Proud to be Indonesian! -part 2

Before I thought of leaving the museum, just outside the galleries entrances, which is the main hall of the museum, I spotted a white stage where three people were sitting before a low-table. They were seemingly demonstrating or creating something with all materials on the low table.

The main hall itself was decorated with janur – some sort of a huge leaf decoration usually used in Indonesia for weddings and special occasions. I approached them. They consisted of two middle-aged men and a woman in the middle. For a while, I observed what they were working on, and apparently they were working on some sort of traditional artwork. I brought myself to talk.

Me: “Excuse me, (are you) Indonesians?”
Man 1: “Yes, are you also Indonesian?”
Me: “Yes, yes, apa kabar?”

And thus began my conversation. I hoped I didn't disturb their artwork progress. The woman and the other men seemed to be enthusiastic when they discovered that I was Indonesian. Good thing I bumped into them.

I spent about a couple of minutes engaging in a warm conversation with them. We basically shared basic topics ranging from “Where are you from in Indonesia?”, “Where do you live in the US?”, “What's the purpose of museum visit?”, etc. The female artist plastered a smile on her face and joined in the conversation.

Apparently they were native Balinese artists. Such an encounter was surely rare since when else would you bump into traditional native Indonesian people who wear traditional clothes and spoke with thick Balinese accent?

Dude, I feel like I'm at home at the moment
I felt so...overwhelmed when I met these guys.

Fuck the fact that I felt like an American earlier.

I noticed that the first man I talked to left for a bit before returning. Then I told them I would basically hang around for a bit in the exhibition hall. As I wandered off, I happened to pass the gallery doors again. By the time I passed it, the door was suddenly opened, revealing the same security I met earlier.

Security: “You want to come in?”
Me: “I don't have the exhibition ticket.”
Security: “That's alright. Just come in.”
Me: “Ooookay, thank you.”

I walked pass him and enter the first exhibition gallery, much to my surprise. It was pretty weird though. He wouldn't allow me to enter in the first place but when I passed the door again (without any intention to visit the Bali exhibition since I gave it up), he let me in.

There were some assumptions lingering in my mind:

1. The Indonesian man who left probably went to the security guy and told him to let me in
2. The security guy probably saw me talking to these Indonesian artists and went like “Holy shit, this girl is Indonesian. I felt so guilty for not letting in to the exhibition of her own country.”

The exhibition itself was not really packed with people. But at least there were some visitors taking their own tour inside. All the exhibits of course, seemed familiar to me. But the whole exhibition was set up in such a different way than the ones I saw back in Indonesian museums.

Somehow the exhibits here were well-kept, neat, and were provided with clean info panels. It was much on the contrary to Indonesian museums, where exhibits were mostly dusty, dirty, and even the museum atmosphere itself felt so stuffy.

I felt a bit crept out when I found myself in a quiet zone where there were no visitors, but the place was filled with traditional masks as exhibits. Well, you get the idea.

At the end of the exhibition tour, I bumped into a small theatre room, quite packed with people, which was playing a documentary video about Ngaben – Balinese cremation ritual. Pride went over me as I didn't feel the need of reading the subtitles as I could understand what those people were saying in the video.

After the video was done, I exited the theatre, which led me to the main hall again. This time, I noticed that the stage was surrounded by quite a few people. As a courtesy, I was intending to bid farewell to the Balinese artists because I was about to leave the museum. Apparently we chatted again despite the fact that the Balinese artists' demonstration was being watched by the visitors. It was as if the artists themselves didn't really care and kept talking to me. After all, the visitors didn't interact with the artists.

The dialogue was conducted in Bahasa.

Man 2: “What do you think of the exhibition?”
Me: “It was impressive, really. I really want to go here again but next time, with my friends.”
Man 2: “Do come again next time with your friends. Spread the word. We'll stick around here till September (don't remember the date)”
Me: “Okay, I'll be sure to pay you a visit sir.”
Man: “If you come on Sunday, you'll get a free entrance ticket to the museum, which is even better.”
Me: “Sure things, sir.”

At that moment, I'm pretty sure the viewers were observing the conversation that went on between me and the artists. I even spotted that one of the viewers was actually the participant of the field trip I just joined, aka my classmate. She was like looking at me in confusion. If only the history professor was there to witness my conversation. I wondered if I could get an extra credit point for making a conversation with these native Indonesian people.

Alas, it was hard for me to part with the artists and step out of the building. It came to my realization that Indonesian people possessed great tolerance and intention to connect with fellow Indonesians outside the mother country.

