I do realise that I’ve abandoned my blog up to the point that I only get to check it a few times a month (that is provided if I still remembered!). Work’s been hectic as always, the students either bug me kill me or love me and I am always in a state of exhaustion and beyond caring by the time I get home from work.

But a few important things have happened and I can’t wait to share them with you.

First, I have acquired a new addiction slash hobby, and it’s all thanks to Toni Wahid. His crib is practically my second home now and I can safely say that Micah would feel the same way. And because he always makes sure that he poisons me with a cup of his delicious latte everytime I come to visit, thanks to him, now instant coffee tastes like some horrible shit that I refuse to call coffee. And again, thanks to him, now I know the reason why coffee shops sell coffee beans (in the past, I seriously thought people who bought coffee beans must have nothing better to do with their lives), and I also own a French press which I use religiously. Every two or three days, I would grind coffee beans and bring it to work, just so I can have my daily coffee fix, in which if I don’t, I’d get horribly cranky and fidgety.

Now you might think this is not such a big deal but coming from a girl who used to have trouble sleeping because she consumed a cup of Nescafe coffee (a cup, just the one cup!), this is a pretty big deal. I found out that specialty coffee would not prevent me from having having a good sleep. I could consume a couple of cups during the day and I’d be right as rain to sleep during the night.

The second addiction, and this is by far the most recent, it’s so fresh it’s still dewy and all; we finally have an EOS. And what I mean by ‘we’ is that Himself and I have been fascinated by our new toy, the Canon EOS 550D. Himself and I can’t seem to stop playing around with it, taking photos of things and just generally feeling smug about holding such a cool, serious-looking camera in our hands. It’s still a kit because it comes with the standard 18-55 lens (not one of those red-ringed lens!) but it’s pretty cool. Of course we’d be thinking of purchasing a much more advanced lens – soon enough!

Last but not least – I am getting married in a week.

Now; before you go, “Wh-wh-whaaaaat?!” do realise that this is simply something that Himself and I have been intending to do since three years ago. We’ve planned it a year ago, and we decided to have it done the way we’d want it to be; a nice simple outdoor ceremony that faces the beach in which our closest friends and families will attend. So after endless researches and inquiries made to different venues and hotels, we’ve chosen Ayana Spa and Resort as the most ideal place for us to get wed. We’ve emailed different hotels and Ayana by far seem to be the one who has given the best responses and tried as best as they can to cater our needs. Plus, they’ve upgraded our hotel rooms which is a pretty sweet deal!

The color theme that we’ve chosen are ivory white and yellow, which I think will look great. We’ve chosen yellow and white for the flower bouquet as well. Himself and I have got our dresses and suits ready. Mine is quirky and fun and unlike any other wedding dresses you’ve seen before, and himself looks pretty dashing in his suit I really can’t keep my hands off him!

Now that’s all for now from me – more details about the wedding will follow – I hope. Who knows, by this time next week I’d already be in paradise and having the best time of my life.

This January, the rain has been painting my days in a wet and grimy mood. The cool air, the strong breeze, the white, muted skies and the sudden flourish of water that pours in the afternoon somehow reminds of Melbourne.

I spent six years of my life there, and I finally came back to Indonesia six years ago. And yet, sometimes I’m reminded of it in ways that I don’t think are possible.

Like the time when I drive home, when the traffic is insane and there are massive container trucks surrounding me. When I look up to the skies, I’m reminded of Melbourne in winter time. It is the same, grey sky that froze my cheeks and numbed my fingers. I remember the time when I used to take drives with my host sister in the almost empty freeway, a privilege that I don’t get to experience here, except for the odd Saturdays when we have to come in.

Like the time when I walk out of the office building to my car, and the cool breeze blows so softly through my hair, and I’m reminded of Melbourne in summer time. How the breeze in the evening felt so nice in contrast to the humid, hot air that scorched us all the way through the day. I’d always loved Melbourne’s summer evenings. Especially the short walk that I always took from the station back to home in Camberwell, where the street was quiet and the trees stood tall and shadowed the lights, making the whole atmosphere somewhat mystic and peaceful.

Like the time when I take a break from checking on the piles of the students’ homework and look out through the window to the office’s surrounding garden that is quite nice and green, and I’m reminded of Melbourne’s Botanical Garden and of the frequent sights I used to see of office workers taking their breaks there, lying around on the grass reading the newspaper and enjoying the warmth of the sun, their take-away lunches sitting not far from them.

