This is the final installment, of my trip to Bandung, divided into 500 words per piece.
… rinse them inside a tank of water, and make sure that they are towel dried as they may catch a cold. Porcupines can swim. And the best thing about keeping porcupines? When you need to leave home for a prolong period of time, just keep them in dry ice (why not put them inside the fridge?). The porcupines will hibernate and you don’t even need to worry about feeding them while you are away.
Neat eh?
Towards the end of the program, the TV anchor asked, “Why do people buy porcupines? Does anyone buy them to eat?” The farm owner calmly replied with a smile, “4,000 years ago, Egyptians were used to eat porcupines. Now, we keep them as pets.”
I love Indonesian television programs.
“This is Bandung airport. Unlike others in the region, we get to walk around in leisure, taking pictures on our way to the plane.”
10. New Year Eve
Christmas went by without much of a bang. We have attended a Mass on Christmas Day but instead of celebrating Christmas, it was a Mass for the Holy Family, which was meant for December 26.
I must have put on some weight. Because I keep eating and eating, reading and reading here in Bandung. I wonder what would happen to my S$900 investment on tailor making my shirts and pants prior to coming to Bandung.
Each trip, I deliberately want to learn some words in Bahasa Indonesia. Proud to say, I have discovered the word bau (means smelly) one day when we were shopping in a supermarket. Like a kid who has learned a new word, I kept repeating bauuu! with the hand gesture. Cynthia could not stop laughing. I picked up angker from a cinema poster. I used it to describe my experience crossing the streets in Bandung. Cynthia laughed and corrected me that angker is horror, but in a spooky sense. No, I have not seen ghosts when I crossed the road. Rather, the incoming traffic scared the living soul out of my body. Our niece Felicia liked to repeat the word malu. Maluuuu! has the same magic as bauuuu!, phonetically speaking. But it means shy instead. At the rate I am going, I will be able to speak fluent Bahasa Indonesia when I am … seven hundred and ten?
I have finished reading the sixth book from my stack of seven this morning. It is “Inés of My Soul” written by Isabel Allende. The Chile Conquest, is bloody. Forward to 2010 going 2011, the world is still in conflict. Peace seems so fragile, so hard to attain. Given the knowledge of knowing what we are, will the end state of our civilization ever reach peace in totality? Or war and conquest is the only mean to propel our progress?
What shall I do in this New Year Eve? Cynthia may surprise me with some grapes from the supermarket, I do not know. And we may do the countdown, in Spanish style – swallowing one grape every two seconds, as we countdown from ten, nine, eight, seven …
“This is another photo taken as we approached the only airline that flies direct from Singapore to Bandung.”
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Author’s note: This chronicle ends with the countdown, in a form I visualized. In reality, I felt asleep at 11pm (which was midnight in Singapore and Hong Kong). As I was peacefully entering into year 2011, I was woken up this time not by the blasting of the speakers from the nearby mosques, but by the loud bangs in the air. It had the same 7.1 stereo effect as the 4am prayers. The first thought that struck my mind was: Get out of bed! It is an air raid! In real life, nothing was as dramatic. It was fireworks everywhere, close by from different locations. Indonesians sure know how to welcome the new year.
Why 500 words a piece? Some time ago, I have dedicated one full month to write blog entries that were limited to a word count of 500. It was fun, as it forced me to be concise. Why 500? By my research, most online readers don’t have the time to read beyond 500 words. In the world of Twitter and Facebook status update, 500 is a big number.
To recap on the entire chronicle, click here.