2 precious things i learned

1. i learned how to make a warm bottle of milk for a baby.
2. i learned how to change a diaper full of shit.

somehow, i enjoyed them both.

pernah ga kalau kita pas lagi mau masuk parkiran plaza senayan atau di mal ambasador atau di mana aja, kita ngikutin mobil di depan kita masuk ke satu row parkiran dengan harapan kita juga dapat tempat parkir di row itu. padahal mobil di depan kita itu juga ngikutin mobil lagi di depannya.

dengan kata lain, kesempatan kita dapat tempat parkir di row itu hanya 30 persen aja karena kemungkinan besar yang dapat tempat parkir adalah mobil yang diikuti oleh mobil yang ada di depan kita.

kenapa kita kadang-kadang secara gak sadar musti ngikutin mobil di depan kita untuk nyari tempat parkir bukan misalnya naik satu lantai lagi? sehingga mobil kita menjadi mobil di urutan pertama bukan malah misalnya mobil di urutan yang kedua atau ketiga?

menjadi mobil di urutan pertama tentu mempunyai kesempatan mendapat tempat parkir lebih besar dari pada kalau kita mengikuti mobil lain di depan kita yang juga sama-sama sedang mencari tempat parkir.

mencari tempat parkir di plaza indonesia menjadi ide saya menulis tulisan ini. dan, saya jadi teringat iklan mobil Audi di amerika dulu yang memotivasi saya untuk selalu tidak mau mengikuti orang.

never follow.
never think great is good enough.
never rest on your laurels.
never quit.

over the weekend i was sick. a throbbing headache pounded my head like never before. so heavy i couldn't even got up from the bed. everytime i tried to, it was like the earth was spinning around me. and, i fell back to the mattras.

the doctor told me i have a mild vertigo.

"kamu kebanyakkan kerja ya? kamu butuh istirahat nih! pasti terlalu capek jadi tekanan darahnya naik drastis, makanya jadi vertigo gini," the doctor told me.

i don't feel like i work too hard like he said. there are so many things i want to accomplish and there are so many things i have not even yet accomplished. i told a friend, i wish one day equals 36 hours instead of 24.

i am so used to work hard.

but, that's not my concern. what concerns me the most is i think i am a changed person.

i used to be a very grey person. easily touched by my surroundings. sensitively affected by my emotions. but, in the past two years here in jakarta, i have turned to be a black and white person. it's like a 'yes - fine, no - i don't care' type of attitude.

a friend of mine told me that i am still a grey person reading my writings and seeing my pictures, but she said, "you changed because you were forced to change by what you are doing and the position you are taking now."

maybe.

whatever it is, i was moved by a saying that changed me a lot --

fortune favors the bold.

a good book is one whose advice you believe.
a great book is one whose advice you follow.

and, of course, in the middle of my walking along the beach, the clouds suddenly became dark. so dark, you could see the rain not far away from the legian beach. and, there it was, a downpouring stopped my journey and i have to run to find a shelter from a sudden thunderstorm.

i love bali. but there are many destinations i would like to visit and experience. i am scheduled to visit medan, kuala lumpur and bangkok and another bali trip in the near future. but, wanting to visit manado, flores, bangka, banda island and brunei. new zealand tourism is interested in the magazine and so does the tourism authority of dubai.

so many cities, so little time.

on my last day in bali, i walked from legian beach to kuta beach, a distance of about 1.5kms. there i saw four ladies walking behind me and shot this picture.

i, then, remembered the headline news in one of the balinese's newspapers the day before. it said -- when the RUU APP approved and passed, bali will be a bankrupt island.

and, if the bill is to pass, these four ladies would end-up in jail or pay hefty fines.

no tourists would dare to visit then.

i was invited to have a teppanyaki dinner with one of the resort's directors. couldn't stand not to shoot this object. someone said my picutre depicted my loneliness and it showed. and, i think so, too.

walking down jalan padma, found this interesting object. panned it and shot it. whoever said bali is not safe, just look at this picture.

just love the colors.

the morning after the storm, i woke up at 6am and walked on the beach. the tide was low since early in the morning and the view was just beautiful with clear sky above. few people walked by and the earth sounded so quiet.could hear birds squawking above and the sound of tides crashing afar. enjoyed the relaxing feeling so much and with this kind of what i saw how can you not love bali?

was thinking of moving to bali one day.

moving to another place, i spot a keong racun with some, i believe, eggs. is she hatching the eggs? i don't know. but, i was surprised to find this albino keong racun with some kind of eggs lying on the wet vegetations.

staying inside my room the whole day bore me tremendously. i am not a kind of person who can just do nothing and lazying around.

around 6pm when the rain subsided to just drizzles, i walked around the resort ground and found a creature i haven't seen for a long time. the keong racun! in the bustling and over populated jakarta, you hardly see this small animal anymore, much less, have time to even think that this nice looking creature exists.

it seems to be their nature that after the rain, with wet conditions around, they came out from behind the bushes and piles of beach stones where i found a number of them around.

i took several shots of this keong racun and was amazed with its beauty.

this one day, i experienced something i've never seen before. a day with 18-hour of downpourings as if buckets of water was just thrown from above. i saw a huge tree capsized in front of my eyes because of the strong wind just after the photo shooting has finished.

it was a day you just could not do anything outside. you just didn't want to stay inside the whole day in bali for goodness sake!

the sky was totally dark and grey, the mood was afoul, and the beach was deserted.

with a low tourist season and not many of them coming to a quiet resort, the 18-hour rain gave a sad feeling to what i saw.

it wasn't a good day at all.

it was the fifth time in three months i visited bali and each time the island gave me a different memory and new things to discover. last week was another photo session in one of the resorts in jimbaran bay. i have to bring nine crew members including the models, photographer, assistant photographer, and myself as the writer for this article.

as much as i love bali, i think it's time to visit other islands and resorts. but, the invitations to visit bali came to my desk endlessly.