Winter is here again (UGGHHH)

Like many people who live at tropical or subtropical area, i liked to wonder how it was winter like. During my childhood even funnier, thinking that i could just eat the snow right away because it looks so yummy. I couldn't think how excited to experience having snow on my skin.

Anyway i came here on fall season nearly winter and i kept on eye for my first snow falling. I couldn't wait for that! Every day i kept watching outside through glass door, worried that i would miss that moment. Then finally.....it was coming! Ohh...so beautiful. I still remembered it was during night time when i was totally alone and homesick, the snow just poured to the ground floating around teasing me to catch them. It looked so white and light, flying on the air and landed on the ground. I grabbed my coat and open the door, tried to feel it.........Ohh....it was so tender, melted on my palm and of course cold....so nice feeling. I looked up at the sky and the view was so fantastic, it was like little cute light just coming to you crazily. I was overwhelmed with the new 'phenomena' in my life, snow landed on my face, my hair, my coat. I couldn't resist to taste it so i open my mouth and let it come to me. They tickled my tongue with tender, and cold sensation, it was just plain and cold (of course! i was being stupid).

I played with them on my hands tried to catch them and squeezed them, the sensation was just so good. I guess people just thought i was out of mind or kinda retarded. I didn't mind! But it was not finished.......You don't have any idea how to deal with this damn freezing temperature.

Well let me tell you something about it.......to enjoy the snow is sensational but to deal with temperature is damn hard. You can say we can wear double or triple clothes to keep warm, but imagine if you have to do that all the time for about 5 months (winter in Michigan is longer). I bet you will just crazy to come back to Indonesia enjoy the warm sunny day and thankful that you don't have to face winter there. How to expect to live in so low celcius or sometimes below zero celcius everyday? Heater always running in the car, or in the house, it is helpful yes i agree with you, but when you step your feet out from the door the coldness just right away snap your cheeks. It makes your skin very dry, flaky just like fish's scale and your lips also suffering. You have to always put lotion on your skin and lips balm on your lips otherwise you will feel itchy because of dryness.

One day i cooked rice and just let it out on the counter, after few hours it turned hard on the surface part (seperti intip) and the next day it was totally dry all the way! It happened also with other stuff, like yuka root (singkong). I steamed them and forgot to put them in the fridge, then at the next day it turned hard on the surface but in the center still soft. Damn! ..but hey i got an idea...so i chopped them into chips so they became mangleng! I was so proud of myself for my invention hehehe (silly mode on). Now i understand that low temperature can be used to dry something naturally just like heat/solar energy, before i didnt have that conception. So i tried something else, with chopped apple and.....voila! I made apple chips! So easy and less energy usage, really efficient and friendly environment.

And now winter is here again....the beauty snow and the beast zero celcius. Everytime people asked me here how do you like winter, i would always say i love snow but i hate the cold. How could people live in that damn cold so long ? I guess they adapted to it well, and for me it is still like staying in the fridge for months.

I wish i was in Indonesia right now.....

