Personal notes

People say that keeping some notes about our feeling, thinking and opinions will give us more understanding about ourselves. This is a note from my final days after working for a year in Papua. I have some other notes from my journal that I would like to share. I'm now digging to my old diaries and scrapbooks in case I find anything interesting. I'm going to start with this one first.

After graduating from university, I did my mandatory government service at West Papua, Indonesia. There are two classes of job offered by the government for fresh-graduated physicians: to work in rural place or in very remote rural place. If we choose the second option then our contract will be shorter than the first option. I chose the second.



Little did I know that my decision would change my whole perception later on. Working in a place that only could be accessed by small “Twin Otter” plane and only has a radio for communication device, I started learning that there is another world outside the world I used to know.


The society I was living in is far and away different from my own, although we are all Indonesians. They practise an odd way of treating disease when they get ill. I hadn’t even been trained to work in such a condition. I was quite surprised (no, I think the right word is ‘gobsmacked’). The awareness that I was the only doctor for the whole mountain was overwhelming. In the first 2 months, I struggled to adapt with my new environment. Everyday life, such as cooking, bathing, or washing suddenly became difficult things. I didn’t know how to make fire, I don’t know how to get water from source, I couldn’t take a bath in the river. Even staple food was difficult to get. They don’t eat rice but cassava. Cassava wasn’t very good for my digestive system. It produces a lot of gas in the intestine and makes my stomach bloated uncontrollably. So at the beginning, it wasn’t me who gave them treatment. It was them who gave me. I learnt to sleep in the hut, then next day I could fix my door and put a stove inside. In a few weeks time, I could say that I survived. But then came along other problems: I relied too much to interpreter that I couldn’t do an appropriate history taking, and also there were short of medical supplies and limited diagnosis tests.


In order to get reliable history, I tried to understand some important vocabularies, e.g. headache, fever, unconscious, diarrhea, bleeding, cough, cold, and three times daily. Then I could ask them further questions like: when it starts, what colour and how many times, etc. However, I wasn’t sure if I use the grammar correctly. Sometimes patients just nodded and laughed. With a help from a nurse, I also managed to store the supplies in order at last, but some of the drugs were apparently expired. To dispose, we had to bury these stuffs otherwise children or animals might ingest them (I had never buried drugs before, I felt like criminal). It took me longer than I thought to get my clinic operate “normally”.


When I decided to extend my contract for another 6 months, I was sure that I did the right thing. In my high ideal I thought I might bring about changes. But I was proved wrong. I wasn’t aware that many people strived before me to make condition better. But it was so difficult to change people’s mind. Before my contract ended, I was at my wit’s end. I started being impatient and frustrated. I felt helpless, disappointed and alone. I had a quarrel with my chief of health department. I had resentment to the eldest of the society who I considered as ‘conventional and stubborn’. At the end of the day, I didn’t accomplish my work triumphantly. As soon as my contract ended, I signed out.


I returned home and I wanted to do something else. I am rather happy with all experience I’ve got, but I also realised that I wasn’t very successful. Now I am still not sure what to do if I have the same situation once again. I want to study tropical infectious diseases so I might return to Papua again. But for now, I guess it might be helpful if I learn to deal with ‘challenging people’ in different circumstances. In my opinion, if I put myself to unfamiliar condition, then I will learn the most.

I lost most of my pictures during traveling, but not the notes! I'll publish them soon in this blog.

This one is from year 2006, during my first visit to London. I was mesmerised by the musical as I'd never seen live performance before. Now it sounds rather exaggerated but honestly, I still love musicals and theatre. The latest performance I really want to see is Monty Python and The Holy Grail but they'd already moved to Los Angeles =(

London’s Musical

What will I miss the most in London? It’s musical. Breathtaking, witty, amazing, fantastic and artistic are not enough words to describe these plays. I agree that not all musical are good enough for their standard, but here are some of the plays I certainly do admire (if you happen to see them, give me your own comment).
The Producer and Avenue Q are the most humorous of all. Surprisingly, they are both set in US. I assume American has better sense of humor. The Producer tells a story of a producer (of course) who want to make the worst play ever in Broadway. He and his accountant, the wanna-be producer, try their best to hire the worst scriptwriter, actor and director in order to make the most box-office flop. They wish that after the unsuccessful show they will be gone with a lot of money. The worst play unpredictably turn to be the most-wanted play, and the funniest part…you’ll see the rest by yourself.
Avenue Q is the story of our everyday life, with unemployed BA degree called Princeton and those all people live in Avenue Q. This play consists of live stage performance of sex, unfortunately, by puppets. With songs like "It’s suck to be me" and "We’re little bit of racist", I’m sure you can imagine what kind of musical it is!
Chicago is likely the sexiest. If you have seen the movie with Catherine Zetta-Jones and Renee Zellwenger (ups, I don’t know how to spell her name, forgive me), don’t even think that you will be bored to watch this play again. It’s fabulous! The music is totally alive and the joke is much funnier. Roxie Hart, the main character of this play, really dances like a puppet. She’s not only hot but also very absorbing. Like to make fun of herself as well as entertain her audience. And with the orchestra as a part of the story, who doesn’t enjoy it?

Lastly, The Phantom of The Opera  is the absolute best classical play. This remarkably well-done musical will make you gasp in fascination when you only first see the setting. With a bit theatrical song, you will be brought to old canals and cathedrals and plays in the Victorian times. Best work of Andrew Llyod Weber and reputated for the longest play in West End, the play is undeniable a classic masterpiece. Never miss it!

Ok. This one is my friend's note when we visited Japan. This bustling, vibrant and twenty-first-century country has only one flaw: they don't have night bus. So if you go out after the last train, you'll end up paying a fortune for a night cab. Luckily there are some good news: MacDs are opened 24 for hours and there are sushi vending machines about every 100 metres. Yay! (P.S. This note is very recommended for my male-traveler friends if you happen to hang around Tokyo or Osaka or Kyoto).

