essentials

I've graduated.



Now, on to the more important things. Bunaken was fabulous! Located just off the coast of Manado, what's important about it is not Bunaken island itself but a cluster of coral reefs nearby which we had to get to from Manado by a splendid white little boat which allowed me to sit at the hull with the wind in my face and the dark blue sea with glittering sparkles of sunlight like playful diamonds and the vivid blue sky with little cottons of cloud and mountain slopes decorating the horizon and later on the coral reefs viewed from the glass-paned boat with the whole city of rainbow coloured fish and lobsters and bright blue starfish which then compelled me to jump off the boat and dip myself into the clear blue sea to swim among the corals and fish. =) Perfect!

Dad just called me an “unemployed intellectual”. Yikes. That’s pressure in a lyrical way. However, approaching the end of my campus days, and hearing lots of stories about working life makes me appreciate the value of unemployment. Most definitely not material values. But Time. Controlling it. Subjecting yourself to leisures or pressures, to a glass of wine or a deadline, because you want to or feel the need to. Not because you have no other option. But that doesn’t make sense doesn’t it, because, theoretically, there’s always an option, innit.
*sigh*. Is there such a thing as “intellectually unemployed”?

And inevitably, football.

At 2 am an unlikely group of people gathered at the La Piazza to join the hundreds who were all watching the World Cup together on the big screen in the middle of the plaza. The surrounding café’s were all working round the clock to cater to this magnitude of an event. The unlikely group, btw, happened to be myself, with my parents. It never occurred to me that they would suddenly feel like watching footie with the masses. At 2-bloody-a.m. Admittedly our cable-TV, with its ESPN and Star Sports and whatnot, amazingly does not transmit the World Cup. Mum had a great time, possessing a moderate enjoyment for football. I, felt weird hanging out with my parents at 2am. Dad was only in it for Mum, and successfully persuaded us to split 15 minutes before the game ended.
Later on in the day Dad went typically contemplative.
He said: “It’s ironic that thousands can be so fanatic about another nation’s football team, that they would all gather in the middle of the night to watch. Everybody, everybody gathering in the big malls built over the empty grassy lands previously used by kids to play football.”
I did not have a response for that. Predictably, we are watching the finals at home tonight. We hijacked our maid’s antenna-TV.