Dec 4, 2006

20 Things about Me




1.) Favorite seat in classroom: last row, corner, where total privacy is guaranteed

2.) Dream in colors; although sometimes involve flying and time travelling

3.) Comfort zone means books, coffee, writing/drawing tools within reach and lots of colorful cushions around

4.) Hate celery, reminds me of my grandma's kiss

5.) Best shopping day is sitting in the largest bookstore with endless rows of my favorite topics, thumbing through the pages for hours

6.) Images, feelings and words have distinct tastes and textures to me

7.) Reconnecting with nature means breathing in the nature around me and melting within it, total silence, listening within.... or swimming with the waves - feel the power when they crash me to the ocean floor & lift me up immediately to the surface.

8.) A mushrooms and tofu freak. Give me more of those......!

9.) Recently adopting an expensive habit - champagne orange in the afternoon.

10.) Have a mortal fear of going broke (yeah and point no. 9 is not really helping at all) and a claustrophobic.

11.) Have an affinity with Native American culture & history

12.) Convince that I met my husband in a dream 4 years before I actually met him in person

13.) ....... also met the three children (boy, girl, boy) in that same dream

14.) Have a secret promise to somebody that I haven't been able to keep up to this day

15.) Name stuffed toys and diaries. Eugene, Navajo, Bob & Klover, Vino Pesca, Kittekat

16) Think that chilies are main course, not condiments

17.) Don't laugh, but giggle. No photos please, I got bad teeth

18.) Look up to those people with principles, doing things for the right reasons with passion. (* I love you heaps, baby!*)

19.) Listening to Linkin Park now. Double thumbs up!

20.) Final truth, mind is a powerful thing, but can be deceitful. Think what you want yourself to be. But somewhere inside, you'll always know it's only a "stage act".

Dec 3, 2006

Please stop the world and let me weep


The brunch was called off, got up too late. Spent the entire morning lazying around on the warm sofa watching news and AXN. Kitkat was enjoying her sunbath nearby - stretching, yawning and purring loud.

There's a subtle melancholy in the air, and I know he felt the same way too. We spent the day together, grocery shopping to Auchan, heart to heart talk, mellowed out in couple massage at the spa, dinner at JJ's and more cuddles. But this feeling stayed on ...... forcing the view of a bigger perspective of human interconnectedness.

I'm not looking for consolation, I'm not looking for answers nor hear the right-or-wrong values, I'm not looking for contradiction nor approval. I've always had this question about who we are. Nothing more than accumulated perceptions gained in a lifetime.


"Mom said that "this" and "that" is bad for you" "Uncle X likes to draw. I really like his paintings" "Mom used to tell me stories about grandma how she loved cooking & that she was a forward thinker in her time. Great grandma apparently had the same qualities, she was a progressive thinking lady in her time, landlady of a vast plantation in West Java and a great horseback rider"

"Grandad was a great linguist, self taught in Italian, Japanese, Dutch, English and Latin"


** Today, I am all of those bits and pieces of qualities and perceptions which I thought is ME. Perhaps this will help me to understand myself better - and the rest of the world. I remember a story from my childhood, Hans Christian Anderson collection about The Ugly Duckling, how you grow up thinking you are what the society think you are. Not because of who you really are.


How sad it is to hold on to something that doesn't really exist, that deluding perceptions of who you are. Perhaps we all need some kind of comfort zone to measure ourselves against the harsh perceptions from the society we live in. Constantly struggling to be accepted. Constantly defending the illusive Self, pride, status, feelings...... It's exhausting - and I think it is so unfair that we have never been given the chance to break this away world of perception. It is sad.

Mar 8, 2006

Living in Jordan


Backposting - October 1997


These days were one the best days in my travelling experience. Signing a one year contract to fly with Royal Jordanian Airlines, were practically the first batch from Indonesia, ever. There were only 6 of us: Deisy, Daru, Rachma, Tieneke Herman, Dhidit and myself. Silly fun looking bunch of newbies to the middle eastern life. Really excited!

Initial training took almost 2 months, in the mean time, we were accommodated in a hotel nearby the airport, Queen Alia, apparently there were only two international hotels in the city. Training was a blast, we had so much fun as everything was totally a new experience for us. The hotel life got a bit boring after a while, at one point, we got so sick & tired of the same food after trainings so we decided to befriend the hotel chef who finally let us to go into the kitchen to cook our Indo foodstuff.



Tieneke & myself on the way to ballad for some grocery shopping

Apart from that, we still thought the main attraction during sunday brunch were watching the local women jumping into the swimming pool complete with their black yahala dresses and face covers, and the most annoying part of evenings was to slammed the phone on anonimous s*x phone calls - arab men for sure. Just disgusting!!! Bored girls tend to do silly stuff. One night we decided to have a drink down at the bar with the pilot cadets, which to our surprise turned into a nightmare. We were told off by the hotel management, they wouldn't tolerate any crew misbehaving in the hotel.... *we're not even officially 'crew' yet* and from that day on, two sky marshals were assigned to monitor what we do in in the hotel after coming back from training and ensure that we return to our own rooms.... like we'd even thought of doing something else.... iiih, plis deh!


Spending the night at the Dead Sea on my birthday, just the five of us

Then FINALLY, time to do our Check Flights - to be certified as an active Flight Attendant. Ooooh boy, couldn't remember where we flew to, it didn't matter anyway as you wouldn't even have a chance to look out through the window ..... or even breathe. Still remember my check flight supervisor was Susan Zelvo - known as the "dragon lady" - not sure about the "lady" part though, she looked and sounded like a man. When she put you to test, she does that passionately, won't leave you alone. Give her one wrong answer, she'd come back to you with a hundred more...... Just a total nightmare! We all passed.At that time, we all flew this Boeing 737 and L1011 Tristar. These aircrafts are considered flying junk these days. Too old. Lucky if you can get them to take off. Even back then, Tristar were known to have problems with their cargo doors that tend to open accidentaly while airborne.....

Our home in Marj Al Hamam - Amman, Jordan, about 15 mnts away from the airport

Thankfully, we were given enough training salary to move out of the hotel and rent a house immediately. We fell in love with a beautiful house up on the hill in Marj Al-Hamam area. Fully furnished and we all shared the fee - except Dhidit who decided to move in with her newfound boyfriend, whom I think she dumped not long afterwards. She loved her freedom too much...... Ya ampun Dhit, inget nggak loe?
Flying was fun, sort of. We preferred to fly rather than staying in home-base. These long layovers were just the best!!! 4 days, 7 days, 14 days... if you're lucky. Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam - and most of the smaller cities in God-knows part of Europe I have never even heard before. Where the hell is Klagenfurt?!?



Klagenfurt stopover, on one of the charter flights. Delayed for 6 hrs of
technical problem a.k.a pintu kargo macet lagi bouw. Tristar emang biasanya.....


PS: Ketemu juga, ngubek2nya di German, ternyata Klagenfurt itu di Austria.. whoops!