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dec
21, t u e s d a y
"we
got bunny ear bus today!" the chidren shouted and
jumped happily.
it was a cold winter day, the children were packed with
layer of sweaters, coats, hats, gloves, and winter shoes.
the bus stopped on the corner of the street and we got
on. like usual, noui already saved me a seat next to
her.
our non-english speaking bus driver said something in
german to andreas, a high schooler with blond hair and
earring. he was our bus's chapy. andreas checked if
all the children were already on their seat instead
of running around on the aisle. he's the kind of guy
who won't hesistate to chop head of any naughty children.
then the bus started moving again.
from my seat, i could hear two sisters were having an
argument in hebrew
somewhere in the back. it must have been a really tired
argument since most sounds in hebrew are produced from
the throat.
on the seat in front of me, masha, a russian middle
schooler sat with william, a kindergarten kid from england.
"i came from moscow," masha said.
"where's moscow?" william asked, sounded so
british.
"three days from here, by train," she explained.
somehwhere in front seat, alexander, a new elementary
kid from serbia who just barely learned english offered
his friend his drawing book as food.
"it's really delicious, try it," he said with
an accent like tom
hanks in the
terminal.
luckily, his friend was not stupid enough to eat the
drawing book, but alex tried to convince him by kept
saying the word 'delicious' again and again. i think
he just learned the word.
the bus stopped two more times to pick more children,
most of them with i-hate-school face. on the last stop,
andreas had a little fight with eriko, a japanese girl.
andreas thought eriko was just too slow.
"i was trying to get on the bus," she barked
to andreas in perfect american english. if i didn't
see her face, i would think that she was just another
american.
the bus continued moving uphill.
"hey, it's snowing!" the children shouted,
again, happily. they tried to kneel on their seat so
they could see through the window better.
it was november, the first snow of the year was just
falling.
"if the snow is thick enough, i will make an igloo,"
told marty, the kid who lived in the same building as
me.
near the outskirt of the city, not far from the woods,
the bus turned right, then entered our school's back
gate to park with other buses.
we got off the bus, ran to the door of school building
with snow falling on us.
another school day just started. |
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dec
21, t u e s d a y
a
couple months ago, when i was in jakarta, a friend took
me to kinokuniya
at plaza senayan (it was still
new
at that time). he showed me  the
wrong way home in travel
book section
and considered it a good book 
after reading some pages. i didn't buy the book at that
time but made a mental note to get it later. misteriously,
i coudn't find it in amazon,
to be put in my wish
list. i coudn't find it either in qb,
aksara
or any other bookshops in bali.
one day, when the office was unbelievable
boring 
 ,
i walked around in kuta and found a bookshop with a
grandma in kebaya
as the shopkeeper. she was watching an infotainment
on tv and giving some comments about sophia
latjuba. somewhere on the front shelf,
i found the book! a bit dog-earred, but not bad.
i looooove 
travel stories!
(i worship
people who do travel). someone told me that he prefers
his children to do travelling
than going to school
since according to him, you get more for life in that
kind of experience than in class.
the
guy in the book started his journey
from
london
until sydney
by land! his
route:
london-prague-budapest-zagreb-split-dubrovnik-tirane-gjirokaster-skopje-sofia-istanbul-dogubeyazit-tabriz-tehran-ghom-shiraz-kerman-bam-quetta-lahore-rawalpindi-peshawar-jalalabad-delhi-
kathmandu-lhasa-xining-lanzhou-chengdu-dali-luang
prabang-vientiane-bangkok-kachanaburi-ko phangan-penang-singapore-jakarta-kuta-dili-darwin-katherine-
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mataranka-devils
marbles- alice springs-uluru-coober pedy-adelaide-canberra-sydney.
amazingly breathtaking
cool  , huh?
it took him 8
months
and passed 25
countries.
the only fly he did was from dili to darwin because
there was no boat unless he waited for months until
the wind change. the entertaining part of the book is
he wrote it in funny
funny funny
way! 
