Note from Flores (1)

02-10-16

Dear My Dude,

Ini adalah perjalanan yang disponsori oleh kantor. Aku dipaksa dianjurkan untuk memilih salah satu pulau selain Jawa dan Bali. Flores menjadi pilihan pertama. Dan dikabulkan untuk 9 hari melintasi Flores dimulai dari Kota Bima.  

Sekarang aku sudah sampai di Bima. Sungguh mendebarkan, semendebarkan waktu aku harus bilang “iya” ke kamu malam itu. Ihik. Beda ding. Kali ini semacam senam kardio, buat jantung sehat. 

Satu jam di dalam pesawat, headset kupasang, aku memandang keluar jendela -syukurlah aku bisa duduk di dekat jendela-, sambil menikmati pemandangan pulau-pulau kecil. *Pura-pura jadi model video klip lagu sendu seneng duit*. Dari atas, tanah Sumbawa terlihat gersang dibalut pasir putih di tepiannya. Semakin ke timur, lereng-lereng bukit seperti garis pada tanah. Saat pesawat terbang rendah, terlihat atap rumah penduduk warna-warni berdampingan dengan hamparan sawah. Tiba-tiba pesawat mulai bergoyang, bukan karena dangdut, tapi karena hujan. Aku yang sedari tadi bergumam bernyanyi, tiba-tiba terdiam, tanganku mencengkeram lengan kursi, namun tetap berpura-pura santai. Pesawat mendarat dengan tidak mulus, tapi syukurlah mendarat dengan selamat.

Ingin rasanya aku sujud syukur di bandara, tapi aku malu. 
Jadi aku hanya berfoto di depan papan nama bandara,
Sultan M. Salahuddin Bima

Setibanya di bandara, kami disambut gerimis tipis. Jalan utama dari bandara ke hotel di pusat kota melewati pesisir pantai. Tak banyak yang bisa dilakukan di Bima. Kotanya kecil. Aku menginap di hotel tengah kota, dekat pasar. Tapi tidak seramai pasar Beringharjo. Lebih ramai kicauan burung tetangga sebelah hotel daripada orang-orang. Sore itu, kami berkenalan dengan rombongan tamu dari Belanda yang sampai selesai perjalanan akan bersama-sama. Ugh, so cute la.

Jangan harap akan ada hiburan malam di sini. Hotel saja harus dapat giliran padam listrik. Seperti desaku dulu belum ada listrik lalu heboh saat listrik masuk desa. Jalanan sepi. Di pinggir pantai, ada beberapa warung lesehan berjejer. Tempat duduk ditata untuk dua orang dengan satu meja kecil menghadap ke laut. Remang-remang karena hanya ada lampu jalan yang menerangi. Terlihat beberapa pasang pelanggan dalam kegelapan. Aih... *nyanyi jagalah hati*

(bersambung ke keesokan harinya)

A New Way in Having Fun

Time flies when we're having fun

In February, I left my previous city, Surakarta and moved to another one, Yogyakarta for my new employment. These cities and everything in it; the people, the culture, the atmosphere, and rhythm of life are alike, so I don't need to adapt all the way of living.

Before my best friend/co worker/house mate/partner in crime found a fully furnished house and rent it for us, we lived in a boring boarding house that we had to be back before 9 pm, and that we couldn't stand any longer than a month. Our recent house is in a tight and quiet neighborhood. Yet it is noisy as well (because of us singing and laughing so hard while our door are open).

We were on this one point that we didn't know what to do together to any further extent. We work in the same office, we live in the same house, we have small side business together, we hang out together, we even think about the same thing at the same time and we know it just by a blink of an eye without even saying a word. And thank god, we don't have the same man to date with. Bored. Yes, we were.

Because she's a crazy fan and a member of Couchsurfing, a travellers community around the world, she came up with an idea to open our lovely house for hosting travellers. I couldn't agree more even though I was not a member of it yet. Well, I've knowing it for quite a long. I even met her on one of its meeting in 2011. Still, for several years I've been hanging out with many people from CS, I didn't sign up yet.

We have a living room, an open space kitchen, two rooms and two bathroom which are already more than perfect for two of us. We thought we can spare a room for more person to live with for several days.

We started hosting travellers since the beginning of March, as our house was already clean and neat to live in. Yes. It was horribly dirty, messy and ratty because it was abandoned for a year.

During my (she had it long before me) first experience, I had this expertise on awkwardness. They were strangers and it's a big effort for me to open a conversation since I had to think twice of what to say and how to say. *giggle*. Yet, it also challenged me to speak because my spoken English is barely perfect, kind of broken here and there, and unlike my house mate who was born and raised with it and even British accent so smoothly.

Every time I hosted some travellers, they told me to sign up. It was my house mate who had had enough of the request for me to sign up. Then, in the beginning of June, she made an account for me and filled it a bit. I was officially a member of this huge travellers community. Hehe.

Once, we had an awful couple that made us pause to welcome any traveller at our house. But hey, it made us bored even more. We could opt them out. She always asks me when someone requests a stay.

Some people use CS as a way to get a free accommodation during their travels. Nah, I don't like those detected free-loader. Her neither. There ain't no such thing as free lunch. It's not with the money they to pay, but time to share with us.

I and my house mate usually take them to places we love to hang out to eat, drink or merely spend a pointless sleepless night. It could be having dinner in food stalls, sipping a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, drinking beers in a bar, smoking shisha in a pub, strolling along the city square, getting wild at a karaoke room, cooking one's specialties in our kitchen, or listening to each other's stories while sitting on our couch. We try having super fun everywhere and create great moment of new friendship from being total strangers.

I can take a silver lining from this stuff. It's a medium for me to meet people with different cultures and practice how to hang out with people and build friendship with those strangers. And I am so far so good with it. We write our stories about the people we hosted here as well.

For me, I'm having my time with a hard fun before I meet my future husband. *dance*

P.S. CS has been existing for so long. And I know it's a bit late to join and write about it, but it's better than no have fun at all, no? *sing*