong I have been about this whole thing and instead tell me that things will be alright *sigh*
Pretty depressing post ya? Well I wish you well peeps. Ciao!
:) eKa @ 8:20:00 PM
Saturday, December 05, 2009
of Life - 05/12/09
It's been a long while since I last wrote. Do you miss me when I don't write? Most probably you don't. So it's December now, the last month of the year. In fact we have kinda gone through the first week of December, so days are really moving to the end of the year, which will soon bring me to another year of being older. Whooaa ... not loving it. The other week, I was asking Yeni what age she is turning to in around 2 weeks. She said 30. I asked how it feels like, does she feel okay? :P She's like totally cool about it. Maybe at a certain age you just become acceptant? :P I was telling her that on my 29th birthday, I will most probably have a big bash to celebrate the last year of being in the twenties. Unfortunately, I am such a boring person so me and big party do not mesh. But I do want a whole year filled with exciting stuff though, a full year of happy and perhaps crazy adventures. I guess, I should start saving money for it :PSo how have I been? Nothing interesting really. Had a bit of flu on Thursday. Maybe if I had pushed it, I could have made it for the whole day but I really wasn't feeling it. So I decided to leave earlier and by the time I saw the doctor, I was actually sicker. The good doctor gave me a day off on Friday too. So spent yesterday in my room. Feeling okay now but just rather un-energetic. On my way back today, I really felt so tired in the bus. I don't know, maybe I actually have enough energy, it's just I didn't push myself much. Feeling quite depressed about Monday now *sigh*
So after today's session, I went for lunch with the husbandless. Ah these ladies are gonna hate me for calling them that :P It was supposed to be a bigger group but somehow it just ended up with us, the usual peeps. Lunch was at NYDC - Wheelock. I got remembered that the last and first time I was there was with Astley and some unusual combination of people. Somehow I couldn't really remember all the people who were there but some memories from that evening with Astley did come back *sigh*
Anyways, Oshie had successfully recommended me 2 things. The first one was the band Owl City which he loves because of the song Fireflies and the second one was the tv series, Glee, which he has mentioned so many times. So I got around to check out Owl City and I really really really love this band! I think the guy behind it is really talented and a good writer. From its latest album. Ocean Eyes, I first fell in love with The Bird and The Worm. This song is so loveable that it totally made my day happy and bright that Monday when I heard it. I love it, it's cute and just so lovey dovey in a quirky way :) Currently I am also in love with Vanilla Twilight. The lyrics are so sweet. The lyrics are actually kinda sad but it was so sweet that you just feel comforted with it. I love it. Totally recommending this to all of you. Kinda want to get the T-shirt too but perhaps it's not worth it to send it all the way here :(
I am currently addicted to Glee which is an American tv series about a show choir. I find this tv series to be amazingly fresh and entertaining. Love the music, love the unique loveable characters, love the witty amazing lines! If you think that this is like High School Musical, it's really not like that. After you get to know the imperfect characters in the show plus the crazy witty lines that they say, you realize that this tv series is not really for the kids. Loving it, loving it!!! I'm so gonna have a withdrawal symptom when this show goes for a break until April :(
Well, that's pretty much it about life peeps. I don't really have things to look forward to. I've just been trying to survive and make it through each day and hoping that something beautiful is gonna come my way. Take care all :)
:) eKa @ 7:14:00 PM
Saturday, November 14, 2009
2012
Eka is sleepy because she didn't have her nap today. Alright, gonna stop with the 3rd person thingy. Had a difficult time waking up this morning because my bed was in the perfect temperature *sigh* It feels rather unfair having to wake up early on a Saturday morning. I remember stupidly telling God something like I don't know what heaven looks like, but thank you God, my bed feels so heavenly. I am that silly. In the end I woke up later and was late today.Watched 2012 with Yeni today. She missed her yoga class and in the end decided that we should just watch the movie now instead of the initially planned tomorrow. It was kinda funny when we were telling people, how about watching vingt douze? and people didn't really get it. Maybe I said it wrongly :P Anyway, I wanted to watch 2012 because I love John Cusack. Unless the movie is not so interesting or a horror, I will most likely watch any movie with John Cusack in it :P Con Air was the movie where I fell in love with him :P
Watching 2012, I was racking my brain what is another movie that carries similar theme as this one, where a vessel was being made and human being and species of living things were chosen to fill the vessel so that after the doomsday was over, the world could be populated with selected species? I think there's a movie like this, no? The idea of 2012 kinda scares me. I've watched a few disaster movies but I don't recall feeling frightened with the theme they present. Many scientists have said it's very unlikely that doomsday will happen on December 2012 but if doomsday does happen the way the movie showed it, it's kinda too freaky. The special effects are actually what captivated me the most in this movie. It must feel so nice to be able to generate such a catastrophe with all the cool softwares.
