Unproductive Weekend

I had to say that last weekend is probably the most unproductive weekend of my entire Art Center history. I usually worked on my homework over the weekend, or at least on Sunday (Sunday is my homework day yay). But forget about last weekend. All I did was chilling, hanging out, eating, and sleeping - it might sound like something most of us do in spare time.

On Friday, after working on Materials homework, Irene, Han, and I had a dinner in Savoy Kitchen. It's a Chinese restaurant in Alhambra widely known for its Hainan Chicken Rice. It feels good to finally get a taste of it after a while not eating it. This particular good has always been one of my favorites back in Indonesia, and everytime I travel to Singapore, I always have this for almost every meal.

By the way, excuse the picture quality. I've been taking pictures using my crappy Blackberry camera feature.

A series of reunions

Just last night, I was surprised by my cousin, Monika's, Skype request. We talked a cousin-to-cousin talk yesterday. As a note to you guys, she's like my own sister and now she already left to pursue her dancing education and career in Singapore.



I really miss her so much. I'm quite saddened with the fact that I won't be able to meet her once I get back to Jakarta for vacay, unless my parents allow me to go to Singapore and pay her a visit.

Just tonight, I got another Skype call but this time, it's from Jeje and Didi!

It was short but it's nice to see them although we could only meet through computer screens. Hopefully one day Monika, Jeje, Didi, and I could meet up at a conversation call!
That'd be awesome!

Speaking of skyping with Monika, Jeje, and Didi, I'd like to mention a bit that they are participants of Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan, a study tour program to Taiwan where Monika and I were lucky to meet Jeje, Didi, and the rest of the gang in Group 4 (the group we were assigned in)!

...and guess what? It's been a year since Taiwan trip! Time flies so fast, and in another month, my first year in the US will be completed and I'll soon enter the second one.
Anyway, let's focus on the Taiwan trip first. The Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan program that I joined last year, kicked off on June 21 till July 11, 2010. So, two days before this entry was posted, officially marked the first anniversary since the day the tour ended.

The whole program itself was very much impressive! If you're wondering what I've been through in details, please refer to this. You'll most likely find everything related to the trip!
The aftermath events following the end of the program include of course, reunions. Reunion is a true fact that our bond created within the group has definitely strengthened. Even at the end of the program, we still felt like not splitting up. It was a tearful moment but anyway, we promised to reunite.

The first reunion was held approx. 3 days after we all arrived in Jakarta, which is around July 13/14 (today last year) in Pancious, Mal Kelapa Gading. The idea of the reunion had been initiated since we were exiting the arrival hall in Soekarno-Hatta International airport. Before we parted, we promised we'd have a reunion while we were still having a few days off left before school started (not for me though, I still had a month left before leaving to the US).

That reunion is probably the most joyous one, since it was attended by some members of Group 4 who come from Makassar. A chance of meeting them in the future is definitely very rare :(

During the briefing of Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan, held before the program kicked off, the organizer lady expected all the participants to make friends, stay in contact, and have a reunion after the program ended. She even mentioned and exaggerated. "Last year's group even had their first reunion just a week after the program ended!"

Well, ma'am, you should know that this year (last year)'s group had their first reunion 3 DAYS just after the program ended! See how close we really are?

Second reunion was held at the same time of Celine's birthday in Bandar Jakarta, Ancol. Remember Celine? She's the girl who we succeeded to surprise on the night of her birthday in Tainan.





Another reunion was quite short, and it was also to celebrate Karin's birthday. It was thrown in Chicken Story, Mal Kelapa Gading. It wouldn't have been originally short, if Monika and I hadn't got lost in that enormous mall and spent nearly an hour to look for the venue of the reunion.

The latest reunion only consisted of four people including me: Audrey, Didi, and Jeje. We had a simple dinner in Sushi Tei and that was when I came back from the US for Year End break. It was so nice to know that they actually dedicated this reunion for me. Aww...

I'm going back to Indonesia on August 6, 2011, in case you wonder. My Group 4 friends have been expecting for another reunion, but I'm afraid it won't be the same. Since some of them are going abroad for college, it will surely affect the amount of the attendees (Monika and Jeje are off to Singapore, Sonya is off to Michigan, US, Karin goes to Taiwan, and Audrey is off to Surabaya).

