Hey, from this point forward, I’ll be moving my blog to http://inatassa.wordpress.com
I’ll put on my favorite postings from this Friendster’s blog there, plus of course, new postings from time to time. It’s been great to get in touch with you through Friendster (my account still remains intact, it’s just the blog that I’m moving), and I hope to share more writings and thoughts with you at wordpress.
Til then, have a nice weekend!
To all my friends, selamat hari raya Idul Fitri, minal aidin wal faizin. Lots of food at my house on the halal bi halal this coming Friday 
My friends, Rina and Rini (sounds like twins but not hehe), and I now have a new hobby to do at the office (if my boss is reading this, don’t worry boss, we only do this late in the afternoon when there’s nothing more to do work-wise … yeah, right!). It’s really the best thing to do while waiting for ‘buka puasa.’ What is it? Checking out the ever-so-cool-never-know-how-we-could-live-before-this The Bag Blog! It’s full of daily postings of what’s fab and what’s dab, what’s hot and what’s not on today’s trends in bags. Need we mention the 2 million dollars worth of Hermes bag collection by Victoria Beckham? The matching white Valentino breaded leather of Angelina Jolie and Princes Zahara Jolie-Pitt? Or the beautifully crafted 2000 bucks ostrich Bottega? Abso-fashion-lutely not healthy on our bank account in this THR season where the splurging desire is almost unbearable. Every click brings me closer to the end of my financial civilization as we know it hahaha.
Anyway, our favorite part of The Bag Blog is this section called What’s in the Bag, where anyone can send pictures of their favorite bag with comments on why they like it and what they usually have in it. And when I say anyone, it’s really anyone, from glorified fashionista like Kim Kardashian and Ivanka Trump to college students carrying Banana Republic. People say that there’s a lot that you can tell about a person from what they have inside their handbag (Gore Vidal’s book inside Ivanka’s purple hobo or Shakespeare for Dummies inside a college freshman’s L.L Bean). Never really thought about what’s inside my bag until I saw this blog, but in case you’re interested, here’s what I have inside my gorgeous camel satchel (I can be stranded anywhere and still survive on all the things I have in it):
- Prescription medicines a.k.a second life
- GSM and CDMA mobile phones and the respective charger (going out without these are just like going out naked!)
- PDA (where I keep all of my contacts and calendar events, would be lost without it!)
- Purse with bare necessities like credit cards, debit/ATM cards, ID card, and small amount of cash
- iPod and the JBL headphones, I changed the original iPod headphones with these because they just sound heavenly better (really great for killing boredom anywhere, and also to avoid having lengthy conversations with people who you don’t really want to talk to, like over-pushing shopkeepers).
- A small box of name cards (you never know when you’re gonna run into prospective clients, always think like a business banker hahaha)
- Passport (so if I need to run away to another country like Jason Bourne, I can just do it instantly from anywhere at anytime, not like I need to hehe)
- Pen (to write, to sign, to draw, to sketch, or to poke into the eyes of tukang jambret on self-defense … serem kali ya?)
- Basic make-up: tiny hairbrush, a Laneige sliding pact and an Anna Sui nude lipstick
- And last but not least, you see that yellow-black book? Yes, it’s my book! Why do I need to carry my debut published novel anywhere? To promote it whenever I have the chance hahaha.
I’ve been dealing with a lot of “when” questions lately that I really think I’m gonna run out of answers and just end up blurting “it won’t be soon before long” just like Adam Levine said about Maroon 5 latest album (yes, for the last three days I’ve been committing an affair from John Mayer by taking him off the playlist on my iPod, replacing him with Adam’s irresistibly sexy voice).
Anyway, back to the whole when issue, one of the most popular questions that I’ve been getting for the last three weeks (mostly from my friends): “When’s your book gonna come out on t
he book stores?” This is an easy one: next week (dan mumpung bulan muda, jangan lupa beli yang banyak ya hehehe).
