SeaWorld at Ancol and Mal Mangga Dua, Mangga Dua ITC

 After traveling gazillions of miles across the ocean just to see her, Cynthia did not even realize that I have a “new haircut”! Umph! I protested, and her immediately reply was: it is not a “new” haircut, just a haircut. She reminded me that I have the same hairdresser for the last 10 years and have only changed my hairstyle once. OK, Cynthia might have been preoccupied with the board presentation early next morning … but still …

By the time Cynthia handed me the one million rupiah as pocket money to spend during my stay in Indonesia, I have totally forgotten my new haircut.

After reading that the SeaWorld at Ancol is larger than Singapore’s Underwater World, I wanted to pay SeaWorld a visit. I LOVE seeing fishes, or anything that moves underwater. Whenever I pass by a fish tank – be it as the one that belongs to the restaurant or at the fish market – I would stop and admire those sea creatures. If I was able to swim in midair like what the fish does in water, I would not have the need to take the lift anymore. In fact, if we all had the memory duration of a goldfish (10 seconds I heard), we would not have remembered that the Arwana in front has already eaten our fathers, and our mothers, and our friends, and our neighbors.

World peace cannot be simpler than this.

I tried to take pictures of the sharks but they swam too fast. I tried to take micro shots of some really weird looking tiny sea creatures too. I love the SeaWorld. I don’t think it is that much bigger than the Singapore version. In fact, both look very similar though I think the aquarium in Singapore is more densely populated. I was lost inside the SeaWorld. It is so beautiful. And I think I have lost Felicia there too wondering why a grown up man is so fascinated with … fishes. Not just fishes, there is a Duyung too!

It is an understatement to say that, in return, Felicia has lost me inside two of the malls near Ancol – Mal Mangga Dua and Mangga Dua ITC. I actually had quite a tough time trying to recall how to pronounce “ITC” in Bahasa Indonesia so that the taxi driver would know – with clarity – where we wished to head to. Mal Mangga Dua is huge, mostly packed with IT goods (so many pirated software and videos!). The bridge that connects the two malls has two levels of shopping area. And ITC is just purely humungous. We could hardly see the other end of the mall. We could hardly breathe inside the mall. ITC mostly sells very affordable clothes and shoes that follow closely with fashion. If you were to ask me, I would say fashion is to the eyes of the beholder.

I have had language lessons in Jakarta before but that was long time ago. OK, I didn’t do too badly today, I think. We seemed to be able to understand the price of the goods most of the time, bargain for a better price, ask for different sizes and colors, and shuttle around town without getting lost. Of course I still got things mixed up. Like one time, I thought the dress only cost Rp 20,000 but in fact, the asking price as Rp 200,000. No wonder they kept saying that the price was negotiable and seemed curious why I was not shocked by their initial offer. I greeted people with “selamat siang” and then when I heard them saying “sore”, I suddenly remembered that “siang” is for early afternoon while “sore” is for late afternoon. I kept thinking that “kereta” means car but in fact, “kereta” is Malay and for Bahasa Indonesia, it should be “mobil”. No wonder the taxi driver was a bit lost when I tried to make small talks with him. Throughout the day I was trying to recall how to say “person” in Bahasa Indonesia. And in the late evening, the word “orang” sprang out of nowhere. I thought my pronunciation of the word toilet was near perfect (the fallacy of pride) and when I told Cynthia that people didn’t understand what I said, she immediately bursted out in laughter saying that it should be “kamar kecil” and not “kamakaci” as I have so perfectly pronounced.

The beauty of a foreign language.

Tomorrow, it will be Mark and Cynthia’s off day and we will be heading to the beautiful city called Bandung. Stay tuned.