No matter where we would be,
Group 4 sticks until the end!

The blue time-machine

Gah, I'm feeling so awful for not posting for ages.
I'm terribly, horribly sorry.

I don't know what's going on but seems like my blogging mood has evaporated approaching Christmas and New Year, and even worse, I didn't get to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year here. Even MUCH worse, I didn't get to post even from my home country. What's up Carissa? Like really? You used to be that frequent blogger then now it looks like you've vanished up to somewhere.

I'm extremely sorry for the ridiculous delay of posting stuff. But as I said in my last post, I'm definitely going to spill everything that I did in my winter break. Let's start from the most important event and one day out of all 21 days spent in Jakarta. I'll probably share about my indescribable feeling and sensation of going home in another post. Not this one.

So basically, I heard of this rumor coming since November that my high school building, famous with being flooded every rainy season, don't ask, is going to be demolished. No, it's not like the school would be gone forever. Ha. It's just that it seems to be the principal was tired already of school days-off due to flood, literally forcing the students and faculty to stay at home since getting through the flood itself was nothing but impossible (it depends on how deep the water was).

Anyway, yeah. With the school being demolished, a new building would stand right in the same spot only far more modern, posh looking, with flood-preventing structure constructed. The so-called flood-preventing structure itself was nothing big, since the first floor of the school would be emptied and used as a parking or huge void. I'm kind of imagining it to be like a very wide space that would look like a basement parking lot. Obviously the reconstruction would take approx 5 years, so they decided to relocate the school to an abandoned university building in South Jakarta, and transformed it into a temporary school building.

Whoa, when can we get to the real story? Alright, I'll just start off here.

December 17 was the last day before the school got demolished on the next day. I heard that a lot of alumnus would be coming to take the last glimpse of the famous blue yet worn-looking school building that had kept their memories. I met up with my friends there and we had a small reunion before getting to explore the school, having some nostalgic moments in every place that we visited.

The tennis court stayed the same. Worn and covered with dirt that seemed to live there forever.

The board that announces the schedules of remedial tests. It seems like as if I could still see my name written on one of its rows lol

Seeing this sign made me unhesitatingly want to enter the classroom right away, sit by one of the desks, and wait for the teacher to come and start a lesson.

Have you ever known the term time machine?

Visiting this school was almost like being in a time-machine. It was just several months when I got the last glimpse of my high school before taking off to the US. The entire views and sights involving the blue building have been replaced with a vast school ground with many buildings divided in quads, which is my currently college environment. Then at that very moment, I was back to that my high school only to find it didn't change a bit. I had to adjust the sight of the contrast of my high school and my college building, trying not to consider my view of my high school building as my college building and vice versa.

Each room in the school building had been emptied, and that day was the last day for the moving before the entire building was to be demolished. So, it's kind of sad to see how most of the rooms were already hollow and empty, only a few remained occupied with the same old desks and chairs, but they were to be moved out as well.

My class of seven students was now but a hollow, unused room.

Anyway, good thing that since that day was to become a memorable one especially for the alumni, we had a little reunion there with the rest of Class of 2010.





Coincidentally, December 17 also happened to be the last day of the current term, before Christmas break. So I bumped into some of my enrolling friends (juniors) who were now in their twelfth grades as well as eleventh grades.

Several of my friends and I decided to go on tour around the school and had ourselves stuck in the past aka nostalgia time. Everytime we stopped by a place, we talked there for a minute or two remembering what sort of events had ever happened at that spot. Sometimes, we giggled at the sweet memory that the place had recorded. If only some rooms were camcorders, we would gladly ask them to play the memories back, aww...

This experience might remind me and my friends that we were no longer students of this high school. It was quite an awestruck to see that now we were college students, considered alumnus in our high school. Gosh I could never feel older than that time.

(Anyway, notice how my English is getting suck-ish? Where the heck are all the vocabs gone?)

Okay, if you feel like I've been melancholic throughout the post, I decided to give you a bit ice breaker. Do you notice any similarities of the picture below....



...with this one below?



LOL the ballad of three girls and an air conditioner continued!