Next week will also mark my fifth anniversary working for this bank (God, time flies!). Never thought I won’t be tempted to be another “kutu loncat korporasi.” It’s only honest to say that I’ve not always been really good with long-term commitments. My “ikatan dinas” with this bank has been over for a year now, which means I don’t have to pay the “in-breach-of-contract fine” in the ridiculous amount of five times what my car worth - if you can grasp the concept in your mind (I barely can). Think of it as a divorce without the obligation to pay the alimony. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Some of friends who have actually changed the name of the company on their business cards (at least once) keep on asking me: “When are you gonna follow our foot steps?” Then I remember something that my friend said: “If you’re deciding to leave your company when you’re feeling unhappy, then it’s probably not a very good decision because you can’t guarantee that it’s not the emotion that drive your thought.” He then said that the best time to decide whether you’re gonna leave or not is actually when you’re feeling happy and comfortable with where you are right now, because then, it’s the logic that drive you, not plain emotion.
(I stopped for a while as I was about to write the next sentences, wondering if my boss is gonna read this hahaha). Honestly, I am happy and comfortable with where I am right now for more reasons than one, hence this is the best time to pull or hold that “resign” trigger, right? And I have been tempted and lured with better packages (let’s just say that I won’t have to join Shopaholic Anonymous if I were to decide to take some of those offers). But - I can’t believe I’m saying this - money is not everything. There are other divine things like opportunity to grow, career path, opportunity to take on challenges, position, location, health coverage, and of course: the people that you work with. And my professional life has been more than rewarding. The other day I just heard that I was thisclose of being recruited by other directorate in my bank. It sounds very interesting, but it also means leaving business banking, the thing that I’ve been doing for the last three years and already beginning to be very good at. Somehow it feels like being a heart surgeon who’s suddenly told to perform pap smear. But it also feels like having to choose between “sticking to what you’re very good at and eventually be a specialist” to “trying out new challenges to see how good you really are at everything else.” What would you do if you were me?
The next one is such a cliché, I know. And I hate to fall into it. But professional life does take its toll on your personal life, one way or the other (especially when you spend almost twelve hours at the office every single day). “When is the wedding date?” I bet this essential question will come up at least a dozen times this Lebaran season. And replying it with “tunggu aja tanggal mainnya” one time too many is just beginning to sound so lame. But then again, you can’t really predict when you’re gonna meet someone who can stack up to the one man that you measure everyone against. Then, you ask, why don’t I just marry the one man that I measure everyone against? That, sadly, is a whole other story that deserves its own book.
Here’s a blunt confession: I do judge a book by its cover. As far as I’m concern, if an author or publisher cares as much about the outside look of a book as the inside, then a brilliantly designed cover should say a lot about the content (not in anyway to imply that my post-it inspired cover that I designed myself is as gorgeous as my writing hahahaha).
Anyway, as I fell off the wagon of my compulsive-shopping diet last night (and this afternoon for that matter, when I found this breathtaking sky-blue sandals, which by the way costs less than the book! …. Aagh, it’s just like an alcoholic first martini after 12 months of AA sobriety), I bought a little brown book entitled The Handbook of Style. It was sealed, so I couldn’t really have a peak of the inside, and honestly, I don’t even have the slightest clue who the writers were (do Francine Maroukian and Sarah Woodruff ring a bell? They’re not Anna Wintour, that’s for sure), but I fell in love with its cover: it looks like this deep maroonish brown crocodile skin matched with a touch of pink in the corner box of the title. And - I’m not just saying this to prove my own theory of book cover - as soon as I finished two minutes of reading the first pages, I must say: this is money well spent! The 163 pages - which I finished in just two hours of caffeine break at Starbucks with my friends - all filled with very simple yet essential tips on beauty, fashion, and style.
