The eaton mess of my life

Heya!

Still alive. Frozen cold though. Flat out busy. Fucking tired.

Hi! I miss you! 
Just like any other Indonesian in this planet, or I should say, the urban professionals who are Indonesians, I am attached to this little nifty device called the Crackberry. I never intended it to be an extension of my hand, but there it is. I recently bought my Dad one in an attempt to get him to ditch his old mobile phone and you know, get with the times. As a result, he now uses a device that is at least one generation ahead than my current device, and his knowledge of the various shortcuts and functionality is quite admirable.

But these days I am so freakin' occupied that every time he texts, I don't give him the attention that he wants. It is not that I am neglecting him, I don't, it just so happens that we have timing issues. I am usually at work when he texts and he is usually at dinner when I am free to text. Don't ask why. Anyway, Dad, in the extremely off chance that you are reading this: Hi! I miss you!

Facebook
These days, for some reason I do not comprehend, I have all these flashbacks about my childhood. Generally my memory is pretty awesome, especially when I make an effort to remember, but for the love of rum and raisin, I have difficulties remembering my childhood. I am talking about the specifics ok. I remember the general stuff like where I lived, where I went to school, etc. But I don't remember if I like any particular food, the things I used to enjoy doing, the friends I have etc etc etc. Ok, I lied, I remember bits and pieces about the friends I had, but I don't remember most of them. I don't remember the conversations we had, or whatever else.

So, given that I have all these flashbacks, and that names come up during these mini events, I decide to look these up on Facebook. I guess I have annoyingly become one of those Gen-Ys who is of the school of opinion of who-does-not-have-Facebook-these-days? And apparently, the answer is ... these people I remember meeting back in my childhood. I swear this is probably because I don't remember the correct names, or the correct spelling, or whatever else, I don't know.

Why am I telling you this? I don't know. I don't know a lot of people in my generation who does not have a Facebook profile. I do find some people of the older generation who is active on Facebook a bit creepy - seriously, aren't you supposed to be busy with your kids or something? I guess this is my personal bias, so don't take it personally.

English is my second language card
Yes, English is my second language. It is in fact the third language that I learnt. The second language was Mandarin, and I was terrible at it. Fortunately, my parents had the decency to send me to a language school, or in particular, an English language school, and I happened to like it because I could then watch all those Hollywood movies without reading the subtitles. I was pretty good at it too - maybe because I was determined to watch the movies without reading the subtitles.

That said, I have those annoying moments when I can't find words that I want to use or when I just make grammatical mistakes unintentionally. This is when I pull the English-is-my-second-language-card, and I have every intention to use this card for as long as I can.

Not that I should be using the card because I am hopeless at Indonesian. I can read and talk and write - although I am not too sure that I can do it well. Over the weekend, a friend and her family came over to visit and I had to converse with her mum in Indonesian. I understood perfectly what she was saying and she was kind enough to put up with my declining language skills. Actually, it was not the language that bothered me so much. It was the culture gap that I found somewhat disturbing. For example, one of her questions was "why are you not married yet?". I am 1000% sure that this was asked in good faith, but I was not too sure how I should answer. I was scared of offending her and I was scared of being too upfront and too honest for fear that I might have accidentally offended her. She was a very nice person, and she did not know my parents (as in, they had met once, and that's it, they do not talk regularly to one another, and she definitely did not ask that question because my parents wanted her to ask it).

Ok, that's it. Going off to dreamland now. Until then, stay warm.

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