That is why, no matter there's a bunch of Indonesian people in my campus, at least we know each other. We don't have to be really close but at least we know who's who. Like my case, I felt great to be able to connect with these native Indonesian people. We were part of each other and that was what drove us to create those connections within.

Credit to: Gustavo Thomas Theatre.

I headed to the exit just when I met another field trip participant. She clearly wasn't my classmate. She came from a different section of history class. Apparently we were both heading to the same direction which was the Muni and Bart station. We walked together to the station and made friends. But at the station, we had to part since she had to take a Bart to the north and I had to take Muni back to Caltrain station.

I arrived at Caltrain station a bit earlier than expected. The upcoming train wouldn't show up until an hour (2 pm). I spent some time shopping around in Safeway and bought some snacks.

The train arrived in Sunnyvale Caltrain station at 3. I took a bus straight to my campus to catch up with my friends. It was Friday and practicing badminton every Friday at 3.30 pm became my routine. We had a good dinner after the practice later in the evening.

What a way to end such an exhausting yet impressive day!

<< Part 1

Proud to be Indonesian! -part 1

June 10, 2011 marked one of the most memorable events occurring this year for me. That day was supposedly going to be an exciting history field trip day to Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, with a couple of my friends.

Apparently, it didn't really start off well since my friends (who planned to go with me) gradually cancelled their trip plans just the night before the D-day due, leaving me on my own. At that time I was like “Fuck!” I was thinking to drop the field trip as well since I thought it was impossible for me to take off to SF by myself. But on a second thought, it would surely risk my grade. Even more, the day of the field trip was the day where I had to turn in my take-home exam. So it would surely cost a lot if I happened to be absent.

In the mean time, I came up with plan B: going to Asian Art Museum by myself. I quickly searched for the public transportations to take, the direction, and not to mention prepared the cash. If the plan worked (and it had to), it would be my very first solo (backpacking?) trip to a not-so-nearby city.

I took off early in the morning, counting myself on my phone's GPS. After all, GPS was all that I needed to avoid getting lost. I nearly lost my hope since the second bus that would take me to Sunnyvale Caltrain station hadn't come for almost half an hour, meanwhile the history professor wanted all students to be in the museum lobby by 10. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make it in time. But just as my hope was about to leave, the bus came to my sight, much to my gratitude.

Going to San Francisco wasn't really as frantic as heading to the museum from SF Caltrain station (after a train ride which lasted approx. 1 hour). After all, I'd been to SF by public transport before, so at least I knew how to get there. Apparently, there was only one transport needed to go to Asian Art museum, which is by Muni (some sort of a monorail/subway). It wasn't really hard to go to Asian Art museum, as I only needed to get off in Civic Center station and walked less than a mile to my ultimate destination.

Despite being by myself at that moment, being inside Muni along with fellow Americans really gave me a strong impression as if I was one of them. It was a weird feeling, to leave my identity as an Indonesian for a while and allow myself to merge with them.

Took some pictures before entering the museum. The neighborhood that surrounded the museum offered a good deal of landscapes.

Guess what I found before entering the museum building.

Can't wait to see the Bali exhibition, but first, of course I needed to attend the field trip.

It was 10.30 am when I got there, which means, I was 30 minutes late. I quickly went to the admission and received my group tour badge. The admission guy didn't seem to know where the group was currently is.

Another problem: I needed to find the party on my own. Thus began my search of the group. I started from the third floor (the beginning of the whole exhibition) since I thought they have just started tour not so long ago. They should be around the beginning of the museum exhibition. The silence of the museum pretty helped me to find the group. Apparently I hadn't missed a lot so I was able to keep up with the tour.

The field trip itself quite left me with an ordinary impression. After all, it was a normal field trip, the kind of field trip you would usually involve in. Basically, with the history professor as the guide, my fellow classmates and I explored exhibition ranging from Chinese art, Korean art, to lastly Japanese art. It was impressive, still, but not till the end of the whole field trip.

The field trip ended with viewing Japanese exhibition gallery, which was located at the second floor (the main museum exhibition was located in the second and third floor. The first one is basically for special exhibition).

Anyway, after descending through an escalator and bidding my professor goodbye as well as my classmates, I thought for a second while looking at my watch. It was still 12pm. I had a club meeting in an hour and a half, but I thought if I took off back to Cupertino, I wouldn't be able to make it on time. So I decided to skip today's meeting (in fact, I already informed an officer and emailed him the presentation slides in case I wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting that day).