I heart Melbourne with all its crazy four-seasons-in-one-day weather, with the hustle and bustle of the city, with the quietness of Camberwell, with the hip and happening crowds in South Yarra, with the lushness of the gardens that were scattered all over the city and the individuality of the people, with the train trips I used to take to the city and to the university, even to zone three areas where it was barren and full of suburbian houses, Blockbusters and small shopping centres with Safeways, McDonalds and Big W’s.

In this present time, I still feel that the me that I remember then is still there, but she’s not quite here. Even though back then I probably felt that I didn’t quite belonged to the way the people lived, even here, back in Indonesia, I still don’t feel like I do.

I wonder what is the place where I can truly feel like I belong.

Because deep down, I still want to go home.

Initially, I was told that my teaching duration would take about one and a half hour, and I was expected to write a lesson plan of how the students would learn the topic effectively. Powerpoint presentation was a must, as well as some internet research, but I was told not to get too overwhelmed because the students and the academic director as well as the senior teacher would understand that I wasn’t familiar with the company’s procedure in serving their guests. On the other hand, they wanted to see how my teaching would be effective to the students.

So during that whole week I surfed the net and looked for instructions, information, details and processes on waiting tables and taking orders.

You’d think that taking a guest’s order would be easy. Wrong. There were so many steps that in the end even I felt that if I were the student, I’d definitely feel quite frightened to know that it wasn’t as simple as it looked.

I tried to discuss things from as many aspects as possible; customer’s service meaning professionality in how the server groomed and presented himself, on how to hand out menus without looking as if he was hovering around, on how he introduced himself to the guests and upsell one of the dishes in the menu but without being so pushy, of how to handle guests who wanted special orders and how to take the orders of more than five guests in one table, and last but not least, the importance of avoiding saying “I don’t know” under any circumstances.

But in the end, I realised that spending too much time on the presentation would not be effective. So I took a lot of pages out from my presentation, compacted it more and got rid of the tiny, unimportant bits. I typed little footnotes at the bottom of each pages in light grey instead for me to explain along as I’d go from one page to the other.

I used some scenes from Ratatouillé, but only the relevant parts. I thought it would add a nice touch to the students to get them interested. Plus, I loved that movie to death – I think it was a terrific and heartwarming movie which I could watch over and over again and still wouldn’t get bored of it.

The next thing that I prepared was a menu. I wanted my students to do a little role-playing to make sure they understood the lesson, so I prepared some mock-up menus for them to use, as well as a special Cheat Sheet which contained the most common questions and replies a server could say to their customers.

The Cheat Sheet was my fiancé’s idea because he said that if he were a student, he’d be pretty pleased if his teacher gave something that he could use in the future. So I made it and the next day I went to the photocopier to get the whole thing copied and cut into four squares that each could easily fit into a person’s wallet.

I told Rima about the whole Cheat Sheet thing, even sent the JPEG file to her so she could have a look and she said, “There were some grammar mistakes here and there, though. But it’s up to you if you want to fix them, they’re nothing major!”

I looked at the already photocopied pages desperately, and hesitated for a moment until the perfectionist side of me told me off, “You still have time, correct it! Put a little bit more effort, goddammit!”

So I ended up printing eight pages of the Cheat Sheets and cut them in four sections myself. But I was relieved to know that this time there were no grammar mistakes! Can you imagine a teacher with grammar mistakes? And all this was happening on the last night where I was supposed to be getting over my nervous feeling! Luckily I followed my fiancé’s advice to time myself while doing the presentation, so that I’d still have enough time to do the role-playing thing. Even if I didn’t get the job yet, there was no harm in a little time-management, right?

At last, the day finally came for me to do my micro-teaching in front of the thirty students. And such was my luck because I happened to feel quite nauseaous that day. I drank some of my mother’s coffee the night before (which she made out of the left-over drying-up coffee powder she found in the kitchen) and I suspected it was too strong for my liking, my stomach immediately started acting up. So as well as feeling restless from lack of sleep (because of the coffee) and wanting to throw up every fifteen minutes (because of the coffee) I seriously thought I was going to puke right in front of the students.

