Reminiscing is a Sign of Aging, and I'm Dragging You Down with Me

(...with a truckload of links!)

We had an all-Indonesian lunch today. At one point we started talking about the science syllabus in Indonesia (getting more advanced nowadays than what we experienced in our high school days) and proceeded to reminisce about the early days we came into contact with computers (the 90s).

Oooh, nostalgic. =DDD

To think that back then we were happily using those flimsy 5.25-inch IBM floppy disks whose capacity I couldn't recall because file sizes weren't big enough to be a concern at that time. Nowadays we can hardly find a new PC with a 3.5in floppy drive, let alone those "A drive and B drive"...

Then there was Digger, the popular PC game of that time. (Even thinking about it now I can relive the panic at being chased around by those mice. (Oh yes I suck at action games even now.))

There was BASIC, our first programming language; mIRC, our first chatting experience (
*pops* asl pls
*types* m
*disappears*
). Before Winword and Excel there were WordStar and Lotus 123...

(Incidentally today too I just found this HCI comic about Lotus Notes from the same company.)

But even with these vivid recollections, our lives had (naturally) been so much more detached from computers that they are now, so we went on to appreciate Bobo, the hugely successful children magazine of our childhood. Probably because the memory was shaped during our most absorbent age, we could still recite the names of most recurring characters in that magazine. I have a very good impression about it in terms of being educational both intellectually and morally. I just had this similar reminiscence with my childhood hometown friend, and she said she would probably subscribe to it for her son after he'd grown a bit more. I hope it still maintains the same quality.

Randomly I was also reminded of Sanggar Cerita, the Indonesian version of audio stories that came in cassette tapes. I only owned one that was "Cinderella" by young Ira Maya Sopha (singing "Hari ini, hari ini, Ira ingin ceritera..."). To jog my memory I tried to sing the whole storyline in the shower (they had a summary song and a conclusion song and one at each main event), but I had blanks here and there. xD

There, there, enough reminiscing for now. ^^ I would call them "the good old days" but without undermining "the good nowadays" with all my present indulgences enabled by the technology leap, even if it means I'm constantly on watch for disk consumption while owning a total of nearly 750GB harddisk space...

Sempitnya Waktu Besarnya Cinta

"Begitu sempitnya waktu, begitu besarnya cinta" ("So little time, so much love") is, as most Indonesians might know, the tagline of the romantic movie Ungu Violet.

The poetic line caught my attention at the time of release and stayed in my mind, even though I never checked out the movie. Now that I've read the synopsis and reviews, the story looked pretty cliched -- very reminiscent of that famous Korean music video "Because I Am A Woman", though possibly with more complex background story. But anyway, I shouldn't comment further seeing as you may know better than me, who haven't watched.

The line just popped into my mind followed by a feeling of belated comprehension ("Ohhh, so that's what it means..") because my life right now is a pile of things I'd love to do but have not done, songs I'd love to learn but have not properly listened to, shows and recordings I'd love to watch but have not gotten around to... and time is never enough.

I thought I was quite an accepting person even in situations when I shouldn't, but for this timing issue I seem to be perpetually dissatisfied, as evidenced by my extremely irregular, lower bound-pushing sleeping hours. Ah.

By the way the above-mentioned belated comprehension may be incorrect after all, because after checking out the (spoiler-free) movie plot, I'm guessing that the line actually refers to some looming character death. Time indeed flows in one direction (or did I just betray my modern physics lecturer? This seems to warrant another blog post by itself) but "little time" in the movie context feels "forward" while my context feels "sideways".. if that makes sense (think duration vs. bandwidth?).

But, that would actually fit just right with the literal meaning: "How narrow time is, how big love is". Ahh, the connotations we lost in translation..

Bersahaja

There are songs that are extremely moving in their intricateness, like this one:

Klakustik - Tak Bisa Ke Lain Hati


And then there are those that are beautiful in the simplicity of the tunes. Letto to me is latter case, judging from their two albums so far.

From their latest album, aside from this one I don't care much for the other songs (which probably reflect more of their actual style?).

Letto - Sebelum Cahaya


The style and the guitar solo interlude is reminiscent of my favourite hit from their first album:

Letto - Ruang Rindu


(The female backing vocals in 'Sebelum Cahaya' also reminded me a little of Samson's 'Kenangan Terindah', but not nearly as powerfully employed.)

I've since had more favourites from that first album, so maybe given some time I'll grow to like some of the rest. Do have a try yourself. Anyway, I have too limited exposure to Indonesian songs, and even more outdated than Eka, to be sufficiently analytical about this. =)

Continued

As promised, on the topic of horrendous sinetrons (other stuff in separate entries later). Just realized I haven't explained this word for non-Indonesians: sinetron is an abbreviated term that (doesn't literally mean, but) refers to Indonesian TV series.

In short, I don't click with these. I guess a few years after their conception, most of the plot devices had become so cliched that I avoided watching them. My family tuned to these from time to time so I did peek into two series this time. Oh my, they're still the same since I last watched one many years ago. The pace felt very slow: we only tuned in like, four or five episodes apart, and they're still solving the same problem. Aiyah. But Mom said it's due to the amount of advertisements. =D

But mainly I avoid them because, somehow, watching them makes me irritated (they are supposed to entertain!). In every series I'm sure to find a totally annoying character who won't be reformed in a very long time, if at all. (In my case this is usually the magnified Cruella deVil or the glorified, whiny damsel in distress. Some nasty scheming stepsisters can still be entertaining.) Sometimes it's the conflicts that just feel petty; much drama about nothing.