Gino, little spoiled dog

Something good came to me after thanksgiving day, one of my niece brought us a little cute pet. He is a mixed breed dog between puddle and something (i dont know, and nobody knows). So cute petite creature with long curly hair and hardly walking because of too long nails on his toes and also his long hair covered his eyes. At first i saw him he just stared at me with his big eyes, so innocent and cute can't wait to pet him. His name is Gino Bambino, means baby Gino in italian and we call him Gino. When i talked to my indo friends they giggled and told me that Gino means gigi nongol. Anyway, at first day we took him outside to do his business, he was really excited to show everybody that all the trees around the house are his. It was not only that, even more he peed on the soccer ball lied on the backyard, also at jacuzzi pool, on the fence and also on the berries tree. As we know that naturally dog shows his teritory by peeing on certain things he likes. He does a good job on that everyday.
Gino is kind of dog that really love to be around people and dislike to be alone, even he likes to sleep with us on bed! Only one thing is bothering us, his breath is stink, smells like rotten food. I dont like when he opens his mouth or yawns around me because it stinks. One day we took him to "Pet Resort and Spa" to give him a new haircut (grooming) and also cut his toes' nail, and of course not forgot to ask them how to clean his breath. Unfortunately they said that to deal with bad breath we have to take him to veterinarian and they would give him anasthesi so they can clean his teeth and it would cost us nearly $200. And also they would need us to show them vaccination letter before doing it. Ohh....that's damn expensive and we weren't sure that he got all vaccination he need. We never seen the paper since we got him. So finally after we left him at Pet Resort and Spa for about 3 hours, we picked him up home. Gino looked so different with new hair style, and he couldn't wait to see us, jumped and span around crazily. His hair was much shorter and more straight (i wondered if they do hair rebonding..?), so he looked skinner and smaller than usual. One big change that also became more obvious was his penis looked much bigger after that since the hair covered was gone. Since then i noticed him humped monkey doll that we gave him as his toy many times. Geezzhh.....small dog with big libido.
There is still problem with him related to his status, because government required to all pet owner to register their pets and Gino hasn't registered yet. The consecquence is Gino actually is not allowed to be outside of the house, we have to keep him inside until we have him registered or otherwise the animal police would take him away from us. And to get registered we have to take him first to veterinarian to get shot like rabies (basic one, and apply every year). The reason behind that is to protect environment from disease that can be infected from pet to other pet or to human. By regulating their, will be easier for government to control and monitor. Newly, there is information about neuteur campaign to control the population and some people has done it to their dogs. Should be a good thing for Gino to do that so he will be more behave to his monkey doll.
Pet here is considered to be a member of family, very diferent with their condition in Indo. We treat them humanly even more by spoiled them with many things like their own food, bed, shampoo, toothbrush, even clothes. I give him bath every few days and brush his teeth with special toothbrush for a dog, and after that dry him with hair dryer and cuddle him on bed. What a dog. In this country they provide special park for dogs so they can take them out from houses and collect together with other dogs in the park. A lot of people also like to take them ride in the cars to enjoy the view outside. Many pet stores provide all of their needs including toys, different size of beds, hygiene products (shampoo, medicine for scalp etc), special food treat (i saw once kind of bagel, hamburger, cookies), cute clothes, carrier bag for small dog like cihuahua or puddle. Geezzhh...they are so special.
The things i like here is there is protection for any kind of pet. There is called humane society or animal shelter in every state that rescue them from abandoning. They shelter and take care of them until somebody finally adopt them to be their own pet. I really like to visit humane society near my place and it is sadness to see them have been suffered from abusing or negligence. These organisation try to help them healing the injured/disease, deal also with traumatic experience by training/treating them in good way.
Like Gino, he has been trained for few words like "come here" he would come to me, or "outside" means he would be outside for pee or poop, or "NO" for stopping what he is doing, or "come in" to ask him enter the house. Every time he did something badly and we said "Bad boy" to him he would give us innocent and guilty looking. He is our baby in the house and we all love him. Always laugh at him when he snore during sleeping or when he acts silly asking us to pet him, stoke his hair, or asking us to cuddle him on the couch or bed.
Gino Bambino, my baby boy.....

My Aunt Tri's Life in Michigan

Dear all friends,
At this edition i got contribution from my sweet niece. She really likes to make story for herself or for school's project and to tell story in front of class as well. She is only 10 yo, her name is Adrianna and now she is in fifth grade. We spent really good time at thanksgiving and gave me so nice gift, a thoughtful story about me. Her story originally came from her own mind about what she sees and thinks about me. And she did it so well in very short time. I hope you will enjoy the gift like i do.
Happy thanksgiving everybody!


Once upon a time, there was a woman named Tri. She married my loving uncle Michael and moved to Michigan. Every day the woman Tri would like to sit at her lap top and thinks of what her family was doing in Indonesia. Every holiday she would get sad because she would have to spend it with her darling husband and without her family. She wishes one day there will be a day Michael and her could go down there to visit but they cant because Michael got a daughter and parents to take care of. She wishes that sometime she could just turn the corner and see them there. This story will go on until she could see them but until bless my aunt Tri and bless my uncle Michael for marrying a wonderful woman like Tri.

