A Getaway

MANUSIA BODOH - ADA BAND

Dahulu terasa indahTak ingin lupakanBermesraan selalu jadi Saturday kenangan manis

Tiada yang salahHanya aku manusia bodohYang biarkan semua ini permainkankuBerulang ulang ulang kali

Reff :Mencoba bertahan sekuat hatiLayaknya karang yang dihempas sang ombakJalani hidup dalam buai belakaSerahkan cinta tulus di dalam takdir

Tapi sampai kapankah kuharusMenanggungnya kutukan cinta iniBersemayam dalam kalbu

Tak ayal tingkah lakumuBuatku putus asaKadang akal sehat iniBelum cukup membendungnya

Hanya kepedihanYang selalu datang menertawakankuEngkau belahan jiwaTega menari indah di atas tangisanku

Bridge :Semua kisah pasti ada akhirYang harus dilaluiBegitu juga akhir kisah iniYakinku indah

(taken from http://indonesia.insan.web.id/lyrics/manusia-bodoh.html)

I reckon last night was a very chaotic Monday night!!!

It only took few minutes after my waitress friend asked me whether Monday night had always been that quiet with only one or two reservations made when suddenly customers kept on coming. No empty table left. Dirty plates were pilling up. Waiters/waitress were running back and forth and sometimes bumping into each other. Dishes ready to be served were waiting to be picked up by us who were also too busy with other routines such as being friendly with all customers (including greeting the ‘new comers’ and dealing with 1001 types of customers), taking some orders, pouring the wine (or even simply some water), making sure that the rice in the pot is HOT, collecting used plates, and cleaning up messy tables thing, etc. And all the sound that I could hear was either the voice of customers sitting at my row or of my boss(es), with customer’s laughter as the background overriding the music played ‘too’ softly. I thought those whole thing belonged to weekends.

After all, I still think of those routines as pieces of a role play. Everytime I start working, I feel like I’m starting a show from which I get the heebie-jeebies, a show which has an introduction, a build-up to climax, an anti-climax, and a closure, and a show in which I become one of the players and also one of the directors -as I watch every stage of the play in each table, I learn the characters of the players there and put some efforts to adapt to them, and sometimes I try to phase the run of each table so that a climax in one scene doesn’t coincide with the other (meaning I got ample time to take care each and every one of them). And I always get very excited, even until now I guess, when it comes to ‘dessert or coffee time’ for it signals the end of the show and everything has run smoothly so far.

Talking about the characters of the players, I find it interesting to know that there are many different kinds of people (or perhaps the word ‘customers’ is more approriate in this case) in their own time. And some of them even came from far places like Helsinski and Johannesburg.

There are those who are extremely polite with a perfect table manner; those who are surprisingly unhypocritical and appreciative; those who are occupied with the long-time-no-see chat and the presence of dishes is the only break they allow; those who are still teenagers and as you may already guess, the girls look more mature (I reckon they’re on their first dates ;p); those who are celebrating their youth with booze and any other things; and those who are in love (I can see it from the way the gentleman touches her and the way the lady looks at him) but at the same time still able to steal some moments to flirt me.

On the contrary, there are also those who ‘don’t really stick to’ any table manner (including ordering to have so many entrees and main courses all together at the same time that I find it difficult to arrange them nicely on a limited space); those who just try to be polite and say something nice (well, some of them are great pretenders, I must say); those who are irritatedly rude and treat us like inferiors (most of the time I found them to be Asians, sorry to say) or who are very grumpy in the extreme; those who don’t seem to enjoy the idea of having dinner together and silence is the ‘ambience’ they choose; those who are in their late 50s or 60s, who already had their best years and managed to preserve the sparks of their love; those who choose or have to have their meal only by him/herself (some find their own excitement of being alone with a book or papers, some are overwhelm with nostalgia, some look really don’t care about anything but the good food); and those who are even fighting over which food to order.

And for last night, the show ended with a closure from my boss, "Everyone is happy." Yea, I guess that could be true, except for us, the waiter/waitress who were still stacking chairs and mopping the floor until late.

