::today is a great day for me::: February 2007

the rise and the fall of it

My capability in the subject history is quite bad. I was at the borderline between pass and failing the subject when I took the lower secondary exam. But of course I passed it lah. So let me just write this entry down with my best effort and limited knowledge. Hik.

During the first day we were in Palembang, we went to this very historical green park on a small hill. It is called the Siguntang hill, where some of the well-known ancient kings and princesses rest in their well kept grave.

I saw the tomb of the king Sigentar Alam. I don’t know much, but from what I comprehend, this is one of the ancestors of Parameswara, the leader who discovered and established the Malacca empire. And that is something huge.

The ancient grave of a famous king

Indonesia experienced the era of invasion by the Dutch. In spite of the imperialist effort to diminish all trace of the Palembang origin, there are still historical artifact found and excavated.
I went to the very simple museum here, not far from the river. They have the Buddha and Indian god statue, (what’s the name? Krishna or Vishnu?) showing that other religion were once strongly practiced here. Once, Palembang was the place offering institutions to study the teachings of Buddha. This attracted a lot of ships to dock here from all over the world.

A Buddha statue

A Hindu god statue

A huge mosque in the middle of the city

They also have a few precious records carved on ancient stones, telling the history of the era of fame of Palembang. Once known as a very prominent civilization, nowadays the people here are struggling to have even have a cup of rice to eat.

An ancient sanskrit record on a stone. Very PGL.

The Dutch occupation indeed left a bit of their culture here. A lot of government buildings have the influence of Dutch architecture. During some of the local wedding processions, they would have a small brass ensemble playing for entertainment, called as ‘jidur music’. And the design of some ambulance vans, reminded me of those that they have in the Europe during the world war.

The stairs of the museum

The brass ensemble.

That old clarinet on the right belongs to cain-abel.

Mak lari dulu ya.

Of course there are things that would still stand proud and tall for the next few decades, and there are other things which would be doubted to survive forever. After their independence, they built this massive independence monument that reminded me of huge weird spaceships from the movies in the eighties. I also saw a few traditional Palembang houses, made of teak wood, as they age and left unnoticed in the dusty tired city.

The indendependence monument.

Simbol burung dedicated to cain-abel.

Matilah only he can understand.

Lariiik.

Still standing.

Architecture of an old Palembang house.

Isn’t there anything that is enticing there in Palembang, you may ask?

The most significant for me personally, is that their avocado here is abundant. As cheap as carrots perhaps. Using one avocado, blended with milk, and topped with chocolate syrup, there, a very delicious beverage that I drank almost twice each of the four days I was in Palembang.

Fresh and delicious. Yummy!

And they also have the apam balek, in a lot of different flavors. This one has a super thick layer of grated cheese, sinful and nice. Yummylicious.

Sinful cake

As for those who would want to get beautiful kebaya dresses, they sell a wide variety of songkets here at very cheap price. It’s a main industry here, I suppose.

Textile marvel.

So that's about it.
I tried to make it as short and sweet as possible.

Overall, I admit that I have been an arrogant jerk for I couldn't stop being uncomfortable there. And I can't help feeling a huge relief each time I return to the cosy hotel. Thank goodness I stayed in a good hotel with supply of avocado juice 24 hours every day!

But I do feel thankful. Compared to them, we are like millionaires.

Now I am loving Damansara even more.

i see lavish here, i see poverty there

Too long I have been leaving this online journal dusty, stagnant without any news. I got too many things to write about, until I do not know how to convey them in words. I am scared they will end up like a formal school essay at the end. But until when I am going to wait until I am ready? What the heck, let me just get this done with.

Okay, that’s scary. The paragraph above sounds freaking formal already. Oh dear.

Anyway. On the Monday 19th, I followed dad and a few of his friends to Palembang, Indonesia. He has some of his work meetings over there, so I tagged along.

Access granted

The journey from KL to the airport was awesome. I got to drive my dad's new E-class Merc. Its sturdy design made me felt nothing as the meter accelerates. It felt huge, and scary too at the same time.

What I had there initially was a shocking experience.

Just a few hours after riding the old van towards the city, I started missing Damansara, PJ and KL already.

To say it in very short words, the whole city is like a massive Chowkit area. A huge flea market.

An old woman, sitting at the entrance of a huge market, selling strange plastic nets

Never in my life being surrounded by poverty, where everyone is striving to get some money for food and clothes.

The most lucky people are those working or owning the business in old worn shophouses, selling traditional kebaya dress, and linoleum rolls to pad the cement floor of most houses there in Palembang.

A very old shophouse, still being maintained and rescued; for it is valued

The economy hierarchy goes down to the people who sit on the streets in between the rows of shophouses. They sell vegetation, fresh meat, and cheap quality clothes.

But the most touching part is where it stretches towards the river bank, where the people here simply sit on the uneven, dirty ground, to sell literally the things that we would have thrown to the dustbin. They sell things that we label as trash.

Rusty old irons.
Torn worn clothes that we would use to wipe the stain on the floor.
Light bulbs that I wonder whether they still can light or not.

And since they are all poor, therefore there are sellers and there are buyers to. People sell and buy those stuff.

Don't expect nice looking cheap stuff being sold here.

In KL you can get a good imitation replica of a expensive branded watch that people might believe it’s real.

In Bangkok you can get a very nice shirt worth 25 ringgit where they would see hundreds of bucks at other cities.

We are so prosperous compared to them.

During my stay here, I observe the way of life of the people here, which is molded uniquely according to their living condition.

Once in the afternoon, we had our lunch by the jetty, near the huge bridge that connects two opposites of the huge backbone river of Palembang. Our lunch was unique, because we were eating inside one of the boats, where they put tables and you sit down on the wooden planks of the boat floor. Here they serve rice with assam gravy fish and fresh uncooked ulam vegetation.