Story wise, I can't say it to be amazingly cool. For an action movie there's quite a lot of drama in it, which was not necessarily good. I even feel it was slightly boring. As much as I like John Cusack, he didn't particularly stand out in this movie, or particularly adorable and likeable. If any character stood out, for me it would be Woody Harrelson who played a nutty person who was telling everyone that doomsday is coming. Overall, getting out of it, I wasn't as excited as I was about it going in. It's another doomsday movie. I don't know, maybe I am just really losing interest on a lot of things. I wonder if something will hit me, charge me, and intrigue me. Per favore Dio, per favore?
:) eKa @ 7:43:00 PM
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Merantau
Went to watch Merantau yesterday with Vivy. I went with much apprehension because afterall it's an Indonesian movie :P Seriously I wasn't planning to watch any movie until 2012 comes out. I found out about this movie because Vivy just casually mentioned it. Even then I don't think any of us give it any thought. What changed was, I saw the picture in GV website and then I read the synopsis which was so not enticing (made me roll my eyes) and then I hunted down the trailer. Saw the website, watched a behind the scene video blog and somehow got mildly interested. I asked Vivy if she wanted to watch it. Somehow she said okay maybe the cheap Tuesday was enticing as well. I can guarantee you that if she had said no, I wouldn't have been bothered to watch this. I think she wouldn't have watched it alone either.So merantau in my definition is when someone leaves his / her hometown to make a life for himself / herself in another place. In a way, you can call me as merantau in Singapore. However I got it easy here. Afterall Singapore is so harmless. Anyways Merantau the movie kinda made merantau sounds like a rite of passage which me and Vivy are doubtful if there's any community in Indonesia currently which takes merantau as a rite of passage. So anyway, it tells the story of Yuda who hailed from Padang (the place which was badly damaged by an earthquake recently) who went merantau in Jakarta. Here he met a girl with a young brother who were living the hard life. The girl was being sold to some caucasian bad guys and Yuda who is really good in silat fought all the bad guys to save the girl. See, the story is not much of a gem but really the trailer which showed the fighting scenes really attracted me. But seriously though, if this weren't an Indonesian movie, I wouldn't watch it. Action-martial-art movies which purely sell actions without an interesting storyline don't really attract me. Well to say this is a purely Indonesian movie is kinda not necessarily true because the director and writer is actually British. However it was done in Indonesia, produced by an Indonesian company, yes they are some non-Indonesians working on it but I have to say that it is very Indonesian in nature.
For the life of me, I cannot recall ever watching an Indonesian movie in a cinema. There were some good ones that I had wanted to watch but somehow it never happened. So Merantau is actually the first Indonesian movie that I watched in a cinema. The first Indonesian movie that I actually paid money to watch! So it's kinda a big deal and I am happy to tell you I was quite entertained with it. I thought it was not bad. I thought it was really really cool. Yes perhaps compared to Hollywood or Jackie Chan movies, there are many things that Merantau is lacking but to know that this was done by Indonesians in Indonesia is just so awesome. You actually feel so proud about it and feel like clapping :D The story though is imperfect. As Vivy said there were many plot holes. Me being the critical one or perhaps you can say being the nagging girl who went to watch an action movie, is going to write some comments on it. So here you go :P These comments may contain spoilers though.
1. Yuda had the same bus take him from Padang to Jakarta. Padang is in Sumatra and Jakarta is in Java. They are 2 different island. So the idea of going from Padang to Sumatra in the same bus is kinda strange for me. I don't know if this really what happens in Indonesia but it's just strange. I wonder how long it takes if people really take the whole land and water way of going from Padang to Jakarta. By the way, the scenes of where Yuda's village was, is so beautiful. I wonder if those places are affected by the earthquake.
2. The scenes in Jakarta is really so Jakarta. Oshie gave me a new word today, dichotomy. He used this to explain how Jakarta is, which is very true. I thought Merantau captured the Jakarta which belongs to the haves not really well. It was pretty authentic, if I can say. So if you're not Indonesian or from Jakarta and thinking they're doing it just for the movie, it's not really just for the movie, it's a good depiction of Jakarta.
