day the fourth

so here i am, typing in the dark with my hi-tech sister's laptop
its 1.19 am n everybody's asleep
i was asleep as well until a weird dream woke me up and now i just cant go back to sleep -.-
probably its the hazelnut latte

so im entering my fourth day in Jakarta, umm.. nea not really coz technically my SQ954 flight landed at 9.40 am last Monday, so... now is like my 3 days, 15 hours and 20 minutes :P

stupid calculations aside..

im glad that jakarta is still warm and humid :D 30 degrees most of the time. compared to the country i left behind, 13 degrees :p plus wind and cloud and rain.. hihihi..

i finally got to see my finished house. last time i went home was march 2007 and it wasnt done yet.

my sisters n bros are wonderful :D well i only see wasi, layina and rawdy since bil's still stuck with univ. stuff. he'll b here tomorrow, Gw. and dad's also still stuck with his work, baru bs dateng tgl 22 T_T

wasi has grown into this tall, fashion-aware but not fashion-wannabe girl :D she loves reading, which im very glad of ^^ she also already kinda developed her own character. she knows what she likes and dislikes n stand for them. im still lost until now :p

layina is the high-tech girl. amiably navigating her nokia communicator (i still have nooo clue how that thing works). she uses opera for browsing, instead of IE :P or firefox :P xD (myb i should ask her to try chrome) she's content in her own nerdy aura.. i mean, she doesnt hv this low self-confidence. we were in this ibu2 gathering last night, and she's not the shy girl who waited till somebody came n talk to her. she could casually start conversations with the other kids. oh yea, she's also humas di OSIS :D at her age, i was trying hard to fly below the radar :P which continued until my college-days :p

rawdy... is this very active boy. he's thinner than a year ago. with longer hair xD proud bearer of yellow belt in tae kwon do, loved the lego racers toy i bought for him. it has this ramp with road obstacles that was meant to be crashed -.- i mean,.. wth.. why would u build something only to destroy it? but iko said that its normal for boys to destroy things.. uh-huh..

im plnning to post some pics as well, but couldnt since the battery of my camera is low. but i already found two weird indonesianized foreign food: one is a hot-dog croissant with SAMBAL sauce. altho the croissant's very good.. surprisingly buttery and has crispy flakey texture.
and rolled lasagna.. which is shaped like a lumpia. maybe they should change the name to italian springroll or something. also eaten with sambal sauce xD

annddd people are still trying their hardest in making money -.- im so mad when our house got calls from insurance/travel agents.. offering stuff... Geez.. since whennnn???? its like those news i read of what happend in the States where ppl complaind about privacy intrusion whnver they got calls from ppl like that. im not sure if indonesia/jakarta already has special privacy-protection offices for these kinds of things. plus those annoying sales people -.- theyre everywhere -.- in the mall, (of course), in the restaurant, drug store... cant believe that most drug/multivitamin brands in a drug store has their own sales person (most of them female).

me n mum went to guardian (a drug store, like kruidvat or etos in NL) 2 days ago, at first i wasnt really aware of these mbak2 crowding at the vitamin section. i thought they're all employees at the mall and they just like having casual chit-chats like they do all day anyway. oh yeah.. i noticed that most stores/commercial places are over-employed.. but considering that this country has lots n lots of ppl anyway.. i guess its a good (temporary) solution for the large availability of human power. why temporary? cozzz... most of the time over-employed >> low-efficiency... annnddd probably those ppl werent paid as much as the minimum standard wage.

anyway, back to the story, apparently those mbak2 are sales rep for different multivitamin brands. u know that there's a lot of brands right? so there were like 6 or 7 of them.. trying to sell vitamin C n stuff to my mum -.- i was surprised.. coz what i expectd was a drugstore employee that can give advices to my mum about the right type of vitamin or supplement, not 6 or 7 sales people harrassing her -___________-

so in the end mum overspent on 90 tablets multivitamin and 60 vitamin C bear gummies. *sigh*. why overspent? coz tadinya mum cuma mo beli vit. c buat layina. she bought one, paid for it, but then i checked it n turnd out that they were chew-tablets, which layina doesnt like. so she had to go back n return it, but apparently she could only exchange it for another product from the same brand. that brand did not have normal vitamin c tablets, the one that u just swallow with water. so instead, mum exchanged it with the 90 tablets multivitamin, which costed twice as much as the vitamin c -.-

but she still need vitamin c.. emm so another mbak2 came and offered the gummy bear vitamins: "also contains echinaea which boosts child's immunity" (yea whatev.. we only need vit.c).. so there you go..

howeva, i still somehow find little blessings during these last three humid days. most of them were from the smaller kids, friends of my sis n bros, they are still happy and playful, sunshine and optimism in their faces. i mean, as long i can see happy kids playing, the world hasnt gone that bad yet xD oh and the food.. food in indonesia are still the best.. yea and the hospitality, either made-ups, addressed to the money inside your wallet/bank account; or just plain sincere from the heart.

and yea, i still think that moslems in indonesia still need to learn about true tolerance. instead of shouting for more islamitised system (for example), but think about people from other religions/beliefs. we were never a secular country, and only because most of us has islam written down in our ID, doesnt mean that this country is reserved for moslems only. i dont want to see this country become a country of hypochrites (still disagree with the ppl doing razia n got angry when a club/pub is open during Ramadhan). (ardho has a post on this but im too lazy to look it up ;P)

will edit this post as soon as i can make some time ;p

cheeeersssss,


sweaty me.