Adrianna

another journey to florida

I have been away from blogging for a while, doesn't mean that i dont like to write anymore but there some reasons behind that. I went to Florida again about a week ago and this time i was with my husband by car. Of course i didnt drive, otherwise it would be end up at the hospital or funeral. No kidding i cant drive and i am afraid of it which is really big mistake to stay here since driving a car is like our basic need to survive. So anyway, we left the house at 1 am (midnite time) when the temperature outside was so cold probably about 40 F, please somebody help me to convert it into Celcius..i am just too lazy to open the other screen. To describe how cold it is, well....when you open the fridge and you put your hand inside of it you will feel freezing snap your hand then you have insight how cold it was. We wore double clothes with sweater and coat to stay warm and also brought some pillows, blanket, supply of foods and drinks, our luggage and medicine. We drove through freeway for hours and hours and see different city on the way. We entered Ohio state an hour after driving and past Cincinati in 3 hours later. I just knew that Cincinati is so close to Kentucky, actually it is the border between Ohio and Kentucky. Since it was still dark i couldn't really see many things except some places were so pretty with the lights. Then we were still driving in Kentucky when the day was coming, so i could see the beautiful scenery along the way. It was just so pretty with the wood changing its color into red, orange, yellow and the gound was so colourful too with all the leaves fell down from fall breeze.
As you know, Kentucky is famous for its KFC, fast food restaurant world wide, found by Colonel Sanders. Too bad that we didn't visit the museum since we had to catch the time to be in Florida ASAP. So we past Kentucky and entered Tennesse. I dont really know what is the thing for Tennesse that is famous.....Ah well anyway, we stopped there to have breakfast and we tried southern style of breakfast with its unique gravy contain of sausage on top of biscuit, hash brown (different kind of fried potato), scramble eggs and of course southern sausage. Well for me it was not really different with other style of breakfast except the gravy. The most interesting for me is the southern accent. I hardly understood what the waitress said to me, because her english is.....different. I dont know how to explain this but i found out it was different expression. I guess if i stay there long enough i will have 'weird' accent too....
Ok then, we entered Georgia state and past Atlanta which is quite big city. At that time we already drove about 12 hours nonstop only stop for buying gas few times and breakfast. I guess you are wondering how come we just stop once to eat? Actually we have foods supply in the car, so i just needed to grab them whenever we want to eat and i fed my husband (kinda romantic huh..?). But because my husband really wanted to show me how southern breakfast style was, then we stopped at one "Waffle House" a restaurant for southern people to have breakfast. That restaurant only exists in southern area, not like Mc.D or KFC or Pizza Hut that can be found anywhere.
After that damn long drive, finally we arrived at his friend house close to Tampa city Florida. Totally we drove for 19 hours mostly by freeway and few times past downtowns. During the trip i couldn't sleep because i was worried about the driver.....So i kept trying to talk to him, sometimes made jokes, massaged his neck or his right arm from soreness. But there were also times when i just close my eyes because they were getting sore as well. Poor him had to do that all the way without switching with me. Well what can i do, if we were on motorbike i could do that..
One thing that also interesting was that the temperature was changing warmer as we drove more southern and we decided to change our "winter costume" at Georgia which was about 60 F there. Closer to Tampa the weather was about 70 F and it was during afternoon nearly dark. We wore pair of shorts, and just t-shirt, really different condition with Michigan that winter has coming.
So we spent a night there, and continued our trip to Hollywood city (this is not Hollywood LA with all stars). It was about 4 hours drive, and finally we met my friend Ucha who let me to stay at her place last time at my first trip. She guided us to get a hotel to stay around her place, it was easy because she is staying in the central of tourist area so accomodation was not a problem to find. Well that day we just took a rest and enjoyed back ache, and sore legs. I wish i was in kampung and can ask tukang pijit to massage me......

a night at the bar

One night my husband and i decided to go to a bar in one of casino in Detroit to escape from boredom. The idea was there was a live music for us to relax, something that i really enjoy. It is not really easy here to find a nice place to hang out with live music. Many bars around our place with different offer usually provide pool tables, dart, or music box but once again without live music. So i got so excited to sit down at the nice ambience with nice light setting, and also the performance of musicians. Lucky me that night jazz was on stage!

I ordered white wine as i asked waitress for advise which one i would enjoy for non drinker or beginer like me. She was right, it tasted pretty good, sweet and a little bit sour and not too strong. The best part of it was they put some cherries in it, made it sooo good...hmmm....

Well since jazz is not his really favorite, he let me enjoy the drink and the music alone. Actually he could not resist to look around the game table, and watched people lost money on gambling. So i was totally alone with two empty couches next to me. Some people went to the floor, dancing with their partners followed the rhytm. I saw one old woman dance constantly from the first song until the next break (about 6 songs), she must be in very good mood.

Then more people come as the show went on and my next couches was very tempting for them. Some of them has asked me and i had to say "sorry, it's taken".

One young guy approached me and just sat down next to me without asking anything. I just looked at him ready to tell him but before i did that he bent over his back moved closer to me "is it ok for you if i sit here?". "I am sorry it is taken by my husband" i replied.

