A Journey in a Lifetime

The same hour, 24 hours ago, I was walking down the crowded Jalan Dewi Sartika, Cililitan, Jakarta. Now, here I am already, sitting in front of desk inside my room in Tokyo. Time really flies sometimes. It feels like Thursday night was just a moment ago, whenI was still busy at office. I was assigned to assist  software-hardware integration test of a component unit in my current project. Before leaving office that day, knowing that I won’t be in Tokyo for couple of days ahead, I taught the subcontractor’s engineer who is in charge of the software test about the test environment set up. After that  I submitted e-mail to the engineer who is in charge of the hardware development about abnormal operation on the hardware that I found that day. Then I returned home, quite late. Packed up my stuff for the travel, clean up my room a bit and had a sleep for about 2 hours. I continued my sleep on the flight to Jakarta. Friday night, I arrived at Jakarta, welcomed by traffic jam that took me 2,5 hours from the airport to my destination.

As for the purpose of my short travel, let me not to disclose it here. It’s an administrative matter that I need to take care immediately. Saturday morning to afternoon, I was dealing with this administrative matter, then I went to meet with Ola.

Ever heard about time machine? I think most probably yes. And its name is quite literal to describe its function. It is the result of human imagination of conquering time, a thing that no matter how, always manage to slip away. It is science fiction, though it’s not impossible to do time travel theoretically.  Scientists have proposed several methods to do so, elaborating Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. But there is still no practical method to do it at present, not in the near future (I think not even in the far future, but I’m not a physics scientist so it’s nothing but personal opinion). Well, accept it already human! You are 3 dimensional creatures living in 4 dimensional realm. As 3 dimensional creatures, yes we can explore the space, the 3 dimensions of our realm freely. Up-down, left-right, forward-backward. But, we can only live from moment to moment in the 4th dimension, time. What would it be like if human were 4 dimensional creatures? Well, we will have the ability to explore time freely. We will be able to go to particular moment in life at anytime, again and again, just as we please.

Meeting Ola is one of such moments I’m willing to go again. Hehehe.. Silly as it sounds, I always delight in the  moment of sitting there in silence, following her talking and listen to her stories. Being stunned to see what I see. Beautiful, as always..

But hey, I take my words back. I don’t think it is that nice to be a 4 dimensional creature. Time as another space? There will be no chronology, no progression, no surprise. You being able to see the whole span of your lifetime already? I think it will be super-boring. So, 3 dimensional is just good.

Sunday morning I went with my brother and his family to Halim Perdana Kusuma airport to meet with our parents. They were coming for pre-retirement training at Bogor. Yes, my father is going to retire, in another two years. That day I met him, I noticed that there were so much white hairs already on the head. Even more than I noticed last time I met him on January. Dad is getting older.

I then met my mother, whom when I called on Friday night offered to bring me sambal teri. I declined. I wanted her to have relax time to prepare for the training.

Mom, since the beginning, opposed to my obsession and dream, doesn’t really support me working overseas. Many times, she expressed her hope that I will return back to Indonesia again. And just recent, she said it again, mentioning dad’s soon retirement as reason that she hope her children would stay closer to home. And it’s another thing for me to think about..

Talking about thinking, probably people who read this writing (or this blog) will be asking, “What is actually this writing about?”. Hahaha.. I’ll try to answer. Once, a friend who read my writings on this blog said that I’m an melancholic-phlegmatic type of person. Well, I was never a serious believer of  “The Four Temperaments Theory”. For me, human personality is just too complex to be classified in 4 categories, or combination of that 4. Then I read the description of melancholic-phlegmatic type of personality. Wow, it’s a bit dark type of personality. Am I that dark? I don’t think I’m dark, even though my skin is a bit dark ;p.

In the description of melancholic-phlegmatic type of personality it is said that they have the tendency to dwell on things for a long time in their mind. Well, this particular thing might fit me. I tend to think of things. Many things. I don’t know why, it’s just my nature. Give me some moment alone, I will think of things. Like this writing, I was thinking of this in the return flight to Tokyo (I couldn’t sleep well during the flight). At some points, I need to take out those thinking process outputs off my head. And so there is this blog.  So, what is this writing (this blog) all about? It’s something inside my head that I put out. So what will you get from reading this blog? Probably nothing, but a better map of an Eric’s thinking so you can realize how nuts I am.

They said that men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti. Men tend to organize matters in life into separate boxes, just like boxes of waffles. We deal with matters one at a time. Women, on the other hand, don’t separate matters from each other. Everything is connected, entangled, just like spaghetti on a plate. Now, while at it, to all dear women, allow me to utter about this method-of-thinking difference in this writing. Probably, you won’t fully understand why we’re like this, just the same way we won’t fully understand why you’re like that.

Men deal with matters one at a time. We are not designed to do multitasking efficiently. So it’s not that we don’t care enough. Probably that time, we were dealing with another matter. It’s alright if you say we are stubborn and strong-headed. But please remember when we deal with a matter, we mean to deal with it, to the end. That’s why yes is a yes and no is a no. And while, as given by nature, we will instinctively accomodate you as far as we can (and there is limit to it), we get dizzy everytime we see you mix things when dealing with matter and get frustrated when you compromize with things in the middle. To us, compromizing is lame and it’s not a thorough solution to a problem.

Sunday night, my boxes were flooded for a moment. Matters inside those boxes mixed. Many things were jumping around inside my mind. Inside the taxi cab on our way back return from church Sunday service, I was busy alone resetting the operating system of my brain from buffer overflow. It was a talk during dinner. Certainly not my most favorite topic, but I know I need to talk it.

Now that I am back to Tokyo, I’ll put that back inside its box for now..

Trivial information:
-I’m a WWF donor now. Kudos to WWF volunteer at Soekarno-Hatta Airport who can convince me to join the program.
-At the airport I met and talk with a Malaysian guy who runs a traveling agency as side job to his main job at hospital. His clients are mostly from China. He said he makes more money with his side job than what he earns from his main job.
-I left my toothbrush at Jakarta, so I had to buy a new one after I reached Tokyo.