And....not to mention, we were lucky enough to meet the faculty and staff who were in the middle of moving the desks from the still-occupied rooms. We felt bad for disturbing their work, but at the same time, impressed by how they saw us now. It was amazing how they still remembered us (of course, we just graduated a few months ago though).
The picture below was not taken by me, but a friend of mine instead who happened to have the camera when I was absent. When I got back, I found her aiming the camera at the second floor's corridor, where a teacher or two looked excitingly towards the camera. But then another one came, and more kept coming.

See how these teachers struggled to get the position in order to be visible in the picture?



The hilarity still left in mind everytime I looked at the picture above. Teachers could act silly, couldn't they? Along the way, we encountered more and more faculty and staff, one of them was surprisingly my last homeroom teacher!



He happened to be the advisor of the English Club back when I still held the position as the President. Here's a picture with my friends, who also happened to be the former members of the English Club.





Some people can't just resist to be shot by camera, can they?





Here's my friend with her last homeroom teacher. Don't they look just adorable? I could've mistaken them as daughter and mother LOL







The picture below concluded our school visit. My friends hitched a ride with me just like they did back in high school days. Looks like they missed my driver so much that they want me to take a picture of them with my driver. Gain fans much?



Alright, so basically that was one of the most amazing yet memorable memories of overall twenty-something days in Jakarta. I'll be sure to post some more stories relating to my days in Jakarta.

And of course, the impressive journey on the way back home to Jakarta, and back to San Francisco. Impressive enough to be memorable since it was my first time traveling abroad all by myself.

Trip to Taiwan - Part 14 (LAST PART!)

Still on the same night....
It was indeed a long night that we hardly slept. Let me tell you later how long we got to sleep. Even some people told me that in the last night, we wouldn't be able to sleep due to repacking stuff and just got busy. If it really happened, then it would be my first time not sleeping all night long. I was thinking to write it down in my record book or something.
So as I told you before, we spent the rest of the night gathering in the hallway, sharing our impressions and stories we'd been through so far and we also ticked the checklist of places and accomodations, where they were good or not.

After the gathering ended, we didn't go straight to bed and sleep but instead we repacked our things, we positioned them inside the luggages so that they would fit it. The airline regulation required all luggages to be under 20kg and those whose luggages' weight were over the target were in state of panic. Some of my friends who were heavy shoppers experienced that, apparently, and they had to get someone (boys particularly, who didn't shop much) to stuff their things in the boys' luggages.
As you can see below, this is the condition of our room just as we were repacking things.

It was already 1 o'clock in the morning and yet we were still wide awake.
The hallways were crowded with people dragging their luggages all around to the living room where the scale was. Anyway, another activity that occured at that moment was that, we - particularly my group - gathered in our leader's room to start making souvenirs for our fu dao yuans. The souvenirs would be in form of three booklets (we have three fu dao yuans) and each of them would be filled with impressions of us towards our fu dao yuans. So practically, we wrote on this glossy black paper using a golden and silver marker impression of us about our fu dao yuans, could be in Chinese or English.

But since I couldn't write in Chinese, I decided to write in English.

We were done with everything at like 2 o'clock.
I finally got to return to my room and my roommates were taking late shower early in the morning. We spent about an hour watching a recorded football match (England vs Germany) while some of my roommates were still busy stuffing their things into the luggages. Some even succeeded finding someone else to share luggages with.

At 3 o'clock, we wrapped things up. My luggage was locked already and so was my cabin bag. I stuffed my shoulderbag into the luggage and decided to wear - as promised - my new hot pink backpack. There was plenty of space in the backpack so it was really worth it.

Honestly I didn't feel sleepy at all, but not until one of my friends decided to sleep. Her action was eventually followed by others. Even though we might not be able to sleep for like six hours, but instead an hour, because the morning call would be at 4 am.

Twenty first day: July 11, 2010 (Taipei - Jakarta)
Finally, got to change the date.
It was a nice, short sleep, almost like a nap and I suddenly woke up at like...4.30 am!!! *panic* Half an hour before the morning call!! I hurriedly took a shower, washed my hair, and got dressed. The last day was really a mess. But I managed to get ready in time. We had a quick breakfast with, again, Doraemon bread, Onigiri, and a juice box.

