Siang hari di depan Takashimaya

I and Soo on MBS. Low-quality picture from my phone. Thx to my stupidity of forget putting the mmc inside the camera. 

Hari yang membingungkan

Kemarin hari saya dimulai dengan….. well, buruk. Sedikit ironis sebenarnya, karena kemarin pagi itu exam terakhir dan subjeknya yang saya paling suka. Saya sudah membayangkan habis exam bakal hura-hura. Apalagi sahabat saya mengundang saya (lebih tepatnya saya maksa dia ngundang :p) ke Marina Bay Sands, hotel paling happening di Singapore sekarang.

Jadilah saya sudah merencanakan dengan sempurna. Pagi hari exam, siangnya dihabiskan dengan tidur, sorenya saya berangkat ke MBS, berenang di kolam renang infinitive-nya, poto-poto, pulang, ditutup dengan skype dating sama Popo. 

Namanya manusia, begitu berencana, kok malah kacau? Exam saya berantakan dan untuk yang satu ini saya males elaborate. Jadi tidur siang juga tidak nyenyak, kepikiran sama exam yang berantakan itu. Sorenya saya siap-siap, saya bawa baju ganti, cek batre kamera (penuh), trus cap cuss lah saya ke MBS. 

Di MBS, saya dijemput sama Soo, tetangga saya di PGPR. Jadi ceritanya mama nya Soo datang menengok, karena, sama seperti saya, program exchange Soo akan berakhir pada bulan Desember dan dia akan kembali ke Illinois. Sebelum programnya kelar, si tante pengen liat gitu deh. Dan ternyata Soo itu tajir abis. Dia dan mamanya menginap di MBS jadi mereka bisa berenang di infinitive pool yang (konon) tersohor. 

Sudah siap dengan baju renang, saya langsung mengeluarkan kamera saya. Tadi di asrama, saya sudah cek baterainya, jadi aman lah. Dan ternyata………… saya lupa bawa mmc *gubrak*. Wah benar-benar anti-klimaks. FYI, Soo juga tidak punya kamera, kecuali di ipod, dia memang bukan tipe orang yang ambil pusing soal foto. Jadilah foto-foto di MBS yang seharusnya bersejarah, jadi foto-foto dengan kualitas foto hp.

Setelah berenang ternyata si Tante nraktir saya makan. Wah sebagai mahasiswa yang pas-pasan, siapa yang bisa nolak. Alasan lain tentunya karena enggak sopan. Lha, udah diundang. Dan ternyata….. makannya di MBS. Omigot….. makan di hotel berbintang kan mahal banget. Dari situ saya baru sadar, ternyata dia emang tajir abis, cuma emang orangnya sederhana, jadi enggak keliatan.

Jadilah kita makan malam di salah satu fine dining restoran yang ada di lantai 57 (ternyata ada banyak restoran). Wah baru kali itu saya makan makanan sampe terharu. Penampilannya cantik banget, sampai enggak tega buat makan. Jujur baru kali itu saya melihat makanan secantik itu di luar acara master chef #ndeso.

Dan baru di situ juga saya menyadari the art of food. Selama ini saya selalu berpendapat kalau makanan mahal itu hambar, lebih enak makanan kaki lima yang lebih ‘sedep’. Paling enggak itu yang saya rasakan setiap saya sarapan di hotel dan waktu Popo ngasi surprise dinner di hotel bintang 4 di Yogya waktu anniversary kita yang ke….6 apa 7 yah? (Kalau sudah pacaran kelamaan, kadang lupa saking banyaknya anniversary). Bahkan waktu saya dan teman-teman sasing ikut kelas tata cara makan di hotel (yang juga) bintang 4, rasa makanannya hambar.

Tapi ternyata saya salah, makanan yang saya nikmati malam itu makanan hotel, tapi enaknya bikin terharu. Ternyata daging mentah itu kalau diolah dengan baik itu rasanya enggak amis. Ternyata steak yang medium-rare itu masuk akal (saya dulu berpikir, buat apa sih makan steak setengah mateng, kan atos?). Ternyata scallop itu bentuknya beda sama sate kerang.

Dan masih banyak ternyata-ternyata lain yang bikin saya bengong. Untungnya saya pernah ikut kelas cara makan itu, jadinya enggak malu-maluin banget. Saya juga pertama kali nyobain yang namanya champagne, sebenarnya sih saya enggak boleh minum alkohol, tapi karena si Tante minta, dan demi alasan kesopanan, saya minum deh. Kesan saya; enggak enak, pahit, panas.

Sayangnya semua memori itu cuma terekam di kamera hp. Pada akhirnya ini semua benar-benar pengalaman yang menyenangkan buat orang yang datang dari kota kecil seperti saya. Bersyukurnya saya cukup beruntung untuk mengalami semua itu gratis, thx to sahabat saya Soo.

n.b: setelah ditimbang-ditimbang, saya memutuskan buat menulis ini dalam bahasa dan bukan bahasa Inggris. Daripada dibaca teman saya yang dari luar, trus mereka ngakak. Sudah cukup beberapa dari mereka mengira tidak ada jalan raya di Indonesia. Bule…. 