What to do if You get stuck in Tokyo or Kyoto from the hours between 12-5 am 

1. Start the night right off. Go to the vending machines and buy a BLACK BOSS or go to Family Mart and get an energy drink {Y200 (up for 2 hrs)-Y1500(up for 2 days)}.
2. Decide where you want to go. There are bars, clubs -stripclubs- you can hang out by a river or just drink from a vending machine.
3. I suggest going to all you can eat/drink place for Y3000. Get drunk and hit a club. Kyoto (club metro, World, Ruba dub). Tokyo (BiasPanic or NUTZ). If you want to take a break, go to an arcade or the Shibuya Mc Donalds.
4. Who you will find at Shibuya Mc Donalds. The second floor will be filled with smoke and Shibuya girls putting on make up and fixing their blonde hair. Some will be adjusting their high heels and long black socks. These girls are hot!!!!!! Everyone is eating Mega Teriyaki burger.
5. If you are a Gai jin like myself then you have to pay 2500 yen to go to a club. Most likely it will be a Reggae club. Here you will have to face the DJ and dance. If you turn your back to them to dance with a girl it might be considered disrespectful. Just drink a lot and it will be a lot of fun. It will be tough to talk to girls so just give them your camera, ask them to take a picture of you and your friends. This will start a conversation. Just pray they know more english than you know Japanese. WAtch out for dudes from Ghana wanting you to go to stripclubs. Go if you want. Get on train at 4.30 am. Go home!!!!

My weekends

Be prepared. For the next few paragraphs I'm going to talk about something rather pointless. It's called "How I spend my weekends."

I don't know how to spend my weekends. I know I should make them enjoyable, momentous, uplifting, relaxing and so on that I will be in a good spirit on Monday morning. Alas, all I did on Saturdays and Sundays are staying in my room, waking up very late, watching pirated DVDs, flipping a last year magazine, picking my nose and eating a take away chinese food (in that order, not at the same time). Of course, it was very nice. But I guess it can be more productive and fruitful.

One of my friend suggested that I should join a local church activity. In her opinion, it will make me move closer to heaven. Moreover, there might be some nice, religious, decent boys that could motivated me to go to church even more often. Yet since I think too much which church I should join in the first place (this church has too many old people, that church the aircon is broken, another church has no good parking lot, and other has too many giggling teenagers) I don't think I can commit to one church and get involved to any activity. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and I will join an activity. One day. I just need a better reason (not excuse) to do that.

On the other day I decided taking train to Jakarta to a friend's wedding. It was fun. I like being in a journey on train, it gives me such a nice feeling, more than any other ways of traveling. Sitting next to the window, reading a book while watching views outside the carriage move fast like a blurred movie always makes everything surreal. I enjoyed the sense of detachment from my busy world until the train stopped at Gambir train station. I can't say I like Jakarta at the very least. I wouldn't mind if I have to go back to my town with the same train moving to other direction. Unfortunately, it never happens. I stepped out of the train and hectic, dusty, dirty, blistering hot and polluted Jakarta greeted me with a lot of taxi drivers, hawkers, touts shouting my way to a public bus. I was back to the real life.

There is nothing better than excursion, surely, but it also requires most of my monthly salary. I couldn't go outside my town every weekend because it'll leave me penniless before the end of the month. I therefore choose to hang out with friends, having dinner or just talking over a cup of tea. This is a bit tricky apparently, because most of my friends are either working, studying or with their family during weekends. When I visit them and they're about to have an exam or a deadline or a child emergency, I'll be left cold on my own. Anyway, I still have some good times when I was out with friends to a seafood restaurant with live music. Just remember before you visit any seafood restaurant, make sure that they really do seafood, not some too dry shellfish that hardly edible. And have a quick glance to other guests. That night my friend and I barely could stand listening a fervent middle-aged woman singing an unmelodious song after another.

Last night I had a reasonably good outing. A friend of mine saying that she had a bad mood and needed an escape to a local cafe with a WiFi. She asked if I could come along (so she could get online while I read my book). I agreed and soon we sat in a sofa in front of a band playing Krispatih songs. She was indeed in a bad mood. She was glued to her computer most of that time and she didn't really talk to me. I reached out my book and shortly got absorbed in it. But she was too long. We had been there for two hours and I was getting bored. Suddenly the lead singer asked me if I want a song. I had no idea of popular songs. I mentioned an old song by Chrisye, that they didn't even have it. I guess nobody asked such old song. I asked another, but I think my request is never so popular that the band will easily perform it. "I'll search for that song," promised the lead singer, "Do you want to sing?" asked he.

This is interesting. The only place I often hang out with friends apart from food stalls is karaoke room. Yet I am not so self-assured that my voice is worth listening although you literally could just shriek in karaoke room. Let's say that I respect others by not getting them hearing-impaired sooner than later. I used to only sing softly in the shower room. But at that moment I had nothing else to do. I stood up and received a microphone. He asked my name and announced, "OK, now it's time for a song by Ria," There I was. I don't know so many songs so it was lucky they chose something familiar for me to sing. He sang the backing vocal beautifully when I struggled not to shriek (as always happen in karaoke room). He invited us to visit again next week.

I came home and having nothing else (again) to do, I wrote my blog. Perhaps one weekend I'll go to the sea and have a great time, but since my budget is tight and I always have to be back by Monday morning, I assume it's not so bad to have a few drinks and sing. Or possibly I'll soon join a church activity no matter if they have no parking lot, no aircon and full of old people and teenagers. I still don't find knitting very interesting for weekend activity, but maybe joining a band will do. Let's see.