I barely remembered what happened next because I think I was still half asleep, even when I was loading my luggage and cabin bag to the bus. But at least I remembered the chill air of Taipei that blasted once we got out of the hotel.
The sun had just risen at that moment and the streets looked awfully quieter than yesterday.

Anyway after loading our things to the bus, we got in and thus the bus moved, leaving Taipei Hero House. Xiao Xin gave a short intro on the bus which I didn't exactly know what he was saying, but since we slept early in the morning and only slept for like an hour, we took a quick nap on the bus. I was woken up when the bus already made its way to the airport, passing freeway. And that's when Mia started to cry after we gave her the souvenir we made last night.

We got off the bus and took our things, then headed straight to the departure hall where the leader, Janet, took care of all passports and stuffs. The fu dao yuans also took us inside, so it wasn't a goodbye yet. I took some pictures with the fu dao yuans while waiting for Janet handling everything.

Here's me with Xiao Xin.



With Pizza. Isn't she such a sweetie?



With Mia or Xi Bao :)



Taking a pose with the fu dao yuans of my group



Then we took a group picture together. This one has better quality. Thanks to Jeje's camera.

But later it came to the moment of farewell when we were about to enter the immigration, where non-passengers weren't allowed to go inside.
It's time when we had to bid our fu dao yuans farewell. Things got a little bit blurry as all of us cried and hugged our fu dao yuans. It was a tearful moment indeed, and that's when you felt the bond you've made with them had gotten stronger for three weeks. I cried too, which is embarrassing because that was at the airport. I remembered hugging Xiao Xin, Xi Bao, and Pizza, and Audrey telling them "Pu yao qu." or "Don't cry".

Okay, let us not expand this topic as everyone hated being discussed about them crying.
I don't though, but well...after hugging and bidding them farewell, telling them not to forget about us and that we would tag all the pictures in Facebook, we finally stepped into the immigration counter.

Again, it was another embarrassing moment. When it came to my turn, I stepped forward, handing the officer my documents, still with swollen eyes. I remembered the officer looked at me meaningfully but I decided to return the eye contact so I just kept looking at other directions. I was sure his face was like saying. "Just cried?"

We headed straight to the gate as it was already boarding. So we didn't spend much time at the gate as we lined up towards the entrance of the plane. Later, the plane took off. So long Taiwan, see you again in the future, see you again tomorrow (particularly for me) as I'm going to transit for a couple of moments there before continuing my flight to San Francisco.
We were excited to go back to our country, and sad at the same time to leave the country which had indulged us for three weeks long.

On board, I only watched The Last Song and I didn't really watch other movies since I kept falling asleep and woke up to find the story was already somewhere else. So I decided to switch the movies.

As we landed, we quickly took our luggages which was a very quick procedure and headed out to meet our loved ones who picked us up. I spotted my mom and dad and they sort of complimented that I was wearing all stuffs they hadn't seen before (new backpack, new shirt, new white cardigan, new shoes).
But we weren't to go home first as there would be a group photoshoot near Hoka Hoka Bento for a local Chinese/Taiwanese newspaper (what?)

After that, we bid each other good bye and quickly arranged a reunion at the same week.
Wow, that's fast. We were just about to part but then we quickly arranged to meet again at a reunion.

Monika headed home with me and mom already brought me lunch which was a local dish, rawon (spicy beef soup). So after three weeks not eating Indonesian cuisine, I was quickly greeted with one shortly after my arrival.
There was a bit of a problem though. Monika sort of lost her luggage lock, but once we arrived at her house, my dad solved it quickly and then I headed back home.

Phiew, I went straight to my bedroom and crashed on the bed. After all, I only slept for an hour. I didn't even get to attend the dinner my family arranged with my friend's family.
But I managed to wake up at 1.30am to watch the final World Cup match between Spain and Germany.

---------------------------------------
Phiew (again) after writing parts of Trip to Taiwan, I finally finished everything today! Just a day before my other trip kicked off. Hope you enjoyed it.
I'll be returning to Taiwan tomorrow even for a short time (just a transit) but this won't be the same anymore. Awww...I'm going to miss everyone.

Anyway, tomorrow is also Xibao's birthday!
Group 4 is already arranging a surprise.
Thanks for reading. Now I can get back to real life writing and babbling just about everything in this blog.

<< Part 13