Saturday, November 05, 2011

The Very Long Post on a Saturday

Hello peeps. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or you can just leave half way, whenever it gets boring which I hope doesn't happen at the end of this sentence. There are just a few thoughts in my head and a few things to share. I don't really want to talk about what happened this week because now that I think of it, I cannot remember much of the things I did this week. Anyway, my week has never really been the interesting one. Let's start with today.

My morning today was rather weird. My brain was really not working that I did many stupid things even before I left my room. I am too embarrassed to tell you all of it in details but to illustrate what I mean, let me tell you my first stupidity. So this morning I was putting my contact lens and for some reason I still couldn't see after I put them in. I thought I put the left lens wrongly so I kept on taking it down and putting it in. I did that for 2-3 times before I realized that I had already put my left lens and the lens that I stubbornly tried to put into my left eye is actually for my right eye. I cannot comment on this stupidity. I don't know if anybody has ever been as stupid as me. I think there is someone out there in this world who had absent mindedly done the same. So that's that and it just seemed one wrong thing after another. It really made me wonder how my day was going to be but french class today was rather uneventful.

Now we have Mr. F. Our first class with him was last week. It was slightly overwhelming last week. You would think that Mr. C's regime would have made us well prepared ... well he did prepare us well. It's just Mr. F started last week with shooting questions to each of us. It was simple questions like introducing yourself and giving opinion on simple things but the speed that it happened made us really sit straight and start preparing our words as the people before us was questioned. He was like questioning me if I'm javanese. I said nope, I was born and raised in Jakarta and he still continued asking if my parents are javanese. It must be my big wonderful eyes!!! I told him that mom and dad are from Bangka. I wonder if he knows where that is. It's really a different class with Mr. F now. His topic is not as heavy as Mr. C and yet it doesn't necessarily make us be more chatty in class. He did ask us to speak up but for some reason I felt people were more quiet. It's surprising that lighter topics make us more speechless than discussing England's riot or 911 for example. Mr. F also always asks us to write which is good but again the topic was pretty light. He was telling me that I did really really good and today he told me I'm in a good level. Last week I told him, really?!?! Because Mr. C is really difficult. He just nodded. My statement is true though. I think Mr. C would think what I wrote these past 2 weeks is not even worth commenting :P It is really strange. I've written it before that Mr. C looks so harmless and yet he could be so deadly and tough. Mr. F looks kinda scary for me and yet he's really generous with the praises. He was rolling it out to everyone when he marked our works. Everyone is great. He also speaks english pretty often and he is okay when we (or mostly I) speak english. It actually made me feel really good because there were many times last time that Mr. C had to say, okay Eka stop, no no no! :( I don't know though if this lighter lenient approach will be good for us in the long run. I felt good not being reprimanded for speaking english but the fact remains that I spoke english or horribly broken french when I should be speaking or putting more effort and control in french. So that's class so far. I'm not coming next week because I'm going home this Thursday.

Ah home. I really look forward to go home however it's such a short trip and the reason for this is Dewi's wedding next Saturday. I'm not really looking forward for the wedding because it's gonna be a whole day thingy and I have to dress up and I'm not loving inches of make-up on my face and a whole can of hairspray in my hair to make them look dead stiff. However it's a once in a lifetime event and true sisters is always there for their soul sisters, right? I just hope that when the time comes for me to get married whenever it is or most importantly wherever it is, they will come to my wedding. Anyways, I think I will only have 2 full days spent with my family and that's not enough time to catch up with mom :( At this point I don't know if it's because I'm just missing home so much or just need to get Singapore off my system but I just really want to go home asap. It can also be because of the blogs I've been reading make me miss Indonesia quite a whole lot.

You see, in my boredom I had to find things to entertain myself. It started with googling for Italian or French blog entry about trips to Indonesia. I wanted to improve my language skills hence the topic. I did stumble on some interesting thing, for example an Italian wrote this about Monas, un grande obelisco che si trova nel centro di una piazza enorme. It means, a big obelisk which one can find in the center of an enormous square. It really got me laughing because I never see it that way. It's really interesting to see your country in the eyes of foreigners. More googling led me to blogs from American Peace Corps volunteers. You can google more about peace corps yourself but basically what happens is, there are a group of Americans being dropped into villages in east Java to teach english at the local schools for 2 years. I think they are all encouraged to blog about their experience. They are living with the locals while they are there and all of them go to different villages. I'm Indonesian and I found it to be scary and overwhelming. I don't know if I can do it. If I tell my parents I want to do this kinda thing, I'm pretty sure they're going to object. I think some of them even have to teach in a madrasah, which is an islamic school. I will feel so self conscious knowing I am the only non-muslim in a school or a village of muslims for that matter and they are American! However it seemed people have been treating them well and they have embraced it all with much eagerness. I haven't read all the blogs yet but from the few that I read, the writers even voluntarily fast too during the fasting month just because they wanted to try it or simply to blend more with the community. I think they are pretty awesome.

