Kulam Ikan Tetangga

Menjelang subuh di pertengahan tahun 2000, saat menunggu telepon dari pacar yang tinggal di tanah yang berbeda waktu 4 jam dari negeri ini, mendadak saya memikirkan tentang tradisi. Beberapa hari terakhir ini, pemikiran itu muncul kembali, seperti kapal selam dari dasar palung terdalam bawah sadar saya. Lahir dan besar sebagai orang Jawa dalam keluarga yang nampak liberal di pulau Jawa, saya tetap dikelilingi dan dibentuk dalam tradisi. Orang Jawa sangat menyukai tradisi. Segala macam upacara dan tata cara dalam hidup orang Jawa dilandasi berbagai simbol dan filosofi. Javanese are suckers for ceremonies and symbols , begitu kesimpulan saya. Ibu saya sebetulnya jenis orang yang tak terlalu gemar upacara dan simbol-simbolan, tetapi sebagai seorang yang dididik secara akademis untuk menjadi skeptis, ibu ternyata bisa menemukan jawaban dan alasan yang rasional untuk beberapa upacara tradisi yang berlaku dalam adat Jawa. Misalnya ketika dulu saya pertama kali menstruasi, ibu tetap memb...

I know something is being shown to me, discreetly, subtly, indirectly. I know this, but I cannot guess what it is yet, that something that is being shown to me. I know how it feels like. It felt like I've crossed a point where a loop is being completed. A perfect circle. Albeit small, but the loop is finished. Time to move on. Start another loop. It doesn't have to be big, everything started minuscule. Like atoms. I know what I need to feel now. I need to soar and surrounded with warmth. I have the warmth, all I need to do is let go of the sandbags, the baggages that are holding me back, and rise.

Rahasia Meede: Misteri Harta Karun VOC by E.S. Ito Mengandung spoiler. Kalau kamu gak suka spoiler, gak usah diteruskan. Jangan misuh-misuh belakangan. Resensi lengkap mungkin akan dibuat dan diunggah saat buku sudah rampung dibaca. Saat ini baru sampai halaman 235. Akan tetapi daripada tidak ada, berikut ini adalah berbagai coretan yang saya buat di halaman-halaman buku dengan menggunakan pensil. Halaman 87: Karakter Guru Uban ini terlalu jelas dibuat sombong dan angkuh, hitam putih. Sepertinya akan condong pada sesuatu yang hitam. Halaman 102: Cathleen lebih terdengar Amerika daripada Belanda, baik dari segi nama maupun gerak-gerik yang dideskripsikan. Halaman 121: Dari semua karakter sejauh ini hanya Batu yang terbentuk lebih utuh, alami dan manusiawi (dalam artian 'believable'). Halaman 125: (re: Cathleen) perempuan ini mahasiswi sejarah, spesialisasinya apa bisa dikesampingkan, kenapa dia harus digambarkan sedemikian butanya tentang Suharto? Halaman 129: Bab 13...

I was standing in a queue for Pak Min's Chicken Soup this evening when I saw this guy in front of me handed something over the counter. It was a tin container. He was going to bring the soup home. I can't remember when exactly was it the last time I brought a tin container from home to buy and bring home the food. Nowadays it's always plastic plastic plastic. Hot food, cold beverages, almost everything uses plastic. I have been trying to return to the forgotten habit of the era before Twitter, Facebook, heck even before Friendster and mIRC; going shopping carrying a shopping bag from home to reduce plastic bags. Which means the going shopping itself has to be carefully planned, so I can bring the shopping bag :D. Not a bad idea for times of crises like nowadays, when all prices goes sky rocketing and would never ever touched down anywhere. Now I'll just need to start bringing food containers when buying food out. By the way, in the blog where I took the photo of r...

We were going to the supermarket to stock his fridge with food yesterday. The traffic was brimming, in anticipation of the adzan at approximately a quarter to six, when the streets would suddenly be empty for a little while people are in a hurry to break their fasting. Waiting for the traffic light to turn green, I snuggled my face to his left shoulder. It smelled so good. "Which pile did you take this t-shirt from?" " What ?" "Did you take it from the laundry plastic bags or from your dresser?" " Dresser ." That was me. The stack of his clean t-shirts in his dresser, I did those for him. I made him smell good :)

