It’s been approximately 10 months since I stepped into this land where traffic congestion, honks, and people wearing excessive make up were prevalent (not all of them are like that, I know. I’m just saying that Jakartans, or, Jakarta people, are quite eccentric). I arrived in Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and there she was, my sister, tottering towards me. She told me she had been looking for me for ages since I got all my stuffs ready 45 minutes away from the expected arrival time. It’s not my fault, it’s the conveyor belts’, if you know what I mean.
I brought home a nice amount of novels, most of which I have already read in Canberra. Huxley’s majestic dystopian novel ‘Brave New World’, Saint-Exupery’s ‘Le Petit Prince’ (the English version one, of course, as I can’t read nor talk in French. This made me a little bit guilty since Afu said that translations can, in a way, diminish the value of the book itself), Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Chbosky ‘The Perks of Being A Wallflower’, etc. There are some books I really wanted to bring but Civic Library wouldn’t let me. Obviously.
In the interim before my departure to Abu Dhabi, a lot of things have to be done: forms, surveys, vaccinations, flight confirmations, etc. I’ve been enjoying the process very, very much though, since everytime we (read: Class of 2015) receive something new, such as new emails from NYU or an inconceivably long survey, there’s always somebody out of those 150 people who would post things related to it onto our group’s Facebook wall. I love the fact that Facebook really help people connect, I really do. Such a magnificent invention, Zuckerberg, a genius you are. 50 days left before getting stung by Abu Dhabi’s torrid weather! As hot as it could be, I totally believe that the camaraderie between us NYU Abu Dhabi students will metaphorically cool down the temperature, that’s why I’ve been looking forward to it. Now that’s poetic!
My current level of ‘poeticness’ is attributable to having just read Stephen Chbosky’s ‘The Perks of Being A Wallflower’. I couldn’t finish it on my way back home to Jakarta in a 7 hour Qantas flight because that time in-flight movies were so alluring and that time I remembered the harrowing fact that Indonesia no longer allows MPAA-produced films to enter our lovely cinemas (this infuriated me a little bit since Warner Bros films, my friends, won’t be here too. Deathly Hallows won’t be here too). So I finished the book yesterday evening when it was raining and my little brother was sleeping like a small panda next to me (don’t depict this falsely). 5 out of 5, Chbosky. Such a great book, written colloquially, yet I completely got the message the author’s trying to say. I should have read this years ago, I knew I was late. People weren’t talking about this anymore since it’s no longer a hot potato every teen would pass to his/her friends back then in 2000. I came up with the idea of buying this book since I knew that Emma Watson will be in it and both @ghiankr and @Afutami, two of my favorite twitterers, have been mercilessly talking about it. The book (and all of my classics) is now on my sister’s hand. I literally went directly to her room yesterday and hand it over. I hope she likes it, I think she will, because even a type of human like me, in which I kind of dislike being sentimental or capricious, like it so much. I wanted to write a review of it but it will be too academic, and nobody reads a formal review on holidays, right? Anyway, I look forward to watching the novel-adopted movie later in 2012.
That’s it for now. Good morning, by the way. And lets start this day with swimming as if we were infinite.
Written in Cibubur, Jakarta.
when i read the title of this post, thought that you wrote your opinions about it. but you didn’t, instead. so you ought to make the review of it for the next post, if you don’t mind. somebody will reads, for sure.