3. Along with how Jakarta looks like, the thugs were pretty authentic as well I have to say. In Jakarta we will call these people as preman. In hollywood movies, the thugs may come across as really strong, well built guys but true to the ones in Jakarta, the thugs in Merantau are not really the best physically looking people. They could come in small short skinny sizes :P and they would really fight with steels or with a cleaver :P
4. Some of the fighting scenes as cool as they were, were kinda too dramatic. One was the one in the lift. I was actually quite excited with the fighting scene in the lift because of the small area a lift present. However the timeline is illogical. The fight was supposed to last from the 5th floor to the 14th. Yes one of the bad guy did pause the lift, but Yuda restarted it. The fight and talking after the lift was restarted was just too long. So that's pretty illogical.
5. The bad guy in the lift was in the end shot by 2 other bad guys when the lift opened. This scene was just too dramatic for me. Too many shots were fired. Too many blood going on and even after that many shots and blood, the guy still didn't die instantly!!! Didn't make sense at all. However this scene kinda reminded me of how Hongkong action movies would have done it as well. Too much drama!
6. I have to add also, no Jakartans will not call the police if there's a major fight going on in the lobby of their appartment or if they hear a lot of shooting going on. Another illogical thing :P
7. The last fighting scene was between Yuda and the 2 caucasian bad guys. One of them was actually a martial art artist who in real life trains in China. I was expecting a lot from the fight between them however the fight between them wasn't that amazing. This bad guy even had to die first :( He was kinda handsome by the way.
8. I hate the ending. I don't like unhappy ending and major spoiler here!!! *alert* Yuda in the end died! The way he died was so dramatic. It reminds me of the movie Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman's character was auditioning for a part. He played a wounded person and was asked to move to the center of the stage from the end of the stage to be more dramatic in his dying scene. Dustin Hoffman's character said it didn't make sense, if you were dying why would you walk so far, you wouldn't even have the energy to do so. That's precisely what Yuda did however!!! He walked quite far despite of the major wound he had and his dying scene was pretty long that it doesn't make sense. In real life I think one would faint before dying since he lost a lot of blood. This kinda thing gets annoying, really :P
9. Some of the lines the character said were pretty Indonesian (I feel), some of the acting were pretty Indonesian as well. What do I mean with that, hmmm ... sometime I feel Indonesian tend to get unnecessarily dramatic :P However, I thought the casts were great. Great bunch of people. Everybody did really well. I thought Iko Uwais who played the main character, Yuda, was really cool but I think I like seeing him because of the character Yuda. Yuda is such a nice guy. So even though the guy is not the most handsome guy around, you would just fall for such nice decent guy!
I think I actually still have a lot of things to say but I'm gonna stop here. I am totally recommending this to all Indonesian out there to catch it. Non-Indonesians, well I don't know if you would be as excited as me but I would be very happy if you watch it too :D I thought the movie is a really good production coming out of Indonesia :) As I said, it kinda makes me feel proud that Indonesia can come out with something like this :D
:) eKa @ 9:45:00 PM
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Of Life - 07.11.09
Hello peeps. Had a nightmare on my nap today and I really didn't like it. Aaarrghhh!!! My nightmares usually are not about monsters or death situation but about uncomfortable situations and they are so bad because of how they make me feel inside it. The feeling kinda lingered when I woke up so normally I would feel moody afterwards (not like the moody feeling hasn't been happening all the time) *sigh*Anyway today started quite weird also. You know how when you sleep, it's like the time for your brain to reboot. Well my reboot happened pretty weird this early morning. This has actually happened before. I got awoken and I didn't know where I was and what I was actually doing. I got totally disoriented. Normally then I would first realized I just got awoken from a sleep and then I tried to figure out where I was. Somehow normally I would try to think if I was in my bed in Jakarta and then I got utterly disappointed to know I was in Singapore. This morning however, I didn't get to figure that out. After the location question came, my brain somehow wanted to quickly figure out what day it is. I figured it was Saturday morning and with that information, all were cleared. I knew where I was and what will be happening. I wonder if you guys have experienced similar thing?
Anyways, I had quite a full social week. Kinda good to be meeting different people and be doing different stuff and talking different stuff. Kinda good to be spending time with people who are nice.
1) Went to watch My Sister's Keeper last Sunday with Vivy. Darn it, I cried a lot. I think this is the only movie that made me cry that much. It's like crying from start to end! I read in Wikipedia that the original story from the book differs quite greatly with the movie but I like how the movie ends. I think if it had followed the book, it would have been more depressing. Abigail Breslin was of course great. Cameron Diaz did really well too. You don't get to sense her silliness at all which normally occur in the comedies that she did. I thought the cast were really great. An emotionally draining movie but I thought it was really good.
