Sunday, September 21, 2008

Charming Lake Toba

7 days before this post…

Lake Toba, here we come!

7 days after the day I’m back…

I love the lake.

I love the sight of an expanse of water, yet I fear it. The mysterious nature of the sea, even this lake, makes me shudder, yet peaceful at the same time. I know, I must be a two-headed strange creature. No, if you are guessing, I’m not a Gemini. But when it comes to my love-fear relationship with the sea, I guess I’m pretty close to being one.

I dreamt of Lake Toba last night. There was a huge storm approaching, and I could see several tornado-like strips of water coming towards the shore, where a few people and I were at, at a furious speed. As they came closer, suddenly an extremely huge and tall tsunami was caused. The waves crashed against the shore. I was screaming.

Dreams are usually the opposites of reality, as what many people have told me. So, that Lake Toba in my dream was truly a far cry from the real one. In the day, the lake was very still – my definition of a lake. As evening approaches, the waters start to get choppy as the wind gets stronger. When it rains, the waves are much bigger and stronger too. This, is Stuart’s definition of a lake.

“Lakes have to be still, that’s why they’re call lakes,” I told Stuart. “If the water is so choppy, it should be the sea, and not a lake.”

My idea of a lake is still, tranquil and just quiet. One can sit in a rowing boat, paddle out there and possibly read a book. That would be the ideal way to enjoy a lake. 

Obviously, the others have a starkly different opinion. They dive into the lake and swim. Some even brought their own snorkelling gear and began their lake odyssey. And some locals clearly take the lake as a ready bath. This is how they enjoy the lake.

We see locals cruising by in a sampan at different times of the day. They are fishermen. And they usually work alone. Do you know that the lake boasts of many breeds of fish, and red snapper is one of them? Yes! That’s what the local told us. So, the red snapper we find on the menu is 100% authentic Lake Toba Snapper! Cool, right? 

Stuart and I stayed at one of the accommodation places on Samosir Island, an island the size of Singapore right smack at the middle of the lake. I was amazed at the number of people coming and going. Lake Toba, to my knowledge, wasn’t as strongly marketed as other resorts, especially those in Bali. Yet, there is no lack of tourists visiting this picturesque place, with the majority of them coming from Europe.

The living condition was pretty good if we don’t compare it to a hotel. Why did I mention a hotel? Because the idiotic me, had thought that it would resemble one.

“You come to this place as if you’re coming to a 5-star hotel,” Stuart teased me sarcastically. You see, I didn’t pack in my toiletries, and bath towel. We had to resort to buying toothbrush, toothpaste and shampoo from them.

But the village life there made the whole atmosphere so nostalgic for me! So I am not complaining about the lack of amenities, since a village life is supposed to be like this, right? Actually, to confess here, it’s just the absence of spa that I miss, really. They do have a ping pong table, a pool table and a number of movie titles that you can choose to play at your own time. But, I hesitate to comment about the condition of these playthings.

I am not lying when I say the place makes me nostalgic. Watching the local kids playing outside, the chickens roaming around and the houses makes me recall some of the days I spent in Malaysia when I was a child. My mother would bring my sister and I to visit her parents who were staying at Muar during Chinese New Year. And that feeling was exactly the same I got when I was at Lake Toba. Nice.

Food there is like in Singapore. I mean the price. Fortunately for us, the bar and restaurant (one place) serves very great local Indonesian food. It’s really good, and I ate that for every meal I was there. To give you an idea, a glass of red wine costs 50,000rps, which is about S$8.30, while a plate of mee goring costs approximately S$3.30.

The weather was generally cloudy with bouts of rain on some days. Hence, we missed a possibly great chance to soak under a blanket of stars at night. Since there was nothing much to do there, we did nothing. Sleeping, strolling, reading, writing – four main activities we engaged in. How can we not be relaxed with such an itinerary?

But, we weren’t complaining, because that was exactly what we went for, and why we chose Lake Toba. Right now as I’m writing this, I realised that I am missing the quietness and beauty of the lake sorely. 

I’m sure there must be quite a number of repeat visitors, as much as I’m sure anyone who has been there will surely be bowled over the lake’s bountiful charm and charisma.

If there was one thing that would seriously defer me from visiting this charming lake, it’s got to be the traffic. That journey from and to the airport can be such a killjoy, seriously.

More photos can be found on my blog Kloudiia’s blog. If you’re keen, please pop by and have a look! 

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

From Lantern To Mooncake Festival

It was the 15th of the Lunar month of August - a special festival that would light our nights with lots of happy feelings. Some (or is it only me?) call it the Lantern Festival, while others call it the Mooncake Festival. Or, the most formal name would probably be the Mid-Autumn Festival.

