Rudy Yuan’s Streak oF BluE

Yesterday was quite different day. Well, philosophically speaking, no day is ever the same, but yesterday was something.

A beloved friend of ours, R, gave us a treat for his 25^th birthday. It would be an ordinary treat-and-grab-all-the-food-nooowww if not for the fact that he had been single for the whole lifetime of his! Pictures were uploaded in his “silver party”-titled album in his Facebook. Silver, of course, is to mark its 25 years of this significance. We are giving our bestest sincere hopes that he wouldn’t have to celebrate his “golden” one. He’d better not live long enough to see it rather than celebrate it anyway… LOL

Anyway, for singles out there, don’t get intimidated by this. Living single is a great thing to enjoy. Well, minus all the excuses and loneliness, and of course the fact that you hug so tightly your pillow at night.

So, some of us back from campus got together around to meet. Some conversations actually sparked memories of distant past.

Here’s one:

A friend of ours, T, had just gone back from London from his one week training trip. He brought us souvenirs. I snatched my part of a London red telephone-booth miniature fashioned into a key holder. As I turned it around here and there to submerge the thing into my part of subconscious where I marked as ‘new possession’ directory, I found out an annoying writing on the base of the booth. “Made in China”

GREAT.

I still like it though.

So, I was asking, whether anyone had sandpaper. I wanted to rub the writing off. Nobody had, of course. I was just suggesting a ridiculous idea.

Then M remembered a funny story of a friend of ours, G, coming from the past “campus orientation” time.

As you know, in most Indonesian’s campus orientations, it always involves a kind of bullying of the freshmen before they start their first semester. The committee asks you to make and wear weird stuffs and bring things to bullying events.

So, on one of this particular day, they told us to bring something very ordinary. This friend of mine, G, had different idea somehow.

As the committee asked us to take out the one thing they had told us to bring, G watched in astonishment, disbelief, and betrayed-face as he realized he had brought one particular wrong item. While others brought A4 paper out, he began to work out his analytical mind whether he had written down the right thing, as he was sure he had heard them told us to bring SANDPAPER. Another part of his cleverer brain, thankfully, instructed him to keep the wrong thing he had brought back into his bag, saving his embarrassment of being found out bringing the ridiculously wrong item…

It turned out that the committee had told us to bring ‘used-A4-paper’.

How does used-A4-paper relate to sandpaper??

Used-A4-paper in Indonesian is translated as “Kertas A-empat bekas”. Sandpaper in Indonesian is “Kertas ampelas”. NOW, you need SUPER FAST SPELLING of ‘Kertas A4 Bekas” and SUPER LOW SENSITIFITY HEARING, you might get ‘Kertas AemPe(k)asss’. Ouwwwh, pretty close to “kertas ampelas”!

DUDE, this G had one of the highest GPA in my batch. For you who are aspiring to get into ITB, maybe you should reconsider whether you have a feat like this yet…

Well, G surely did quite a lot of foolish stuffs back then and now.

Like yesterday, we ordered a bowl of Three-Flavored Porridge. As it was served, G was so excited to get his fill. His bowl was ready and his fingers had been busy opening and closing his chopsticks he had been holding, as if he couldn’t wait any longer to get it into his stomach.

The thing is, YOU DON’T EAT PORRIDGE WITH CHOPSTICKS! I have no idea how he planned to do it.

Well, we mostly just hang around here and there afterwards. There was a story about us taking revenge (more like torture haha) to D as he was bringing his GF along to our dining. Ohhh, you should see how this man changed from a bastard pervert and gossip circulator into one of the most obedient dog!! But that story isn’t worth tainting my blog.

And oh, for you who don’t have Facebook account yet, R and my adventure went into more intriguing scenes…

I had had the urge to write several days ago… But it all vanished by the time I experienced hadrships here in Seram… Yep, this is my third trip to this far far away island already.

I had spent all my week enjoying Jakarta. The traffic. The buildings. The malls. The food. The crowd. The heat. The city. 

It’s nothing like philosophical enjoyment, where one might go to old parts of the city and sip local beverages, chat socially and amiably with local residents about the city and its growth toward filthiness and about good old times. Not like that at all!

It’s simply my body and soul coming back to the civilization, and me feeling being part of the vibrant constant stream of life, of crowd, of friends, somehow, even though I spent time more at rigsite.

I came to achieve several things in this coming back. As the saying goes, you always lose something whenever you gain something. It’s called the Third Law of Mechanics by Newton. It’s action and reaction.

