Nov 11 - Nothing is What It Seems

Today was my first day of period, so naturally I was short on abilities to decide whether I got super annoyed because he was not being sensitive... or because I was being oversensitive. Fine, probably the latter, but still, my 1831-IQ-brain decided to put together an act and behave batshit crazy (-er than my usual fiery self). After I calmed down, he called me and scolded, "You wanna know why it's so difficult for me to say sorry??" // "Why?" Of course I was already laughing by now. // "Karena aku the real Batak."

All those oceans I have to cross and fly over and all I got is a clone of myself.

Oct 14 - Marilyn Knows What's Up

 

There have been multiple instances where my mom rushed to check on me because she thought I was very upset. I was crying, but from hysterical laughter. No one cracks me up the way he does.

Oct 14 - Language Learning Essential / My Sexual Orientation

Aaaaand I'm back at not writing for a hot minute. :D

Eight weeks into my Intermediate 2 level of Dutch class by Erasmus Training Centre, I'm reminded of the different topics covered to date, spanning across Basic 1 - 3 and Intermediate 2 (yup, that's 5 classes in total so far). We've discussed, among others, the weather, travel, etiquettes, going out culture, health, entertainment, sports, journalism and media, and recently, politics. And for every single theme, Luis is there for me to consult, making it super easy for me to grasp the entire concept. You think I'm merely referring to the grammar part; I'm not. It never ceases to amaze me how knowledgeable he is about them all. I mean you ask me about the coalition's interests in Indonesia and I'll have you Wikipedia it on your phone. Or call my dad, one of the two. This guy's degrees are in Dietetics and Health Promotion! How the heck is he so goddamn fluent (and accurate) in matters revolving political intricacies??

My sapiosexual self can't be prouder for having responded to a random dude's message on OkCupid back in 2013. A dude so random I didn't even take a look at his photos prior to replying*. Easily the best decision I made that year -- and every year onwards!

*) Thank God he turned out to be hot AF.

Aug 22 - Not Yet a Mrs.

So it's here. Today's the day.

With so many friends and families checking in within the past few days, I had expected one helluva heavy day. Pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't. All props to Amanguda Hari's family and my girls (and guys!) who made sure I knew it had nothing to do with our relationship.

We're postponing the wedding for crying out loud. NOT cancelling.

I legit look like a creep. This is a screenshot from a video we took where Luis, as always, refused to look into the camera and would pretend he didn't notice me at all when in reality his fingers were tickling me! Who's the creep now!?

Aug 10 - What Now

As a dietitian with not only first-time clients but also return ones, Luis plans work schedules and visits at least two weeks in advance. We wanted to wait until the end of July to decide what to do with the wedding, so, just to be on the safe side, he cleared out his schedule for at least the first two weeks of August. If it would still go through, he could elongate it to four months; if not, he could just use some time off anyway. So today is his first day of a two-week blocked annual leave.

Can't help but think it's just the way it'll be for God knows however many more months down the road. Winging it. Deciding as we go. On my side, I had had it all figured out:

1. Get married in August 2020

2. Resign from work and start paperwork in October 2020

3. Move to the Netherlands in December 2020

4. Start a new job in March 2021

5. Have my parents come over in May 2021

6. Make a trip back home in July 2022

Let's look at the progress:

1. Oh right we don't even know when we're getting married!

Having to wait with a timeline is one thing. Having to wait with a deadline is another thing. So what now? Well.. We keep waiting. :D

Aug 05 - Footsteps

Some of my favorite pictures/trips during my 1.5 years' blog hiatus:

Jakarta, Indonesia

Dusseldorf, Germany

Budapest, Hungary

Calpe, Spain

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Aug 04 - Security

There's no denying that this man has so many exceptional qualities. Among them is confidence. Not the cocky personality to think he's above everyone else, or I should be the lucky one in the relationship (spoiler alert: I am). But the security and contentment with our relationship and, in turn, honesty practiced and trust instilled.

