When Life Treats Me Too Fairly

The expression of today: "What the hell!". That's exactly what I felt like when I heard the news. The camp that I had been waiting for got cancelled due to several organization issues. I heard this news just several hours after I received the email from the US General Consulate informing that my request for an early visa interview was denied. So, no visa, which means, I can't purchase any flight ticket until mid-July when price gets so much crazier. Then, the plan to go to the camp and the visa interview forced me to postpone the family trip to my most favorite city in Vietnam. Haha, it just seems like, the weekend that I expected to have so much fun just turned me down like a sinister betrayal of hope.

It's even funnier when I look back at what happened yesterday: I had such a fun day with my best friend watching sun rise at the beach in the early dawn and watching movie together in the afternoon; two close friends since middle school secretly gave me a surprise after we hadn't met for a year; I was able to download the two albums of Kings of Convenience, whose music drove me extremely happy; etc.

What is it that makes today so different from yesterday? Why can't today, a new day of life, be just as nice as yesterday? Why does it have to be that when I have already overjoyed myself in one day, I have to face disastrous events on the day after? I keep wondering. I am more than certain that, if my life would have been just a plain straight line (which I would not exactly want it to happen) in which either good things happen all the time or bad things occur everyday, I wouldn't have felt so bitter today. It's when these comparisons and contrasts between the days in my life are made that the situations start to get even worse, I believe so.

Well, I guess life treats me too fairly. Maybe I should just learn one fact of life, that if I'm happy in one day, I should be made to be sad another day. The only solution now is to listen to Kings of Convenience, calm myself down and try to make sense to myself that, today is so bad because life wants to give me a better day tomorrow.

The miracle of hope.

Just suddenly found this funny picture taken several years ago - when life still hasn't become so complicated.

A day to remember

It's 3 AM at home. I'm finally back from the 2-day trip to Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC), including 16 hours of traveling back and forth the distance of 400km. Maithreyi thought that it was crazy to travel such a long distance and tried to cancel the trip for many times so that it would be better for me, but I knew from the very beginning that it would be worth it to meet up this time. And after all the planning, we finally met in HCMC. Here we are:

It's us, meeting up after a year!

We didn't seem to change that much compared to when we first met at UWC Adriatic, except for the fact that I looked a bit older because I forgot to shave for a week :P. Anyways, it was exciting when we finally met again, one year after the memorable event Water Cycle and Climate Change Summer School in Duino, Italy. I remember the last night at Duino, we decided to stay awake together just lying on the grass and gazing stars, waiting to watch sunrise at the Adriatic sea. That time when the sun eventually rised, signaling that our farewell was coming soon, we never thought that we would meet again. Yet, a year later, we met, which couldn't have happened if her dad hadn't changed his work place to Vietnam. I am now convinced that things do happen, when we never expect them to.

We didn't change, and neither did our friendship.

We spent the day going around Ho Chi Minh city, actually we only walked in the downtown and visited some tourist sights (Duc Ba Church), since we didn't really have time and we spent most of the time talking to each other. I guess there are way too many things to talk about, those that were saved up throughout the whole year not seeing each other, from college application stories to how life is after UWC, from something really random such as how to cross a street in Vietnam and India to something really emotional.

Us, in front of Duc Ba Church.

The best thing of this meeting was that I could tell her all my thoughts about UWC, express to her all my love to UWC and how much I miss UWC. It was nice to meet a UWCer again after leaving UWC, since it's only that UWCer that may be able to understand my UWC nostalgia. At home, people may care about me being sad and I may have told them that it was because I missed UWC so much, but it's the first time after coming back home that someone sympathizes with my UWC nostalgia. She said that we only said goodbye to be able to see each other again. I do believe her, because meeting her in Vietnam is the biggest proof that I will see my friends again someday, in a really unexpected scenario.

Us, and the dragonfly souvenirs in Vietnam

We spent two hours in a very nice and quiet coffee store near the Turtle Lake. We chose it because from there, you could get the whole view of the busy streets in Ho Chi Minh city. What was nice about sitting in a coffee store in the afternoon is that the store appeared to be a capsule in this life where time is slowed down inside. It was nice to experience how people just sat down and took it so slowly while outside everybody was rushing to their destinations in their busy lives.