What I really like and what got me laughing most of the time reading the blogs are their first impression of Indonesia, Java, and all the things that they have to get used too. Again I haven't read all, but from the few I read, the similar things they wrote are like about their briefing in which the issue of using squat toilet was discussed in great details :D They also wrote about eating rice everyday and tempe is always there as well in every meal (this was rather surprising to me, maybe because it's Java). None of them have written about Indomie so far and I found that to be very surprising, since it's one of our national food :P They talked about how their host parents will always pile more food in their plates and ask them to eat more. One girl wrote about the host parent asking her to take a nap. It's very funny and it does sound silly but it's Indonesian alright. Which Indonesian has never been asked to eat more or to take a nap? :D I cannot list all the things that made me giggle but things they wrote like having to take a shower using a pail did make it to one of my lunch conversation this week. It becomes really funny when you realize how something so normal to us is able to make someone else stumped. Someone asked one of the girl if she would bring a gun. I almost burst laughing. Indonesia's crime rate is not necessarily low but crime with gun is almost unheard of. I guess the prefered weapon of choice is the old reliable axe or other sharp things or of course the favorite bomb by muslim extremists. So anyway, I'm glad there are these blogs for me to pour over, I hope they will write often. I have to comment on one other thing. I actually watched a speech one of them made in Indonesian after they finished their 3 months training or something before starting the real thing. I have to comment that the guy's Indonesian is so awesome considering 3 months prior he didn't speak Indonesian! I suppose the Indonesian teachers had a hand in helping preparing the speech but his pronunciation which included the standard islamic greeting in arabic was spot on. However I still got a bit of a giggle because he spoke with a Javanese accent. It's so funny for me and I guess that boy doesn't even realize he's not sounding the standard Indonesian. But still I think it's cool that he can have a javanese accent which got me thinking. I guess the guy was one of the best one in the Indonesian class that he was chosen to make the speech but I wonder if he's also so talented to be able to hear clearly how things are pronounced and be able to emulate it. I for one, feel that I am kinda bad at this hence when Mr. C used to break into impromptu phonetic session, I felt pretty tortured. So that's one of the most interesting thing this week.

Movie of this week was Footloose, the reboot, which I watched alone this evening. It was horrible. The storyline was weak. I don't know if it's better or worse than the original one because I never watch the original one. I was only 2 when that movie came out. This 2011 was really bad. I don't even think the dancing was cool. Seeing the dancing, I am thinking Harry Shum Jr will be so much cooler in those scenes. Nice comments that I can make about the movie is so superficial, like the main boy is handsome. I found myself liking the sidekick more though, even though he's not as handsome. I guess character will always be a bigger draw than look. The sidekick is this goofy funny guy, and so he's more interesting to watch. So that's that, I'm not gonna write more about this movie.

Alone is quite the word I have a lot in my head today. This week brought to me moments when I was alone which I actually like and moments when I was alone which made me feel pretty lonely :( In the face of the loneliness, I just have to tell myself, being alone is a fact Eka and being with someone or with people is a blessing, luck, opportunity, hope or perhaps at time despair :P You can deal with the fact and with the rest you can only hope. So with the fact that I am alone, I tell myself to embrace the fact and just be happy that you can do things on your own. So after feeling quite alone today, I felt really good at the slightest thing. Like when the auntie who got me my lunch commented that she hasn't seen me for some time. She's nice and she knows exactly what I normally choose. Also the auntie who gave me my movie ticket today also made me feel warm and fuzzy just because she said enjoy your evening.

Although it didn't actually make me much happier but my Max's dosage for the day did get me laughing a bit. Max is trying this new thing to shock me everyday. Yesterday was a good one, he was hiding behind the door and suddenly just screamed boo! He almost gave me a heart attack and yet it did make us laugh (me less, he more). Due to that very successful attempt, he decided to make it an everyday event thing. Obviously I am not liking this much, simply because I really believe my heart is not that strong and I don't want to accidentally drop my dinner especially if there are liquid inside it. Today he tried again. Confidently he chose the same spot as yesterday. Me, who we agreed has become paranoid, started looking for signs and I spotted him behind the door and I told him, I can see you!!! It felt good to ruin his plan but this surely will make him be more determined to try more things.

