[.a.sunday.in.the.city.]

...earlier today at around 3 p.m.....

Here I am! On a Sunday afternoon, writing from a bustling foodcourt at the Mall Ambassador in South Jakarta. It's not my so-called ordinary day. I'm not really into eating alone at a busy foodcourt where there are so many people talking at the same time and loud music. But this morning my computer suddenly crashed and I had no choice but bringing it to the store where I bought it, to get it repaired. And it's at the Mall Ambassador.

I finally got out of the house at around noon when the rain already subsided, and couldn't help from stopping by a company building half way to the bus stop, where two cute little puppies were playing by the building's main entrance. The puppies were 8 week old, said the guard at the entrance. And they are short legged, so chubby with the cutest gaze when they look at people.

But the rain started pouring again, so I had to say "au revoir" to the puppies (wonder whether they understood...) and then rush to the the bus stop. It would take me 1,5 hour to get to the mall, so I was glad I didn't forget to bring with me the book "Digging for the Truth" from the History Channel and all the way I continued to follow Josh Bernstein's archaeological adventures until I reached my destination: "Karet" bus stop on Sudirman street.

Sudirman street, named after the legendary Indonesian hero General Sudirman, is normally on weekdays a very busy, main business street in Jakarta. But obviously it was not the case today. This is also my usual route to work, but in clear days I walk about 25 minutes to my office after getting off at Karet bus stop. When raining like this, I preferred to hop into a public transport though I knew I would miss the walk.

Arriving at the computer store in the mall, the salesman, recognising me from my previous visits asked me whether there was anything he could help. I said I had a rpbolem with my computer that I bought last october, that is shut down itself without warning nor particular reason (of course there must be a reason, I just couldn't figure it out!)

The salesman called one of technicians flocking in the repair corner, but all of them responded with a cheering choir. I would say they were so nice. I think it would really help panicking customers, who always come with their troubled computers. One technician told me to relax while checking my computer while another offered me a bottle of mineral water.

"We have to repair several components" said the technician who was checking my computer. "have you backed-up all of your files?"

"Well, no" I must admit. Now I blamed myself for not taking the time to back up my files.

"Let's see if your files can still be saved..." he asked the other technician if he knew where a disk containing data recovery program was. He found it. Then he tried it. After awhile he told me to mark the folders I wanted to save and after a click I could see my graphic files (I recognised their names, of course! :-)) being transferred to another partition in the hard disk, which is spared from error.

"We'll need around one hour to finish this" said the technician. "Your files look okay"

I thanked him and told him I'd be off for lunch and back in an hour. Somehow I was amazed how I could stay calm at that time - but still, I noticed something I always did when panic attacks: I couldn't stop munching chocolate!

So here I am now, eating at the food court. I wasn't interested in eating at one of the more quiet restaurants at the moment...and besides, I was thinking of eating Manadonese cuisine (North Sulawesi) this time. I know one food stall at the foodcourt which serves very delicious porridge a la manadonese: rice porridge with greens, corn, sweet potato, fish, and spicy hot sauce. The best in the city! And for this, at least for this time, I'd sacrifice my fondness of quiet moment while eating ;-)