Saturday, May 19, 2012

From Sushi to Taekwondo

Does the title sound weird? To me, it sure does...

From what I know, sushi originates from Japan and Taekwondo from Korea. They come from two different cultures, but somehow my dream last night seemed to be connecting them. Well, that's how dreams are: unrelated things uniting in one strange episode.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a wonderful sushi buffet lunch with my university pals. The food was good and the ambience of the restaurant was quite nice for an afternoon gathering. Since we decided on having the All You Can Eat menu, we ordered lots of weird sushi names that haven't been heard of anywhere else. We talked about memorable trivial things that happened during the earlier days of university, enjoyed good laugh over silly matters of the past and took pictures together. What a nice gathering that was.

So now we move on to Taekwondo.

What I can remember from my dream is that I was a newbie enrolled in a Taekwondo school along with the same friends that had had sushi with me in the afternoon. What's even funnier  is that the school was located in the Emporium Pluit Mall in North Jakarta. That's so strange...As a resident of Puri Indah in West Jakarta, only on special occasions do I go all the way to North Jakarta for mere weekend entertainment. Not only that, I don't think there's even a Taekwondo school in EPM despite being only an occasional visitor.

The teacher was a heavily-built female with fair skin. Plus, she was a strict one with black belt. I remember clearly that she was warning us not to run off and hang out with friends in EPM and that we better be serious in the training. Suddenly, without even showing us the basics, she instructed us to do a one-on-one training, where each of us had to practise with a partner. How on earth were we supposed to do that?

The story suddenly shifted. As if we succeeded in escaping from the training, we were then strolling together along the shops in EPM.

That's where the dream terminated. When I woke up this morning, I wondered if the dream was caused by the distant memory of my childhood. I recalled that I once wanted to join the Taekwondo extracurricular activity when I was in primary school grade 1, and I found it so hilarious that I started rolling on the bed and chuckling by myself. Oh my, I think I'd watched too much episodes of Power Rangers and Ultraman when I was small.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

When one suddenly became an eyewitness

Life really has so much to offer. We may get indirectly involved in unexpected incidents, in which what or whom we saw and thought to be unimportant, turned out to be a very crucial moment that could serve justice.

It all happened earlier today after having lunch with friends at the Marine & Fisheries research center in Slipi Petamburan. I was on my way to meet my friend Tyas in the library, when I remembered about my permission request letter which I need to submit to the lecturers to inform them about the reason for my absence in Wednesday's lectures. So I decided to get my permission request letter in my bag to be entrusted to her.

Bringing along my wallet and cell phone, I made my way to the Biotechnology Laboratory where my backpack was, and pushed open the door.

At that very moment, a man dressed in dark blue uniform came out from a space between a table and a bookshelf near the door of my entrance. The table was the spot where I put my backpack along with my friends'. They were friends I made when I started my research there and they were just upstairs washing the plates and spoons they had used for eating. I remembered clearly that the 3 of them went to the kitchen to do their washing and I was the only one going back to the laboratory.

There was no one in the laboratory that time, only that man in the dark blue clothing. As he walked towards the door through which I'd made my entrance, he greeted me, said nothing else, then left through the door. That moment was too short, that I could not even recall how his face exactly looked. After getting my permission request letter, I proceeded to the library to meet up with Tyas.

Upon returning to the laboratory half an hour later, Ms. Dewi, the head of the Biotechnology Laboratory, hastily called out to me and asked if my wallet had gone missing from my backpack. The me who still had no idea of what had happened, puzzledly showed her the wallet I had been bringing along with me. Then she asked me whether I had seen anyone suspicious wandering in the laboratory.

Oh man...I had a really bad feeling back then. Before I asked about what had happened, well, I tried describing the man I saw. She asked about his face, his posture, his hairstyle....but my mind just could not recall them. I must admit that I'm really, really bad in remembering people's faces and names, especially those that I don't see very often. It turned out that someone had stolen one of the student researcher's wallet. What??? So that man I saw could have been the thief!! No one was in the lab when I bumped into him! But I could not say that for sure, of course. I regret it so much about not taking good notice of his facial features, which might have been useful in identifying the thief.

I have to see more into details next time. Lesson learned!