But fortunately, things went well. I got there at 12:00 pm, and my micro-teaching started at one o’clock, so I ask for a permission to enter the classroom early just so I could install my presentation and check things out, just in case.  The classroom was empty when I got there, but as I was busy installing things, a student came in (still with the same uniform from which I saw them the first time; long-sleeved shirts, bow tie and black pants and shoes) and he looked quite confused. I smiled at him, and then another one came, and another one and so on until the whole class was full with about thirty students who were looking at me intently as if I was this strange exotic creature from Venus (you wish).

I thought I’d better make some conversations rather than keep quiet and make things uncomfortable – they’d be my students for the next one and a half hour, after all! So I started introducing myself and made little chit-chat with some of them, and they were very friendly and polite (even up to a point of being slightly flirty), and that was relieving.  I had to excuse myself to go back downstairs so I could inform the senior teacher that I was ready to teach. She told me that I could start without her, so I went back upstairs.

As soon as I opened the door, all of the students stood up immediately and greeted me enthusiastically. I swear, I nearly had a heart attack. Never in my life were there that many men in one single room who looked so excited to see me. But that set me off in a good mood, so I started by getting the students to introduce themselves, and was quite surprised to know that eighty-percent of them came from Bali.

The micro-teaching went well, and the senior teacher and AD came in after about half an hour later, and something terrible happened.

As I was babbling about, my mobile rang. The students went quiet. I really wished someone would laugh instead but they went absolutely rigid. And it wasn’t helping either that I had my Bob Marley’s Jammin‘ ringing tone on. Already paranoid thoughts were running across my mind; Omigod, my students would think I took marijuana on a daily basis, I had a boyfriend with dreadlocked hair and we’d get totally wasted on the weekends, I grew marijuana crops secretly on my backyard, I had contacts with the mafia and so on and so on. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit there.

But I reached for my mobile immediately and turned it off – it was my mother who called me! – and I apologised profusely. My heart was beating so fast but I tried to keep my cool. I had to finish this thing off, and whatever happened, happened!

I was right about including some scenes from Ratatouillé, though. The students loved it, and some asked me to play one scene over, and some who hadn’t seen the movie were curious about what the mouse was doing inside the chef’s toque – including the AD, surprisingly! – in which I ended up explaining about the mouse controlling the chef’s body movements by pulling different strands of his hair- I even had to pull strands of my own hair to make them understood what I was saying.

The senior teacher and the AD left as I was assisting the students with the role-playing activity. I felt a bit disappointed and scared that I’d failed because of the whole mobile phone incident.

After the whole thing was finished, the senior teacher called me to have a private conversation to talk about the job, the commitment I had to give and whether or not I’d be able to deal with the time management, and the whole teaching thing.I gave my best reply which was my most sincere, and then she told me that she’d let me know whether or not I’d get accepted by next friday.

I went home feeling relieved but also anxious. The hardest part was over.. but now all I had to was wait. And there was nothing else I hated doing than waiting for the uncertainty.

Actual event happened on March 11th, 2009.

So I tried to get back into the employment line.

Except that I was getting nowhere. I sent resumés after resumés to different types of companies but I only got as far as being interviewed. There was one company that published several posh magazines which I managed to get an interview with, but even I was unsure that I wanted to work there – it seemed that long hours were involved and I had to be one of those people who liked mingling with the likes of Adinda Bakrie and many other socialites who carried forty million worth of handbags, when the only expensive item I owned was my gold and silver Raymond Weil watch.

There was one company that offered the job as an english teacher to young children, and it seemed like a better option for me as I liked teaching and English was one of my forté, until the interviewer (which was also the academic director of the institution) said that to be able to work there I had to hand in my college certificate as a warranty. I decided not to go through with it because there was no way I’d entrust my college certificate to someone I didn’t know well and obviously had a trust issue of his own!

There was another job that offered the position as an illustrator – it was an educational book publishing company – and I got as far as being tested to draw one piece of illustration, but even that I didn’t get in. The work environment was very friendly, and they were all using Macs (which was expected), but I somehow fucked it up because I wanted to draw using an Intuos (which was provided) instead of manually which I thought would be quicker as well as saving time for me so that I could color it properly, but I didn’t know that I was expected to draw it using the latter technique as what the other illustrators did. So that was another blow for me too.

Being an overseas graduate, anyone would’ve wondered why it was so difficult for me to get a job. If I got a dollar for each time I got asked the same question, I swear I’d be a rich woman. The fact was that, it was beyond my understanding as to why and how did I manage not to score a single job in the year since I’d quit my last job. It was a mystery that no one would be able to figure out.

