(I should probably stop with this habit of only updating before a trip to someplace. I’ll be doing the chauffeur thing tomorrow and driving two of the most important women in my life - my mom and my grandma - down to Penang, to follow-up on some procedural things related to great-grandma’s funeral).
“Prologue, or those days I spend more time daydreaming dangerously”
It was that sort of crazy stretch in a month where everything seemingly led to one another, like the Bold and the Beautiful, and you kind of just sat through it until one day it announces that this is the finale, and you watch it and finish it and get on with your lives (or, somehow, start with CSI: Miami). Of course, by now, your muscles have already atrophied, along with any semblance of a brain.
(Apologies for any soap opera campers out there, but there’s no other way to describe unending lethargy).
And that was sort of how it felt when having to come back from Jakarta straight into closing week, which ended three days back, and things have not entirely slowed down for some recuperation.
(And then, of course, there’s tomorrow and the drive to Penang).
It’ll be an early sleep tonight, so I figure that I’ll keep this one short.
Besides, my atrophied brain needs time to warm itself up.
****
Jakarta was interesting.
Not the place though. But I wasn’t brought to Jakarta Central, or at least that’s how I remembered the local overclocker told me; they held it at East Jakarta, which had Jakarta’s biggest IT mall and the second worst traffic that side of the world.
A fact about Indonesian traffic; the rules don’t apply. The go as far as to avoid cars going the wrong way, but traffic lights and double lines and no-entries only appear as a warning sticker that said ‘Pretty Please’. In Indonesian traffic, might is right.
But you also have to have some puzzle-solving skills as an Indonesian driver. For instance, when you have a good ten or so automobiles converging in the middle of the T-junction (of course, the traffic light was only there as a light source), it takes considerable brain power to untangle each beeping and horning car so that they are free to drive off to their respective junction, while the another batch forms the next puzzle.
Another fact; the pedestrians are all traffic authorities. So don’t be surprised when the elderly lady selling steamed corn at the road side suddenly puts on a scary face and started ushering cars to the right junction.
Needless to say, it was a perpetual state of pandemonium.
Indonesian IT malls are fascinating. Though, only fascinating as much as I could explore, which encompassed eight stores of the mall’s centre court, and three from the first floor when I dashed up to take pictures.
At the centre of the mall was the Overclocking Championship. I’ll write about some other time. For now, let’s just say that it was Not What I Thought It’d Be.
After the championship, the organisers shipped us to an island (Ayer Island, with the eponymous Ayer Island Beach Resort) to let us have fun. They put us in a paintball competition (I got shot in the face, and might’ve shot a few people on the thigh, but it was hard to tell), and those teamwork games that were stupid to do but fun to play.
Then they lodged us on a chalet built on top of the water. If you wake to pee in the morning, you can hear the waves hitting the board under your feet. And the waves get scarily high when the weather picked up; I was on the chalet veranda thinking I could write under the stars and above the waves when sea water started hitting my face. The waves were incredibly high then, and they squirmed and coiled and crashed in the dark.
There were a lot of stars, as island skies do. But from my chalet the trees blocked a lot of the sky.
I shared my chalet room with a Vietnamese man who couldn’t get my name right, and instead resorted to smiling and nodding at me whenever he needed my attention. He was an amazing sleeper; he slept the minute we entered the chalet (sand still sticking on his legs and all) and he slept with the lights on and the world cup showing on the incredibly blur TV, all the way past breakfast (he skipped it).
The organiser shipped us back when they got our flight schedules sorted out, and I found myself on a bus back to the airport.
Another Indonesian road fact here; you can bribe, or in a better sense, tip the pedestrian road authorities with cash for them to stop traffic for you so that the large bus can make an impossible U-Turn.
I flew home with the Malaysian Overclocker, and one of the Malaysian sales rep. It was all good fun.
The rest, they say, were the dreams you can’t remember when you sleep after a long weekend.
*****
Closing was, well, closing week. Thankfully, I chose not to pick up any game reviews, because I couldn’t remember having to have so much to write.
Saturday gave me a few hours off so that I could go attend Li Mei’s farewell lunch. I gave her a Magic 8 Ball. Because, well, we needed magic sometimes to make decisions.
I’m also owing her something else, which is now at the stage which requires me to daydream dangerously. Like when driving home in the heavy rain. Thankfully, Malaysian traffic is nowhere near Indonesia‘s. Constant vigilance is required but not compulsory.
I expect to be in Part 1 when I get back from Penang. Hopefully.
Right then. Goodnight folks.