For a moment, I thought of visiting Bali exhibition wouldn't be troublesome. Instead of heading straight to exit, I stole some moment to go to Bali exhibition gallery. The gallery consisted of two galleries, when I was about to open one of the gallery's glass door, I spotted a security was standing at the entrance door side.

Security: “Do you have the ticket?”
Me: *dumbfounded and showed him the ticket I have*
Security: “Unfortunately you can't use this ticket. The privilege doesn't include this exhibition. You need to go to the admission and buy a ticket for this special exhibition.”
Me: “Alright. Thanks.”

So, I was thinking it would cost more for me if I spent more money. Well, I could always return to this place someday before September (when the exhibition would come to its end).

To be continued...

Part 2 >>

Kota Tua Tour

A quality post! Finally!!

This early May, my friends and I decided to fill out our leisure time by going on tour to Kota Tua. Fascinating indeed. I've been there before, last year on my school's city tour, but I'm excited to finally get a chance of going there again.

We took a busway ride from Blok M terminal to Kota (downtown) in the morning. It took a while me to find the terminal though, since it turned out to be located underground. WTH.

Arriving at Kota, we quickly found our ways to our first museum which was Museum Bank Mandiri. Seriously, since all buildings there looked the same, we almost mistook Museum Bank Mandiri as Museum Bank Indonesia. Well, I recommended my friends to visit Museum BI, since it was very cutting-edge with all the modern technology equipped to display the exhibits.

Anyway, we entered Museum Bank Mandiri eventually.
The admission is free :)

The museum was effin' hot and thus, we got all sweaty inside. The fan set in the room didn't even help. So the point is, to be honest, the museum was boring and dusty too. -__-

In the other side, the museum was quite exciting as well, since it got many, many rooms for exhibits and interesting items from the past, ranging from rooms that resembled a jail (there were only four of us entering the quiet room, so you can imagine all the spook) to an auditorium filled with woods and stuffs from the past. They might look like normal woods and metals, but they all dated back to the year of forty-something! Cool.

Not to mention nice objects and hallways as photography objects. Turned out we were busy snapping pictures likely we were having some sort of photoshoot instead of observing the exhibits.

Haha, I honestly love this picture above. See the way my friend Widya (on the lower part of the stairs) stares at Agnes. I feel the sparks of...well, forget it. LOL

Oh, did I mention that the mention even got a mini playground!

And you know the best part is...

We found a separate room, a dining room to be exact, complete with vintage-y looking chairs and huge rectangular table. The whole dining set was said to belong to a noble back in the past.

But no, it wasn't the dining set that we were excited to see. At the corner of the room, there was this other thing that excited us. Not another historical item. You see this everyday and maybe you have it in your house. It was...AC. Yeah, we were that desperate to find fresh air in the damp museum, and when we found that AC, we all felt very...safe at last. LOL.

Holy AC!

I told my friends that Museum Bank Indonesia was much more interesting than this museum. So we finally moved on to the next museum, which was located right next to Museum Bank Mandiri.

Once the automatic door (heck, it's got an automatic sliding door!!) opened, the cool air from the inside blasted through us. The entire room was equipped with AC!!

The admission is, again, free. This is the museum that I once visited back in October 2009 (I'll be sure to post the story of my city tour later). The first time I went to that museum, my jaw dropped in both excitement and disbelief. The fact is, I've never ever visited a museum so cutting-edge with all modern technology! That was back in October. But now, I felt like a tour guide leading several friends who hadn't been here before.

I kind of expected to watch a movie in its theatre that was located once we entered the exhibition room, since I skipped that part last time. But too bad, the movie wasn't playing at that moment, so I had to skip it again.

The whole museum tour began with fun! Before we entered the theatre, there was this dark room with projectors reflecting on the wall, displaying flying pennies. If we got to catch one of them by our bare hands on the wall, the details about the penny would appear.

The exhibition room was set likely a maze, with sounds, animations, colorful rooms, and everything was designed based on the chronology of our nation's story. Started from 15th century, exactly on Portuguese colonial, and moving to the present.

Approaching the end of the maze, we stumbled upon a game where we had to drag animated letters to form a word. We were even helped by this nice security guy.

Overall, I love this museum! So...cool (hehe, I'm talking about the atmosphere) and sight-refreshing! It wasn't like any other museums whose exhibits were dusty and damp or anything. Just love it!

After our visit to Museum Bank Indonesia, we had lunch nearby, catching sights of Japanese tourists which excited my friend :) Then we got back to our Blok M and went back home. It was such a fun day! Can't wait for another non-mall tour with my friends.

Charlie's Angels much?