So this week I had the chance to have quite a long talk with him which helped me to see things in a different perspective on the whole relationship thing between him and his aunt. Geez, I hope the aunt is not gonna stumble into this blog. So the 15-year old Max apparently has been going to clubs, though in his defence, it's only been twice since he came here. The thing is, he's 15. So how on earth did he manage to go inside Butter Factory? The answer is, using a common marker the boy turned 95 in his french id into 89. It wasn't even a neat work and yet the people at the club let him go in. I can only sigh. Maybe it's because I am an Indonesian who's been raised in a rather strict Indonesian family in regard with this kinda thing but I really against him going to clubs. I know for sure his aunt too because I've heard her complaining on the phone with this boy's mother and all of the sudden the times when she caned this boy make sense. That's also exactly what my parents would have done if we had done something as bad as this. Then this boy brought the argument of it's all being so normal back in France and he even drank more back there. He argued that right now it's like asking him to be a horse when he's a zebra. Well he didn't say that exactly, it's just my analogy of what his point is. I got it. I see his points and I told him that's why it's rather hard to comment on this. However the fact that he's doing this illegal things behind his aunt's back is just so wrong and now he has even made me promise not to tell his aunt. Well, I am no Sheldon Cooper with secret but all this information do get me tormented a bit. By law of non involvement that my mom imposed in me in relation to these people, I do kinda have to do what this boy asked of me as well as not trying to tell him to do anything even though I disagree truly with what he's doing. It's very mind opening hearing him telling me that his french friends now think he lives a boring life here while in my eyes he's already living quite a destructive life. Imagine having to raise children with someone with such different cultural perception like this whole Asian European way of thinking.

Maybe I am being too dramatic especially as he pointed that he only clubbed once in 2 months now but I am just really really strongly against him hanging out with all these older people and doing stuff he shouldn't be doing just yet. I asked him why he just doesn't hang out with people his age. He said because people his age are just wasting their time playing games. Point taken. Still, it doesn't really warrant him to be clubbing and all right? Again maybe it's the Asian thinking, or the Indonesian way of thinking, or just me thinking based on how I was raised and what is expected of me when I was young. I told him as Asian, we like structure. Maybe I don't explain that clearly to him but it seemed he gets it. I think as Asian or again perhaps as Indonesian, it's important that things are in its place, people are within their boundary, doing things that they suppose to be doing at the time they should be doing it as dictated by the norms that have guided generations before us. Westerners are perhaps more liberal (for lack of a better word). I am pretty certain the majority of Asians who find their kids clubbing at the age of 15 will give hell to the kid when perhaps the westerners's punishment (if any) will be less severe. Some may argue with me on this but really seriously think about it, canes and belts will most probably be on the hands of the Asian parents. Maybe this is disturbing, but I don't see anything wrong with the Asian's reaction. The way I see it, Singapore highlights the situation even better. If parents fail to discipline the kids themselves, one day it might be the Singapore government who cane them. So it's all quite understandable.

Another topic which brought a lot of discussion was when he told me he's meeting a girl for dinner. I asked him, oouh is it a date? He was like, why do you all do this? Why do you all have to think it's a date. Can't a boy and girl just as friends go out together. Of course they can, I say. Apparently he asked a girl if she would like to meet up with him and the girl asked him something along the line of if he trying to date her and that made him really frustrated. He said back in France he could say I love you and I miss you to all his friends who are girls and noone will think anything out of the ordinary. I told him, it's again the whole Asian thingy. We don't say I love you (often). Maybe we should but we just don't and I told him to be more careful in navigating this. Unfortunately I don't think I explain my point well here. Perhaps because my point is wrong. This is the way I see it, of course a guy and a girl can go out together just as friends. However when you just meet someone for a few times and haven't actually talked much to each other, it's still not a long enough time to ask someone if they want to hang out just the two of us without one of the other party thinking if there's something else going on. Yeah, I agree that one shouldn't read much into this kinda thing. But seriously, you meet someone for 2-3 times and in that 2-3 times you were in a group. Then suddenly you just choose a person of the opposite sex from that group and ask the person if you want to hang out. Why do you that? Choose that one person? He said because I like her. There you go, the word "like". He then retracted by saying like as in the normal like, not "like". I told him, I get that it could be that way but what if the girl thinks the other way. So anyways, it seems girls are throwing themselves to him. He said just by one comment in FB to a friend, 4 other girls of this friend suddenly asked to be his friend in FB and started sending him messages. I asked him, and you don't feel cheap that they only like you because you're half french? If you were an average Chinese Singaporean boy, you wouldn't get this much attention. I don't think he gets me or he just likes being cheap.

Today this boy was like asking my opinion on how his body looks. Oh God, you know these day I just try my best to be cool and I repeat to myself "it's french", each time this 15-year old, who is taller than me, walks around in his short boxer. So anyway, he asked me to comment on his body and I told him why he cared so much. Apparently he has self confident issue because he used to feel fat when he had to go to swimming pool so now he's trying to sculpture his body. The fact that he's telling me that made me feel how crazy the world is that he has to feel that way. I'm not saying that I am super confident with my body. My problem is I have issue with exposing much skin but I guess that's a good issue to have :P My point is if your body size is not extremely outside the normal range, just be happy and be confident with your body. I found myself telling this boy "who cares" a lot. On many things we talked about, I will often be screaming that line.

I'm tired now. I didn't take a nap today. I feel like I still haven't said all the things I want to say but this post is already very long and I'm really tired. So good night peeps. Hmm ... I would like to specifically say, buonanotte amore, mi manchi tanto e veramente spero che posso parlare con te, spero che sia presto, per favore Dio?

:) eKa @ 9:18:00 PM •