As many of you had known, I got myself a new haircut. I did plan to have my hair cut (since it was so annoyingly long already), but not that short as it is now. I just wanted to trim it a little. The hair-doer, who was completely gay in manner (and had tried to engage me in conversation so I worked out my charm of aloofness and he soon resigned any talkings to me), had apparently misunderstood and gave me a short style instead. I decided I liked it, since it was the most expensive haircut I had ever treated myself. Later, after close inspection, I did actually like it.

A friend said it looked pretty much like the style of a friend of mine. I observed a little more (now that tells you how much I like to look at myself at the mirror! haha), and it did show some resemblance. I decided mine was better than his (hahaha, sorry pal!). Yet since he had gotten such style longer than me, I did consult him for gel treatment. Now I was still experiencing with that.. (still with great result, I guess? hahahha)

The high event of things came at the end of my off-time, the great Friday. 

Friday came with a hint of heat (not so uncommon as it is loathsome since I still hadn’t found a rent-room with AC equipped within! and the heat literally melted my skin and all its enchantment).

Petra had made an appointment with me to go out on this day.

She had texted me saying she was wearing the turtleneck she bought previously at Zara at just [a very cheap price!! ;P]. So she said I had to wear my newly bought ZARA shirt too, the one that my S friend said looked like Mandarin Boyband (I corrected it from ‘HK boyband’ after her kindly comment on previous post).

So we set out to MOI. 

Petra was actually delighted to see me in this new kind of style.

And then we talked about how much we had transformed (and me transforming so so much more). We always nudged this topic somehow. Talked about how much we had spent on all these apparels and on those stored at home.

Me with my new hairstyle surely progressed the transformation I had been advancing.

I never cared for such things (apparels and stuffs) back in college. Jakarta and my salary had to have given me the influence to. I started to peek at the branded stores. I began to buy more expensive facial-foam. I started to complain about styles, looks, colors. I changed my diet. I read better books. I began to take notice of the fashion others were wearing, and judged them (”oh jeez, that man wears an Armani Exchange!” and “oh gosh he must do well enough to have that Guess!” and “oooh look at that fake GAP Polo…” ). It was badddd badddd attitude!

“Ahh… what a reproachful lifestyle” is what I might have said back in college towards such life. I was reproachful now and I couldn’t stop.

At least I didn’t fuss about how I looked here at the rig. And at least I still hadn’t reached the hyper metro lifestyle where man actually does pedicure, manicure, spa treatment, etc. Now, now, I wouldn’t say it is disgusting as a man’s lifestyle. I am just confirming, if I ever went there, I would have the excuse to say it’s transformation for my better. HAHA

So back to that Friday. I wore almost all new that day. New Zara, new Nike, new Lee-Cooper (which my friend had claimed it a fashion disaster. HAHA. At least that means my eyes hadn’t gone metro yet! But Petra and I did find it kinda not that good, but its color was so tainting our judgement so we decided to buy), and new underwear (I had done an underwear-shopping-spree to relieve my stress after I failed to look for an appropriate room with an AC equipped throughout the whole Setiabudi and Karet area), and new haircut, of course.

I felt like a brand new man. Coming out of the shell. And I didn’t know who I was. It was like looking at someone I never knew. But I liked him, this person that had returned my glance on the mirror… And I hated myself for it.

MOI turned out to be a disappointment. 95% of the stores were still closed. The Blitz were so deserted you could take a horse-ride around it full speed.

We moved our asses to Senayan City, and thus produced the famed photos that had gleamed my Facebook, Friendster, and YM profile.
We watched a movie that night, called Eagle Eye (starring Shia La Beouf). I’d give 8.772039379/10. Shia acted brilliantly like usual. The story line was easily guessed halfway. My high rating came from the fact that this movie had given me a constant blood rush almost throughout the movie length. 

From all the pictures we had taken, there was one I liked quite a lot. (This photo was thanks to faithful Mikael, who had patiently taken shots after shots of our trial poses. until we got the warning of not taking building photos from the security and moved away, embarrasingly). But this was blurred so it did not appear anywhere on Facebook or Friendster but here only..

We then moved to PS to meet our beloved Gadri. There was a SALE (quite big one, judging from the capitalized letter of ’sale’ I type in) in Metro. It was so full of people queueing and browsing the items. You could hardly move through the narrow lane of people and stuff. People were literally fighting and pulling hairs, trying to pull each other’s eyes out to grab the limited sale items. NOT TRUE lah of course!, but you could use a little imagination.

So Petra and I took a little creativity into play. We avoided the crowd and asked faithful kindly Gadri to come with us outside and took more photos! ahahhahaha. Here is the unpublished-anywhere result.

We tried several more poses, but my poor poor camera just couldn’t give out the right color and brightness.

