a crib and me

i'm planning to move in to my new crib next month after (almost) a year of living in this (luxurious) apartment in Kuningan area in Jakarta with two others lovely housemates. my new place is closest to my office and still in the central of Jakarta, but with completely different environment and neighborhood compared with my current place. Kuningan is very international neighborhood but gajah mada is mostly inhabitant by chinnese communities. I already feel homey with my present neighborhood actually but i have and need to move out. i need new 'fresh' air (though there's no fresh air in jakarta anymore), new people, new routine activities otherwise i will just being a lazy (old) woman and think that i'm already in (almost) comfort zone of living.
i've been living for almost nine years in Jakarta (including 22 months in Holland but my heart was always in jakarta). let's take a look back for the last nine years, where i was, been and am....

1. an unemployed girl who just graduated from university in semarang, brought her one and only suitcase to jakarta and started living in a small room at radio dalam in the end of year 1999. that used to be her sister's room (a 'kost' we called it in indonesia) before her sister moved in to her husband's apartment in cipete. looking for a job was her activities at that time and wandering around by herself in that kost and south jakarta areas.
   
2. when finaly she got a job and her sister moved in to a new house in ciputat, still in south jakarta with her family, she also joint them for a couple of months.
3. gosh...ciputat to down town is too far for her, she decided to move to a room in gajah mada neighborhood. there she was. started to blend in and hang out with her 'chinnese' colleagues and community.
4. got another job, then once again she decided to rent a room that closed to her new office in merdeka barat, still in central jakarta. there, she met her old friend and became closer to her and influenced her to achieve more than she could and her friend did it...(way to go, sist). unfortunately, this new place and new job brought her new routines, she became lazier to get ready in the morning, and this was the start of re-sleeping after having her early morning praying...[sigh] and woke up late ...at seven or 7.30 in the morning. yet, she was quite a dedicated employee ;) ...she finished her office hours mostly at night, well...besides using office facilities to send scholarship and school application, she did really work otherwise she wouldn't be promoted to other office at taman suropati.
5. her next crib was a student flat in wageningen-holland but when she had to conduct her research in bogor, she sub-rented her flat and decided to live together with two guys in a rented apartment at trosltraweg before leaving for her research.
6. in bogor, she was a kost-er too. the only 'anak kost' in a lovely house of her colleague and for sure she spent some time in a village house in central java while she was doing her research too.
7. almost 22 months of living in holland did not change her interest of re-living in jakarta. first destination was her aunt's house in tangerang-west java. jobless with master degree in her hand for about three months, she spent her times in this lovely and warm family as a'good' niece or causin.
   
8. as soon as she got a job, she moved out from tangerang and once again became an 'anak kost', for almost a year in senen neighborhood- central jakarta.
   
9. the temptation of living together in apartment had made her to live in an apartment with two other housemates in kuningan.
   
10. and here she is at this moment...planning, arranging, lay-outing her new crib in the neighborhood she was already familiar with...a gajah mada area in central jakarta, this time with her old friend from holland.

some people asked me if i move in and out quite often when i can settle down, make some saving, and living normal. i said, my life is normal for me at this moment, being nomadic is a way i keep living, my saving content of my heart, my memories and my experiences. when the time is come for settling down, i will settle down. changing routine live is to make more lively, to keep feeling young and being positive in every move and planning. who said that looking for a place is easy? it's not, i need to feel the chemistry and 'click' in body and soul with the place, environment and the neighborhood.

wish me luck this year...with my new crib...you are still welcome to stop over and have a cup of tea or coffee while we are sharing experiences :-)

idle thought

i lost my touch of writing, well..it doesn't mean that i'm a writer who produces so many writing, it's just that i cannot write anymore...here. i have no clue, no idea, geen idee, although i actually want to write something. i believe in this method "write whatever in your mind now and put it as the first line" ...oh yeah.. i did it couple of words before, right? i was telling you that i do not have any idea of writing but i want to write something..aah...am i way too complicated about this? :p..don't care!.

