Thursday and Friday, August 19th and 20th: My two-day trip to Bandung with campus friends. First time I'd been to Bandung in three years, which you probably think is a bit odd, given that loads of people seem to go back and forth at the drop of a hat. Guess I've never had a good enough reason to go, or the timing was never right. Not to say the timing was right on this occasion, considering I had some leftover work - my review of Hoobastank's gig - to finish. But I figured that Bandung's a modern city; they were bound to have internet rentals, so I could take some time out to finish up my work.
So we left from campus in the afternoon, got there at around seven, stopped by our lodgings to deposit our bags, and then it was off for dinner and a sojourn to this place called The Valley. After that it was back to our humble, temporary abode, where I was too tired to even think about finishing work, even though - as it turns out - there was a laptop and internet connection via cellphone available, courtesy of a travel mate's foresight.
The next morning, I started working. I would've sent my article via e-mail as soon as it was done, but the cellphone had to be used, so I had to put it off, save it to disk and look for an internet rental. And once again, since Bandung was a modern city (and the last time I went there, it wasn't hard to find internet rentals), I thought it'd be a simple matter of just taking a brief detour while everyone was checking out the abundance of factory outlets.
Boy, was I wrong. In a nutshell: here in Jakarta, you can't throw a stone 100 yards without smashing through an internet rental's window, such has been the level of proliferation over the years. Whereas in Bandung, it's like the internet rental has become a dying species, and been co-opted by that Ragnarok Online shit - you don't have to be a marketing genius to know that the internet will still be around and essential long after Ragnarok has become an embarrassing early 21st century memory. Lack of vision there, internet-turned-Ragnarok rental owners. By this point, I was seriously on the verge of losing it - and the fact that the entire day was spent hopping from factory outlet to factory outlet didn't help. Personally, I was in no mood nor financial health to shop until I bloody well dropped. All I wanted was to send my article, and probably stay in the car if everyone still wanted to go shopping.
Eventually we stopped by a rental...but was that the end of my problems? Hell, no. The signs were probably apparent when the clerk had a hard time transferring a scan of the Hoobastank setlist to the disk. Eventually we had to make do with another disk for the scan, and then it was just a matter of attaching the required files to my e-mail. I was about to let a weary whoop of jubilation as soon as the "Message sent" reminder came on the screen, but then I suddenly realised something - I had sent the wrong article! Didn't know how that happened, maybe I was just too tired to pay close attention. Then I checked the disk's contents for the proper file...and it wasn't there. How could it not be there? I'm sure I had saved it to disk before we left. Then I tried accessing the disk on the rental's main computer...and up came that dreaded "this disk has not been formatted" message. At first I didn't panic, because on previous occasions, all that took to remedy this was to just eject the disk and put it back in again. But when that method didn't work, panic started to set in.
Then the thought occurred to me that maybe I hadn't saved it to disk after all, and I had saved it on the laptop by mistake. So we went back home, I checked the laptop...and nothing. Tried accessing the disk...and nothing too. Same bloody "not been formatted" message. After several futile attempts at the insert/re-insert trick, I finally gave up and we went out for a steak dinner. What, you think I'm the type of person who dwells on the unsalvagable?
Saturday, August 21st: Got up at 5 o'clock, got my stuff ready, and headed straight for the train station. I was the sole traveller from our group, because - contrary to the original plan - everyone had decided to leave on Saturday night as opposed to morning, whereas I had told the folks that I'd be back on Saturday afternoon at the latest. They wanted me to drive them to a wedding, whereas I didn't want to miss the night's episode of
Coupling - the main reason I agreed to the Bandung trip in the first place, because it meant that I could get home in time to catch it. So when everyone decided to stay longer, it meant that I had to travel alone - which, as it turned out, wasn't so bad. In fact, it was quite wonderful; during my waking moments, I could appreciate the countryside scenery better than on the trip to Bandung. Daylight'll do that for you. Plus I could get an adequate amount of shut-eye; so adequate, in fact, that I woke up just as the train was pulling into Jakarta. A very blissful trip. Not so blissful was the taxi ride back home, which took about half the time the train from Bandung to Jakarta did.
Then it was a matter of counting the hours until the wedding, where my supposed claustrophobia (or whatever phobia it is that makes me queasy in crowds of people I don't know) flared up. All I wanted to do was go home - especially as they were showing Liverpool vs. Machester City on TV. The match was on at nine - clashing with
Coupling, but as I've
mentioned earlier, not a problem due to the re-run.
Ah yes, the re-run. Here's the thing: after the excitement of seeing Liverpool play good football and come from behind to beat City 2-1, I got tired from waiting for 1:30 to come around, so I set my alarm for 1:25 (to compensate for differences between Star World time and Hasief Ardiasyah time) and took a nap. Did I fail to get awoken by the alarm? Oh, if only I were that fortunate: I heard the alarm fine. I turned on the TV, and it was still that shitty
TNA Wrestling on. So I went back to sleep...and didn't wake up until five. Yup, I missed it. I missed the main reason for arranging my Bandung trip the way I did. Oh, the cruel irony.
Though I guess there's a silver lining: in a couple of weeks,
Absolutely Fabulous (which occupies the time-slot immediately after
Coupling) will be replaced by...
The Office! Yeah, baby! Very soon, I'll no longer go out on Saturday nights! Though I suppose I'd better be more obedient to alarms...
Sunday, August 22nd: Major headache, most of the day spent in bed. 'Nuff said.
Monday, August 23rd: Still a bit under the weather, but had to soldier on with the unfinished work from Bandung. After that was done, went to PIM to see
The Bourne Supremacy with Citra and her pal Tari. Personally, I was curious due to the good reviews, curious enough to check it out even though I missed the first one. But I read somewhere that you didn't have to have watched the first, so there you go. Pretty good, rather brutal without being too explicit. Favourite moment? Any time Jason Bourne has a long phone conversation with the CIA woman who's tracking him down (watch the flick, you'll see what I mean).
Back at home, caught this week's episode of
The O.C. on TV7, and I am increasingly feeling a kinship with Seth Cohen. I'm sort of like the penniless version of Seth, and in this episode, I found another similarity: he has a knack for remembering obscure details regarding this girl whom he's had a major crush on for years, even after said girl herself has forgotten all about those details. Here, Seth gets a big kiss on the lips from the object of his affection for his uncanny memory; wonder if that'll ever happen to me too...
