Day 2 in Jakarta.

It is about 5 AM here right now, and obviously I'm suffering from jetlag as both my dad and I are fully awake and moving about. I'm in my cousin's room at my aunt and uncle's house instead of the usual room at Grandma's house because my other aunt is staying there, although surrounding wise, I can still hear the old men singing (chanting? or whichever) outside at 4:30 AM - I guess it doesn't matter where in Jakarta you are, you'll hear them somehow-, and there's still air conditioning, and there's still mosquitos, and there's another linksys unprotected network, so I suppose it isn't that much different. Actually, the network near Grandma's house disappeared so once we move back there I'll be internet-less again. oh well.

Random comments about the trip so far...

- Cathay Pacific does not beat Singapore Airlines. I was a little sad that we weren't flying Singapore, but we flew the former because it was less expensive this time. I guess you get what you pay for. 10 hours on a 14 hour flight without food is a bit much. The storage compartments felt noticeably smaller, and for some reason we had an emergency exit seat so I had to stow my backpack in one of the upper compartments.

I hate being separated from my backpack on airplanes.

So I took out like a couple of pounds of stuff from my backpack and had it sitting on my lap the entire time, which felt like it was cutting off the circulation in my leg after a while. That and I realized 12 hours into the flight that I'd been sitting on top of headphones the entire time, which would explain why the seat was so friggin uncomfortable. -_-

And I miss the hot towelettes!

And having two lunches + dinner!

Oh well, I'm international flight-spoiled.

- Another thing, international flights (least to Asia) are really over the top paranoid about swine flu. All of the flight attendents and every other fifth passenger had a face mask on, which so I'm told from my parents is only effective for people who actually have the flu; people who are trying to prevent themselves from getting the fly can still get it from the sides. And when we were heading towards the baggage claim, I had to pass through this "checkpoint" where they basically sprayed either cold/moist air or some kind of disinfectant on you, which wasn't really effective since the guy didn't even check if my hand was going all the way into the disinfector thingy (I was trying to reposition my backpack and they just let me through anyway). And I'm still confused why every fourth security guard or worker wasn't wearing a mask. I was somewhat expecting by the huge numbers that there was some health security regulation that all workers were to wear masks, but some of them were working at the same stations with masks next to a bunch of people with masks. Interesting.

- Apparently I forgot that there was a laser pointer in my backpack all year, because at Hong Kong the security guard had to search through my entire backpack for it. And then he saw my copy of Emma and was like "Jane Austen? Pride and Prejudice!" which sounded pretty funny with his Chinese accent.

- Indonesia is pretty hot and humid right now. But I refuse to leave my arms totally uncovered when there are so many mosquitos prancing about. I'm really paranoid about sleeping in this room with them around, and it doesn't help that I start jumping out of bed the moment I hear a buzzing sound next to my ear. It's kinda sad that I'm paranoid about leaving the door wide open and seeing wide open spaces of water lying around where they could potentially breed... stupid mosquitos.

- According to my aunt, when my grandpa was still alive, he left the country once for 8 months, and when he came back he got lost trying to go between his house and my uncle's house. Which I might compare to me driving between my house and Jade's? (in other words they're kinda close) Except with more hectic traffic and 10 motorcyclists getting in your way and tons of car horns going off.

- I'm a bit confused about the street my grandma lives on. It looks like it's a one way street except for the fact that our car was driving the opposite direction to get to it. And then you have to block off half of the street (one of two lanes) waiting outside for the people to open up the gate for you. And I'm kinda sure right of way doesn't really apply when you have a 4 way street with no stop signs or lights, right?

The back seat seatbelts in our car don't work, which is okay since backseat passengers are not required to wear their seatbelts here... but traffic seems more dangerous to me than back at home. I feel like there's some sort of skill level that you have to develop driving here that explains why I've never seen a car accident in a place where I would probably crash within a week. (and even though I'm not that great of a driver, I haven't crashed yet. :P)

- I LOVE BAKMI GM. best noodles and best meatballs and best soup broth ever.

- So I continued my FF4 save file from back when I started in February, and my party is now approaching level 50. This game's actually kinda short by my standards I guess, but it's been pretty fun and ironically, invokes nostalgia of the other FF's that came after it. I miss the good old ATB system a lot.

- So I started rereading The Sound and the Fury because I was in the mood and just reached Quentin's portion of the novel again. It's a lot more understandable now that I already have a general gist of the story, but there's still a lot of things I missed out on while rereadin Benjy's part. I read the Sparknotes for that section afterwards to see if I'd missed anything, and I totally did not notice that Mr. Compson died. Or that Luster picked up a condom and mistook it for a quarter. Stupid random nitpicky details that may or may not affect the course of the plot.

Also, all of the discussion involving Dilsey's family (the Compsons' black servants) reminded me of the servants working at my family's houses here, raising their own families and having their own interconnections with the other servants at different houses. It felt kind of... weird. I guess. It's a side of house life that you don't really see much of in California, for sure.

- So nothing's really actually happened in Indonesia for me yet. Just a bunch of family talking, and me not really paying attention. I mean, I need context often to understand a conversation, and when they're throwing around names I don't recognize then I'm not really sure what's going on... communication barrier. I realize I'm kinda quiet around my family in general, but I have trouble speaking in general when I don't know what's going on half the time. And I don't like asking people what they just said all the time, considering how often enough I do that with English speakers anyway. Mm, oh well. I'm trying not to completely fall back on the books/games this time around, but it's hard, I'll admit. It's hard.

- I'm still a bit upset about missing Chapter Camp. And that I'm sort of in the ultimate stage of lacking control right now, which is bugging me. But I'll have to learn to deal with it, I guess. Make what I can of it.

- Stupid ******* mosquitos.