This is not the coffee store that I'm talking about, but anyways, we keep going from one store to another.

After having 6 hours of hanging out together since 12.30 AM, we returned to her department, where she demanded to write a secret message on my laptop and I can only open it after I get on the bus to home. What a meanie, telling people to read message in the most emotional moment of farewell! Anyways, the message was really nice, and I couldn't stop smiling when I read what she wrote. Somehow I felt like she could understand me so much just after 3 hours of conversation, and that's much better than the fact that some friends never got to understand me even though we may spend hours together.

Trying out the traditional Vietnamese hat

Okay, I have to talk about the message that she wrote for me. I opened the message at 2AM when I was on the bus home. The last sentence she wrote in the message was that "Stay the awesome Vuvu you are". Somehow, the message she wrote to me openned my eyes and made me realize that, for some reasons, I have quite forgotten myself. "You are living for yourself. Your dreams, your goals, your aspirations". Yes, after reading that, I wondered "since when did I forget to pursue my dreams, and goals, and aspirations?". Yes, she made me realize I'm fading myself away, and it's time to take "the awesome me" back.

Maithreyi posing in front of the church

Thank you Maithreyi for a great day. Thank you for being a great friend. Thank you for so many good advice.  It's so nice and crucial that we met. Thank you for steering my life now into a different direction.

We are friends, forever.

Right before we left it there...

"Region, region" - the girl screamed out loud in the midst of a busy airport, with tears bursting out from her already-watery eyes.


I turned around, my nerves subconsciously forced my heart to beat with an incredible speed, as I was hoping that I hadn't just imagined the voice calling me out of nostalgia. 


Then I saw her, my little Indonesian princess.

Hehe, maybe it's time to stop being so dramatic. Actually I was just looking at the pictures I took since Graduation, and I suddenly found the picture of only me and Titan at the Los Angeles airport. I just realized that Titan was actually the last UWC person that I saw before I got home, ending my two-year journey at the most wonderful place on Earth.

Eating ice-creams in the airport

That day, we said good-bye before we flew out of New Mexico. The situation that day was rather ironic, we both were heading towards Los Angeles Airport, yet we had to take two different flights with only... 10 minutes difference. At the time, I really wondered why life had to create those unnecessary separations, since being together for another 2 hours on the plane should have been so valuable to us, the people who would enjoy the last UWC moment to every split of a second. Later on, when we finally met again in the Los Angeles airport, experiencing how happy we were made me realize why that separation existed in the first place. It was said in a movie:

"The longer you wait, the happier you will be when you meet again"

And this was absolutely true. Now, I'm rather thankful for that ironic situation, and it convinced me that everything in this life does exist for a reason.

I scream "Ice-cream".

We sat ourselves down in a tiny restaurant in Los Angeles airport. Even though the sign said so, it was not exactly a restaurant. There wasn't any food really, and that's why we had ice-cream instead (and even ice-cream was expensive). After ordering our ice-creams, we had another hour before we departed for our homes. 

"I didn't win the contest Vuvu, the blogging contest"

"Well, you won it once, what else do you want?"

"But I didn't win it this time Vuvu."

"Winning once is at least better than not ever winning at all."

That was the kind of conversation we had for the last hour. All random stuffs, no more tears, no more UWC, no more emotional talk about whether we will be able to keep in touch in future. I guess since that moment, we already tried to move forward and learn to adapt to what would happen when we no longer stayed together. I bet it made me feel much better than how I would have felt if we had talked about anything else. 

Titan writing in my "yearbook" pages

Nice handwriting :P (Almost as good as mine xD)

We left soon after for our flights which were again, only 30 minutes apart even though we both were heading for Asia. What was worse, our gates were right next to each other, and that fact just irritated me so much. Sometimes we crazily thought of exchanging one of our tickets to another passenger for us to be on the same flight. We thought so before we realized it was just as crazy as our attempt to stay together any longer. The time eventually came, and we finally said goodbye. I was confused, so confused at that time. Yet I know one thing: the farewell was short. 

It was only 5 minutes, 3 hugs, 10 good-byes and one huge desire to meet again.

Region, I wrote this because I suddenly missed you :(


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A boring summer day

Vietnam, June 6th 2011