Laziness

I now I am never a diligent student. But there’s times where I just do all my works and done long before the due date. There’s also times where I am really really lazy and doing nothing for days, like….. now :P

If I track back to the past. I realize that I’m really lazy on certain time. Usually it happen when I have so many assignment or deadlines. The harder the work, the more laziness that I have. 

In the opposite, when I have nothing to do, I am so energetic. I wake up early and do many things. I plan my trip or go out somewhere, or simply just clean my room. 

Besides deadlines, I also realize that I am lazy to take pictures. I love photography, so I do take picture of good object and scenery. But I don’t like taking picture of people for so many times at the same place. And when it comes to taking picture while doing something else, it’s frustrating. Using SLR is already hard, changing the apperture and shutter speed all the time while doing something else is not easy, at least for me.

One bad example happened recently when me and my friends went to Cold Stone. Ankur, one of my friend, asked to catch the ice cream. So the waiter threw the ice cream and he was about to catch it. At the same time, other waiter kept asking me what I want to order. Confuse about capturing Ankur’s moment with ordering my ice cream, I ended up taking picture of him but I missed the ice cream, because it’s too high and I didn’t raise my camera. 

Other object that I think not important is my neighbourhood and myself. It’s connected actually. Let’s say picture of NUS campus, I’d prefer not to take it without me in it, because if it is just the picture of NUS, there will be a lot in the net. What makes it special is a person, which is ‘me’. 

Again, that will cause another problem. Obviously I can’t take a picture on my own unless I bring tripod everywhere, which is troublesome. And asking random people wouldn’t be as good as I want. Not to mention, some people can’t or just too lazy to change the setting of the SLR camera.

Still connected with photography, I didn’t realize that pictures are important until recently. I had to make a photo essay of my activities during this exchange. It was so hard for me to find pictures. I did a lot of volunteer yet I only had 2-3 picture about it. I knew from the very beginning that I had to make that photo essay. But when I did the community services, I tottaly forget and, again, too lazy to take picture. I mean, I enjoyed my work and I didn’t want to lose my concentration just because of picture. What important for me was I enjoyed my community services.

If I could blame someone for this, that would be papa. I love him, but the way he hate picture just make me sad. We moved and travelled a lot around in Indonesia, yet I don’t have any memory of it. I don’t have picture when I did snorkeling in Menjangan island, or when I visited Martapura and Banjarmasin in Borneo, or when I stayed in Kupang which was one of the nicest city I’ve ever lived in. I didn’t have documentation about our family trip to Batam, East Borneo, and Manado. 

I guess in the end, pictures are important. At least it’s more important than how I used to think it is. I’m not saying that I take a lot of pictures now. But a few days ago, right before I packed up my things, I realize that I don’t have pictures of my room. So I took it. Without me in it, but there’s my stuff. So it’s different from random picture in the internet.

Almost Over

I can’t believe my exchange is almost over. I’m going back to my small and peaceful city in a couple of weeks. Back to my campus with its old buildings and spend my weekend wandering in those tiny malls with mom. Leaving this developed country with all the great facilities. The weird thing is…. I can’t wait!!!

I know that I cannot compare Yogyakarta with Singapore. Perhaps, in many aspect Singapore is way better than Yogyakarta. Cleaner, low crime rate, better campus, better libraries, bigger malls, and so on. But I still miss my hometown. I miss eating on the pedestrian, miss going to crowded hot yet really cheap batik market, miss riding my scooter, miss hanging out with the girls in the cheap cafe with dime light. What I miss the most is about how live in Yogyakarta is 24 hours. I can always go at 2 in the morning just to find a gudeg place that just open and fresh, or 6 am and found fresh porridge scattered everywhere. But….. it is also not easy to leave Singapore.

I am experiencing what Robin, from How I met Your Mother, called as graduation goggles. “It is the nostalgic feeling one has about a time or someone in their life when it is about to end, even if the time was completely miserable.” ( I found the description here, little weird)

I don’t like my room here, compare to my own room, this one is too cramp and it has no AC and shared bathroom with expensive rate. I also don’t like the lack of entertainment here. Most of the weekends were boring. The options are clubbing, shopping, or doing nothing. Three things that I couldn’t do if I’m broke. 

Ahhh… now that I remembered, there’s a seesha in arab street, which was fun, but somehow always ended up badly. First time I went seesha, I ended up in a weird bar, second time ended up with me and Ankur running all the way to catch the last bus. So, that were some of my weekends.

Some might ended up badly but I will miss it. I even gonna miss the most lousy weekend where some of us just stay in the lounge, either studying or daydreaming…..

Now that I know I’m gonna miss the bad part of it, I also realize I’m gonna miss the good part of it, my new friends. I think in the first week when I am back in Yogya, I’ll miss the lounge. Especially because I spent most of my evenings chilling out there. 

But it just gonna happen so there’s nothing I can do except make the most of it…..

Sebelum ke ERC