True to what Shakespeare said in “Romeo and Juliet” - “A rose by any other name can smell as sweet” - regardless of what this festival’s name goes by, my feelings for it remains.

However, and with much regret, the feelings associated with this occasion is more nostalgic than ever, as I celebrate it year after year. Nothing seems to bring more excitement to me than when I was a young kid having fun on this day.

I must have been around 10 years old then. I remembered we stayed in a shop house along Upper Bt. Timah Road, and we had a long stretch of a sandy road that ran across all the shop houses along the street behind where we lived. On the 15th day, when the sparkling white moon would be shining ever brightly in the sky, I, together with my neighbourhood friends would be out on that road rejoicing in the celebrations.

The adults would take the mooncakes out and sit on makeshift chairs. The young ones would busy themselves with lighting up their lanterns and running around. No, we didn’t do much running then for fear of the fire being gushed out from the breeze created. Hence, much to the adults’ satisfaction, we actually strolled.

At that time, the lanterns didn’t have “La Bamba” songs, or those battery-operated lights that replaced the traditional candles. Until one year when one kid actually carried that, and all of us crowded around her to check out this new toy. But, because there wasn’t any fire, our enthusiasm fizzled out as fast as it came.

Not everyone had enough money to buy a lantern, and those who didn’t have one didn’t find that a reason to be despondent. You know, kids growing up in a less technology-consumed era tend to be more innovative when it comes to self-entertainment. We found some bamboo sticks and lighted candles on it and carried them as if they were lanterns. In fact, this became even more popular than the real lanterns, and even those who had a lantern also came and join in the fun. That also meant that we strolled even slower as now the flames had got no shade over it.

Parents would sit there, eating the mooncakes while drinking tea and chat. When the weather turned more humid, they would whip out their paper fans and offer themselves some cool air. Occasionally, they would shout to the kids to be careful as we were, literally, playing with fire. Now you know why I have special fond feelings towards this festival? Besides that day, when would we ever have the chance to play with fire?

Because there wasn’t any lampposts along that road, therefore our lanterns and candles turned what used to be a dark, scary night (really, I used to be so scared of that road because it was almost completely dark, save for some weak light that streamed out from some houses) into a sea of glowing radiance. The colourful lights not only made the street look warmer, it also injected a gush of life into it.

Everyone was all smiles and laughter. Everyone, from the young to the old, was enjoying themselves. We could see it all in their faces. And now as I’m writing, I thought I can vaguely hear them all.

When it was time to go back, the kids, me included, very reluctantly blow off the candles, packed all our stuff and went home. But you could easily hear the excited chatter continuing as each family retreated back to their homes.

As the society modernises, and all of us had to relocate from that place to make way for new buildings, that kind of celebration among a community seems to be uprooted at the same time. Though we can still find large scale lantern and mooncake parties going on in housing estates and other public venues like the Mandarin Garden, they are and will never be the same as those good ole’ days.

And I have also slowly faded out from these celebrations. I still get thrilled when I knew the moon is coming out soon in full bloom in this particular month, but it would be for other reasons, and that level of anticipation is a far cry from what I used to have when I was staying in the shop house.

Now, I’m referring it more to the Mooncake Festival. I believe it’s easy to guess why.

And by the way, this year, I celebrated with some church friends over the most unlikely places of all – singing karaoke. But, we had our mooncakes, thanks to my sister who brought it along! 

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Learning Again and Again

Let me think? When did I learn typing? Hmm… I remembered that my secondary school friends signed up for the course at Bukit Timah. At that time, PC had been invented, but a typing course had to be done on the real typewriter, not the soft and easy-to-type-on keyboard.

Yes, the type that needed huge muscle mass to carry around because they weren’t meant to be portable. If I recalled rightly, at that time electronic ones were already available, but it came at a pretty high cost.

Typing on such a typewriter was like learning how to play the piano – placement of our fingers was of importance. We had to use the tip of our fingers, angled at 90 degrees with the palm, and press the keys down. The larger surface area of our fingers that came into contact with the keys, the slower the speed and the more mistakes will be made.

Mind you, there was no backspace key to delete any errors. The alphabets came out as you typed. With the exception of the electronic ones where we could pre-check up to a sentence before we hit the “Enter” key.

In a bid to save money, I cajoled my friends to let me have the textbook. I photocopied it, and had my own book!

Excitedly, I ran home to start learning. But, I had a problem. There was no typewriter! I pouted, and sat there looking for a solution. When there is a will, there is a way.