here's what i wanna write, i'm gonna write about what i'm doing at this moment besides writing it down here:

i'm reading a module of distance learning on adolescent sexual and reproductive health. i'm on the third module though i should've read to the fourth module by now but i keep postponing and delaying to read it until now. why? because the final assignment will be on January 29th and by that time i should finish reading and understanding the whole five modules and submit the assignment.

why am i bothering myself with this non-obligation distance learning from my office? the answer is i want to keep myself busy, to keep my mind thinking besides working, to keep my laptop functioning besides using it for chatting, checking my facebook and other useless stuffs, and more importantly, those distance learning programme boost me up to understanding more about the issues around my work actually.

People or even friends think that my work related closely only to statistics, data, and numbers. it's true indeed at some point but the worst thought from them is that they assume i understand and knowhow everything about any kind of statistics...well God no!. i could probably know the bureaucratic system of how the data been collected or whom i should ask about particular data but i absolutely know nothing about how many ton of aspalt produced and used in this country and whom i should ask to since my work related to reproductive health, gender, population, and related social data with all of those i said earlier. oh well....i like to be someone who could help friends..indeed..if i could do it. i do, just don't expect to much on me knowing all statistics stuffs. now i admit it! i avoided statistics when i studied but i do love mathematics, those are different, right?

anyway, back to the module i'm reading now, what do you think about the adolescent sexual and reproductive health actually? do you want me to tell you about what i think or what i have read and learnt? since this issue is still a controversial and sensitive issue to be discussed within community and among policy makers in my country.

i know..i know..i will look for research on this issue, especially the research in indonesia about how far have our adolescent been behaved and acted with their sexuality and more over with their reproductive health?

as far as i know and read, the only thing that we have accomodated for this issue is that we provide information to adolescent about reproductive health only but we haven't provided the services to them related to early marriage reproductive health, young pregnancy, sexual transmitted disease, pregnancy prevention, safe abortion to them and so on.

i claim myself as an open-minded person, someone who do not judge people from its cover, but rather to what they think and behave and try to understand and tolerate with differences between others and me. however, i do really understand the reason of not giving services to adolescent on reproductive health because with my naivety i (mostly) believe that there are still many good and behave adolescents who could still believe and keep their faith for having sex only after married, who still believe in virginity or something like that. But you know what? i think i'm wrong..but once again, let me read the whole modules and search some references and articles then i can say that i'm wrong.

why did i say that i'm wrong? the answer is that because there are many young people who are sexually active before getting married (i'll look for the data for this and put it here later on). they are human and every human being deserve to get their rights! and the reproductive health service is also the adolescent's rights. giving and providing services to them will help not only the adolescents but also the society with accurate and valuable information about safe sex, about safe abortion, about safe life (girls and unborn child), about preventing the sexual diseases and even the HIV and AIDS transmission.

i can say all of those before finishing my reading because sex is natural for humankind and adolescent in their age tend to know what it likes to have sex and trying to taste it. Thus, without proper information, their trial action can be very dangerous and uncontrollable especially when someone use a what so called 'reasonable' justification to do it at the young age....like "love" (for God sake, this is really a common reason for them to do it and forget the whole lesson about 'sin' of doing it before married) but also because the community provide really cheap access to it through DVD that claimed as an indies movie but with semi porn scene or complete porn movies or even worse...adult's hypocritical behavior who pretend of being faithful to their couple but bloody hell they are f***ing around behind their spouse but known by the kids. adult lessons and experiences are easily influence younger.

aah...i wrote something finally..although it was jumping here and there as usual. even though i wrote the thing that i'm not good at it but i want to know more since i'm not married yet, i have no kid (not even an adopted one), i have no experience about being parents , i could probably worse and way too inexperience about sex than most of adolescent in my community, i'm still too naive about all of those and could be wrong about what i have said above. Having passed the adolescent period in our life does not mean we understand them better about their feeling and their needs..look at our adult people around us...way more ignorance than the younger.