The Opera Populaire

I was in sch to print out my resume, then I went to Hon Room to see who was there and it was empty and locked. It felt kinda sad and surreal. I am not used to going to the Room and finding it empty. Such is the sadness of graduation. Soon, it will be taken over by another group of people. I wonder if they will use it the way we did, spending nights there and bringing everything they owned under the sun there, till it smells kinda weird? Hahaha... Bumped into Kevin on my way to KR terminal. He looked so suai wearing a striped shirt and working pants! That guy got a part time job with National Heritage Board liao, so good!

Felt rather inspired by Weijin's blog. Sure, graduation is bittersweet. I felt rather moody as I walked to Mediacorp to hand in my application. The drizzle added to my sentimentality. Felt kinda lonely cos usually by this time I would have been in Jakarta to spend the holiday with my parents. Really wished I'm there now, sleeping on my bed, listening to the sound of the night: bajajs (a public transport) with their noisy engines driving around looking for customers, the speeding motorbikes competiting with one another during weekends, the sound of praying from the mosques in the middle of the night. The smell of dust, though it was the single cause of my asthma back then. The sound of that rare rain and wind. The noise of our TV, theChinese language spoken by the Phoenix Channel a surreal contrast to the Indonesian and Sundanese babble outside. For a moment, I thought that I could live with going back and taking over our family biz just so that I need not feel so lonely.

Shu Huei and Hongxian's msg brought me back to the joys of being here. I have long since lost the contacts of my frens in Indonesia. My parents are not the sort who socialize a lot either. We hardly ever attend any wedding if we can help it or join any tai-tai activities. Somehow, we can't relate to their ways of thinking and living. They possess a certain lovely porcelain look, cultivated by a life of indolence. They speak Indonesian with a terrible nasal accent that betrayed a feeling superiority over the Natives and their indolence with one another. I can't imagine marrying an Indo Chinese man and living as a tai-tai, too. To me, it may be romantic if I go back or reminicensce about it once in a while, but I can't live there unless God tells me to.

I came to S'pore becos of my own decision. My parents thot that it will be good if I learn to read and write Chinese properly, though we do speak Chinese at home. Ever since young, I have never known how to assimilate into the Indonesian society. Although I can read Indonesian fairly well, my speaking is atrocious, becos I'm just not used to it. One of my teachers at Santa Ursula (if you ask any Indonesian, they will tell you that it is the Number 1 sch in Jakarta, with the biggest Cathedral) said to me one day that I couldn't do anything right becos I'm Chinese. I didn't take it to heart, but recalling this incident, I think it was my first instance of facing the latent racial tensions there. It also showed me that I did not and will never belong there.

I like the simplicity of S'pore. True, we are not the most elegant society in the world, but at least it is more meritocratic and you do not have to live with corruption. In Indonesia, it is almost impossible to live without money becos the income gap is just too wide. Corruption is the rule of the day. If u wanna things done fast, "pay" them. If u need to get off the hook of law, pay them. Esp if u r a Chinese, u need to be very careful becos u can neva win in any lawsuit, so what u do is u pay them. If u need to get into a prestigious sch, they need a little "gift" they will tell u to your face, as if it is the most normal thing in the world. U walk around the street fearing that your bag may be snatched or for some women, there is the irritation that stemmed from the fact that some of the many youths hanging around the city will wolf-whistle at you.

Maybe this is just the scenario from the biggest and most cosmopolitan city in Indonesia. When I went to East Java last year, the people are amazingly polite and refined and efficient and thorough in their work. Even tho I do not understand their heavily Javanese-accented Indonesia all the time, they were really nice. It was really fun becos we stayed in Batu, at a hotel that was once a Dutch colonial mansion. I was reliving what I had read in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet.

Wah after writing all these, I really feel like going back! Hee hee if anyone wanna travel to Indo, do call me up.