I’ve always been a bit judgmental towards other how-to books (they’re usually just a collection of bullshit advice which you can’t really apply in real life), but this one is really different. The Handbook of Style should be the bible of any modern women anywhere, 37 commandments you should follow if you want to avoid committing the crime of fashion. My favorite chapters: How to Get the Haircut You Want (which explain my fanaticism with one particular stylist), How to Find the Right Frames for Your Face (I think Lisa Loeb is reading this), How to Choose the Perfect T-Shirt (oh those beautiful Zara v-necks), How to Spot a Comfortable and Sexy Shoe (beauty is painful, but any tips debunking this, I’m there!), How to Carry a Computer Bag and Still Look Good (another impulsive buying: this gorgeous brick orange small laptop bag from Sumdex), and How to Travel and Arrive in Style. For a highly voguish style book, this one doesn’t even harass you to buy a particular brand (like us mortals really have the guts to max out our credit cards to purchase a Coach bag). Instead, the articles just describe the type of style that matches your hair color and eye color and skin tone and body type.
So allow me to selfish and suggest the two must-have books the next time you’re stopping by a bookstore: The Handbook of Style and A Very Yuppy Wedding … my book, of course
It was a windy day in Los Angeles, and I had just been on a 20 hours of no sleep and crappy airlines food and this guy sitting next to me who couldn’t stop talking about where he’s been in the world. It was more like a show-and-tell because there he was with his passport showing every single page with immigration stamps on it (while all I could think of was: “When is this guy gonna shut up?” I’m still not ready to listen to another line of: “here’s where I went skiing in Swiss, and here’s when I traveled to Spain.”)
I was tired, not feeling really well actually, but still when I got off the airplane, and walked into the huge Tom Bradley International Airport, there’s this sudden rush of energy charging inside of me. The first time I saw a Spanish cleaning lady, the first time I saw a huge African-American police officer, the first time I held a quarter in my hand, the first time I walked out of the airport building and breathe the city of angels’s cold summer. That was the first time that I traveled to a foreign ground.
And there’s always something so ethereal about the first time you do something. Somehow, no matter how small it is, you just remember every single feeling and sensation as you experienced it. Sometimes down to the very minutes and seconds that it happened. On that day in the summer of 1995, I remember everything like it was yesterday. The tingling feeling on my face as a breeze of clear Los Angeles air touched it. This weird adjustment in my ears and my brain as I caught another line and another line and then another line of people speaking in foreign language around me. The sensation is eternal. That’s what I love the most about traveling: you will always have many first times that leave you tingling with excitement.
But of course, you don’t have to get on a plane or hop in a bus and travel somewhere new to experience those first times. There were all around us. The first time you saw the man that you later fall in love with. The first time you heard him laugh. The first time you tasted Indian food. The first time you ate sushi. The first time you drive a go-kart. The first time you fell off a tree. The first time you heard the cry of the child that you just gave birth to. The first your own baby touched your finger. The first time you bungee-jumped. You, and I, remember these first times like you remember to breathe. It’s funny how our brain works, isn’t it? I don’t even remember where I put my pen that I just had a second ago, but I do recollect the first time I saw the ocean (1981, I was only four years old, our family just moved to a small town called Tanjung Gading as my dad worked there, and on the first weekend my dad took me and my brother to see the company’s harbor. Clear, deep, dark blue ocean around me, with some groups of ubur-ubur floating on the water). Remember it like it was just this morning.
A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to experience a whole new first time (yeah, lucky is the word. You’ll understand why as you read through this). The first time I was admitted to a hospital, the first time I was injected with real needles, the first time I was head-scanned, the first time I was infused, and the first time I went under the knife. As some of you might have heard, I had a nose surgery called septoplasty to fix the deviated septum of my nose that had been causing me frequent problems (to put it mildly). The first time I lost my consciousness, and the first time I woke up from anaesthesia (which was hell! Thank God I had genius doctors and surgeon who left me with no visible scar whatsoever).
Don’t you just love those first times? The good ones, yeah for sure, but also the bad ones (which of course, you wish will always be the first time and no second or third time). Because in moments like now, when I’m sitting in my car with my eyes closed as we cruised the impossible traffic of Ramadhan afternoon, after a long tiring day at work, I still have a hint of smile on my face, recollecting some of those first times from the back of my mind. You now what I’m thinking of? The first time I … oh, well, that memory is too private to be shared here
So which first time put a smile on your face today?
