A Good Investment

One day, I went somewhere on vacation with my fam. This conversation was happened while we were riding the narrow road among plateaus, green pasture, hundreds small houses. It was between my mom and my youngest sister Audy (10 years old).

Audy: This place is amazing !!! (amazed and wowing through the window). I wonder if there's any place more wonderful than this one.

Mom: Sure lot! You haven't place your feet on more than 4 provinces yet and that's only in Indonesia.

Audy: Yeaah! That's it, Mom!! I'm gonna get rich someday and travel all around Indonesia.. no...no... all around the world (showing greedy grin)

Mom: Money doesn't grow on tree! Study well then!! Maybe you can bring me somewhere around the globe (was trying to motivate my idly Audy)

Audy: (after a few moments of silence) I know now!!! You made many kids of your own so that when they grow up, you can take a lot from them. Travel here and there, buy this and that. So I understand now, that's what parents think of. But I ain't gonna fooled (snuffled). Sorry Mom, my own is mine!

Mom: (shrugged) You're not really a good investment (smiled to my pop who grinned, really did enjoy the conversation)

And so for me, that short conversation epitomizes the whole bunch of scholarly discourses, discontents, debates, and dialectics on children and childhood. Is kid a mere investment to her parents? Are children important because society invest a lot on them, on their childhood?

Or could it be that there no such thing as investment in childhood, it is just nothing more than investment in adulthood? Since children are matter because their potentiality of being the next adults (to work painstakingly to pay for parents pension :D )?

I'm gonna write about it
...someday...

#I'm not any better investment too :)

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Celebrating My Stoic Aunty

I have a big big family especially from my mom's side. My mom is the eldest of 9, with 5 sisters and 3 brothers. So, I have 5 aunties, and 3 uncles (really, I wonder how much stress my grandma endured all of those years).

All of my 5 aunties -all of them- had their own special times baby sited me and my siblings. Some for consecutive 4 years and more, others just for several months. One by one then, they left my house to do some real grown up works and got married with children. Now they all have their own families....except the youngest (who in fact not to be called young anymore, she's 31 next January).

She's the boldest, the most independent, the most carefree, the most enjoyable aunty one can ever hope to have. She's just 8 years older than me. So sometimes I call her by name -and add aunty at the end of my sentence- and she calls me Klak -my popular public name ;p- not Rara or Clara like the rest of my families. It's just like having a big sister.

I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, I stayed at my grannies for couple of days (my parents went on family business or something). While I was there, she didn't go to school. I asked her," Why don't you go to school? There is no holiday. Other aunties are going." She answered me," I have special holidays in my school." I just nodded. Those couple of days I played around with her, making fake stupid biographies of other aunties, doing some traditional "inai" pedicure, looking for caterpillars and put them on a jar, I never saw them meta-morphed into butterflies.

Living in Jakarta since 2002, she earns her life by teaching English for kids and I assume she is wealthy enough for happy-go-lucky life (not really an assumption, everyone in my family knows she has big amount of saving).

Nevertheless, she never drown into luxurious life she can afford (in some measures for Jakarta dwellers). Her biggest dream is to travel around the world. Well, classic it may sounds, but that's what her saving is for. She went to Germany once and has made Berlin her starting point to conquer the earth.

The most enjoyable aunty she is.
I dance with her, I laugh and mock people with her (I mock her, she mocks me), I wander the city with her (and got lost in that cobble stones jungle) and daydream while eating ice scream with her. Where to borrow money, where to sleep, where to ask for help is unquestionably her.

And above all she always has this combination of stoicalness while at the same time she exhibits capacity to treasure all the fun, all the downs and ups, all the pains. Any certain condition as worst as it gets, as good as it gets, never gets the best of her.

I wonder if it's related to her being the youngest of 9. She was born when my mom reached age 18. I bet she was exposed to a hell amount of growing up issues of her 5 sisters and 3 brothers, ranging from teenage drama queens to that foolish hormonal lunatic songs of my uncles. So she used to play around alone.

Just like last week, when she text messaged me:

"Kla, how are you? We get series of blackouts here. I was just visited by Jehovah's witness, so I told him/her I wanted to go on some business. But I don't know where to go now. The class is on holiday hahahahaha"

and I replied "Repent, you sinner!! hahahahaha. O y I'll be having TOTAL 1st interview, long way to France.Pray for me, will y?"

and she replied with her stoic tune as always," Yup, I bet there are many sins written on my face. I always pray for you -see I'm already repent-. Got to go now, heading for nowhere"

She once told me, she came from a land above the sky - a sky country, a sky kingdom-. Part of me didn't believe it, but other part want to know the story. So I listened to her own made fairy tale (I even asked, is drink jar in sky country different from what we have here on earth?).

and I guess she has taken me believe that she came from a land above the sky.

An Omen

My mom was short messaging me 5 days ago
She said," Don't you worry the heavy and weary load. As long as you stick to the right direction, you'll surely arrive at your destination"

Aaah mommy how did you know?

The day before she even called me right before my tears started to fall. Right after I asked Lord, why so much pain, and whined that I don't have anyone to turn to. That's when my cell phone rang.