"Damn..!" he said in disappointing expression. So he got up and walked away

Then.....there were two other guys came to me, they already asked me before about the seat was taken. I hoped they didnt come back because my english was awful so they didnt understand what i said. The older said something "I knew that this seat is taken i just wanna ask you if it is ok for you to let us sit here until..your..boyfriend come back". "It is my husband actually" i said. "I promise we will leave as your husband coming" he insisted.

"Well ok then, i dont mind" i threw them a smile.

"Where are you from ?" he was still keeping up conversation with me.

"I am from Indonesia. Do you know where it is? "

"Yes i know that, it is in south east asia right?"

"Yes you are right, surprising in fact since not many people really know about it"

"I am a teacher .....geography..." he smiled

"Ah no wondering sir...."

Then the rest we just enjoyed the music and our drinks until my husband came and they kept the promise, let the seat for him.

But......my husband left me to the counter to buy a beer and it took time.

And that guy who just sat down without asking me, he did the same thing again. I couldn't believe that! He gave me strange smile and whispered close to my ears (which was i didn't expect that)" hey look.....we can go upstair and get a room if you like...?"

"No thanks" i felt humiliated and became angry at him. At the same time i smelt strong from his breath....geesh this guy is really drunk, i thought at that time.

He left me and i kept watching him walk away and stopped at other table. I guess he did the same thing to another woman at that table, she looked disturbed and asked him to leave.

What a nite.....

thanks Maam.....

I think i already told you that i was in Florida visiting my friend there (look at previous blog below), right? Actually my trip should be with my husband, but then we wasted his flight tiket because he should start to work a day after our departure. So i decided to call my friend and talked about the possibility to stay at her place instead of being lonely at hotel and of course saving money (actually this is the main issue here hehehe). So i had really a good company and free place to stay, and for sure she gave me a ride to some places.

Her boyfriend picked me up at Hollywood International airport and took me home by a bus. It was my first experince to ride a bus in this country. It was confusing for me to insert $1 bill and coin quarter (25 cents) into the machine. The bus fare is affordable and it is comfy too. Equipped with air conditioning against the tropical hot weather there, and no time delay. Tips for you, before taking bus just prepare one dollar bill and one coin quarter, because they will not give you change for exceeding bill. So here we go, it started to move and i enjoyed the view along the trip. It was beautiful city with its palm trees eveywhere and made me remember the old tv show i always watched when i was stil in Indonesia "Miami Vice". I saw more people take a walk or ride bicycle than in Michigan. I felt more homy! it was really different feeling for me to be in Michigan with all difference weather and geograpical condition and to be here with more or less similar with Indonesia. I saw many Hispanics and some of them were really masculin handsome guys like Antonio Banderas and also sexy beautiful women! In Indonesia they will make a lot of money by becoming an artist. Also there were Haitian black people which is slight different with African America.

Anyway, there was "little" incident happened after we came back from the store. In short our car scratched another car next to us......We just looked each other and didnt know what to do first, and the other lady who own the car tried to call her husband and after that told me that she is gonna ask the police to come. The police!? Oh no....must be bad for us, how much money we have to pay for this damage.....? After about 20 minutes, the police came to us and interviewed us about the incident. She took note and checked the cars. She was nice and not intimidating, even tried to figure out how to fix it (our car door was stuck in the body of the other car). Finally she did good and only left minor scratch on the other car. Phew! Then she told us that she wont put any police record and let my friend insurance company to take care of the damage. Thanks God. Then another thing came up, the lady could not start the car.....the problem came out from the battery. So she asked us help her to buy a jumper cable so that she can start the car by connecting her battery to another car battery. The police was still there with her when we came back, and she started to open the machine and tried to look for where the battery was and i helped her by holding flash light (it was night time). It took about another 5 minutes until she finally called her partner to come over and help her. Then another police came and they worked together until it was started eventually. I was surprised by her seriousness to help us and she was just friendly.
Finally she said "Ok guys make sure you get home safely". "Yep, no more surprise for us" i replied. After we thanked her many times for all help we took off and left us curiousity and of course relief feeling. We discussed about how nice the police was to us. There was no intimidation or bad treatment from her or even didnt asked us for money. And just let us go with secure feeling. My friend wondering if this kind of police is not 'the real' one like police who does investigation for criminal case. Because she saw the police car was written "Police Service Aide". Out of curiosity i searched it and finally found out that Police Service Aide serves non-enforcement support that help police officer to have more time to perform law enforcement activities.* So basically they are available to help people to feel safe and secure by providing service to deal with the trouble like what they have done, fixed the car. Thanks Maam....! You have really great job to help people like us. I hope someday in my country the dream will come true as slogan "Kami siap melayani anda".