Until my fiancé, being the ever optimistic person that he was, mentioned a job vacancy he saw on the newspaper which was looking for an english teacher and located in Cikarang. For me that sounded like music to my ears. Cikarang was a much better and much nicer option for me rather than Jakarta. I’d rather work in the Cikarang or Cibitung area rather than Jakarta. The traffic alone was enough to drive me crazy.

So I sent my application, and I didn’t think much about it until I saw another vacancy at the same city, which was looking for a graphic designer. It was posted on Mario Teguh Superjobs website, so I applied for that one too. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t expecting much on the teacher job because I knew beforehand how much did teachers usually earned. So I was hoping more to the designer job.

The week after, I got a telephone call asking me to come in for an interview. The woman told me the name of the company but I couldn’t remember it (I sent a lot of CVs) because I was concentrating on writing down the address and the time of the interview, so I assumed that it was the company of which I’d applied the position as a graphic designer, because the address was located in Cikarang.

So off I went, bringing along my portfolio and feeling confident because my fiancé had coached me beforehand as to what I should and should not say. As I was driving, I kept praying to God, saying that whatever happened, should happen for my own good. I trusted my life completely, as I did before I met my fiancé. At that moment, I only had my faith, and nothing else.

The problem was that the appointment was at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and I got to Cikarang at 12, but I couldn’t find the address of the company. I even stopped by at the police office and asked one of the officers for the correct address. I was driving around Cikarang for about 45 minutes, looking for the turn I was supposed to take, until I realised I was going to be late. So I parked my car at one of the mini markets nearby and caught a public transport instead.

I nearly gave the driver a heart attack as I called him so suddenly, because I wanted him to drop me off near the street where I was supposed to get off. Luckily he was not pissed off, instead he answered cheekily, “Aduh, teteh, kalo mau ngasih tau berenti dimana, bilang aja, jangan teriak gitu, saya jadi kaget atuh (Please miss, if you want to let me know where you want to get off, just tell me, no need to shout please)”. He even managed to tell me to get an ojek (another means of public transportation in a form of a motorcycle driver) because after I got dropped off it was still a bit far from where I was supposed to be.

So I was finally there, at ten to one, and as I gave my ID card to the security guard at the front gate, I was feeling slightly suspicious when I saw the title of the building. As I stepped inside, I felt even more confused because there was no receptionist’s desk to be found, and there were a lot of young men at the right side of the building wearing white shirts, bow ties and black pants, lining up to get lunch. On the left side of the building, there was a door that said ‘Front Office’ so I decided to walk in and I saw a bunch of people wearing marine-like uniforms.

But of course, my foolishness didn’t stop there because I adamantly told one of the personnel that I was there for an interview as a graphic designer. The person who I was talking to got confused, until another woman who looked like she was the coordinator came up and asked me, and when she saw how confused I was, she told me that they only offered the position of an English teacher, not graphic designer.

Oh, the shame! I realised straight away that I came in with the wrong perception of the wrong company and the wrong job! But I got interviewed nevertheless, and the coordinator woman and the American academic director who both interviewed me at the same time, told me that they were interested of my graphic design skills because they wanted to publish their own educational textbooks. They also told me what they expected from a teacher, and the salary that I’d get if I got accepted. I was booked to present a teaching demo to a class of thirty students for next week, and I was told that I could look around the building if I wanted.

So I did. And there were all these funny name placards for each room that sounded interesting; Lido, Half Moon, Northern Lights, Promenade and so on. Until I finally realised that the building itself was a replica of a cruise ship. Immediately, I took a strange liking of the place. The classrooms on the second floor had powerpoint projectors, everything was nice and clean and the ceilings was very high (a lot of open space was always a good thing) there was a gym and a bar on the third floor, a soccer field at the back of the building and the atmosphere, strange enough, gave a comfortable feeling for me.

When I returned to the first floor, the AD came out of his office and had a small talk with me. I told him I didn’t realise before that the building was meant as a replica of a cruise ship, but I really liked the environment nevertheless. He said that it was made that way so that the students wouldn’t get confused when they boarded the ship. So I bade my farewell to him and as I was leaving he said, “I think it’s going to rain soon.” I smiled and told him that I’d better hurry.