How do you usually spend the minutes or the hours that it takes for you to get to and back from work everyday? When I lived in Jakarta, it used to take me only ten minutes to get to work but ridiculously one to two hours to get home - well, you guys know how impossible the traffic in Sudirman is at 6 in the evening. One thing that I love so much about moving back to Medan was escaping that horrendous traffic, now it only takes me 20 minutes max to get to and back from work. I never drive (I can’t drive is actually a more honest way of saying it. It’s been two years since I bought my own car and still nowhere near turning the ignition), so I use those twenty minutes doing anything I can think of to kill time. Either listening to the iPod while catching some zzzs (I’m so not a morning person), or playing Pocket Bowling or Pocket Monopoly (one of these days I’m really gonna get a PSP so I can play Gran Turismo whenever I want), or - if I’m really desperate - reading the feasibility analysis pages of the customer that I was supposed to present that day (yeah, I hope my boss is reading this hahahaha).
Anyway, as I got into the car from work yesterday, I found this document lying on the backseat, just arrived from the mail. Guess what it was: the legal contract between me and the largest publishing house in this country to publish my book! The book has been going back and forth between me and my editor these last few months - I guess you’re wondering why it took so long, but between my impossible schedule at work, her busy schedule, my septoplasty a.k.a nose surgery and post-op recovery time (will tell you all about it next time, but all I can say now: my doctors and surgeon are genius, totally love the hospital, not so much about the procedures), my projects on corporate culture for my company (that I had to catch up on after missing two weeks of work), him (enough said), this is probably as fast that I could go. So I spent the whole ride reading through it, after giving it to my friend the legal officer slash lawyer at the office to take a look at it (and I’m so gonna get in trouble because I forgot to mention him in the thank you page!), I finally signed it!
Here’s the good news for me (and I hope for you too if you’re looking forward to this as much as I do): the book will finally go to printing next week, I get to design my own cover (do you think Vera Wang would let anybody else design her own wedding dress? Yeah, not that I’m Vera Wang for that matter, hahaha), and I hope it will hit the shelves next month.
So the next time you’re going to the bookstore and see this, it’ll be so awesome if you could pick a copy and read and throw me some comments or criticism afterward. To my closest friends who already hold the copies of the original manuscript of this book, think of it this way: when I’m rich and famous like J.K Rowling, you can always sell that on eBay and make a fortune hahahaha!
Item number 5 on my thirty things to do before I’m thirty: publish a book - check!
Item number 2: be able to drive … not so much.
1. Smartness cannot get you far at work without associaton, connection, and a whole lot of pulling strings.
2. A series of bad decisions can be fixed by one great good decision.
3. But of course, there are some mistakes that you just can’t fix.
4. If I can survive flying on a Cessna, then I can survive flying on anything.
5. I’m very bad at controlling my patience when I see something’s not done right.
6. I have proven personally the power of sedekah, over and over again, so it might be a good idea for you guys to start to.
7. It’s funny how your needs grow exponentially while your salary doesn’t grow as fast.
8. Freedom is sometimes overrated. Before, when it actually cost me a fine of 500 million if I leave this company, I just can’t wait. Now, that the contract-bound is over, I’m beginning to love my work more.
9. There’s a line between “being there no matter what” with “being a push-over.”
10. You can actually differentiate friends who are there for you and also help you grow as a person in a return with friends who are just good at drowning your emotions and yourself. Choose wisely.
11. First impression is not always true. You can be best friends with people that you don’t like at all at first.
12. You get what you give. And you also get what you ask for. So be careful what you wish for.
13. My perfectly shaped nose (yes, I’ve also learned that I’m still narcissistic) is actually crooked on the inside. And the doctor said I need surgery to fix it. Scares the shit out of me especially since I’ve seen one too many Nip and Tuck episode.
14. Financial success doesn’t guarantee happiness. But it helps in buying your way into it.
15. Choices and being able to make them is one of God’s greatest gift to a person.
16. John Lennon was a genius when he said: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”
17. Now that I don’t live in Jakarta and only go there frequently, I actually love it.
18. Moods, energy, creativity, and emotions can be controlled. Thanks to Gavin Degraw, Robin Thicke, Seal, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, and Alanis Morissette.