Pretty early on in the relationship, he wasn't very happy with how close I was (am) with Araz. He, so as I, is never one to think two people from opposite sex couldn't be fully platonic, but it caught him off guard seeing how 'friendly' I was with a guy I claimed to be 'just a friend'. Immediately I told him if he were about to make me choose between him and Araz, I'd choose Araz. Big time. Luckily it didn't take long for him to finally understand just how important my relationship was with Araz, but it occupied a different section of my heart. What also helped was when he finally met Araz (after the both of them managed to avoid each other the entire month Luis was here the first time around), when he saw the two of them instantly clicked... and were about to embark on this alarming bromance situation.

Anyway. Araz, although indeed the closest, is just an example. I have many more guy friends and Luis is fully accepting of that. He trusts I'm being honest with him that they're not a threat to what we have. That kind of confidence is hella sexy in my eyes. The more he trusts me, the more willing I am to be open with him, and I can't tell you just how comfortable this reciprocity is!

Earlier tonight he came home and texted me on Telegram. I didn't have time to check cause I was on the phone with Bang Aroon, so after a few minutes he video-called my iPhone. Again, I didn't answer, so he video-called my Samsung. I picked up, showed him I had been on the phone with Bang Aroon for the past 1.5 hours, and told him I would call him back. He just said okay, showed me a Magnum ice cream he was enjoying, and told me silly things that didn't make a lot of sense while he hung up. That's so precious to me.

I swear there's just something with a guy who seemingly has no insecurities. I'm sure he has one, or a maybe a couple, but I'm SO glad it's not in this department.

Aug 03 - Until Further Notice

Luis is still denied access to Indonesia so prior to my Bandung staycation we decided to delay all arrangements. He spoke to my parents and that's how it was finalized. We've informed family, close friends, and vendors. Not the best outcome ever but surprisingly it was relatively painless and somehow.. liberating. Finally we can put our minds at rest, at least for a couple of months.

There are various scenarios depending on the near-future development, but if there's anything I learned the past 4 months, it's to play it by ear and not fuss so much in making plans. Things will work out the way it's supposed to. Failed execution changes nothing about our relationship and delaying the marriage just means.. longer deadline to lose weight. *slams door and giggles*

Aug 01 - Check Point

So August is here!

Luis and I have zero visibility on what's ahead.

Whatever happens, August will always be our month.

Seven years and counting!

<3

Jul 23 - Those Who Believe

You know how your embarrassing/heartbreaking memories stay longer and are more prominent in your brain compared to the beautiful ones? I'll spare you some BS and instead encourage you to research the scientific explanations behind it. Happens to me and this blog too TBH, I feel lately I don't give enough shout out to those who have always supported, especially during the rough patches in our LDR span across 7 years. And/or now.

I am reminded today to thank God for those people. With the (initial) wedding day practically around the corner, every single day there's always at least two people dropping by virtually through phone calls, texts, and Instagram messages asking how we are doing. At first it felt like something I would have done too if I were on the other side. But there are just so many people. And ones who have done it one day keep coming back every so often. It's just extremely difficult to not think I'm up there with some of the luckiest girl on earth, for having so many God-sent people to take care of me in my time of needs.

Yesterday to today was a big one. In less than 24 hours, I had Uty, Zuzu, Eric, Jamal, Fajar, and Samantha reaching out via various methods. And it's not the "I'm great, oh by the way how's the wedding thing coming along?" kind of message, but the "Hey Vic, how are you? I'm here if you need anything!" kind of message. I didn't ask for attention, they just.. popped up unexpectedly. In the most heartwarming manner possible. In the way it makes me feel I had been a wonderful friend to them. I haven't.

The following didn't necessarily initiate conversation yesterday, but it would be a surprise if I did not hear from them in two weeks asking for updates: Allie, Araz, Nantulang Ipi, Galih, Kiti, Kak Des, Venessa, Ecel, Mbachi, Fifi, Stephanie, Bros gang, Tia Cruz, Kakak, Galuh, Naila, Natasja, and Mbak Bimbi. Not that ones who ask once or twice are not important (for example, Pak Syl's monthly check in; wow, talk about quality over quantity here), but I'm listing those special, above-mentioned names down so I do not forget. So the next time the tide turns -- NOT that I would ever wish for them to be unlucky or anything -- I know to place their names on top of my priority.

I don't give up because of them.

