Georgetterox

Don’t ask for more.
As a Javanese proverb says, diwehi ati ngrogoh rempela, means, never ask for rempela if you’re given a liver. But ask for the intestine, too.
The principle that makes me still standing to torture myself on this big river’s shore.

When the electricity begins to often strike, I just laugh.
It’s just once a week or twice, instead of everyday.
My colleague in a local hospital, who’s stayed earlier here before me, instead of curing her desire to cinema, she was planning to put on a tv cable.
But the plan was delayed, coz in Pulang Pisau, the electricity stroke three times a week those days.
Beside, who needs electricity if you used to hook up in the dark?

But when the Water Company strikes the water, I start to get mad.
Yes, we still can live without electricity, but how to live without water?
I don’t care about drink water, my host sells gallon water anyway.
But for bath? Laundry? Should I use gallon water for it? I’ll get bankrupt!

My host says, thanks to the people of Public Work who repaired the bridge in Tingang Menteng.
They must’ve been digging the road so hard and even have dug the water pipe under.
The pipe leaked, and the water inside spread everywhere.
PAM had to stop the streaming. And the whole Pulang Pisau totally lost the water.
Imagine the whole citizens didn’t take a bath at all. Smellie!

My host was furious.
Finally he bought a tank of water from the Company, and he filled out all of the bath-tubs in the house, including mine.
He didn’t have a heart to eat in the same table with his smellie lodgers.
I just smiled like understanding.
It’s been a week I’m resting my white coat coz I’m afraid that the coat gets matt if I wash it.

So there enters the plumbers into my bath room, filling the tubs by the water streamed by the pipe, directly from their tank. The color was.. matt black like the Kahayan river.
They said, the water from PAM wasn’t screened well, so sometimes it’s still sandy.
I clicked impatiently. Sandy .. what da hell kinda sandy? This is muddy!

I was gonna sigh to my office staff, but she sighed earlier.
She said she lived with a family with little kids and the little rascals often waste the water when they’re taking shower.
Ya know, that’s what’ll happen if you never take your kids for leisure in swimming pool or if you forbid them to play in rain.
The only kids who don’t love playing water are just kittens.

My nurse sucks water from the river for her bath. I wonder why she doesn’t get panu.
And in fact, nobody suffers from panu in Pulang Pisau, though the origin inhabitants take bath in the river for hundreds years and generations.
Dermatologist can be bankrupt here, coz the patient is just immigrants who itches of sand allergy. (?!)

I know from the start that I’m suffering much here, but I don’t think I’ll be this misery.
All I ask is just living near cafes so I can eat instant noodle, get a room with a window next to a grass yard, have electricity for charging my GPRS device, and can take a shower twice a day by clean water. Now, tell me now, who asks for more?

Tags: I promise myself I'll never waste anymore water..

After I write this, I’ve just realized how much I love public cars a.k.a angkot.

Now motorbike is my best friend.

There’s no public cars in Pulang Pisau, and coz the regent doesn’t have enough budget to give official cars for the doctors, so I must hire an ojek to take me to the office everyday.

For the fellas in the other part of the world, who doesn’t know what an ojek is, ojek is a kinda motorbike that you can rent for traveling, completed with the motorist.

A kinda taxicab, but the vehicle is a motorbike, instead of car.

My problem begun when I wanna go to a party in an hospital.

Coz I was lazy of riding an ojek to the party, so I rode with a nurse whom also invited to the party.

The venue was just six kilometers far away, but the Trans Kalimantan Road was so silent coz instead of buildings both sides, there’s just a treeless field.

It felt like going to Timbucktoo (have you ever been to Timbucktoo, Vic? Like y’-know-it-all!)

The nurse goes through the road everyday, alone with her motorbike, coz she works in the hospital. I wasn’t concerned to listen to her talking, coz:

1.She sped up, her long shawl waved snapping my face.

I was busy averting the shawl attack, but I must hold her belly to prevent me from falling.

2.The helmet which lent to me had no buckle.

The strained wind made me scared that the helmet was gonna fly.

I was confused which one I should hold on to: The helmet, her shawl, or her belly?

3.In the middle of the road suddenly it rained hard, and we both were wet.

The nurse was more panic and she sped up faster.

I was more confused, along the journey I prayed that the motorbike wouldn’t strike.

I don’t know which one is worse, sped up with motorbike which driven by a shawled woman and wore a buckleless helmet, or being drifted ashore in the middle of Trans Kalimantan Road with a strike motorbike in the hard rain.

At the party, a doctor in the hospital listened to my story full-sympatheticly and offered me to take me home with her car.

The fact was, it wasn’t her car; it was an ambulance that she used as a private car coz it wasn’t often used to transport patients.

The ambulance was an old-fashioned car, pushing the brake feels like driving a bus, long and strong.

There was no official driver for ambulance, the doctor drives it everywhere on her own.