Karena kepala sakit jadinya nggak bisa mikir pake bahasa Inggris ataupun Bahasa Indonesia yang baik dan benar. Maka dari itu, jika dalam jurnal kali ini terjadi pencampuran bahasa yang semena dan ketidak-konsistenan istilah, biarkanlah berlalu dari kesadaran. Amin. Semua dimulai agak pagi hari ini karena ada yang mengusik tidur dengan mengkitik-kitik telapak kaki dan mendorong-dorong betis (dengan cukup brutil) buat ngebangunin. Memang sih, memang, minta dianterin beli tiket, tapi sungguhlah upacara pembangunan itu agak barbar. Mata masih lengket karena baru bisa tidur jam empat menjelang adzan Shubuh. Singkat cerita, kecemasan bahwa tidak akan dapat tiket tidak terbukti karena setelah mengantri di belakang 12 orang, akhirnya tiket pulang pergi ke kota kelahiran sudah di tangan. HAHAHA! YA! AKULAH SI GADIS KOTA! Aku bukan gadis desa! eh yang nancep di ubun-ubunnya itu apa ya, kok digdaya sangat nampaknya... Selepas itu kami pergi ke supermarket untuk menumpuk bahan makanan karena...

I promised to write about the brown non-electric warmer, so I began with the sweet chocolate pup in mind, and ended up in an entirely different story altogether. Well, ... maybe not too far different. Who could resist this chocolate charm? :) When small, my sister had recurrent bouts of asthma and she's allergic to a lot of things. Animals with fur are strictly banned in our household. My grandparents had to let go a dozen of rabbits they kept at their house because my sister spent two earlier years of her life there. My grandparents also had a pet dog, or rather my mother's youngest brother had, but the dog was always kept at the back of the house and wasn't allowed to get inside. My youngest uncle always have a dog, one succeeding the other when the previous dog died, or in one case was stolen :( I don't recall of the dog being banished because of my sister's asthma. The last two dogs my uncle kept was Bonzo and its pup Deki. They were sold off by my grandm...

Which is first? Chicken or egg? Which is first? Music or dance? My friend's daughter, hardly two years old, reacted to all kind of music by starting to dance. The movements aren't complex, she just started to move, bending her knees and swinging her arms. Sometimes, when the adults reacted to her by clapping hands, she would imitate the hand clapping. She reacted to all kind of music indiscriminately. Drillbot bottom shaking moving... uhyeah! :D Last month, during another friends' wedding party, the little girl couldn't resist the charm of the live dangdut wedding singers and didn't stop dancing for ages. Her parents whose music taste barely include dangdut were a bit mortified. But, who could resist the age old drive to move your body to the rhythm? Which is first? Names or Sound? Which is first? Language or Music? A discussion turned into the subject of language one night, particularly about onomatopoeia, the formation of a word from a sound associated wit...

oh.my.GOD PMS is looming! Since adzan Maghrib I had been eating nearly incessantly like a pig. All carbs. I ate four times the whole night. Four times big meals! And once a snack. Oh I am so full right now I can't move. I feel like a ... a very full boa constrictor lying contented after swallowing down a whole water buffalo. Nah. Although I am tempted to google an image to show you what it looks like, I won't do it :D Google it yourself ! :D Food. I think I promised to write about it. J loves good food, and he can cook good food, particularly the good food he loves. This is sensible. Her Majesty Queen of My Universe said this when she taught me the basic cooking skills: "Nak, at the very least you have to know how to cook the food you like to eat." And you can't get anymore sensible than that. The thing is, I like to eat junk. So everything I cook has the tendency to lean to that direction. J doesn't eat junk. What he does is smoking, and eat good food. So...

Did you have a bad day? Sorry to tell you, everybody has one. But my day was great. And I won't apologize for that :) But, I do feel sorry for you. Not like I care. You didn't want any, anyways. Well, Actually, I don't have any idea what to write right now. Since trying to describe the thing that baffled me today is verging to pointless. HAHAHA. Today after 6, Nyi Geni Sambernyowo , Nyi Jaran Poni and Nyi Sumbermengo, decided to celebrate their pay day by going to this cafe at the North for coffee and cakes. They invited me to join them. We went here, Parsley Bakery in Jalan Kaliurang The place was small and cozy, and we sat right in front the home band of three playing, live music by request. Right next to these musicians is a white screen with Travel and Living projected at it. We had coffee, and tea, and a cup of hot chocolate, and cakes, while watching Bobby Chinn does his thing, and completely ignored the home band. HAHA. We didn't clap our hands to show o...

