北京，我又来啦！

Okay gotta keep this short but really have lots of things to talk about but but going to climb the Great Wall of China with my new PiB friends tomorrow morning so so so, yeah.

First of all, just to clarify, my stop after San Francisco was Hong Kong, and I spent a good seven days there catching up with my family. (oh, and I met an old friend from BLCU too!) Hong Kong is heaven. Good, good food, cheap, cheap prices. (well, Beijing's prices are definitely lower than HK's but at HK you can eat without worrying about your stomach's wellbeing) I also didn't do anything productive; I talked, ate, shopped, slept, and repeat after me.

I flew to Beijing on June 20th, and was immediately greeted by the Beijing warmth (and kouyuER) as I endured a two hour taxi ride from the airport to Beijing Normal University. Ahh. Beijing never fails to make me happy. I have finally caught up with my old friends (Hello Indira, I'm talking to you!) and made some new friends from the program. I was lucky enough to bump into a bunch of Berkeley kids, who I look forward to spend more time with.

How is the Chinese class, you ask? I guess Princeton in Beijing is called 'Prison in Beijing' for a reason.. I am actually in the middle of a language pledge right now, so in the presence of my fellow PiBers I can only communicate in Chinese. I have just survived the first week, and in a week I had four small quizzes, an exam, an oral presentation, a debate session, and covered around 700 new words in Chinese. Damn, son. Also, within this past seven days I have been to Wudaokou four times. It seems that I don't quite miss Beijing; I miss Wudaokou instead. ;)

And lastly, I did have a good birthday. Although no one from the program knew that my birthday was three days ago, my parents sent me flowers and chocolates, and my old Manggala (Buddhist Youth Group) threw me a surprise party and bought me cake. How ironic, they are telling me how much chubbier I am compared to last year and they still buy me cake? I know I am in good hands. But really though, I am glad to have friends to celebrate my birthday with although I am in a foreign country! I look forward to spending more time with my old and my new friends! And thank you for the birthday wishes!

Ok, gotta go now!

-Truly Indonesia's Finest. 

Enter Summer

Although I had a month between the time exams ended at Amherst College and the start of my summer classes in Beijing; A time which I could've used to fly back home to Indonesia (and Singapore) to catch up with my family and old friends, my dad told me to "experience the summer of the United States" and insisted on me staying here.

So me, being a good son, applied for a job during commencement & reunion, and extended my stay at Amherst for two weeks. Fortunately, my dad is right. It has been an interesting (and refreshing) two weeks for me. Save the tears for my seniors who were graduating, I explored Amherst, ate at almost all restaurants in town, spent a good portion of my time talking to roommate, Jordan Young, about girl problems, and finally deciding not transfer out of Amherst.

So for the most part I worked for facilities, and I was the vacuum guy. I did suck up a bunch of different things, from pennies to bikinis. I met and talked to a bunch of wonderful people whom I would've never met otherwise, from the unicycle-riding Santabeard Tim Gaura who has this passion about spoken words and slam poetry, to the super kind and pretty (but taken!) Rebecca who actually folded my clothes after I left it inside the drying machine for too long. I was also paid to stand up, smile, and look good (guess what job is that), but nothing beats being a wine assistant for the Ouyang family.

Let me put you in context for that. Amherst College has an alcohol policy that forbids guests to serve their own alcohol. Thus, when these people throw parties, they have to hire TIPS-trained waiters to pour them alcohol. The purpose of this rule is to minimize the possibility of the guests abusing alcohol and ending up drunk (yes, we are trained to refrain from serving alcohol if the guest starts to look mildly intoxicated). The tent I was working for was put up by seven or so senior girls (one of them Olivia Ouyang), who invited their families to celebrate their graduation and chipped in to put together a tent and dinner. Interestingly, the party was BYOB, so I had to rely on their integrity to not secretly pour their drinks behind my back.

I always maintain that Americans have interesting traditions, and after an hour into the meals and conversations, one daddy stood up and told the guests that each daddy is going to tell an embarrassing story about his own daughters. Awkward laughter filled up the tent as each parent finished shaming his/her daughter, but one story stuck to me in particular. She was in primary school, and she was to partake in a school play. The parents prepared her costume, but for some reason, misheard that "pants are provided", and clothed their daughter sans a pair of pants, wrapping her torso downward with a cloth. The play begun, and the daughter was dancing in the front row. Inevitably, the cloth gave away, and the whole school gasped as they witnessed the young girl dancing energetically without any pants on. 

Another highlight of the night was watching a dad-daughter tag team playing a game of beer pong. For the unenlightened minds (heh, jk), beer pong is a drinking game where a set of cups filled with beer is placed on two sides of the table, and each player takes turns to throw a ping pong ball to the opposing team's cups. If a player successfully lands the ball into his/her opponent's cup, the opponent must finish whatever drinks in the cup. The game continues until there are no more cups left on one side of the team. I can never imagine my dad teaming up with my sister to play beer pong with other dad-daughter teams, but my sister will only make it to college in two years' time, so I might be wrong. It was about as exciting as seeing 40-year-old Amherst alums dancing to Far East Movement and Black Eyed Peas, and then high-fiving their children on the dance floor when the song ends.

I am also grateful to be able to spend a lot of time with Sarah. Kudos to her amazing ability in picking the sweetest of the corns and boiling them, for introducing the dates + almond butter combination (Heavenly stuff. Dip the former into the latter, and enjoy), and for taking me to the bird sanctuary for the first time. It's been a pleasure talking to you, miss!

I am now safely tucked in a house within the misty hills of San Francisco, together with my cousin who is a pastry chef by trade and a food connoisseur by heart. Life's been chill, food's been rad, and just for this few days, I'm going to take it easy. Here's to a great summer ahead, everyone :)

Truly Indonesia's Finest,