When I looked into my fridge this afternoon, I realized that I got nothing to eat. It’s almost empty actually (that’s so unlike me!!!), despite the eggs and some dips and some other foods.  And the "some other foods" that I left there about 2 months ago were either mouldy or already expired -including the fruits of which the skin wrinkled like the one we see in the skin-rejuvenating-lotion ads =). Meaning…I had to do the groceries.

Number one lesson in shopping groceries is that never do it when you’re hungry or ‘hungry’ for whatever reasons, or you’ll end up buying so many things that you’ll regret when carrying to your place!

Well, I was quite hungry and ‘hungry’ when I shopped. But I remembered  clearly that lesson =) that I grabbed things from the shelves reasonably enough (I guess). Yet still, I ended up carrying 3 bags home, one bag is only for paper towels and tissues, one bag of breakkie ‘equipment’ like muesli n yoghurt, milk, etc., and another bag for some meat and bananas. I thought I’ve shopped wise enough this time, considering that I haven’t done groceries of and on my own for  1.5 months. I, yet, had that kind of regret when carrying them for couple blocks, especially because of the uncomfortable humid weather leading "some rain periods" as the weatherman said.

So I tried to think of anything else. Then I look back at my groceries bags again. What I saw inside those bags were something a bit different from my usual shopping list. And I was reminded -I had this idea before, back in 2000 and 2002- of how God uses the persons I know along the way of my life to ’see’ the other side of the world, to see other people’s lifestyle, to ’see’ and understand other people’s perspective, and also to see the stuffs in the grocery store’s aisle that I used to skip or even the stuffs on the overlooked shelf when walking through the aisle that’s familiar to my shopping list. I thought about that along my way home, though sometime I was interrupted by the flies that flew erratically attacking my face -the extremely annoying thing about summer here.

I soon realized that I got home already and at the same time found that I couldn’t find my key. I could see the caretaker was watching TV inside his room but I didn’t wanna bother him by asking him to open the door. If I didn’t bring my key, I’d better ask him to open my room’s door as well, I thought. So I kept on searching for the key in my bag. I heard its sound but I couldn’t see it. Felt a bit relieved, I was concentrating even more on stuffs in my bag when suddenly the caretaker’s voice struck me…HAAAAA…I was so shocked!!! He just called me offering a help to open the door, though. Phewww…Luckily it wasn’t in the middle of the dark night with lightning and thunderstorm, like in the horror movies. I would have jump and scream in fright otherwise ;p

And now I gotta prepare to work….Ouwww…I so don’t wanna go for work tonight…I can imagine it’ll be raining heavily when I finish my work…

I think it’s funny how my body resists meals. It is really not an ordinary case for me =) It’s not that I’m not hungry, I just don’t feel like eating…Ok, I rephrase it, I still wanna eat but I feel like dunno what I’d like to have. Everytime I think of what I wanna have today…then I feel like everything is so "biasa-biasa aja". Indonesian food? Hmmm…I miss it but I don’t think I’m having it today. Japanese? No, I don’t wanna have Japanese, I had it yesterday.  Some coffee? I had it too much during last semester. Yea, great, I’m refusing all the choices…

And today I started to cook some rice again at my place -the first time after a while!! It’s not that I’m too lazy to cook these days, but there’s been hesitance. Or may be…I’m avoiding eating in silence?

Phuihhhhh…I finally can see the results, after waiting for hours in front of my laptop (and sleeping ;p). I’m so…lega… Like I said to my Mom on that night, this was the time for me to have a 3-month holiday. I may not have it again later, or actually… I may "have" it but cannot enjoy it as I need to find a job this time next year. I guess that’s so true, this is the holiday which I’ve never had during my undergrad. This is the holiday which I wished to have after graduating my undergrad. This is the holiday that I deserve, now. Such a blessing!!

