18 January 2006 Wednesday

return to Jakarta

after 20 years away, it’s not likely that anything would be recognizable to me here, even if i remembered anything more than my childhood dog—Skippy—from when we lived here.

but Indonesia is a pretty cool place so far, and not so unfamiliar.. the Jakartan landscape from airplane view is definitely much different from Kuala Lumpur’s.. we had some wonderful Indonesian food, and i liked it all even though i’m still not great at eating spicy food—i like to think i’ve really really improved over the past few decades though, and that i’m at the very least a warrior about it.

we ran into issue at the airport.. they didn’t want to let my brother into the country because his American passport expires in less than 6 months. they seriously tried to send him back to Malaysia on the next flight out. i basically went into fight mode and could feel my the stress in my body and heartrate and such, as i stood between my brother and the 7 guys insisting that they had to take him to the airplane immediately. ultimately, mom was able to nice the man in charge into letting Lor through. if no is an unacceptable offer, then do not accept it.

very nice lady my father works with came to fetch us, and took us to lunch and such.. so nice to see the traditional handicrafts around.. i think more accessible and more authentic than stuff you’ll see in Malaysia these days. familiar and comfortable all at once.

internet at this hotel is not guaranteed. in fact, they told us we can’t have it without paying a few hundred thousand rupia, AND changing rooms to pay more, but only have two hours of access per day. oy oy oy. somehow i’m in right now.. but i won’t hold my breath for too too much.

i was told the flight over was going to be about an hour… it didn’t totally sound right to me, but i didn’t have the itinerary and i don’t have a watch and indonesia isn’t that far from KL, so i believed it was possible… thus the taking of my ‘ear pills’ much much much too early, and thus the intense pain upon landing that actually managed to persist a while after we landed. yay.

poor guy at nice restaurant seemed not to understand what i wanted by ordering “lime/lemon juice.” “lemon tea? tea with lemon?” “no… lemon juice.” he eventually got it. it was good juice. Lor has seemingly inherited my taste for starfruit juice, which used to be an Alicson favorite/must-order. it’s still quite good.

we had dragon fruit the past few days. i’ve not had this kind with the red (hot magenta pink) inside before… apparently this is the common kind… but i’d only ever seen the kind with white inside. this magenta kind leaves magenta EVERYwhere—fingers, tongue, teeth…. but it’s still yum, and it apparently doesn’t stain like mangosteen (white, but purpleish stains) does.

though it was very brief (but i’ll see them again in a week, at least, for CNY) was really really really nice to see my three lil cousins (there’s another two lil ones over in KL that i’ll get to see in a week).. really nice to see them, but also really sad—they’re getting bigger! kids get bigger! you go away a year, and you come back, and they’re not as small as they were before! i feel strange and old and very trite to be saying that.. but … well, i adore them as they are and as they continue to grow, but i’ll always miss them as the tiny kids they once were..