2) Tuesday I met Oshie for dinner. The last time I saw him was actually on Christmas last year! I think he has physically changed a bit but that's the least of his changes actually. I don't know how informative and helpful I was for him during dinner :( I don't think I helped much. He's gonna go through a big change in life soon. I asked him how it felt. He said he was feeling excited about it. I kinda like that spirit in him. I hope things gonna turn out great for him which most probably will because he works so hard and I'm sure he's not gonna stop fighting. I have a stand that sometime what matter is just you work hard for whatever it is you are doing even though people don't think much of what you do because ultimately I feel it is God that you should impress. Everything that will happen will come from God or at least that's how I want it to be. I want what happen in my life to be from God. I feel sincerity in what you do is very important. Personally I just would like to kick ass in no matter what I do :P
3) Wednesday I went to watch a show by Ennio Marchetto. I got a free ticket courtesy of The Italian Cultural Institute :) I chose to take la Gioia since she took me for a ballet performance during Singapore Sun Festival. Ennio Marchetto's performance was quite funny though I found some of the jokes were pretty crude. Seriously there was one part which I thought was too crude for the conservative uptight me. The least crude but still disturbing for me was when Kermit the frog was stroking Ms. Piggy's body with the tune of Touch My Body from Mariah Carey. Err ... it was disturbing for me. There were some kids in the show. I don't know if their parents had to explain anything especially during the crudest part which I'm not gonna write. The show does make me think that there's definitely a generation gap between the youngster and the older ones. The youngster ones may wonder who were the people, who were actually Freddie Mercurie, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton and such. The older ones may wonder who were the people, who were actually people like Kanye West and Lady Gaga. I wonder if there will come a time as well when I'm not following what's happening currently. Perhaps it has happened actually.
4) Yesterday I met up with Yeni to prep her for today. Got a free dinner out of it :P I really like having her in my Saturday's engagement. I realize it's kinda really nice to have an Indonesian around. Today I see new people. It's always the case that people would just disappear slowly but I really hope the core group will stay for long. It would be kinda hard to keep doing this alone.
On other news. I have been kinda crazy with photoshop photomerge since the photoshop world event that I attended last week. Been playing with my pictures but I don't have much pictures to play with. If I had known how easy it is, I would have taken my pictures better. Unfortunately my vaio will not be able to take all the heavy work. Aarrghh ... is it possible that someone buy me a new laptop? *sigh* You can see what I have been doing here. They are totally far from perfect and I wonder if they are printed if they are any good, but so far on screen, they are kinda nice :P Some of my favourites are below. Julia Child said don't say anything you do is of no good to people. Let them figure it out by themselves. Chances are they may not, so why bring yourself down in front of them. However I am gonna comment on these pictures and maybe it will help you be more critical if you see pictures :P
This one is of Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. I really like this picture. I really like the pastel yellow and orange houses on the bridge especially since the rest of the buildings wear a light pastel colours. Not really a good composition but really with the angle I had, it's the best I have.
This one is of the Tuscan hills and vineyards. Kinda nice small but its original size kinda look not so nice on my Vaio. 
The last one, the longest yet, and most problematic is of the Hongkong skyline. This comes from pictures from different days. There's quite a difference from the part on the left and the one on the right. The right one is actually sharper than the one on the left. The shots from the different days show how different the weather were. The one on the left has clouds while the one on the right has a dark sky. Did you notice that? :P I like the colours of the reflection on the water! Very very nice!
:) eKa @ 8:46:00 PM
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Short Trip Home
Get ready peeps, it's gonna be a long post. I actually prepared some points that I wanted to talk about, can you believe it?!? There are actually some points and opinions here on some issues so maybe this post will get somewhat interesting?So last weekend I actually went home, as mentioned before. It was a short trip and this trip was totally unplanned. NanSee told me of the existence of cheap tickets from Jetstar and so we made use of it. I think she left for Jakarta today. The tickets were really cheap, it was only $35+ for a return ticket. It's like taking a taxi in Singapore. However, I am not loving taking budget airline, so I am not foreseeing doing this for my Chinese New Year trip.
Jakarta was freaking hot! Mom said it still hasn't rained yet. One of the morning this week, I googled what the temperature was and it was 34oC. It was so hot that on one of the day I was there, I decided not to go out because I couldn't take the heat. Singapore on the other hand is not so hot, we just had thunderous rain :( I hate the thunder!!! Aarrgghhh.
