Lovely Weed

Side view

Front view 

Another Joy To The Eyes

Musing About A Cottage

Musing About A Cottage

This cottage lies in a valley, surrounded by trees, fishponds, cool, peaceful in a village somewhere in Tajur Halang. How long will it last? The owner might sell this paradise one day for the joys of money, or is forced to give up for the building of a new large real estate, ...

Close Up View

These lotos’ are no more on lake Kemuning. They’re weeded out.

And I thought of the many paradises I’ve visited, as I travelled running or cycled into the country: Serpong, Jurang Mangu, MuaraKarang, ... sold and now gone forever. They’ve proudly changed them into Jakarta of today, of technology, to provide for the threatening population increase with new tall buildings, houses, toll roads, noise, traffic jams, pollution, stress, ...

This is a picture of a charming village, Cilenggang, as I picture it in words, for I hadn’t got a camera then:

The country road, so cool, so shady and winding. The village houses small, so welcome, not cold and proud as grand mansions, the gardens without borders, ...

Wow, how delightful it was to be welcomed by a girl with a branch of red colored “rambutan” just taken from the tree after being tired, running in Cilenggang, which I did not eat but took home to decorate the dining table.

Though there was no park, just by going down a path through a bamboo-wood, I got a captivating view of Eden’s garden in a valley below.

And as Adam, my eyes, delighted, enjoyed to see a verdant earth, a waterfall on the hills far away and the rice fields near below. My feet tripped, danced along a winding path, following a brook with rich vegetation bordering the sides and lovely, laughing, washing, bathing nymphs and women. My ears feasted on sounds of falling water in the rice fields and fishponds. I deeply breathed the pure fresh air, I bought me cendol (gelatin drops in iced sweet coconut milk) of a vendor, sitting somewhere lingering on a trunk, my heart so grateful, rapturously singing, though it was just inCilenggang, not in Bali, the island of the Gods.

And that was but some twenty years ago – perhaps some of you are not yet born - and now they’re no more. Who would miss them?

September 2012

That's Her Gratitude

That’s Her Gratitude

 

How lovely this wild grass grow so tall, though on barren earth, bordering the wall. That’s her gratitude, my reward for just regularly watering it.

September 2012

 

Never Too Old To Be Young

 

Never Too Old To Be Young

 

 

I wish I could picture, the moment he stepped out of the train, walking fast with his empty pikulan (a pole with two hanging baskets on each end). Too difficult to shoot in an overcrowded train.  So said Opa Johan to his wife. 


This is a photo I shot in the train. Imagine the impossibility to meet him three times in a same compartment.

He is over 90 and what’s so special is that he still teases playfully  a young woman vendor in the train and she equally teases him in return when she’s passing by. The worst thing for a man is when a woman regards him as not a man, you know? When I asked him whether he still has his wife, he said, sure. She’s just 30. I don’t remember how many wives I’ve got, while it’s a pity, I’ve only got just the first one, that’s you, you little fool?


And I thought of Liz who won a young husband for the 8th time in her sixties, but he won himself a young wife when he is over 90 years. That’s more than winning an Olympic gold medal. Ha. Ha.
 

September 2012