Jul 22 - It's What He Doesn't Do

Every single person in my circle knows I don't mind being called names, dealing with back-stabbing snakes, having to wait for a chronically late person, sleeping next to loud snorers, receiving non-constructive criticism, not getting the credits I deserve, hearing people talk shit and gossip about me; all the ultra common pet peeves there are. Those things do annoy me, but it takes a millisecond or two (fine, sometimes a day) for me to shrug it off and be over it.

Honesty, however, is the biggest thing for me. Although I'm not the smartest kid on the block, I know a thing or two more than that kid about spotting liars. Lying in my dictionary means two things: you underestimate my intelligence (that I would not be able to see right through you) and you're a coward who chooses to not tell the truth which may result in a confrontation. 

It might be biased, knowing I'm one who (more often than not) would risk relationships for the sake of letting the truth roam free. But I won't apologize as it's just my personality (and I think it's called 'personality' for a reason: it's a way to define that person). I'm a big girl, I can handle ugly truths and forgive your actions; however, if I spot you're lying to me, that's the end of it. I keep quiet but make a mental note that you're no longer one who deserves to benefit from me in any way, shape, or form.

Maybe that's one big fat reason why I've never wanted to call it quits with this guy. Look, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like he's all that perfect, because he's not. But at least he doesn't lie to me, despite having all the reasons to, and the opportunity. Through it all, he chooses to come clean with things and have raw conversations with me, even at the expense of the follow up chore of buttering up this broken-hearted/completely-livid girl who always feels the need to say a piece of her mind. He's confident my state of mind wouldn't stay negative for all that long, cause he knows at the end of the day I'll come to my senses and remember that he remembers. 

That this is the way he cares. The way he appreciates me. The way he puts me first.

PS: Post not triggered by him. Some people lied to me today.

PPS: Of course I caught them. By default, I keep quiet but make a mental note that they're no longer ones who de-- oh, please, just scroll up already. :)

Jul 20 - #Priority

As briefly mentioned, Luis was here in Indonesia last March. For 4 x 24 hours.

Friday, Mar 13

He landed late in the day. I picked him up after work, carrying a small suitcase full of his prezzies. Will never know how he manages to smell (and look) so damn good.

Saturday, Mar 14

I hoped the morning he took to rest was enough cause we were about to start a jam-packed day! Gyu-Kaku lunch, La'Seine venue survey (which was his first and last time seeing *rolls eyes*), and crash course on Aku Percaya prayer with Bapa an hour before the baptism rehearsal with Inang Rita. My gut was completely wrenched in anticipation of the mandatory pre-baptism oral exam.... that turned out to not be mandatory as Luis was ushered by Inang Rita directly to the altar! All the reading material we had digested to prepare for this and apparently no questions asked! :D She's great. Closing the day with a dinner with Mama's side of the family.

Sunday, Mar 15 - Still obsessed with everything that happened today

Nothing better than cheap breakfast by the pool. Our kind of morning.

Today was going to be super intense! For starters, lunch and ice cream with Bapa's side of the family (please don't act like I didn't write 'super intense' in the previous sentence). This bunch (read: my people, in other words, multiple forms of me) is a lot to deal with, but Luis handled himself incredibly well, including and especially during his very first ever impromptu mandokhata. At least my family was meeting him in the middle by choosing Sate Khas Senayan and Pisa Cafe as the places.

Nobody had prepared me for this view.

His Aku Percaya was flawless and we welcomed SO MANY of these questions at the exit, "How long has he lived here?" "With whom has he been practicing the prayer?" "How long did the language course take?" and so forth. Bapa and I would just be exchanging dirty looks, not having the heart to tell them his first time mouthing the prayer out loud was exactly 24 hours ago. God is good! Worth noting as well that it was the first time HKBP Menteng has ever seen Inang Rita speak English.

We celebrated his baptism that night during the warmest dinner at Amanguda Hari's house. Today just could not be any better by any stretch of imagination.

Monday, Mar 16

Morning was spent at the tailor, choosing material, color, and model for his suits. From there, we met up with Mama's work friends while picking her up and were on our way with Abang too to the food tasting. Umara is definitely not the cheapest but they're just so, so good! Luis and I were so full that we had to pass on Al Jazeerah's famous kebuli set while on double date with Araz and Nadhy. Could never say no to late night Martabak Favourite though. 