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dec
20, m o n d a y
i'm
reading 
the
wrong way home. a book about peter
moore, an australian
guy travelling from london
to sydney
without airplane! there's a part in the book when he
needs to get visas to go to all of those countries he
passed.
i loved getting visas  .
i used to have to get a new passport not because it
was not valid anymore, but because all the pages of
my passport was already full
of visas and stamps.
i
was travelling with some international friends, when
we passed german
border
(we were on a train), my passport was the only one
that got checked
and stamped.
my american and japanese friends was so jealous 
about it. no one checked their passport and their
passports were empty! no sign they have visited anywhere,
eventhough they have been everywhere .
so one of the guy begged
the police border to stamp his passport. the others
soon followed handing their passport to the police
to get
i-have-been-in-germany souvenir.
i
used to think they're lucky. can pass most countries
for free anytime. at that time i was still with my
diplomatic passport, so i
don't have to pay
to get visas, but i still have to get it. since it
was free, i applied for some visas of the countries
that i planned to visit, but didn't make it, then
regret it later such as cyprus
and romania.
i
miss my
diplomatic passport
.
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dec
17, f r i d a y
 |
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after
tried reading
a few pages of the beginning of the
kite runner, i can't stop reading
it literally. i even had to steal
time during working, lunch, sleeping and i wish
i could read the book while i was driving *too
bad, there's no traffic jam in bali!!*. i usually
can't read a book too long, after some times,
i'll loose
concentration
and have to take a break by doing something else,
but this one is an exception. |
the story is about two
boys,
living in kabul, afghanistan,
during 1970s. they had a wonderful childhood together
eventhough one of them is the master's
son and the other is the servant's
son. they both have no
mother.
after a kite fighting, amir,
the master's son started to hate hassan.
he made hassan and his father move away from their house
and it was the last time they met. a couple years later,
the war broke then amir and his father fled to america.
after 20 years something, he came back.
I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over
those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed,
not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP
story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Somewhere over those mountains in the west slept the
city where my harelipped brother and I run kites. Somewhere
over there, the blindfolded man from my dream had died
a needless death. Once, over those mountains, I had
made a choice. And now, a quarter of a century later,
that choice had landed me right back on this soil.
the author himself, khaled
hosseini was born
in kabul
and moved to usa in 1980. the
kite runner is the
first afghan novel to be written in english
and after browsing around i just found out that it will
be made into movie
by dreamworks
films! |
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dec
17, f r i d a y
a
friend gave me a
bag full of dvds.
"these are good, you have to watch them",
he said.
i still have some
dvds left
at home from my last visit to jakarta, waiting
to be watch.
and now, there are more!! 
i suspected that this guy was just trying to pull me
out of my social life *eventhough i'm not even sure
if i have any*.
so
i
started the mission ,
watched it one by one. and i'm really glad because
they're really worth to see.
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i'm
not sure if the others would
like this one too.
there's almost no plot. only about 3
people who happened to became friends.
one is a dwarf who always attract attention everywhere
he goes because of his size. the other is a latino
looking guy who's always in happy and excited
mood, and |
the
last one is a middle age woman who just lost his son,
so she moved to countryside and do paintings.
this
is from 1999 and supposed
to be just typical teenager
movie with setting in high
school.
but somehow i like it! when i googled
about it, so many pages did
review
about it *it was even nominated for several
awards*.
i'm too lazy writing about
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the
plot here, just check out the
website. pertanyaannya
 ,
kemana aja gue selama ini baru nonton film ini sekarang?
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someone
told me that the movie is his/her favorite
one *don't remember the person*, so i after looking
for it for months in
vain ,
finally i watched it!! 
it's based from a
novel with the same title from jeffrey
eugenides (the guy who wrote |
middlesex,
a good book ).
well, the movie of virgin
suicides was just ok, it didn't kill me.
about 5 damn good looking sisters who live with extremly
strict parents. they end up killing themselves one by
one.
him:
i bought before
sunset last week but too
afraid
to watch it
me: why?
him: before
sunrise was so good, i really got into
the romantic side, i don't want before
sunset to dissapoint me  .
i was so
angry
when i heard they make the
sequel.
me: it is not that bad,
you should watch it  .
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dec
15, w e d n e s d a y
at the beginning of the book there are some regulations,
etc that i skipped 
*he told the readers to skip some stuff*. the first
chapter wasn't too interest me ,
telling about his mother who has
cancer and dying.
after both of his parents died 
, he sold
the house and moved to california
with his 7
years old brother
and that's where the part of the book that i love .
when the book tells the story about mtv
real world
in san
fransisco
(dave was trying to get part in it) i tried hard to
remember
the people in it *i'm sure i watched it, but ages ago!*
the only thing i remember was the guy named puke,
with bicycles,
tatoo, and dog.
something i couldn't understand, an excellent,
bestseller book
like this
was on
sale
in qb!
next book :
the
kite runner by khaled
hosseini |
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dec
13, m o n d a y
i
move my sight from my monitor to the window.
it's raining outside.