Passers-by did actually STARE at us.

“Must be new just out of the mountain or remote village, these two, posing in place like this. And in such nice suits too, what a waste” is probably what they tought.

A western couple actually stopped on their track and looked at us before going on. Thinking maybe we were doing some pre-wed shots. wahhaha.

Well, looking at the photos, I did see myself change. A friend said I was getting more attractive (hahhaa, stop puking please, you’d ruin my blog). I told her it was just the effect of the expensive clothes. Never undermine the power of fashion!!

And the tragic part of my life this week: I lost my keys! I went home late at night that Friday with a flight to catch at coming hours, and found I had lost my key!! I went panic. I began calling hitman to unlock my keylock and put a note to bring gun in case he failed to picklock it. Not lah!

Luckily my landlady had the spare and spared me the angry bellow of my boss if he found out I had missed my flight…

The key holder was a gift from someone (hope you read this and accept my apology for losing it :P).

It was a Disney’s Mickey Mouse key holder (the one on the back)… And I liked it a lot… 

And here the photo I took at Ambon’s airport baggage claim hall.

I could not believe my eyes. I had never seen the airport so crowded and hectic before. And look at all the baggages. I actually saw people carrying lots of bags like ones of Banana Republic, Guess, Nike, etc. And even LV scarf and hand bag. Oh jeez, this sale season had to have influenced people as far as Eastern Indonesia! And talk about transformation!

(A compilation of my Sunday shopping spree. Damn, I kinda regret that I didn’t bring my camera yesterday. No pict for this post…)

Yesterday was the first day I got the chance to roam the famed (or infamed??) city of Jakarta again after been one month working at isolated rig in Seram Island.

Like usual, I terrorized as much malls as I could lay my step on.

Plaza Semanggi was the first choice.

Not a that-hi-class mall, but then again, I came here to attend a Sunday service (need sin-cleansing maaah). Not a bad choice, the preacher was funny enough to induce five- second-long laugh I hadn’t had for quite some time. (just imagine I “HA HA Ha He He He” five seconds, you got the pretty much of the idea).

One thing I got from his preach I liked the most: “Enjoy what you’d earned”

Well, I think I like it because it’s the best excuse for my shopping freak problem.

Plaza Indonesia was the next. 

The whole first floor was totally untouchable. The price was fomidable. You’d know instantly that people roaming inside the shops on the first floor were the one you should pay respect in succeeding to earn what they can spend, in whatever way they might have earned that. (hm, a gigolo is still worth respect, since they make the far-flung effort to humble their pride in serving the best they can, to aunties… you-happy-me-happy kind of service always sounds promising, agree not…?).

Nope it was not within my price range. Even though I had the power to spend such amount, it was not within my lifestyle. (Did I have such power? totally bullshitting here.. :P)

So we went to the modest lower ground. 

Ak’sara bookstore.

A favorite place to buy books for me lately. Since I stopped did less reading thriller or suspense novels and switched to more meaningful and entertaining-in-literary-sense books (like one by literature award recipient authors. I am totally so deserved to be slain for this arrogant statement of change of my book taste), Ak’sara was definitely a nice place to browse.

I got a Mark Haddon’s book I had been curious to browse (the title was kinda long and peculiar: something to do with night time, dog, and incident). It’s an International bestseller (so what, geek??).

I liked his other book which I had bought and read in continuous period (Somehow I always do ‘read-stop-read-stop’ for books I don’t really like. The read and stop period lasted usually several days to several years…. hehe). So I really hope I would fall in doomed love with this one since it got more acclaims than the one I had read.

(NOTE: Talk about Mark Haddon, it is claimed he had been actively writing books for autist kids. I wonder my liking to his book has anything to do with my autism…. shit)

Next destination: ZARA. Their T-Shirt never suited me well (though I like one particular T-shirt pretty much I once laid my eyes upon and then later laid my money upon). But then I had started to buy its jacket (a green one, a actually-not-my-favorite color, yet my girl-friend told me I looked good and I believed), so I thought browsing another item here wouldn’t kill.

I got a dark shirt. I bought it after 3-1 supporting vote (T&G said I looked damn fantastic [sorry guys, I used your names to lie a lil bit. LOL], and M liked the arms). Well, 1 vote (from S) actually said I looked like HK Boyband wearing that. She didn’t like the look. Well, I thought, what’s wrong with HK Boyband?? F4, Comic boys, 5566 (whatelse ahh?). They had pretty much fans as I could remember, and people actually screamed and cried and fainted for them, didn’t they. And some girls could die for F4. Since nobody ever fainted, cried, screamed, and was ready to die for me, why not started to try to make them?