Anyways, so I arrived in Jakarta last Saturday evening. For Sunday mom has planned for me and my dad to fly to Bangka, which is an island where both of my parents are from. It's on the north west of Jakarta and from Singapore it's on the south east. We were there to check out my father's ill sister. I think this is the first time I had a trip with my dad alone, at least in my adult life. So the flight was at 6 am something and my cousin and aunt drove us to the aiport at 04:30 am something! Yes, it was early. What was surprising for me though was how early the Jakartans actually start their day. I could hear the moslems doing their morning prayer and I didn't recall they did that this early when I was young. The craziest was, my mom switched on the tv and at 4 am something, the tv news were already on air and it was live! That's like crazy! Because that means they are accompanying all those people that start their day early. Now that I think about it, people starting their day that early on a Sunday is pretty crazy! The aiport itself was already buzzing with activities, flights were already getting out of Jakarta and arriving in Jakarta! Can you imagine that if they arrive at 6 am something in Jakarta, they must have flown out from places like Bali and further than that at 4 am something! I really didn't expect that the flight schedule is that happening in Indonesia.
Anyways, so we arrived in Bangka. The flight was like around 50 minutes plus (visualize folks that it's located between Jakarta - Singapore). My cousin picked us up and first stop was my father's older sister (not the sick one). In my aunt's house, we went to their small garden / orchard. They have lime trees, papaya trees, and the most interesting one was a durian tree!!! I have never seen a durian tree up close and personal before so it was interesting! There were some tiny durians and I heard it can take months before it grows to its full size. What was more interesting for me was seeing durian flowers, they were white and they're not really attractive at all! I didn't even notice it at first since it blended with all the green leaves so well. If you're wondering, a durian tree doesn't smell like durian :D Oh I have to add, my aunt's garden has grass on the ground and curiously I stepped on it bare-footed and ran my foot on it and it's so smooth!!! I was thinking it's a grass carpet and it's so nice!!! It's like the nice grass that you see people often lie on :P By the way as we drove to places, I saw a lot of ilalang (I don't know the correct english word for it, see picture below, though it's not a nice picture) with all sort of flowers (if I can say that), white, yellow, deep magenta, that they looked so pretty! The magenta ones kinda reminded me of a bunch of lavenders.
There I saw my cousin's chickens running around and I think those chicken are what they called "kampung" chicken (cannot find the english word). They were quite skinny. They are not KFC fat so you really wonder how come KFC chickens are that fat. There were a lot of coconut trees. Conversation between my cousins was about chopping the coconut trees because they were leaning precariously. Apparently one tree did fell and crashed on my cousin's pig pen! Yes, I saw an actual pig, I think it's my cousin's unless it's some neighbour's which happened to wandered around his place. The first time I saw the pig, it was cooling himself in a mud near a tin mine, it was funny for me when I noticed it. Anyway, my cousins were talking about how one coconut tree was killed and my other cousin wondered if the tree was really dead like that (it's still standing although without leaves). I didn't ask how they killed a coconut tree, I was just amazed at how different our worlds are. I don't get to talk about interesting stuffs like this in my daily life! I have to add that I don't speak the local language, I can only pick up a bit. So my cousin had other trees in his front yard (if you can call it that). I don't know if people there have an actual border for their property. He has mango trees and the most interesting one for me was the cacao tree. When my dad pointed it out to me, it didn't register to me what it was, until he reiterated what it was and I stupidly proclaimed, oh a chocolate tree! Boys and girls, there's no such thing as a chocolate tree, be correct like my father and call it the cacao tree. Unfortunately I didn't see the actual fruit being opened up so I didn't know how it looks like inside but I saw some of the beans were being dried. I thought the beans looked like almond. My cousin said it takes around 35 fruits to get a kg of cacao which he can sells at Rp 22.000 per kg, that's like S$3+ per kg or around $2+ per kg. So yeah, the grower at the bottom don't really get much.
