What Do You Choose to Pay For?

What choice do we have if we live far away from our daily main activity; school, college, or work? Can we instantly move our house to the nearest area?

If we’re still young and single, rent a room in some house or live in a dorm could be an option. But how would it be for us if we are too young to live by ourself, financially incapable to rent a room, or already have a house to live with our own family? Railing the road every morning and when get back home is the only most possible way.

We all know how massive crowd in big city, especially Jakarta, could be regarding to transportation. Bless you who already own your car. I really hope the use of your car is optimal by carrying 4 or 5 passengers per travel, so the car’s contribution to the air pollution could be minimized.

It’s an important matter, indeed. A senior of my friend choose to buy house in rural area and travel to office also back home by train instead of rent a room near office but travel to office and get back by car. Environmentally and financially smart one, I think.

Bless you who own motorbike. Traveling by motorbike is far more exhausting than traveling by car in the same travel distance, let alone by public transportation, if I may say. There’s no back support while traveling by it, plus we always have to keep our balance, and don’t forget the lack safety of it. For whatever stereotype people have in mind for motorbike riders, I wish you who travel by it always safely arrive at destination.

Source: flickr

And what’s left for people who don’t have their own vehicle? Public transportation, it is. When I lived in Riau, the only public transportation I know was taxi. When I moved to Bandung, the knowledge of it became wider into angkot and ojeg. Now that I currently breathing the air of capital city, I’ve tried all kind of public road transportation that I can think of. Taxi, angkot, omprengan, ojeg, metromini, kopaja, damri, economic train, commuter train, you name it.

There’s always a bargain value when we choose something over others. When we choose to reach our destination by public transportation, what value drives us the most? Cost, travel time, travel distance, travel schedule, comfortness, pride, prestige, or others?

I still live in my aunt’s house in East Jakarta while my office is in Central Jakarta. I used to go and back home by metromini, spent 4 hours in total per day on the road. Went out from house when the rooster is still asleep. Arrived at home when the owl is about to wake up. Tired, sleepless, no days without these.

But thank goodness there are many public transportation options we could have when we live in big city like Jakarta. These days, I go to office by commuter train and back home by angkot. I can have 2 more hours a day on the bed. The new option surely cost me more than the old one, but worth every penny of it.

I choose to pay for less travel time and more comfortness. What about you?

Can You Guess People’s Age?

I can’t.

In the past 3 months, I’ve been working in a market research company in Jakarta. For you who follow my twitter or a friend of mine in facebook, might’ve seen me posted things related to work there.

In every project I handle, I always deal with questionnaire, translated or backtranslated one. One of the possible question will ask about respondent’s age. Stated there, if the respondent refuse to mention his/her age, the interviewer are allowed to guess his/her age.

If I’m the interviewer, believe me, I won’t be fully succeeded in completing that question. Because I rarely correct on guessing people’s age. Better be positive thinking than hurt other’s feeling, right? N0T.

Better be truth, than hurtful in the last. Because no matter what we’re hiding, it will come out in the end.

In my case, I usually under-guess (too young) or over-guess (too old) people’s age. For you whom I might’ve hurt, really sorry for that.

*
In a related matter, what if we incorrectly guessing elder people’s age? It is known that we better give our seat to elder people, for them to sit down, especially in public transportation. But how old?

Source: Flickr

In my opinion, the rightful people to be given our seat are the ones who already retired from their conventional job. If we give a seat to someone’s below retirement age, we could’ve hurt their feeling. They aren’t working anymore means they become handicapped in the society, hence we need to help them. As long as they’re still able to work, why give them any easiness?

If they’re still able to do the conventional job like the rest of us, youngsters, they also must be able to stand up in a public transportation for a couple minutes, right? If you aren’t, please kindly take your pension, dear sir/madame.

Please do correct me if I’m wrong.

I Am Not A (Big) City Kid

I’ve spent 10 full days in the capital city last week that made me believe that I might be not a kind of city person, let alone the big one. By city I mean the average city in Java Island and by big I mean the metropolitan one. And if you think Bandung is big enough as a city then believe me, you’ve fooled yourself.