So I bought it. 

Next we went to EX.

A mall full of gays, or so they say. 

I personally don’t know why gays like this mall. It’s small. It’s two floors only. It can be walked in one hour (assuming you are not in the worse-level-of-shopping-freak, not dining, and not sitting around on the sofa on first floor watching a performin’ band on the stage). 

Then why we came here liiih?? The XXI theatre. This theatre couch was damn good.

We watched “Body of Lies” starring Leonardo di Caprio and Russel Crowe. My impression: Gosh, I hate Leo with his ’stache. Gosh, Crowe was so fat now ahh!? 

(My verdict: 8.352546723414854925575327745/10.00.

Crowe hadn’t acted as good since Cinderella Man and Beautiful Mind. But I still like his acting. Leo was wonderful [his pretty face was enough, no? LOL. I always think he had tons of expression to expose, which was crucial for an actor, so yes, his acting was good]. The story was what I didn’t really like. Yes I liked the twist and plot. I like the theme. Yet some parts of the story turned out to be forceful. There was the lady-factor thing. There was the rather-quick resolve of the ending. etc)

Like I said. The couch was good! Try them. Soft, Fluffy, lotsa leg-space. And BCA Buy 1 Get 1 applied there too. Oh yeah, the AC worked well. The sound was …. so-so lah I guess. And the screen was…. like other xxi lah i guess (again).
Oh yeah, we went to pizza before that for lunch. I was kinda tired with pizza, so I just passed and ate 1.5 slices of bread instead (not that delicious. I still like Secret Recipe’s tarts better. PH made pizza, not tarts, stop doing collateral side menu laaah).

I didn’t know in what name Athena struck me (the choice of this god has no relevance or significance at all), I bought another Nike Free 7.0 shoe at PI (I didn’t know crap about what Free and 7.0 mean, but it feels good on my sole). A white one (totally against my policy to never have white shoes - since they got dirty easy and I’d be too lazy to clean). And it had this orangy streak I had liked the moment I saw them. So I spent another sum of money. FREAK!

After that, we headed to PP. Some friends did not have enough integrity to walk with us so they left early (no offense guys. but no love there too for you here. hehe).

This mall was so crammed with lack of visitors I wanted to fill it with scream. (exaggerate mode). But where all the consumers gone ah? It was Sunday, it was dinner-time, and nobody in sight. I could see the stores were crying blood to beckon people to come. 

Anyway, we just went to another Ak’sara here. New store. I didn’t see it 5 weeks earlier. I like its facade of unpainted brickwork (or false brickwork ar?). But didn’t get what I looked for. Too bad. Bad bad bookstoore (need some spankin’. i’d happily spank the cashier girls. bad bad)

So we looked for food instead. Too tired to try cost-quite-a-lot meals. I wanted to eat Baso, Sate, Soto, or the kind. Where to look lih? Solaria. Cheap, not that bad, and … (dunno what to add after ‘and’..).

Yea I know I couldn’t get Sate or Soto there. I had Baso though. Well, I had to admit that tek-tek Baso tasted better (rat meat, possibly? why, it’s still animal anyway. haha).

and then we went home. unusually early. pity some people still had to go to work the day after.

uploaded some photos to the facebook. Watched some porns (17++ or 21++ in some US states). Jerked something (PG17 man stuff). And slept. (I didn’t commit any of those atrocities whatsoever. See, I didn’t put subject. I mean “somebody” did all that)

So yes, my day was pretty spent. Just wish there were more people…

I had known for a long time that I could stay inside my house for a long time. I am used to solitude and kinda like it. It gives me the freedom to do what I like and how I like it (I’m on top or maybe do it sideways… whatever I like. NAUGHTY! I’m not talking sex position!)

Of course I enjoy seeing friends too, since I can poke them anytime I like when they are around (Poking them through Facebook never gives me the satisfaction… poke poke). And of course there is always the gossip part.

Anyhow, I developed a theory that the longer one stays in the house, the more eccentric his behavior becomes. Here are some examples.

I stayed in my room the entire Sunday (again!?) (which also implicitly tells that I miss the church (again!?)). I didn’t wake up late though. I turned the laptop on, checked on new messages, logged into the messenger (replied some messages from my fans), put a vague status, and went to sleep again (while ignoring some persistent incoming fans’ messages - sorry fans…). Geez, it felt good to re-sleep (there’s no such word in English Dictionary, try my own creation dictionary).

The sleep didn’t last long, something felt not right, almost like guilt. I woke up and found myself staring at the laptop (what a beautiful laptop a Vaio is). And then I did something amazing: I took a bath! On other circumstances, when I hadn’t had any plan to go out, I would usually take the bath much more later. Today’s gonna be special for my doing that, I thought.