The floating lunch place

I had the chance to go by the same jetty at night and went aboard this bigger boat that they see like what we would see a luxury cruise ship is.

Theirs is a humble huge boat, with formal dinner setting in it. For special occasions, the people would book the place for a special night gathering occasion, where they dine and have fun. While the boat goes slowly along the river, I could see the energy plant that they have at the end of the river, where it supplies power for Jakarta and other region of Indonesia.

This is the bridge at night, and the boat will go below it to the other end of the river

To maintain the peace and security of a city where its crowded with poor people, there will be officers everywhere. They will mingle around at the shophouses to monitor the area, or they would be controlling the traffic.

Business as usual

Scheduled to control the traffic

As I took the photo of this traffic officer, he came to me being curious with what I was doing there. I was a bit scared, but managed to convince him that I am a tourist.

There are things that they are happy to have which we would not see here in our city. Such as.

Bottled plain tea. This would be like our bottled/packet lemon tea

A food shop operating at night, for dinner and supper. Customers sit on the floor.

An ambulance van. Reminds me of the world war era.

Me being there made me feel like I am so wealthy and lucky. An experience like this would be good, it taught me to be thankful. I have more things to tell about my trip, in the next journal entry.

Till then.

so many things to do with my time

Ah, there are so many things to catch up in this blog of mine.

I suddenly just have not enough time to sit down and write my journals properly.

Many things had happened, I even went to the airport three times in this month.

I know that some readers are wondering when am I going to update stories of my life here, due to my silence of almost two weeks from writing and posting pictures on the net.

I always ended having myself alone when it’s already late at night and I would not be fresh and alert to type something nice.

Anyway, I promise you, I will post a few interesting stories soon.

Take care.

happy snappy in terengganu

orangey golden. klia.

this was taken at my hotel window.

the terengganu beach

tables by the sea, outside the hall.

chair by the window. guess what happened next?
i sat on the chair-lah.

butter and bun. guess what happened next?
makan roti lor.

break down

Oh dear, said the bike rider.

The tire exploded and we almost fell onto the road.
So lucky that my angelic face did not kiss the rough tar.

The bike rider was stranded in the middle of Taman Tun under the hot sun.
He was sticky, squatting with his friend, and we moaned together-gether.
The bike was practically un-movable.

What’s left is a tire tube that resembled strands of ribbon.

And the best part was that this dirty rubbery ribbon was tangled with the bike chain.

By the way, please look at the beautiful fake Crocs that I washed squeaky clean just before the ill-fated ride. Nice not? Nice not?

hari kekasih

Valentine’s Day.

I used to be urging my friends to do a small event on this day of the year.

The most memorable one was when we had a small gathering, drinking earl gray and eating a slice of cake, in a nice coffee house in SS2 PJ.

Perhaps initially the root ignition of such activities was my insecure of being single.

Perhaps I was trying to avoid silly heart shaped pizzas, red roses everywhere, and being tortured to the thoughts of there’s no one there for me.

(A small girl a few PCs away, sang Pencinta Wanita with her cute toddler voice.)

But I was lucky to decide to spend the night away with my friends instead of getting myself trapped in the apartment like I often did on Friday nights, bore myself lying on the bed listening to my own suffocating breath, and the steady yet stagnant buzzing sound of the stand fan.

It was fun being single and going out with my single and attached friends who did not have the chance to be with their affair.

Hidden under the uncomfortable feeling of Lovers’ Day, there was a twist of celebration of the day itself by cherishing the sincere love between close friends. We tried to heal our loneliness, but at the end, we were not alone. True, it is not the same as being there watching stars with a lover, but that’s the point. The difference is the thing to be appreciated.

How can I deny the fact that there are things that I would prefer to share with friends than the rest. How can I deny the fact that sometimes friends guide me and understand me more in a lot of aspects.

And so as it is, I cannot avoid it, be that I am single or attached. And it doesn’t matter when was the last time we contacted each other, I dedicate Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you, my friends.

colorful journey

A few big headlines happened around me lately.

:: Me being sick for a whole week

:: A friend flying off to a place faraway as a step towards her masters and perhaps PHD

:: Me enjoying life with friends feeding me lots of nice food, and a karaoke session for two

:: Big news from dad that I only wish to keep to myself.

:: A friend passing through a confusing experience in his life.

Anyway, the end is not here. Life goes on with unexpected surprises.

“I hate surprises,” someone I knew always say.

But we can’t avoid surprises sometimes.

Hopefully future surprises would make us happy.

Hopefully future surprises can still make us stronger, as what we always do.

i am no architect or draftman

Dad called me again to his office for the third meeting between me and him; regarding the new project in plan.

This time, he sketched me the map for me to go to an LRT station. My task is to go there, take some measurements, and draw the draft of the floor plan.

This unused lobby floor at the LRT station is a potential area for us to propose a renovation as the venue of my dad’s new project.

As I reached there, with an engineer’s measuring tape, and a paper and a pencil, my mind was empty.

Where the heck do I start? The place was huge, with fifteen pillars, at least.

I made it to my mind that this is absolutely a tiny task.
I started sketching, it took me an hour.
I couldn’t use the measuring tape as no one was there to help me hold it at the other end.
I decided to measure lengths by using the tiles on the floor instead.

Pillar A to Pillar B: thirty five and a half tiles of distance.

After a boring three hours of sketching the whole floor plan, I sighed in relief.
Another task was done. It’s just a small thing, but it is still a small piece that would add towards the success of the huge mega project plan.

I wish myself success.