"hey, it's raining outside," i told the guy
whose desk next to mine.
he doesn't say anything and keep working.
who cares!
it rains everyday anyway. maybe that's what in his mind.
the
rain is a
gentle one,
with tiny drips falling down diagonally.
from inside, i can't hear the sound, i can't breath
the smell.
as
a child, i used to stick
my nose on the glass of the window
to watch the rain.
i love to see the detail of the drips touch the wet
ground. it's
simply beautiful.
then i went outside to the terrace.
from there, i could smell the mixture of the rain
touching the ground. a
nature's parfume.
from there, i could hear the sound of the
rain colliding against the leaves of the trees, the
ground, and the roofs.
"you
come from a tropical
land,
where there are a lot of rain," my teacher said.
at that time, i had been away
from my tropical land for years, i only had a blurry
image
of it. but for the rain, i still remembered the picture
clearly,
including the smell and the sound, like it was locked
in a special folder in my brain that i can find easily
anytime.
i
move my sight back from the window to my monitor.
it's still raining outside
and i'm safe inside.
he's right.
who cares!
it rains everyday anyway.
>>
to magda
 , who
wrote about rain
too and whose rain is too far from the equator
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dec
13, m o n d a y
in
the office, life is so
boring
.
i walk to the book shelf, took my favorite book
that
i never
finish
reading it. the book is hip
hotels: beach by herbert
ypma.
the
first time i met this book, i just looked at its
beautiful
colorful pictures
.
it is about those
spectacular
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hotels
by the beach
around the world: from antigua
to greek island, from australia to zanzibar.
but according to the writer, this is a
book of beach destinations for real travellers.
when i started reading
the book and i just found it
really interesting.
the book tells
different stories
in each country. these are some of them:
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maldives
is consist of 1190 islands with maximum height
above sea level only
7 feet.
as the sea rising (because of global warming),
the maldives are
sinking.
so its goverment assigned a
deal
with australian goverment: to allow the maldivians
to resettled
in australia
if they loose their homeland one day. |
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the
capital
of oman
is muscat
*baru tau gue!*
once, it was a powerful empire. since 1932 for
about 40 years, the country began to isolated
itself. travel
was forbidden,
even within the country. anything represented
the west is banned and some imported stuff such
as book, radio, etc are illegal. in 1970, when
the sultan was overthrown, the country opened
again. and now, they have the
chedi in muscat. |
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in
spain,
there's a hotel called 100% fun and france
has a hotel called hi.
*they both recommended
,
of course* |
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as
the nations in europe, the countries in carribia
are different
culturally and historically. |
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in
bahamas,
hotel come in of 3
sizes: large, very large, and way to large .
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there
are countless
of cove
in antigua.
about 4000 years ago, when the world's ocean was
about 275 feet lower, the
indian
from south america came to antigua via trinidad.
they lived there and became an agrarian tribe.
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dec
09, t h u r s d a y
"four
seasons has special
spray,
so if you stay in four seasons new york, bali, or barbados,
it will smell
the same."
"so
if i got the spray and spray it in my room, it will
feel like
i'm staying in four
seasons!"
"yeah.
and suddenly your
breakfast costs you 30 dollars."
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dec
07, t u e s d a y
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"Do you want to have a cup of cofee or
something?" he asks her.
She looks at her watch . "I've got a meeting
with my thesis advisor in half an hour."
"That's nothing compared to the tight schedule
of an unsuccessful, small-town lawyer," he
says.
"Where would be fast?" Iris says.
"The Koffee Kup. The coffee's so bad the
spell it with a K. And |
the
lighting is so bad, it's impossible to sit there longer
than fifteen minutes. I'll race you there."
.............
"Actually, it was the summer. She got a mosquito
bite, and I guess she was scratching it and scratching
it." His eyes shift away from Kate's; he realizes
he is talking himself into a hole. "And she turned
the bite into a sore, you know how that happens. And
so she took a pen and wrote 'ouch ouch ouch ouch' in
a circle around the bite."
-- A
Ship Made of Paper - Scott
Spencer
i
didn't remember why did i buy a
ship made of paper. maybe because i like
the title
and i think i read about this book somewhere. but for
sure because it's written on the cover that the book
is national
bestseller
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not good... 
*