Behind the tree, there was a working mine, in which I saw 2 backhoe loaders moving the dirt around (on a Sunday peeps!). The mine is big and these 2 heavy machineries were inside a mound of dirt and it looked dangerous for me because I wonder if they could slip and fall, that would be so disastrous! I asked what does tin look like? My cousin said it's like black sand. Take note that there are no fence around this places, I think if I were to hike for a close inspection, nobody would catch me for tresspassing. I asked who own these mines, are they the government, foreign companies, or private companies. My cousin said some are actually really privately own. Like if you have money and you want to mine for tin in Bangka you can just do so! This is the part where I have issue with. I first asked how do they know where the tins are. My cousin said it's been known since the Dutch colonialized us (which they did for 350 years as we were taught in school). My dad said every plot of Bangka, if you want to do it, you can find tin. My cousin said last time during the Soeharto's era (Indonesian's 2nd president with colourful pros and cons), all the mines were owned by the government, you could not mine privately. I thought that's actually a better idea (I wonder if that makes me a socialist?). However Soeharto's era are known for its corruption so perhaps it's not a fair and just way. But when I saw all these mines being worked on with obviously not much rule and regulation, I wonder if it's a good way of doing it. I have issue with foreign companies taking things from Indonesian soil without much thoughts towards the people living there and the environmental issue, after all it's not their countries :( Like, one time I opened a Grasberg mine photo that Rista once sent me when she was working in Papua and a teacher who was sitting next to me said that the mine is not environmental friendly :( It's really about the profit for all this company. I really have issue with the environmental part of this. The mine doesn't look safe for the workers and the environmental part of it is worrying. When my father spent his childhood there, he said this area used to be filled with trees and it can lead him all the way to the sea where he once worked as a fisherman (he said this a few times but we never bother to get more details). Now this area are filled with sands!!! My cousin being the optimist nice him, said over time there will be plants again. It will take a long time but eventually grass will start to grow again and then plants *sigh* It doesn't seem to bother him even though this place is not so far from the houses. I mean if you walk, it will take you less than half an hour :( Last time Rista also said, yes, all this mines may look bad but it's already the best possible way that the mine company can do it. She works for mine companies all her life so we don't know if they're bias :P Somehow I feel better if the government take charge of these processes, I mean they are the government, they suppose to govern but with the so many things Indonesia have to deal with and since we are so big, the government do have a lot of things on their plate and government all over the world are not perfect and in the case of Indonesia we are still quite far from it *sigh*
Hmm, I guess I have written all the points that I wanted to write. I didn't take much pictures (I took like only 4!) because I didn't want to come across as this snobbish city girl putting their lives under a microscope :( There were so many interesting things but I really didn't feel comfortable taking the pictures :( My sick aunt was not looking so bad. She's old as everyone my dad's generation is, so they are plagued with sickness and they are not as strong as before. The place being a village has a lot of bugs and I know I am so spoiled but I cannot imagine living there :( So sorry!!! The place is really interesting though. There's apparently a mountain or hill nearby (which I recalled a bit from childhood memories) where my cousin found some edible mushrooms which only grow under certain condition (I have confirmed, it's not truffle). On my trip there I even managed to accompany dad to a wedding reception of dad's neighbour which was boring for me, it was for lunch and not many people came yet and I just sat there quietly :( Anyways, we went home that same day at 4 pm something. Landed in Jakarta's airport latest new terminal, T3. It's pretty nice though I did see the strangest thing. A cat was wondering about inside the terminal :P And so my days back in Indonesia were quite packed and tiring but most annoyingly HOT!!! I am praying for rain for Jakarta soon.
:) eKa @ 9:51:00 PM
Friday, October 23, 2009
Off to Rawa Kepa
Hi peeps. Not gonna write much. Actually, I shouldn't be writing at all. Gonna go home tomorrow but only for a few days. Will be back here in Singapore on Tuesday. This trip is gonna be physically heavy, I think. I'm already feeling quite tired and of no energy today, which I want to blame on the combination of drugs I took last night since I was having a bit of a flu :( Tomorrow, I still have Saturday engagement, which I don't know how I'm gonna deal with it since my brain is pretty empty right now. After which, I have to rush back and get to the airport and get on the plane. Sunday morning, I will be flying out of Jakarta. Mom said it would be at 6 am, which I don't know if it's 6 from the house or 6 the plane gonna take off. If it's 6 the plane gonna take off, I'm so gonna die having to wake up early and leave the house at 4 am something, aarrrgghh! Mom also said around 6 pm, I should be back in Jakarta. I hope I have enough energy because if not I'm gonna get so cranky :( With the so little time I have, I don't think I will be meeting any friends back home. It's okay for me. What I'm looking forward the most is to eat! Take care loves!:) eKa @ 10:11:00 PM
In the spirit of something different, hope this will make your day better :)
For certain things are not refused us, but their granting is delayed to a fitting time.
St. Augustine
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