The first thing I did when I woke up at 8 am this morning was getting a glass of cold coke from the fridge and finish it. Hahah! No fasting today. This poster promotes that any girl who drink this soda beverage would look this awesome. Even the puppy has that dreamy grin on its face . I hadn't feel too fantastic throughout the day so house chores were done sparsely.The only highlight of the day was me discovering the wonder of human made technology inside a 500 rupiah plastic sachet. EUREKAAA!!! I am the kind of person that let her laundry piled up into a mountain, for not wanting to waste detergent suds and buckets of water just to wash three pieces of clothes everyday. Also, I don't really like doing laundry. I think washing machines are awesome and whoever invented them must be promoted and canonized into sainthood, or at least be given a Nobel prize . Seriously. The last week I had noticed that the small hill in the back porch that is my laundry pile was reaching a re...

Started the day averagely at 10.30 today. I changed my alarm set up from the unrealistic 5.30 to the realistic 8 am, but the result was still disappointing heh heh heh. The fact that I slept around 3 am didn't help much. I have to learn to sleep early. Unlike the days before, I didn't stop after finishing house chores and gave in to an hour nap after 3 pm. Instead, I showered and went out to the nearest public library to sip the wifi connection. AHAHAHA. After weeks of limited connection, it felt liberating to have a proper internet session. :D There were so many to catch up with, I didn't know where to start, and ended up updating photos for my online social network and downloaded several chapters of audiobook for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I so need an iPod now, to listen to Jane Austen's work being read at any given time and place, I tell you! >:] Miss Austen is making a lot of sense J had to run errands here and there so he couldn't come...

When I was still in University, usually I spent the last half of Ramadan at my parent's house. One time, before I returned to Surabaya, my friends and I had a farewell dinner in one of the junkfood restaurant, and the restaurant offered Powerpuff Girls drinking bottle as a bonus when buying certain meal package. I was still crazy about the Powerpuff Girls, so we bought the meal package, and I brought home the Buttercup water bottle. Buttercup, often mistaken as the middle child when she's actually the youngest :) Each morning after sahur, while waiting for imsak, I would fill the Buttercup bottle full with water and finished it empty. That's about a liter of water, each morning. I knew I would immediately peed like 80% off it within three hours or so, but gulping down a liter of water kind of gave me confidence to face the fasting during the day. Ha ha ha. Well, afterall, Surabaya is famous for its hot weather. A couple of years later my Mom noted how we had to replace t...

Now I remember why I don't really like sahur at 3-4 am. Am too lazy to chew. Had nasi padang too early at 11 pm, the bread toast was shared between me and J. I was still up until half past three this morning, and there are still left over of the toast, so I finished it off. It was just one slice, but it took like five minutes for me to chew and swallow. Tonight I would probably had my sahur as late as 2 am. Later than that I would be too lazy to eat anything. Yeah, it doesn't sound right does it? Me, lazy to eat anything. Haha. I woke up at ten this morning. This is quite early by average. I did the house chores while updating news through plurknation. Internet connection is as slow as ever. And it's a hot hot day. So hot and dry, I resorted to the wonder of olive oil for my parched parched skin. I skipped my hair because I planned to chop it off today. Since I planned to write something about batik, after house chores I kept myself awake for another two hours or so, e-...

Second day of fasting, I didn't eat anything other than the fried duck J bought me. Had it with rice and killer sambal at 10 pm. I fell asleep at about 3 am after trying to finish some work on text and writing a review about Channing Tatum's hot ass . So, because it's Sunday, and to preserve energy, I slept until around 12.30. Only woke up to go to the bathroom, turned some music on, and turning the modem on. Connection was slow as usual so while loading pages I fell asleep again, and was awake briefly to check if the pages loaded properly, if not I had to reload the page and... fell asleep again. Yes, life is good. J bought fruit soup again :) but from different hawker because it had smaller fruit chops with pinkish syrup and more ice cubes. Last night, on his advice, I marinated a piece of chicken fillet with salt and black pepper, which rebelliously I added two more ingredients in accordance to my own imagination: thyme and some olive oil. The chicken fillet was supp...

Me : I'm waiting for J, he's coming to take me out and watch movie. Cherie : What are you going to see? Me : GI Joe Cherie : Ooh, Channing Tatum's ass is *HOT* Me : :)) Me : Oh, gotta go, J's here. Talk you later, Cher! Cherie : Bye bye And so we went to see GI Joe. We left the house at half past eight and the show started at 9 so I wasn't sure we were going to get any ticket. Among the films that were showing in Premiere XXI were the local war film Merah Putih, the horror flick Orphan, the animation UP, and District 9. It was relatively quiet compared the movie blockbuster time in the last couple of months, but I am always the one with pessimistic mind heheh. So my escape plan was, if we didn't get the ticket to GI Joe, let's see District 9. But at 20:48 we did get the ticket for GI Joe, so we went and bought a bag full of chips, a bottle of apple juice for him and a bottle of mineral water for me, in we went into the theatre and sat at the right hand top ...