*taken from http://www.cityofaventura.com/pdfs/JobDescription/PSA.pdf

dedicated to Police Service Aide of Aventura city, Florida

sorry no english

I heard before that in US some people dont speak english and they adapt well for living. At first it was quite surprise for me, how come people doesnt speak english there....? I cant imagine to be one of them living abroad without knowing its language. Dont you think it is kind of insecurity? How do they deal with only english spoken people for their daily life? I still remember my Indonesian friend after just moved in there for few months told me a story how it was so hard for her to understand how to pay electric bill of her apartment. She repeated to listen to answer machine many times to understand the instructions. Her english is fine in fact but for some reason to deal with real english native spoken apparently is a bit different.
It happened to me until now (shame on me!), especially for conversation on the phone, sometimes i need to ask the other person on the phone to repeat what did they say. At first few months it was even worse and made me feel lack of confidence when i engaged conversation with my husband family and i could not get the words correctly. I missed many words during conversation and it embarassed me. There were times when i let them told me a story and i was just stuck there without being able to ask them the missing word for me because i didnt want to disturb the flow of it.Unfortunately they were too excited, it was going on and on loong story.....so even if have moment to ask the words, it would be too much. Poor them, they just wasted time and energy.
Well i learnt more about accent and slank words. It was easier to read a book in english and to discuss or to listen to the lecturer speak english in indonesia because their accent is indonesian. But here........believe me, it's different.
Now after a year i have been "tortured" to always speak their language, i am improving much better. Before it was alwyas hesitant for me to make a phone call because i didnt want to feel bad after i speak with them because of my fluency. Actually i did good on the phone, even one of them were surprised to know that i moved in here only for few months (i hope she didnt lie to me). Well i took it as compliment to motivate me to practice more often. Voila......now i have no problem with making phone call!
So again i can't imagine how to be a person without speaking english here.....Must be felt terrible sometimes.
Then i found weird situation when i was in Florida, mostly they dont speak english! In the bus, mall, store, restaurant they speak strange language i dont understand. What the hell is going on...? Is it still America? A guy with uniform approached me at Wendy's and started to speak his language while i was looking for the handle for paper towel. I just looked at him with confused expression, then he pulled down the handle for me. Ohh....apparently he was trying to explain how to do that. "Thank you sir..." i said. He didnt reply and just left me. I saw him talk with his friend and sometimes laughed together. My friend told me that it was spanish, becoming main language there.
Then i started to think......how will it be like if bahasa as main language here?
Asyik kali ya serasa di kampung halaman setiap saat?! Terus nanti ada papan di pinggir jalan tertulis "tambal ban tubeles" atau "Warung Makan Pak Dirjo".

*Happy Sumpah Pemuda!

see you next posting!

Transition

Back to almost one year ago when i had the most difficult decision to make concerning my future. Should i go or should i stay...? Most people said...think again carefully and not to go. But i believe i can do it myself, eventhough so faraway from all of them people who always love me and keep me in their mind. I kept telling myself, just move on dont give up....once you turn back you would not be able to step forward.

So here i am, in another world so faraway from home......
Looking back at my past keeping alive all beloved people in my mind to move forward stronger. Trying to retrieve all of old files about them, keeping me warm in my heart from winter. There is sadness coloring my self, all good times good memories just come out make me sad to realize that i dont have those anymore now. Every day every night those memories attack me wildly at my dreams, make me feel good and also make me sad. I wish i have that normal life already, but also i dont want my current life replace them. No, no way.... Those memories are just too sweet and always remind me how happy i was around my family and friends.

Finally in this case, i was right....i have to stand by myself. I cant rely on somebody else to make things right. There is a time when you have to be totally alone no one understand what you are going through. Nobody, except yourself.

That is the time when you have to rethink your vision of life, build new one. Make yourself feel better knowing that there is still hope everything will be good eventually.
Keep in faith that something good will come good, and i came here with good intention. So must be something will come good in time, still a mistery.

Something good is precious, only work for who work on it and belief in it.
Hopefully i am the right one to do that, strong enough to struggle holding my faith.