discovering gifts

20 juli 2009

Kondominium Golf Karawaci, #6F

[9:48 pm - elektrik mati, or electricity off] Three air conditioner units, a washing machine, and one eventful switch of a light later (the last done by none other than yours truly), I am sitting in the hot, still darkness of our apartment – with the exception of the light coming from my computer. As early as it is in the year, I feel like I am already discovering new gifts I never realized that I had: bug killing (going on my resume as “freelance insect exterminator”) and the uncanny knack for causing blown fuses. Tonight is case number two for the latter, and I can feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead as I type.

I’ll share about the first newfound gift, since the process surrounding the discovery is actually quite amusing. On our first night in Lippo Karawaci [July 11], while exploring our tiny yet cozy and adorable kitchen (white cabinets, with red knobs and red countertops – we also have a white heart-shaped dish rack, which for me, was the icing on the cake), we discovered some creepy crawling neighbors – cockroaches!

[10:09 pm – the electricity is back on!] Rachel met our tiny neighboring tenants first actually, and I knew it from her screams. Two weeks, and I’ve already forgotten which roommate ran into the kitchen after her but whichever girl it was, the two chorused in a shrieking extravaganza. I knew that I could either join in the screaming, or we could do something to keep the cockroaches away. I grabbed a large can of bug spray and started spraying the floor and the counters. Once they reached the newly sprayed surfaces, the cockroaches started flipping over, legs flailing, and then were still. It seemed that our problem was solved – but it seemed that every time I entered the kitchen, there was a new cockroach. Total casualties to the cockroach population, before John Eom helped me to find the drain hole from where they were entering the apartment: 8.

If I took any sort of pride in the “courage” displayed from killing those bugs, I had a good slice of humble pie for breakfast the next morning when I realized that I have been developing another gift over the past year, which I happened to bring with me to Karawaci: blowing fuses. (And if Nancy Choi is reading this, she is probably laughing because she knows that it’s true…).

Before showering on Sunday morning, I spied a plug on the bathroom wall that looked like it would be the water heater for my bathroom. Without thinking about the further implications of having at least two air conditioning units running, along with the water heater in the other bathroom, I inserted the plug into the socket. Almost instantaneously, I was standing in darkness. If I remember correctly, poor Irene was in the shower at the time, and I’m sure she was surprised not only by the change in water temperature but also by the lights going out! With five women living in one apartment in Jakarta, it’s really easy to forget how much electricity we are accustomed to consuming – and that that what was second nature to us in terms of using energy is actually an overload for the resources that we have available to us here.

We found the fuse box in our apartment, but despite all of our attempts to get the power back on (e.g., flipping every switch), we were unsuccessful. Fortunately, when the power went out the first time, we were about to leave the apartment anyway for a day with a full schedule. Strike two, and I’m writing the night before embarking on a new adventure – working at Yonasindo Intra Pratama for one year.