Friday, August 23, 2019

Home in August

August, the only good thing that happened so far or at least the time when I was most unrattled and somewhat happy was when I went home during the long weekend. I practically didn't do much. The goal was to enjoy as much TV as possible. I did go to the mall with mom and met up with an aunt and uncle. The anti social me wasn't feeling an evening out with the good friends, but somehow in that mall trip I met the mom of one of my good friend, Dewi. My mom was the one who noticed her first. Met her big family in fact, sans Dewi because she apparently was travelling with friends at work for the weekend. So I met her kids and when I kissed the youngest goodbye, he smiled and that made my heart smile too. It was lucky he didn't cry seeing a strange lady charging at him and planting kisses :D I was a bit confused seeing him walking, because the last time I saw him, he was kinda new.

It was good to be in Jakarta. I do have to say I saw something disappointing. August is the month of Indonesia's independence. All through my life, it's like when it's August, raise your flag up, but there in my street, not many people were raising their flags. I commented to mom, what the hell was going on with our neighbours. Our house had a small kinda pitiful flag, but at least the flag was up. Pretty much the people who put up the flags are like the old timers, the neighbours who have stayed there even before I was born. It was totally disappointing and even more disappointing when on our way to the mall, we saw very few flags were up. Shocking and very very sad. It's not even hard to get flags and bamboo poles. I saw 2 people selling them when I was there, one of them was even going round in his cart selling these. As an Indonesian, I think the flag and a bamboo pole is just something that you have to have in your house. I don't know how long this has been going on since I can't remember the last time I was home in August. Indonesians or at least Indonesians in my part of West Jakarta need to do better :(

In light of other things in Indonesia, putting out flag seems to be so trivial. These days the news have been about the conflict with the Papuans. The Papuans are asked to be magnanimous and forgiving, at which point I'm rolling my eyes. Really there's a certain group of people in Indonesia who always think that they're the superior ones. They're actually the intolerant one and yet every time they did something stupid and hurt the minorities, we're the one who have to be forgiving. How come there's no consequence for them and they can go on ruining the country? Will things change for Papua after what happened, I hope so but looking at past track records, I think we haven't do them justice. Another news that got me thinking was about the president's plan to move the capital. He has his reasons about Jakarta being unsustainable anymore and how we really need to build the Indonesia outside Java. I disagree with this plan though I don't know if there's any way we can make Jakarta better especially with the useless governor we are currently having. The president's plan is to move to Kalimantan. He has a budget in mind, I think the budget might be better used to protect or perhaps expand forest areas. With the news about fires in the Amazon, we really need to have more forest.

Anyways I only spent a very short time home, but when coming back here I was like disoriented. It felt like I just experienced something wondrous and there it was life chugging along in its mundane way not caring or knowing the wonderful thing I had. Life was just so keen to go back irritating me. It took me around 2 hours upon landing in Singapore to realize how I really want all this to be over. Another thing that I realized about me recently is how angry I am. I'm pissed about so many things and these days I don't even really try to control myself anymore. I curse more, I slam things, I really want to throw things, but luckily I haven't done that. I wonder how far this will escalate. Because I'm angry, it also means I can't forgive. It's like if I could torch the earth like Daenerys, I would. Yeah it's bad, even worse I think my anger is also to God, it's like God, what?!? why?!? I still pray and plead with Him though. Will this ever be over? How would the end be?

:) eKa @ 9:57:00 PM •