We were studying for the final exam that night when I, out
of the blue, asked my friend what he saw as he looked back to the past. I
thought it’s only me who says, "Ooo…I was very much happier on those
days…I wish I could be there longer, when things were so straightforward,
simply because I didn’t know the complexity ("Ignorance is bliss," he
said)…I wish I knew it weren’t gonna last long that I could treasure it
more…" No matter how worn out I was actually made throughout those
times, I can only refer it as a happy period of time compared to now.

So, "Morale of the story…," I said, "Stop grumbling
(i.e. go back to study!!! =p ) about what we’re doing because someday we’re
gonna see these moments as a happier hours compared to what we will be going
through at that time." Then I said to myself, "Or shouldn’t it mean
that what we’re having now, how bad it is, will be nothing in comparison to
what we’re gonna experience sometime in the future? But don’t we grow in our
capabilities to cope with problems?" Hmmm…"I dunno…I don’t wanna
think about it now, but  I think I got the point…that I have to enjoy
(=be happy of) every second I’m living now, without reminiscing so much about
the past, nor putting so much burden or hope about the future. Just living for
the moment, in the present time. May be that way I won’t someday stop and look
back and say, "I should have…” or “I could have…" In other words…I
gotta enjoy every word I read and write during this revision??? Hughhhhh…Such a
revelation!!! =)

Soon after the exam was over (phuihhhhh…at last…!!! A 3-month holiday, I’m
cominggg…), I proved it to be true. How on earth could I possibly know that now
is the last time I’m doing this or that? Yea…sometimes I can tell…But, what if
I’ve, in fact, already had that last chance without realizing it? Perhaps,
there won’t be so much loss if I do every single little thing as if it were my
last chance, just like what people say. I believe I will see everything
differently then. Hey, it was actually what I’ve learned when I was working on
my last days before quitting, when the
no-more-time-left-to-fix-everything-I-thought-I-could was the reality that I
had to accept. So why did I fall into the same mistake? 

Hey btw, if it’s true that when we look back we feel that we
were happier before than today. And if it’s true that, consequently, we regret
why we didn’t feel really happy at that time, while we can, as now we can’t
feel that way again (i.e. not happy). Then what happens when we die? Assume,
for the moment, we all believe in the life after death and we believe that
there will be Heaven and Hell. If we end up in Hell, we must regret if we didn’t
choose to be a happy person and to be content with our lives on earth as we’re
gonna spend another life miserably for eternity. But what if we go to Heaven?
Will it matter whether we had a happy life or not as we’re entering an infinite
time of happiness? 

Well, for the time being…I’ve decided that I wanna be happy.
I‘ve proven it myself (perhaps it’s unnecessary) what my sis told me, that
being happy wasn’t supposed to depend on other person(s) existence…you just
can’t.

How many times did you hear someone saying (or
may be you telling yourself) something like…never put off until tomorrow what
you can do today? And how many times then, did you actually do what you should
do or could do straight away? Well, may be I’d better start to increase the
number. 

"I’d better do it tomorrow, first thing in the morning (!!!), when I
can think clearer." Or "I usually work best in the evenings." Or
"I just wanna keep it this time, I’m gonna read it later when I got
time." I said those lines quite often, I guess…and may be most of the
times, I only did the work until I really had to, and regretted as I thought
that I could have done it better if only I’d had more time. 

Yea, that’s what happened with the bloggin’ thing. I wanted to scratch some
words few days ago, when every single things were still fresh in my mind. Yet I
let it stay only in my mind until last night, when I actually went to
friendster and found the "Our Apologies" thing again and again… Now
you see why delaying something is not the best thing to do, while in
Corporate Finance, which I’ve been taught recently =), it’s said that it may be
optimal not to exercise an option, even the one with a favourable intrinsic
value, early as it kills the time value of the option. In other words, not
delaying the exercise may cost you losing the chance to see how things turn
out to be and resolve the uncertainty.

So…can we (or should we) treat "every option" we face in the real
life like the way we think of "real options" in Finance? =)

a dinner after Harry Potter on a day before announcement

Ha!! Finally…there’s no the "Our Apologies" thing when I clicked the "Continue" button. Yea, yea…there’s a time for everything, we need only be aware enough to watch when it comes.