Some Sameness

Here’s something crazy: this week last year I spent something like 48 hours straight in a series of airports and airplanes. I flew from Logan Boston to Doha on a Saturday, missed my connecting flight to Jakarta so I spent like an extra 8 hours inside the airport, arriving to Jakarta far too late to join a meeting in Sudirman before flying to Yogyakarta in the evening which made it nonsensical for me to brave the traffic out of Cengkareng just to head back in an hour—and so it was Monday 11 pm when I finally, properly, arrived someplace. I can hardly imagine traveling like this again in the past half-year. 

The world was so different a year ago, and in the year that followed this almost didn’t feel like a year at all because all I see is the sameness of the inside of my apartment.

I see and read and write and watch different things on my laptop screen, phones, iPad, and monitor screens, but they are all confined in the house. I have been seeing very few people in person—but this is not news. 

I turned thirty three and I thought this is really neat—it’s a palindrome. The last time I had a palindrome age I was twenty two and really not enjoying myself. It was my first winter in Japan and everything was cold and bleak and the future looked grim. Now I have a cat. 

Not like he snuggles up to me, though. He does that to Freida—with me he more often gives me a wary look. In the rare time that he does though, it’s pretty neat. Pengingat supaya saya mengerahkan daya agar kehidupan saya tidak seluruhnya terhisap kerja.

Selamat tahun baru.