Last week visit was the first time I wandered around the capital city by myself. Not always alone by myself of course, because most of the times I got some nice company (thank You <3). I mean, by myself, without any parents supervised. You gotta clapped your hands for me on that one. :p

There were times when I had to go alone by myself and got me thinking, “I feel so alone in this massive crowds”. I never feel that way in the crowds of Bandung. Think of how massive the crowds in Bandung could be compare to in capital city. Dear Jakartans, do you ever feel that way?

Or when people were hastily moved from one place to another. I could never stand their pace. Why were they so hurry when the night was still young? My nice company, at that time, responded, “They want their fine rest. They wanna meet their family that they left at home because of working. Quickly”. Translation, they don’t wanna grow old on the road.

Source: Flickr

The simple rule of living a life in the big city that I didn’t understand. Now I do. We should never wait for a crowdless public transportation. Grab any opportunities that we can grab, because they won’t come twice.

If we travel with our loved ones, we perhaps don’t wanna arrive at the destination in a hurry. If we travel with our loved ones, everything runs slow in a nice way and we’re fine with that. If we travel alone and left our loved ones at home, we certainly don’t wanna waste our time in the messed up traffic, especially in the messed up traffic of capital city.

Or the label of kid that I put on myself isn’t suited anymore.

Converse All The Time

Saya masih ingat ketidaksukaan saya pada sepatu Converse ketika masih sekolah. Ya, sepatu keds dengan merk Converse, bukan sepatu keds merk lainnya. Alasannya, hanya karena hampir semua teman saya memakainya. Padahal sekolah tidak pernah mengharuskan siswanya untuk memakai sepatu merk Converse. Sekolah hanya mewajibkan agar siswa memakai sepatu mayoritas berwarna hitam. “Kenapa harus memakai Converse?”, pikir saya waktu itu.

Bagi kamu yang tidak percaya, yakinlah kalau ternyata hukum karma memang berlaku. Juga jangan pernah menyatakan ketidaksukaan pada sesuatu, karena suatu saat penilaian kita bisa berubah.

Saya yang saat sekolah anti-memakai-Converse, saat kuliah ternyata tidak bisa lepas dari Converse. Untungnya saya kuliah di universitas yang rasio perempuan dan laki-lakinya hampir sama banyak. Bayangkan kalau saya harus kuliah di universitas yang lebih banyak perempuannya sehingga menuntut mahasiswinya untuk menjadi feminine, seperti universitas yang saya kunjungi pagi tadi.

Berdasarkan pengalaman saat sekolah dan meminjam sebentar sepatu Converse bukan-warna-hitam milik adik saya, saya jadi yakin kalau sepatu keds paling nyaman dengan harga terjangkau itu memang sepatu keds dengan merk Converse. Terlebih lagi, saat kuliah dibebaskan mau memakai sepatu jenis apa warna apa. Bagi dosen-dosen di jurusan saya, yang penting mahasiswa memakai sepatu yang menutup seluruh kaki saat kuliah. Pakai sendal? Alamat diusir dari kelas.

Coba tebak, sepatu saya yang mana?

Pernah saya memakai flat shoes ke kampus. Sayang, nasib si sepatu tidak bertahan lama, hanya dalam hitungan beberapa bulan. Mungkin karena kelakuan saya saat memakai flat shoes masih sama grasak-grusuknya dengan ketika saya memakai sepatu keds. :p Alhasil, sepatu cewek yang saya miliki saat ini hanya sepatu formal yang tidak akan mungkin dipakai ke kampus kecuali saat sidang kemarin.

Bahkan, saat sudah lulus pun *sombongnya,  baru juga beberapa hari :p*, saya masih bernyaman-nyaman ria memakai sepatu Converse. Ayah saya sampai komentar, “Udah lulus masih kayak yang gitu juga sepatu kamu?“. Haha, ampun pa.

Saya harus bisa cari kerja yang tidak mengharuskan karyawatinya memakai sepatu berhak. Ada tidak ya? Atau mungkin harapan itu sebenarnya cerminan dari saya belum siap untuk masuk ke dunia kerja?