19. One of my resolutions this year is learning how to drive. I might have to scratch that as I find it more enjoyable to be chauffeured arround.
20. Flying solo is sometimes more fun then flying with someone.
21. Here’s a financial advice: do not apply for a credit card if you can’t handle the responsibility.
22. I do judge a book by its cover.
23. When you think that your life sucks, think of one good thing in your life and let it be the ignition of your spirit to fix the other things that contribute to that suckness.
24. Surprise, there’s no such thing as a free lunch is not always true.
25. If you have something to say to someone, just open yourself and say it, before it’s too late and what you say doesn’t make a difference anymore.
26. Being forgiving doesn’t always mean you’re weak. I learn this the hard way.
27. You’re only as good as the last thing that you add on your resume.
28. There can never be a sitcom who can come close to Friends.
29. Sometimes you do have to change for the people that you love. Just don’t lose yourself in the process.
30. From time to time, you might receive unimportant calls or messages or e-mails. These messages might be unimportant, but the person who sent them to you can be important.
31. Never buy things forward, unless it’s airplane tickets for holiday plan. They’re much cheaper that way.
32. It’s always nice to have something to look forward to. So plan something fun way ahead. Like a holiday.
33. Not being able to live up to people’s expectations is really not the end of the world.
34. Lunch is overrated. Sushi Tei, however, is not.
35. I started this routine with one of my best friend in which we message each other at the end of every day telling each other “what made us smile that day.” It sounds simple, but it opens your eyes more when you have a really, really bad day and find out that you still have at least one thing to be thankful for.
36. There’s a thin red line between love and hate. Really. Not just a movie title.
37. Somehow it’s easier for me to get mad at somebody in English than any other language. The cuss words are just a lot meaner.
38. It only takes a small thing to change your priorities in life.
39. Also, it can only take a small thing to ruin your whole life.
40. Health care is expensive. Makes you so thankful that you can still afford it.
41. Buying a car means paying for gas, paying for service, paying the installments, paying the insurance, paying all the accessories, paying for a whole lot of different things.
42. Public display of affection can be cute … to a certain extent.
43. Be careful, be very careful, of whom you give your mobile numbers to.
44. One of my new favorite things to do: sitting alone in the airport lounge sipping drinks with a good book whilst waiting for take off.
45. Sometimes it’s actually better not to think too much.
I was on this longer-than-life, 19 hours drive to and back to one of my customer’s factory in this absolutely ridiculous road condition that I was literally shaking in my bones half the way. And then we took a stop in front of a mosque, I waited alone in the car while my colleague and my driver went in for the Friday prayer. So, I turned on the stereo, and there was Alanis Morissette singing Flinch. You know what image flashed through my mind? You. You know, when we sometimes met after you just had finished your Friday prayer, and your face was a little bit blushed from the sun, and you hair was still wet a 
little from the wudhu. And you smiled. And you laughed. And your eyes lit up as you told me stories. And there was another image of you falling asleep, tired from walking a mile or so for your exercise. Your face also blushed from the sun, this fresh reddish blush on your white skin. And there was a drip of sweat on your forehead. You snored. How ridiculous is it that I even miss your snore?
It was a long, painful drive yesterday, but it was merely as painful as thinking that I might not be able to see you like that ever again. You have ruined me for any other men in the world as none of them will ever measure up to who you are. But I guess I shouldn’t have told you that and made your head grows even bigger and bigger as the arrogant, selfish, insensitive man that you are.
I read one of your old messages, the one that said you missed me. I looked at the date and it was almost two years ago. But weeks and months had passed. We are barely speaking to each other. Geography is no longer our friend. Everything just seems to have lost in translation. You know what’s killing me though? I kept going it over and over in mye head, words that should be left unsaid, or even worse … words that I should have said.
If you’re reading this, just tell me this: what happened to us? Tell me please, so I can stop being a masochistic for torturing myself with my feelings and fixations towards you.
