Saturday, July 12, 2008

Un Altro Sabato Sono Da Sola Nella Mia Camera

Così è un altro Sabato sera, io sono da sola nella mia camera. Patetico? Che cosa posso fare? Va bene. Un giorno non sarò da sola più. Credo di si.

Just finished eating 3 egg tarts. Fattening, but that's dinner. I am crazy about eggs but somehow egg tarts do not excite me much even though it can come with melting chocolate. Okay, that's uninteresting detail.

Finished reading A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earth-bound Travels in the Far East by Tiziano Terzani or Un Indovino Mi Disse in Italian. Obviously I read the English version. Bought the book in January and only finished it this week. The book is interesting, don't get me wrong. I just got sidetracked a lot. The whole idea was interesting for me. Tiziano is an Italian who worked as a journalist in Asia. One day a fortune teller in Hong Kong told him that he shouldn't fly in 1993. As a journalist living in a very dynamic Asia (looking at the past 10-20 years here you would agree that many historical things happened in our part of the world), it made it very difficult for him to travel if he couldn't fly. He had his skepticism, should he heed the warning or to dismiss it as something with no power. In the end he listened to the warning, partly as an experiment to know how he would travel around Asia and back to his country in Italia without flying. So he used trains, ships, buses, and cars. Can you imagine the logistic traveling for example from Singapore to Italy without using planes? The route involved taking a train from China across Mongolia to Russia. Interesting, no? He also used his travels to locate all the famous locals fortune tellers, shamans, lamas and learned more about them. He asked the same questions about him and got to know them, their power, and method. For me these themes are so interesting, hence why I bought the book. However the writing is not all about these traveling and fortune teller stories. He wrote about countries he visited, their histories, and his opinions. I particularly thought his writing about Singapore was so right on. I think his description about Malaysia was also so apt. Unfortunately, he didn't travel much in Indonesia because I would have loved to read his opinion on my beloved country. He also wrote about the interesting people he met, which I thought was so cool. One of which was his meeting with Khun Sa, the Burmese warlord known to the world as the opium king.

I kinda love how Tiziano viewed the world. I kinda think he's an old soul. Perhaps I am one as well because I so agree with his dislike to modernity which has destroyed the beautiful and uniqueness of traditions and cultures in this world. Everywhere has become more or less the same. All due to globalization. I have to admit though that I am part of that generation who are not hanging on to our own roots and traditions. I can foresee that certain tradition in my family may not be continued by me. I hope I will do them but it just seems unlikely. I wikipedia-ed Tiziano and to my dismay he had passed away 4 years ago in 2004. Would have loved to hear his opinion about this part of the world, especially Indonesia. Unfortunately he never stayed in Indonesia. Maybe he didn't find it intriguing enough. Would have loved to read what he had to say about my country, the changes that we are going through, the changes that have yet to settle. Everything is always changing in Indonesia currently. I believe certain things take time to take effect but in Indonesia sometime I think the impatience of the people or perhaps the self absorbed politicians are dismissing certain policy and effort just because nothing is improved immediately. Anyway I think Tiziano's other books are heavy but I think I should try getting and reading them. They will truly be enriching because he's really such an insightful person.

Didn't do anything of particular interest this week. Missed a wedding today. Really didn't feel like going. I totally preferred to go to my class. Was late though I did try to be early. Had a good morning sessions with them. S e K hanno raccontato la loro esperienza in Italia. Anna Maria ha detto, "devi andare". Si ma come? Vorrei andare tanto, tutto Italia. Ma come, da sola? Aspetto Dio darmi l'opportunita, aspetto per un tempo giusto. Un giorno credo di avere l'opportunita visitare Italia.

Anyways, been having movies in the classes. Learning about the famous Italian comics. So far we had Totò and Paolo Villagio's Fantozzi. The Totò's movie which we watched was Miseria e Nobiltà which featured the young Sofia Loren. I loved this movie more than Fantozzi and man how I can talk more about how I love it in English rather than in Italian. Anna Maria kindly gave us a transcript of a famous scene from the movie. When I was watching it, I didn't understand all the thing word by word but reading the transcript, I thought a line that Totò said was brilliant. This was a scene when Totò who worked as a writer for illiterate people met with one particular illiterate man, Cafone. Totò ha detto, "Dungue. Lei è ignorante?". Cafone ha detto, "Io? Si". Poi Totò ha detto, "Bravo, bravo. Viva l'ignoranza! Tutti così dovrebbero essere". Okay translation for you, so Totò asked Cafone the illiterate man, "So you are ignorant?". The man said yes. Then Totò said, "Bravo, bravo. Viva ignorance! Everyone should be like that". I love it, love it so much Today we had Roberto Benigni, famous for La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful). We did Johnny Stecchino today but didn't finish it because Anna Maria is splitting the movie for 2 sessions. Watching parts of Jhonny Stecchino, I thought Benigni is amazing. I particularly love the way he involved down syndrome people in his story. He is a good actor as well, very very good acting. I think I should really watch more Italian movies, no more Fantozzi though. I just don't enjoy slapstick comedy, mi dispiace. I love how our discussions now is involving something which I truly enjoy, movies. I hope we can do more of this. I do have to say the discussions parts do play a big role, unfortunately all of us have punctuality issue which cause us to lose much time and hinder us in doing proper exchange of ideas.

On other news. Plans are in motion for my trip with my good friend Dewi. She's coming here at the end of the month. I wonder if I should ask her to bring me a copy of Machi's book. Still thinking if I really want it. I'm afraid reading it will make me depressed. Less than 2 weeks to go, I should get ready. 2 weeks, darn! I wonder if I can get myself well prepared. So so excited about this. The success of the trip will surely be a good morale boost for me.

Allora, buona notte amici!

:) eKa @ 9:18:00 PM •