So, it has been 33 days since my latest blogpost—and I haven’t had the time to write more about my India trip; which resulted in 4 pending blogposts for Mumbai, Agra, Jaipur and Delhi.
In one and other way, my India escape shares similar characteristics with my Santorini getaway, in a sense that I keep restraining myself from writing the experience immediately because somehow it will make the magical feeling evaporated. And on top of that, the days that follows after my coming-home seemed to go extra fast to the point that—just like Parker; a character in Nick Miller’s Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?—I literally need to browse my own Facebook timeline and look at the pictures I posted to remember what had happened in my life lately:
I stayed at my friend’s apartment for a month while she was in the US and became her cat-sitter. It was actually very therapeutic in a way. Sfac is a cat with a pensive mood, and I think we get along quite well naturally because of that.
And because I stayed at my friend’s apartment and packed only a few clothes with me, I found myself playing futsal in a summer dress and a pair of gold flat shoes for an office tournament. It was extremely challenging not to have your shoes flying to the face of the goalkeeper when you kicked the ball.
The previous cat-sitter, Alisa—whom I met at my friend’s apartment and the first Samoan friend I have, invited me to a charity event she organized: Love Your Neighbour Jakarta Flood Relief Fundraiser. You can no longer see the water and you may think that everything is fine now, but Jakarta’s two-legged and four-legged citizens are still struggling after the 2013 Jakarta flood. A bunch of young expats (led by Alisa) and Indonesians worked together to throw a fundraising party at 365 Eco Bar Kemang to financially support Habitat for Humanity, Jakarta Animal Aid Network, and Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center—three NGOs that are continuing their works even long after the flood is gone. It was such a wonderful initiative, and I was more than happy to volunteer in documenting the event and sharing these pictures with them.
I did a lot of cooking and grocery shopping, as well as pampering myself with visits to various coffee shops to read or write, and reconnecting with old friends—eating out and catching up. I detached myself from my laptop—trying to close it down when I had finished work, and went to the pool instead. I am still not a good swimmer, but I love being in the water (or floating in the sea with a life vest attached to my chest). It’s always relaxing to have some lazy strokes under the sun—the water is cold on your skin and smells of chlorine (or salt or fish); you think of nothing.
On another note, if everything goes well (fingers crossed) I will have two books to be published this year. One in June (hints: it’s a perfect book for summer reading, especially if you’ll be traveling!) and another one in September. I have just finished the rough draft for the first book and decided to leave it for a while before I typed everything in my laptop this weekend. While working on a story, I love to re-read some books on writing because it gives me a lot of comfort and encouragement. My favorites are Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Elizabeth George’s Write Away, and Susan Goldsmith Wooldridges’ Poemcrazy.
I also spent some times writing letters and packaging stuffs for my friends abroad, again. When I am traveling, usually I will spot something that will remind me of someone (probably it’s you!): a book, an eyeshadow kit, a pack of tea, a pair of earrings, a CD, a Buddha necklace, a simple receipt with a certain word printed on it, a burst of color… anything. These things will then go inside a brown envelope and travel a few extra miles to reach you. I always love choosing the words for the greeting cards, writing names and addresses on the envelopes, getting them ready to be sent to the post office, and waiting anxiously if you’ll receive it!
Mostly, I was just busy with my professional work—and a new project I started with my girl Nadia. This project combines everything we both love: design, photography, videography, storytelling, beautiful words, make-up, fashion, and everything whimsical. It requires a lot of time to be on the road scouting for beautiful places; the stamina to carry a lot of stuff and get our hands dirty; as well as the flexibility of being in the outdoors for an indeterminate period of time, getting exposed to the sun or being threatened by the rainstorm. But whenever we see our final products, we soon realized why we love doing this at the first place. Expect to hear more about this on a Sunday in May this year.
Last but not least, I was in Singapore last weekend with the whole office (always a great bunch!). I was happy for I did the things I would not normally do: going for indoor skydiving at iFly (I did fly!), having my leap of faith from the 5-story high Parajump and sliding 450 metres long through jungle canopy and Siloso Beach at 72 metres above sea level. And to wrap it all, a guy named Enrique asked me to marry him.
We were standing at the terrace on the 57th floor; the wind was strong and we were speaking in English and French and Spanish. He showed me the sky with the hanging dark clouds and the city lights shining underneath and we whispered our wishes to the universe and talked about Valencia and Paris and Hemingway and laughed at each others’ jokes. When I think about it again, it was quite a romantic scene, actually.
“Will you kiss me?” he asked.
“Nope,” I shook my head.
“Hmm, if I said I’m gay, will you kiss me?”
“Maybe,” I laughed.
“Not even if I said I like you so much I want to marry you?”
I punched his right arm and we laughed and he hugged me and landed a kiss on my forehead. And no, I don’t marry him.