As I walked out the building, I was feeling lighter than usual, so I decided to take a walk to the main road and catch the transport car instead.

When I got off the car, it started to rain heavily. I was soaked from head to toe, I had to run to the nearest depot. My car was parked right across the road, but it was definitely impossible for me to cross – there were a lot of cars passing by and the rain would make it difficult for me to see – it was pouring in buckets. There were cardboard boxes stacked up nearby, so I asked one of the depot keeper whether I could have one. “Yes, please, take them! Sorry, we don’t have an umbrella!”said one of the keeper nicely.

So there I was, crossing the road, where cars were passing by, and I was wearing a rather nicely formal work outfit with a cardboard box on top of my head. The heavy rain made everything blurry and when I finally got inside the car, my car seat was soaked with water.

As I drove home, I turned the heater on full blast. It was strange but in a way, I knew something great was about to happen.

Actual event happened on March 4th, 2009.

Remember how last week I was writing about the beauty of Cisayong? Well that was only the jist of it.  The previous post was dedicated especially to Ecky and Sam, so this post will talk more about what we did in Tasikmalaya. ‘We’, as in Elyani, Parvita, Toni, Yefta and me.

Deciding on transportation was a bit of a fickle but once we were set, we were ready to go. Parvita agreed to ride with us in our tiny green Karimun Estilo all the way to Tasik, and Yefta agreed to drive. I told him earlier on that I’d gladly take turns with him but of course, he’d have none of it.

When we’re about to leave, and I was literally getting on the car, one thing crossed my mind and all of a sudden I freaked out; the cupcakes! Yes, Anita had ordered 53 cupcakes with messages on each especially for Ecky and she asked me to bring it to Ecky’s wedding, and they were supposed to be delivered at 8 in the morning, but we were about to leave at 9 and the cupcakes were nowhere to be seen! I seriously don’t want to imagine what would happen if I didn’t remember about the cupcakes. In the end we had to drop by at the bakery to pick them up, adjust them a little so that they won’t slide around in the back (there will be some crazy, sharp turns as we got nearer to Tasik, that was what I’d been told by Ecky)….

And then we were off. We stopped over at Bandung to have lunch (Parvita kindly showed the way) at Kabayan restaurant which had this yummy mango chilli sauce (I must get the recipe!) and then continued to Tasik.  Understanding the road signs was a bit tricky but we figured it out eventually.

Now here’s some funny things we noticed on our way there:

• We passed a lot of kids who looked like they were elementary students running on the side of the streets of Nagrek in their school’s sports uniform – under the direct sunlight. Maybe it was Friday and it was supposed to be a sport’s day, who knows? By the time we got to Tasik, we noticed the same view, except that this time the kids were running in opposite directions. The current joke that was running between Parvita, Yefta and me at the time was that these were some superhuman kids who could outrun cars and even planes – because when we were at Nagrek, they were going towards Tasik, but when we got to Tasik, they were already going back!

• During our stopover in Bandung we noticed some hilarious candidate posters – not because of the images – well, okay, not only because of the images, but because of some of the names these candidates had. Happy Bone Zulkarnaen was one of the names of the candidates that I noticed but missed by Parvita, who is probably still curious about it until this very moment, mostly because she had in her mind this very candidate posing with different types of dogs and winning votes from dog lovers due to his name alone. I seriously couldn’t imagine what kind of parents would name their child, Happy Bone. Apparently this one would!

By the time we checked in to the hotel, everything was fine and dandy, and I left Yefta for a while to have a rest while I joined Parvita at the hotel’s coffee shop. We were chatting and enjoying tea and coffee when Elyani phoned me to inform that she just got back after photographing Ecky’s Siraman ceremony. Soon enough, we were accompanied with Elyani and Toni who looked like they could use a few snacks. Initially, Parvita ordered more tea and coffee and banana fritters (which wasn’t in the restaurant’s menu but they made it for us anyway) and afterwards, we were all happily chatting. I woke Yefta up to join us, and we were there until around 7 pm, when Elyani said she had to go back to Cisayong to photograph Ecky’s Ngeyeuk Sereh ceremony.

So what is Ngeyeuk Sereh exactly? Read all about it in Toni’s blog – it’s in Indonesian but once you see the photos (which are awesome) I’m sure you’d know what it means.

What happened afterwards? Stay tuned, peeps, there are plenty more to tell!