Guess who is back?

It's me, off course! Ha ha

I know it has been a long long looooong hiatus for me. What can I say? Life happens and you get super busy juggling in real life so this virtual home is kind of got abandoned. Sad, eh?

Excuses aside, writing has always been the thing that I love doing. I have been writing since the day I knew how to write. Been writing poems and short stories during my junior high school days, stopped, writing speeches and letters and short stories in senior high, writing my own diary (haha...good old diary), and then when internet comes, writing my blog. This blog has been my longest relationship with all of the writing media available thus far. And even though I have been coming on and off the website, I always found that writing is somehow therapeutic and something that I will always come back to do despite anything.

Now. Let us talk about life, shall we? For the past 4 years of my absence, I have transformed from a working mom of a little girl to a stay at home mom of 3. Yep. you read that right. I am a momma of 3 kiddos now. My last post was in Gabon and we have been changing adresses 4 times since then. We called Pescara, Italy - Lombok, Indonesia - and Pointe Noir, Congo home. And for now, we settle back to Jakarta. Since there has been too many things going on in life, I will try to write more often. It helps me to look back and reflect on what has happened and how we cope with a lot of stuff. I need to document those somewhere and I guess this blog can be the right place.

So until then,

See you soon!!

Diamond

Here I am in my 2^nd week on the site. We are currently on standby waiting for the next rig operation so I have quite a relax time chatting over dinner with a Mud Supervisor and an Engineer that deals with Water Based Mud Treatment Plant. Yeah, I know…with my college background and all that’s what I should be doing right now, no? Thank you, sub-conscious mind!!

This Mud Supervisor is a 60 year old Italian and the other guy is a 30 something South African. We started the chat with the “usual conversation starter”: Safari in South Africa, how to get there, food, condition, etc. Of course you can’t talk about South Africa without talking about Mr. Mandela, right? So we talked about him for some time; how inspirational he was, what people in his country call him (Mudiba? Mudaba? I couldn’t remember. But I do remember that it actually means an old tree of wisdom, or the grandfather to all people), things like that. And then this Engineer said that their new president is nothing sort of Mandela. He started to complain about how bad he has been as a President, and when he said that this President has 7 wives, we were all stopped eating and said “Get out of here!”

The Engineer said that this is the truth. In fact, he told us a story about how this president just took 20 million USD from the tax payer’s money to build his own ranch with a private helipad and a bomb bunker.

Now this was when the mud supervisor said, “Of course he needs a bunker. He’s got SEVEN WIVES, for heaven’s sake! I got only one wife, and I already think about having a panic room for myself. Those fortresses and bunkers are not to protect him from his people or terrorist, it’s his wives he is running away from. I am telling you that.” 

We all laughed about it, then these guys started to talk about how having one wife is actually bad enough. You know, because woman likes to talk a lot, they shop a lot, they worry too much, all that sort of stuff. I laughed with them simply because I can see some part of me in those women they talked about. Don’t worry, I counter attack them as well when they are having too much fun. Hail to the ladies!!

The thing is, men joke about their women all the time. At first, it really bothers me. I felt like they have no respect whatsoever. I mean, why do you even want to marry if then after you got married you just complain about her all the time, right? That’s just ridiculous and disrespectful. So I talk about it with Mr. Hubby. His response was actually quite a shocker. 

“You know, honey, these guys work hard being far away from home and such to provide for their family. Sometimes they miss their wives so much and they need to speak out. The only way of doing it without looking emotionally weird is just to joke about it. Do you know when we joke about our wives, we are actually bragging about her? For instance when I told my friends that I need approval from my finance minister for all my expenses, I kind of feel proud that I have a wife who can take care of my money and I feel safe about it. And besides, don’t say that you don’t joke about us when you are hanging out with your girls.”

Well, come to think of it now, we do joke about our men when we hang out with each other. So Okay, this one is a draw. But even until today, I still have some doubt about Mr. Hubby’s reply. I mean, he could have just said that to woo me, right? Although, I have to admit, it worked that time. :P

Tonight's conversation, though, turned into something extraordinary for me when the engineer said,

“But really I am so lucky to have my wife. She is so down to earth and grounded. The center of my house. She is my diamond.” 

I saw him saying that ever so sincerely and I started to think that, hey, my hubby may be right. May be he was telling the truth and not just saying what he said that time to calm me down. I am so happy for the engineer’s wife for having scored a good man that truly loves her. In times when men and women can easily cheat on each other like now, hearing a man saying something like this about his wife is actually felt like a cool breeze of hope to me. I feel that the world is not so bad after all. That we can all still aim for that happily ever after, in sickness and in health, in poor or wealth, till death do us part kind of marriage. But ofcourse, being a man as he is, he just have to end the conversation by saying,

"She never asked for anything from me, except for handbags. That's a war I can not win :)"

ONE DAY, ...

In our living room. I was reading review on the latest model of hair dryer.

Me: 

Beb, this new hair dryer brand sounds interesting. It says that it can dry the hair twice as fast with lower heat so that it doesn’t do as much dammage to the hair. Sounds cool right?

Hubby: 

Naaah, it’s just advertorial campaign beb. Don’t trust them. Drying your hair is just a matter of mass transfer.

Me: 

Exactly. Since it’s about mass transfer, then the same initial steady state condition will give different result if the external factor like heat or wind speed introduced to it is varried, right? So the advertorial language is actually valid and based on scientific fact.

Hubby: 

errr….honey, look! A flying elephant!! (and then he runs away with littleM)

In a train from Sfax to Tunis. I was looking at the scenery of olive garden in the window.

Hubby: 

Isn’t it nice, the scenery?

Me: 

Yeah. Those olive farmers are quite amazing. Niat banget gitu nanem pohon zaitunnya miring-miring gitu barisannya.

Hubby: 

(long silence, looking at me with astonishment) sayang, look again more carefully. Those olive trees are actually planted on straight lines to one another, but since you are looking at it side ways, it seems like those olive trees are planted in a diagonal line. (laughing)

Me: 

(looking back to the lines of olive trees) errghh…heheh… (looking at littleM) look, baby, we are in the train!! Chooo-chooo….

Those are actual conversations occuring in our daily life during our short 4 years of marriage. I am lucky to have found such a smart man who is comfortable in his own skin. I love the fact that we can have those silly conversations and laugh while also having a more deep and meaningful conversations as well. And the fun thing about being with him is that we have our own internal jokes that when we see something or hear a key word that relates to the joke, we just look into each other and we will burst in to tears laughing. So thank you, Masnya, for being an awesome partner in crime, in parenting, and in life. May we have more conversations to come, be it silly or smart. Happy anniversary, sayang. Love you!

Niembi Field, 16 February 2015