Between

the fridge and the cupboard, you will find something that you might like. I left it there this morning. Promise me you'll feed it.

Who woke up this morning thinking it's Wednesday?

I did. Now I have to go to a two-day workshop in Bogor without fresh clothes and toiletries.

I blame the Idul Kurban holiday on Monday for this lapse.

I Dream of Roasted Eel

What’s a good meal to you? Have you ever had a particularly delicious dish in an environment that is just right? A thick burger with melted cheese in a busy fast-food joint perhaps? Or a jazzy restaurant’s delicately intricate dish so pretty that you feel content just by staring at it? Or a perfectly fried mendoan at a shabby warung that you stumbled upon when you tried to locate where Kebasen is?

You may remember a lot of good meals that you’ve had. You see, the memory of a good meal tends to stay with you. It is etched at the back of your mind and springs forward when you see or hear the phrase ‘good food’, or when you’re hungry.

I love eating. I particularly adore gudeg and soto Sokaraja and have had countless portion of them. Yet, my recollection of a good meal has nothing to do with Yu Ginuk’s exceptional gudeg or Pak Amin’s thick broth and liberal topping of tripe chunks. It wasn’t even my meal. Instead, it involves two eel hunters and a graveyard.

I was about 10 then. My cousin and I were returning from a fishing expedition. We were walking across the graveyard near my uncle’s house when I saw them under a tall salam tree. Two tukang urek-urek taking a break after spending a good part of the morning fishing for eels in the vast rice fields to the east. They had built a small fire on a cemented floor between two gravestones, across which chunks of eel meat clamped between two bamboo sticks were being roasted.

They must have had a good day. The eels they selected for their lunch was quite large and they’re not exactly frugal with the cut. The meat looked reddish-brown and oily, the edges were charred from roasting. An empty sachet of kecap manis ABC suggested that they had added sweet soy sauce for taste. I could see the juice dripping down as the sweet scent of roasted eel rose to the air.

One of them produced a packet of cooked rice, while the other got up to get banana leaves which would serve as their plate. They knew my cousin and invited us over. My stupid, stupid cousin politely declined. I couldn’t remember why.

As we walked home, I couldn’t get the picture off my mind. It would have been a perfect lunch. Rice on banana leaves with slightly charred chunks of roasted eel. The meat would have been sweet, succulent and juicy. Not to mention that they are enjoyed outdoors, accompanied by light breeze bringing the scent of rice stalks. Really, I couldn’t get it off my mind. Even now.

Halfway Through

So we’re twelve days into Ramadhan. Well, actually, it depends on your denomination as well. If you’re a disciple of Naqsabandiyah—I hope I wrote that correctly, then you’re fourteen days into the holy month.

The thing is, the Ramadhan has always been an enigmatic time for me. For someone whose attitude towards food is somewhere between gluttony and anarchy, the idea of refraining from food is not very appealing, to say the least. It affects with my mood, my productivity—or lack thereof, and my ability to hold a decent conversation without falling asleep.

Like the other day, for example. I was sent to this five-hour long meeting, from 1 to 6, at a nearby hotel conference room. Yes that’s right. That’s a five hour battle to ward off severe drowsiness and boredom. The warm ambiance, cool airconditioned room, fluffy desks, and the monotonous voice of a man droning on and on about the importance of getting the program name right when they are to be included in medium-term development plan. Things like that are bad enough on a regular day. On a Ramadhan day, it’s a downright torture. The grave misery I had to experience that day is second only to the time when, stuck at an angkot, I was forced to listen to Syaiful Jamil sing.

But then again, there is the break-fasting (or fast-breaking?). Either way, it’s a truly joyous time. It’s the time when the heavily quoted sentenece ‘you never knew what you’ve got till it’s gone’ actually means something. It’s time for the bottled-out rage to be unleashed at the unsuspecting dinner-table. Feast, feast my dears. Let you be hungry or thirsty no more! Don’t sip, gulp! Attack with vengeance!

Yet, fast-breaking wouldn’t be fun if you don’t fast. Even if you only cheated with a quick gulp of water at noon. Come fast-breaking time, you may still be hungry and thirsty, but you don’t have it anymore. The mucho gusto has flown off the patio.

So yeah, it’s kinda paradoxical, isn’t it? But it never is a bad thing. May you make it till sundown. Cheers..

The Big Three-O

Oh wait, that was last year. I'm thirty-one now. Man, how time whizzes pass like a chipmunk on Redbull..

Aura Kasih

It's not that she can't sing. Everybody can sing. Whether they can sing WELL, is quite a different matter. But with legs like that, she's so forgiven.


And, oh, the pole is there for a reason, dear..

The Loss

Usually she greets me by jumping up and down, announcing to her mother that I’m home. I’m not gonna lie to you. It does make me feel like a rock-star when she does that. Last night, however, she just stood there tearfully crying. The way she cried, you’d think there has been a tragedy of biblical proportion. Tears were streaming down and the corners of her mouth curved downward. Steady rendition of mid-range weeping accentuated with occasional burst of high-pitched wailing.

When I asked her what happened, between her sobs she mentioned something about her ‘ngeng-ngeng’. That’s her best linguistic effort to describe her toy car. A plastic fire-truck big enough for her to ride around, Flintstone-style, and wreak havoc around the house. On fine afternoons, she would drag the contraption to the pavement in front of our house, since we don’t have any yard to speak of, to play with her wee friends. The toy car became something of a social tool because it enables her to mingle with other kids. Sometimes they traded rides too. She gets to try the fancy tricycle or whatever it is the other kids happen to bring along.

The missus explained that the ‘ngeng-ngeng’ went missing. She forgot to bring it in that afternoon. Somebody must have took it. So, yes, to her it’s a big, big loss. While not exactly a tragedy of biblical proportion, it wasn’t that far off.

At this point, I figured that the best course of action is to cheer her up. After meal, we told her that we were going to lapangan Mekarsari to check out the pasar malam, funfair. The change of emotion was stunning. She barely sat on the motorcycle when she started singing. Belting out ‘Hujan’ and ‘Balonku’ alternately at the top of her lungs. Moving her head sideways and raised her hands at the ‘dor!’. It’s like the whole ngeng-ngeng gone missing episode never happened.

At the funfair, I don’t think that she remembered owning a ngeng-ngeng in the first place. She asked me to buy her a pair of toy sunglasses and, of course, a big red balloon. Despite the fact that she already had seven sunglasses and the balloon wouldn’t last five minutes, in the light of what just happened, I couldn’t say no to both. I think most fathers in the world wouldn’t say no either. All in all, she was back to her old cheerful chatterbox self. And I feel rather good about my self for handling this quite well.

As we put her to bed, I commented to the missus that I wished all pain related to losing something we hold dear can be erased by pink sunglasses and big red balloons. As if on cue, my daughter began mumbling sadly about her missing toy car. “Nope.” the missus whispered,” the only cure is a NEW ngeng-ngeng”