Prosa

I now have 6 close friends who I go play regularly. They are actually 3 pairs of brother and sisters: Kania, Radia, Liandra, Norman, Joshua and Joel. They are my neighbors. Kania and Radia live in front of my house, Joel and Joshua live on the right hand side of Kania and Radia’s house, whereas Liandra and Norman live three houses away from my house.

We meet almost everyday right after school. Sometimes we meet at Radia amd Kania’s house, some other time at joel and Joshua’s or at Liandra and Norman’s house. Although we meet regularly, there are not so many things to do. The boys have their own interest especially when they talk about play station and wii-game. The girls like to stay in room talking and listening to the music. Me..I do like game as well as listening to the music but I stay longer with the boys than with the girls. Besides..Liandra and Kania are older than me. I still likes playing blocks, puzzle and Lego things, the kind of play, Liandra and Kania forgot. The boys also do not play those manual games, but since they still play “game”, so I like hang out with them.

However, there are some moments I’d like to scream at them,

“Can we play outside?”

They got high-technology-fever. The more I look the way they are into the technology, the more I think that is impossible to distract them. My mind works hard thinking some ways to ask them to go out of the house and forget the gadget for a while. Well..at least not until I observe my mother’s new activity: “arisan”. It gave me an idea to ask my friends to stay away from the game and the internet. Obviously, we don’t have to go to some sophisticate restaurants and spend rupiahs there. I would like to combine “arisan” and what we did back in Grenoble.

My father had some time to gather with her family and his friends at home. Usually they gathered for having barbecue together during summer time. Off course they sometimes were gathering on winter time, especially on new year’s eve, but summertime is a special period of time when they could take their families and we did some outdoor activities together under the sun. Laurent and myself enjoyed the barbecue so much, especially when it was my parent’s turn to do the barbecue at home. Do you know why barbecue is an outrageous time for two of us? Food.. What else! All I want to is to eat everything my parent’s friends brought with them. Each one of them should bring a potluck and it could be everything: crisps, burritos, cakes, any kind of chocolates, any kind of cheese, any kind of fruits. You just name it. Those foods are not so special, I know, because they were found very easy at my home either. I just felt there was a special passion to see our garden table was filed up with food and that’s just not that. I enjoyed the happy atmosphere which reflected on their face to come along and brought those foods.

That was it! I wanted to share my experience, the joyful moment to stay outside and do “arisan” with my new friends. Obviously, they were a bit reluctant at first:

“Gather and have barbecue outside? Come on! You must be joking! Do you realise how unfriendly Indonesia sun is?”

“Do you expect us to also collect …uum..money..like our mothers usually do at “arisan”?”

“Do you know how to prepare the gas for barbecue?”

Everyone seemed in doubt on my idea. One thing I would like to ask them in this idea is just stay outside for a while. If we don’t have barbecue or collecting money, it won’t be any problem at all. Well.. is there anyone in the world who feel comfortable on a new idea? My father once said, even a good leader would ask more than 3 people to give them advice before saying “yes” on a new thought.

Then I came up with a thought that we were staying outside doing anything we like, each one of us should bring something to eat and drink. One last idea is we will collect money Rp. 5000 then we would keep the money to buy food and drink for the next “outside gathering.”

I was so happy that today my idea worked well. They wanted to come with one condition that the gathering would be held at my house. I could not say no since it was my idea and we never play inside my house. I had already thought on the place we would sit together: under mango tree at the back of my house. The tree itself is quite big and not very tall, even I sometime climbed on the tree and sat there for as long as I wanted.

So..at 4 o’clock sharp on the time that everybody agreed upon, they came along with something on their hand: Kania and Radia brought donuts. They were saying that their mother knew about this gathering and bought something for us. Liandra and Norman brought 2 kind of juice: orange and apple juice, whereas Joshua and Joel brought 2 backs of crisps. Did they just bring food and drink? No. The boys brought a ball to play soccer with and the girls, they brought with them their laptop.

“At least we came!”

We were playing and chatting altogether. All in all, we were having fun. Before we departed, we collected the money and Kania as the oldest of the group will keep it and buy something for the next gathering. Our kind of “arisan”.  (ls, Jakarta, September 10, 2010)

Note:

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