(Yet, I saw one that was touching on homosexuality, but I didn't follow up on how it is resolved. I wonder if it's quite the trend nowadays since Brokeback Mountain?)

In comparison, I appreciate Singapore's local drama better now. Huhuh. There's the occasional annoying character and soapy stuff too, but at least they're always educational, with the not-so-subtle campaigns and all. =D

Haven't tuned back in though. I've wanted to catch Parental Guidance, but now that I have something on every Thursday evening... argh.

Twenty Days

Well, I'm back. =) Since Wednesday night -- physically. Not quite completely 'back' in the last few days, so this post might not be so late after all. ;P

Soon after I arrived I talked to Yesie, and I found that I had to watch what I spouted out to make sure they were in comprehensible Indonesian. =P Too used to speaking Teochew back home and watching Chinese TV channels that my dad likes. Different paradigm? Hee.

I'm over the language disorientation by now, but still readjusting to the different lifestyle. Back home I was very much domesticated. =P Singapore time runs much much faster by the amount of things to do, for work or for play. Strangely enough, my obsession with those I (used to) do for play is, at this moment, drastically down. I'd have expected them to amplify after leaving them for so long! As you see it's only now that I write this blog (and you'd probably notice the bad writing). Even more stunning is how slowly I'm updating my manga collection after the void, heh.

Anyway, about the trip. I've repeated travel stories to several friends, so I've lost steam to talk more here, but here are some pictures. =)

I've always wanted to take this kind of photos, since I'm rather obsessed with the sky (you've probably figured from the title of my blog). I had a former misconception that using cameras is forbidden inside airplanes (did they say electronics?) so I hadn't dared to. But I figured cameras wouldn't interfere with any navigation signal... right? (Well, we did survive that one flight.)

A look down at the clouds!

And a once-a-year view. =)

Chinese New Year Eve in Pontianak was filled with noisy fireworks that lasted well over three hours -- I went to sleep amidst the noises after I've watched enough. I know Singapore also has lah, but different atmosphere woh. =D Our town is small enough for most residents to see them in close distance.

This year our small town had more than the usual 'small fries' (those 'annoyingly loud but nothing to see' ones), since somebody sponsored for the big beautiful types. I've found out long ago that naked eyes (er, with specs when needed) have got the best lens focus capability, so it's probably for the better that I missed recording some of the nicest ones with my camera, as it means I was enjoying 'the real thing'. =)

The above four I snapped quite randomly. Of course there were more shots that caught nothing and went to trash. =D

That one looked like a lightning, and sounded like a thunder, too. I used video mode to record, and this is a screen capture from the resulting video; otherwise my timing couldn't be this good. =D The video has my surprised squeak also, so I'm not posting it, huhuh.

Anyway, the rest of the firework photos that follow are all screen captures. The video resolution is much lower so these are quite crappy. Interesting shapes they did with the smokes in the sky; but no doubt solidifying on our roofs afterwards, and we couldn't use the water from the first few rainfalls in the following days.

I call this "the spider that painted the sky blue".

For some reason the long-ish shape reminded me of the Lance of Longinus from Evangelion. Hee.

Several days into the New Year, the 舞狮 (lion dance) troupe finally roamed the streets of our town. Kids had been parading their own small lions just for fun before this came, but of course people only invited the 'proper' group into their houses.

Still I heard from my parents that even this trained group was not following the proper procedure by already parading on the 7th day (if I remember the date correctly). As they told me, before being paraded, the lion's eyes have to be opened in a proper ceremony, exactly on the 13th day of the New Year. This is the only day that the god responsible for this matter (for lack of better phrasing..) is present in the temple. Interesting huh.

The rest here are 'iseng' (just for fun) photographs.

As I told you before, I'm a sucker for sky and clouds. It just seemed bluer than normal Singapore sky, but to be fair I didn't watch the sky often enough in Singapore.

Second on my fave scenery list, flowers and greeneries. This is one side of our little garden. The other side is the edible/herbal group, and looks rather like a mini jungle. =P

A little background story before the next pictures. There've always been owner-less cats around our neighborhood -- they would sunbathe on someone's yard and have kittens on somebody else's roof and sneak around my mom's cooking materials for food. Nevertheless we began leaving leftover food for them, so they would patrol our place from time to time and keep the mice away (animal exploitation!). I found them quite fun to watch too.

That day, a technician came to repair the phone line, and the cats were looking on with interest as he worked from atop the stairs.
But, just like us, short attention span ler.
So they started looking at each other pretty romantically (or not, since I thought they were related, but a~nyway) and enjoyed some quality time.
Then the third (party?) sibling came, and Right Patch went off for an attempted affair, or so it seemed. But cat drama was not at all like some of the horrendous sinetrons we have, and this was soon over with everyone simply going on their own ways. ^^

I'd have more to say on the topic of horrendous sinetrons and some other stuff, probably next entry.