It was my mom, saying she couldn't sleep because she felt that there was something wrong, and that very something was on me. A clairvoyance, and every mother is a clairvoyant, they say once. I believe in such things and that such thing is beyond my life's triviality. As I recall I never experience a clairvoyant unless you categorized whimsical thought as one of these. But here it is, a sudden call from my mom (she accused me that I failed the TOTAL GS interview ... aha!! another clairvoyant to be revealed by the end of Feb 2010).

From womb to tomb, they say. A child is attached to his/her mother, physically in her womb for a certain times, simulating the same heart beat which will follow them till the last earthly resort, the tomb.

Well, as for the conversation, I, of course pretended that everything's alright least to make her worrier. I talked about my boring job, another sudden responsibility from my professor. But she knows me too well. I think she sensed my perplexity so she suggested me to do some serious writing, not to hunt job (I know, she wanted me to find a descent job, but she didn't even mention it). Writing... gee...my mom really knows her daughter.


I miss her...

Death and All His Friends

Death is a distant rumor to the young. ~Andrew A. Rooney

Introducing Pak Jumari, a clerk who has been working for UGM for more than 20 years. He's now counting down his pensioner time. Pak Jum doesn't have much work to fuss about (not like me :p ). He arrives at 7 o'clock, opens all the doors, switches on all the ACs, and does some mere cleanings. Occasionally during the day, he goes to the kitchen to do some dishes while chatting with one or two friends. Sometimes, TURT (Households and correspondence) will call him to do cleanings in other part of this big office. But most of the times, I find him lazying around or sleeping.

There's one thing Pak Jum frequently do in which I find I begin to develop a curiosity. Going to funeral. It is so often that one of his friends or relatives calls him (I handle all his calls now, like his own secretary) to inform that another friends or relatives of them died and are buried. He then will begin to give me a iffy explanations and lame details, and off he goes!

Sometimes, I wonder how many funerals can one attend during one's life? Well as I can recall during this 11 months of working here, Pak Jum had attended 10 funerals more or less. One funeral for one month. I remembered, it was probably in the mid of April, when Pak Jum attended 3 funerals in just two weeks. WOW!!! The deceased were his neighbors and it involved some ordinary mystical belief -a sort of competition between nearby cemeteries-.

Anyway, though I sometimes sceptically accept his reasoning for leaving the office -which might be an excuse for him to skip the day I suspect (but who can blame him -his work is totally mundane-)- I feel myself unable to forbid him to leave, or to just question his excuse -even if I want it, even if there is a solid ground to suspect him. In his age, no one can question a reasoning of one friend's death and funeral to take a day off.

Death, die, dying, dead, in Pak Jum age, are trite events and wordings. I think Pak Jum has accustomed to death and with every respect to him, Pak Jum might have lived it to the point where it resound nothing extraordinary. Is it had to be related to age? Well, though I have to admit that every one, each of us, lives our life with death floating in the air, aging makes one is prone to sickness, casualty, degradation, and therefore nearer to death.

Ah, this is quite a scary topics, but as someone says ( I forget who), you haven't lived until you think of death constantly :)

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Take A Bow For You

Life is crazy
and you've been living it so well

you do the jump with borrowed skateboard
learn the geek softwares and to plug the LAN Cable
you even master the red hat linux
and show your own tofu- salad dressing skill

you study 14 different lessons in a week
biology, math, physics, sociology, and party
you survive more tiesan 20s too-sweet-birthday cake
and manage your chin up for forgotten birthdays

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself

you prove yourself able to accomplish all the deadlines
while keeping up with the news and the gossips
and when you screw all the tests
you hold on to yourself


in your life that somehow went nowhere
you retain from killing yourself
even take time to be a devoted blogger
life's like a messy room, but still you find a place to sleep

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself

you buy the needles, do the knitting
and give a sweater to beloved one
the one you soon realize philandering
!! but somehow you chill out and enjoy your ice cream time


you pass all the hots and cools
flu, fevers, measles, and some psychosomatic symptoms
with or without Prozac

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself

you lurk yourself inside cabinet
to meet your schizophrenic need
but never let away for too long your breath

yesterday someone hit you
and others hissed behind you
life is so rough and so 'grrrr'
but that's what those self-help books for

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself


you do the aikido and research well
and your friend got invited to the government gala dinner
while your ex enjoying the sight of big apple
you pass jealousy and hatred
with or without tear


you survive all the lust world serve you
without losing your sanity and desire
and miyabi doesn't get the best of you
you've done your self definition so far

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself

learn how to not over do make up
to make a diorama for some reasons you wonder why
learn how to sing in a choir to savvy the state of world's security
learn how to survive never-ending job interviews
to force a smile when the answer is sorry
learn how to best adapt to awkward situations
to recycle worn out dating series

learn sometimes life's so unkind
and your journey stuck in between reality and dream
that you blew out so many good changes
and ended up with wrong choices
maturity doesn't resound anything real to you
and your parents keep nagging at you
but you manage to survive those rounds

so congratulations
you need to take a bow for yourself


we need to take a bow for you
shall we ?