But I was wrong. Right after I took the bath, the heat started to attack. And the peaceful mind of mine that had given rise to my desire to be clean that day just simply vanished. So it’s better to be a little bit lazy somehow, right?

I did something abnormally innovative though. I took out my camera, and started taking shots of myself, trying on several face expressions and body languages (what the heck?). I concluded that I looked best when I was acting it cool. Too much laugh would stretch my eyes thin (barely visible!) and too serious would make me look old. Just a hint of sly smile was the right ingredient. I’m thinking of submitting it to the modeling agency. LOL. R u kiddin me!?

Several results of that photo session had landed on several places: on my Friendster profile, on the YM’s Photo Sharing feature with my friends (plural, noted, all girls… and some boys.. hahaha), on the YM’s display image, and… on some webs with parental control access (LOL). Well, the shot took quite a while, but sorting them and editing them took much longer. Although I was not that professional in this kind of thing, I was quite satisfied with the result (how not whenever a narcissistic looks at himself?? come on, you do too, right!?). If you had different opinions about them, keep it to yourself and lock it away, this is not democratic blog. Hhahaha.

Of course this was not that weird compared to an experience of a friend. (This story is PG-rated and had been certified by Ditto Prabowo’s gossiping community) One of my friend, say M (not the true initial), was so lazy to go out of his room that he decided it was more convenient to pee in a bottle and put it in the room behind the door (maybe on the thought that he might forget to throw it away). Later, unfortunately, the chief circulator of gossip came into his room and was, not surprisingly, thristy. He almost mistook the brown liquid or urine for green tea! And thus that was how the story went circulating in the mailing list of our university batch.

Weird things not only happen if you stay too long inside. It could start right not long after you entered certain places. Well, it was not strange if weird things happened once every while, but what if it happened EVERYtime you got into THE place. Take the car of a friend of ours.

There was nothing weird with the car. Small city car with metalic color and (don’t remember how many) mini-statues of Doraemon on the dashboard. Put in the right ingredients of people (I think ‘T’ should be present, ‘R’ was a pleasant option [<- definitely the other 'R', not me, guys!], and the owner himself), soon enough they would readily start conversing about the world of ’sex education’. Position of the seat doesn’t matter as long as ‘T’ got the direct blow of the air conditioner (which was pretty everywhere on the seats! He would start getting cold and blurt something worth scandalizing or scandalized). Last time they discussed some insightful knowledge such as 5000 rupiah service by Lawang occupiers or horny Shutter-like lady ghost who haunted the car, waiting the owner to stick his tongue out and started oral (PG-rated), among many things else.

This had also provided us The Ditto Prabowo gossiping comunity award winning scandal, which was the shocking revelation that ‘T’ had actually had an experience of certain pleasure in certain pleasuring place (I couldn’t put it more vague than this!!), which, like I told you, was extracted by several minutes of cold-AC-blowing to him (though I got this only from the chief circulator of gossip himself, not directly..). This put the mailing list member into havoc for a while…

Let’s switch to a more children-friendly topic, alright!?

Weird things do exist in the Busway though. (Busway was the current Jakarta’s only systematic bus transport service).

The earliest weird Busway experience for me is the swinging man incident.

A thin man was standing in the alley of the bus right in front of where I sat. You know how (especially Asian) busdriver drove, right. They braked and accelerated unforgivingly. This man, with each hand holding a handle on the left and right side, magically danced along with the braking and accelerating of the bus. Since the brake and acceleration happened quite often, he would swing his body backward, arching his body like a rubber, then sway forward, then took several small quick steps back and forth, moved and waved his body back and forth, like the man had no power to stand still on his feet and keep his body rigid. He was practically dancing to the rhythm of the bus. It was deeply abnormal for him to move like that in the bus and damn making me welled with laughter. How often do you see man “dancing” in the bus??

But I tried to suppress my laughter, so did my friend who sat beside me, until I caught a look from a girl across my seat. We just looked at each other, and somehow understood each other, and almost simultaneously bursted the laugh we had been suppressing. I was more reserved (cool, remember?) by turning my head sideways to hide the laugh. The girl, on the other hand, laughed uncontrollably to her mother arm. I avoided her glance afterwards to suppress more laugh, but how could I, when the man kept swaying along the way? And geez, the girl was kind of cute..

Nothing happened though. Her mother kept asking his girl why she laughed so hard and I kept noticing she took a peep on me (hahah, not again,,, after previous blog???)

*SIGH* I’ve typed enough. I still need to do something else!! So happy digging through the rubbish!