I laid out my “virtual typewriter” and frantically practiced my typing on the table. Though the keys were imaginary, but my effort in learning was as real as it got.

“asdf jkl asdf jkl asdf jkl … … …”

This was the first set of fingering I learnt. Hmm… it looked rather easy, I thought. Well, most things seemed easy to pick up at that age. I was probably about 14 years old then.

“asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; … … … ”

Still easy. Very soon, I zoomed past a few more pages and was happily “typing” away at the speed of light. I decided to call my friend and checked on their status. Well, apparently they were behind me. I was progressing ahead of their class!

Of course, I had to. It was the school holidays and I had practically nothing to do except learning and practising how to type all day. Yes, I can be super addicted when I’m focused on learning one thing.

I had a fairly easy time mastering the skill. Easy, until the real thing came.

My mum’s friend, upon knowing of my new hobby, volunteered to give me her spare typewriter, which was sitting at her home and collecting dust. She had a new electronic one, and was happy to dispose off the older one. And for a good cause.

I was so excited and agreed immediately to house that newly-orphaned typewriter. Boy! Was it heavy! Lugging it home was just the appetiser, as I soon was to find out.

When I laid it out on the table, all ready to punch furiously away at the keys to test my newly-acquired typing skills, I was in for a shock.

Why weren’t there any letters? I checked the ink ribbon and got my fingers all black. Good, there was ink.

Then I typed again, this time I hit it real hard. Dang! Yes, the letters came out! Whoa! I was very hyped up, and resumed typing the passages given for practise.

It took me sooo long to finish a paragraph. By the time I finished, my pinkies were almost gone. In the end, I had to use my third finger to replace my pinkie, which was awkward but doable. Plus, there was always the risk of pushing my entire finger in the spaces between the keys. Ouch! It was painful!

Check these out:

This ...

versus this…

Then I understood why my friends were so slow in the learning process. Because typing on that ancient thing was no easy task at all! My virtual typewriter was just that, virtual!

Though hard, I wasn’t the least bit deterred. I practised non-stop, and eventually built up some strength in my fingers and my pinkies. When my fingering was more or less stable, I stepped up on my speed.

Moving on to now, I no longer had to exercise so much strength to finish typing an article. My speed shot up, and my familiarity with the keyboard went up too. But, instead of being a better typist, to my horror I realised that I had deteriorated. My fingers had, somehow along the way got conditioned to a certain sequence.

For example, I had the tendency to hit the “e” and “a” keys rather unnecessarily. I’m sure it was because they came in almost every other letter. No wonder they are known as vowels. And there were other mistakes that were very commonly made all the time, like “the”, “other” and any words that contain double “r”, “s” or “t”.

At first it was bearable, but now I have to admit, rather embarrassingly, that the rate at which I am making typo errors is causing me quite a headache. It not only slows down my speed, it is creating havoc on my efficiency! I had to delete the words that I typed wrong again, and again, and again. It could get to the ultimate rate of 1/3 of a sentence.

Believe it or not, “to” has been almost, always typed as “ot”. How bad can this go further? I got frustrated.

What can I do about it? The only option I guess is – to relearn the whole skill again.

Yes. I’ve finally come to the point of this post. We always thought that after we picked up a skill, and when we keep using it over and over again, the only way to see it is it becomes better and better.

During this process, we unconsciously got conditioned by several factors. Some can be good, while some aren’t really necessary for our growth. Therefore, if we don’t keep ourselves on our toes, there is a high tendency that we will just stray from our paths and go haywire.

We can see this in how people run their businesses, especially from start-ups to the stage when they are growing and expanding. We can see this in relationship as well. How people can grow so accustomed to one way of communicating that they are immune to the fact that their partners have outgrown that particular stage they used to be in.

On a bright side, this isn’t a big problem. It’s not as if we lack the skills to begin with. We have them, but what we need to do is constantly monitor it, see how it fits into our present circumstances, notice the mistakes that we are making, and we continue practising. If it has come to the stage where the need for re-learning from the beginning is warranted, then do not deny it. Acknowledge that it has happened, and just do it.

As for me, I’ve identified some online sites that teach typing. How nice to be able to learn using a notebook now. And the course is free! That means, I no longer have to snoop around with a “borrowed” textbook! What a lucky thing there was nothing called copyright then.

Ok, have fun with the learning, and re-learning, and re-learning. I’m off to my typing course! Last check, my speed was 98wpm (words per minute). Not bad really. I just need to clean up the accuracy, which as it stands now, erh… I’d rather not mention it.