Sometimes Pulang Pisau become a dead city in the weekend, so she looks for fun by trip to Banjarmasin. She’s already taken the ambulance in and out the mall at Bogor, many times.

Before she took me home, the ambulance stopped in a nurse’s house to take her home.

The nurse was panic, coz the side door and the back door couldn’t be opened!

The door was still jammed, though we hitted it, chanted for it, and we even embraced it.

C’mon, the Ambulance Door Honey, don’t be jammed right here!

Finally we gave up, and I helped the nurse got out of the antique ambulance by the window!

And the nurse’s husband in the house came out, wondered why his wife got out of the ambulance with a thief-style. He was vexed with the door, then he pulled the handle.

The door suddenly opened, very widely!

And my dream to ride a speed boat has come true.

I had to go to Kelanis which was very remote, and reaching it only by the speed boat which sailing the Kapuas river which collateral with the Barito river for three hours.

Instead of vomit, I was busy to shoot the life along the river.

I found out that the views of people bathing in the river was common, and there were people who really lived on boats; eating, drying clothes in the sun, and having sex.

My office staff drove the speed boat.

He was gliding to the upper course like driving a car, just without stepping any pedals.

And there was no brake to moved, there was just a button to manage the gas.

All you need to do is just avoiding water hyacinth

Obstructing much the machine!

or the pieces of ship woods which sowed on the river to prevent it from obstructing the motor machine.

He offered me to try driving the speed boat.

I refused, I wasn’t crazy enough to change the sailing session becoming the scene of Baywatch.

Or even imitating the Miami Vice. Oops.. sorry, I mean Kapuas Vice. Or Barito Vice. Whatever!

I often grumble how sucks the angkots that I often rode in Bandung.

I’ve just realized how pretty this life would be if there were a lotta public cars in Kalimantan, so I didn’t to defy the river stream by speed boat, no need to ride a motorcycle just for going to the office, or must ride an ambulance only for taking me home from a party.

We never realize how precious that we have, until we lose it.

I must ride a speed boat again. And that moment, I wanna drive it on my own.

Tags: Never ride with a shawled woman in motorbike!, The moral lesson of this article:

Actually, I left to Kalimantan with tens of greetings such as,

“Bubbye, Vic, please take care inside the hinterland right there”;

“Kalimantan? Can you swim?”;

or the worse, “Ky, what da hell, why must you go to the forest?

Are you gonna hook up with orang utan?!”

But after I came here, I just realized that:

·   Pulangpisau ain’t an hinterland coz it’s located exact by the Trans Kalimantan Road which has been paved very smoothly,

And you said I walked across the forest?

·   The paved road deleted my chance to try my crazy idea to cross the river by klotok, even by swimming,

·   And instead of tropical rainforest, this place is full of barren farms, the habitants are mean for planting any trees; and though I’ve spent the recent days to ride infiltrating the small forests by car, I haven’t seen any orang utan at all.

It’s abundant if I expect to meet a mall right here, according my yearly reputation as a mallrat, but when I find out that there’s even no minimarket here, I start to ask how can I live if I run of cosmetics and carbolic for flushing the septitank?

I’ll still survive that there’s a lotta citizens here open many haberdashery shops and sell refill mineral water, and there’s a delivery loper who can drop a Cosmopolitan if I’d like to order him first.

My worry is proven, there’s no internet café right here!

Nobody’s on-line here, except the governmental employees which still use Speedy in their office just for checking the issue of salary increasing.

I must manage cleverly for entertainment, instead of swimming on the Kahayan River.

I'm not crazy enough to swim across it.

Madame Minister of Health: “Doctor, why do you swim the river?

The minister of transportation has been kind enough to open the bridges.

Thank you, Minister, to let the truck pass by!

You can cross the river by the car, instead of swimming!”

Dr Vicky: “I swim coz there’s no other entertainment right here, Ma’am..”

Kalimantan is full of rivers, and the relief that I’ve been assuming as river ain’t a river, the local citizen calls it anjir.

This is just an anjir, not yet a river.

If you find a 20-30 meters-wide water stream, then it ain’t river, it’s just an anjir, which you can fring by a jukung boat.

But you can call it a river if it’s so wide and you must use a 10 kms/hour-velocity boat to cross it, and by the boat you must wait at least 45 minutes just to arrive at the land across.

Use this for across the river.

The house where I was born has been renovated, and the inhabitant has made up my placenta tomb becoming a garage.

This is where my dad buried my placenta.

The midwife who born me still remembers my name, and she holds me like she’s just picked me down yesterday.

The local senior nurse offered me a little room by the river, and I could throw my lure to catch a fish directly from my terrace if I loved to.

I called it a Riverview Room.

By the view, the house could be an expensive inn if only the owner would put an huge investment.

But the thing I like the most here is, the expectation that everybody seems loving me.

This is where I belong.

Tags: This is the first blog I write as I return to Pulangpis