Saturday, March 12, 2005
so. march hols spent in indonesia. very.. um. eventful.
Day Onemy family was the last to arrive at the airport. habib, baba and khala's family were already there. we jakun folks took millions of pictures and went to have some food at BK because habib insisted that we'd all die of starvation because they werent serving us food on the plane. called vibs to chat for a last time tt week. hah. anyways. our flight was slightly delayed. wic gave us more time to take more pics=) upon boarding. we encountered a mini catastrophe since habib decided tt bringing a tiny pair of scissors on the plane was perfectly acceptable. haha. hes so cute.
i got the window seat=) but the plane wing was rather nearby. ohwells. i tried to do some homework but eventually dint even solve one sum. thennn we reached jakarta at last. right as we alighted i heard this ang moh guy tell his ang moh friend "wow, its warm already" sheesh. the airport there reminded me of the ecp underpass. strange. the airport staff were clad in ugly uniforms (including ridiculous hat things). the staff in charge of immigration could not have worked at a slower pace. the lines wouldve moved along much faster if a snail were stamping our passports.
after claiming our luggage, we met ami salim. he looked much darker than how i remembered him. ami alwi was also there along with his two sons nabil [six] and ali [four]. it was the first time ive ever met them. the boys were incredibly edible!
anyways, ami salim drove us to his place (condet) in habib shaikh's green kijang. meanwhile ami alwi drove our luggage plus aman there. the ride was about an hour long. millions of buskers were roaming around the roads with their guitars hoping to earn some money. apparently driving on two lanes in jakarta is acceptable. it was quite dark then so i couldnt really tell tt the outside world was somewhat malaysia-like.
at ami salim's house: loads of ppl awaiting our presence=) ami salim's wife and kids: amati fatimah, ridho' [eight], salleh [four] and affaf (afifah) [two]. ami alwi's wife amati lubna (who's pregnant). amati azimah, her husband ami fauzi and their kids habib shaikh [eight] and batul [four]. and jiddah maryam. we were shown our room upstairs. i braced myself for the absence of aircon. habib and baba shared a room downstairs. then we had dinner (consisting of strange new dishes) which was excellent. after which faizah, aman, ameera, mohammed, qadir and i played with the tiny indonesian folks. they are SO cute! its a shame i couldnt understand a single word they uttered. im already so bad at malay and im given indonesian speaking ppl to socialise with. their language sounds so foreign!!
after a long while we all went upstairs to shower. the heat was killing me. tt was when i gained my enormous fear of the black jamban. and the fact that we had ZERO toilet paper!! it was very hard to fall asleep because the flies were distracting. and the fan. would not. shut. up. creaaaaak. creak creak creak creak creak creak creak creak creaaak. i sweated the whole night. bad bad first night.
fears so far:
malayness
flies
absence of toilet paper
black jamban
hideous po bolster owned by affaf
-blogged on 20/3/05
-aysha