Tuesday, Mar 17

And just like that, this was his last day in Jakarta. We looked for a cute little souvenir for his The Navigators spiritual father back home, enjoyed two large pans of pizza, ran some errands, and looked for wedding rings before starting with packing.

Those long hours on an airplanes (times two) only for (what feels like) a blink of an eye. Sometimes you make questionable decisions all for the sake of, uh, priorities.

Jul 17 - How His Brain Works

A pattern book for my journal and other crafting activities. This is the 5th one he got me.

A collector's item Pokemon card from the costume edition that I told him was super cute a few weeks ago.

A Hello Kitty doll cause he loves blue dresses on me and that I'm always on my phone according to him (not true).

So this is his line of thinking:

Logic 1

"She loves the four pattern books I got her for journaling. This would make a great addition to her collection! I'm buying this."

Scenario 2

Logic 2

"I remember showing this card to her and she thought this one was super cute. The black one looks like me and the pink ones look like her. Also cause zij heeft het druk so it feels there are two of hers in this relationship. I'm buying this."

Logic 3

"This is BASICALLY HER! 1. It's Hello Kitty. 2. It's a cute little doll. 3. It wears a blue dress. She always makes me choose a color and I always choose blue. 4. It's holding a phone! She's never not with her phone. I'm buying this."

Fine, maybe it's a tad too feminine to be his chain of thoughts. But did I mention everything was a just because gift?

Luckiest girl ever, I think so too.

Jul 16 - Engineering Hearts

His flight in with Garuda was initially booked for Aug 13, allowing him to arrive in Jakarta in the morning on the 14. A few weeks ago, due to slow demand for international flights, Garuda decided to reduce the frequency to twice a week. His got dragged three days in advance, scheduled to fly in on the 10. We felt so lucky his boss is a reasonable man, so it wasn't a problem to add a couple more days into Luis' planned annual leave.

This morning, he sent me a screenshot of, guess what, another change. Now he's scheduled to fly in on the 8. I'm thinking Garuda is now reducing the flights to only once a week (my heart sank cause it would create another chaos with his siblings whose work nature is not as flexible as his, but we'll deal with this later once we have heard from them).

How does this recent development make me feel?

Pre-Corona, this would be the best thing ever! Aug 8 is a Saturday, thus no problem with his work there. So why am I not jumping for joy, knowing I have two extra days with him? The answer is because I do not even know whether or not I'll end up having him board that plane if the partial lockdown policy is still in place.

Pre-Corona, I would have trouble sleeping literally starting from the night he booked his flights, from the excitement of having him come to me! Sadly it's not the case now. While usually I would have a note full of activities and food I wanted us to do/enjoy on his upcoming visit, this time around I cannot look forward to it too much..... except if I'm that ready to experience one hell of a disappointment.

Crazy to think I've engineered my heart so much that I'm not even stoked for my own wedding day. (insert a sad smile here)

Jul 15 - Big Mouth

Last picture taken during his visit in March

Today is exactly one month before the Batak/church engagement (and the mark of my last month of being 27). Borders are still closed for foreigners without KITAS, and Schengen countries no longer welcome Indonesian citizens without PR. With literally everything related to our wedding still all up in the air, people are wondering how I manage to not freak out.

I did. We gave our everything for 6 years before we finally received my parents' blessings. It took our last strand of hope, and effort, to not listen to those who did not believe in (long-term) long distance relationships. We've gotten this far, only to be faced with yet another hurdle right before our eyes. Of course I freaked out.

But one day I just came to realize that none of this is personal. This Covid-19 shit affects every single person on this mother earth - well, probably except for those living completely out of reach from the civilization. Granted it varies for everyone in forms, measures, and magnitude, but it's not like this pandemic was designed only to crush our dreams of getting married on our chosen day. How important are we, really, to think that millions of lives vanish just to continue keeping us apart?

From there on out, it has become crystal clear that worrying does not reduce a liter of this uncertainty we are forced to deal with. We can only wait and see. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And all the other messages you've read off those overpriced bumper stickers. I would much rather focus on controlling my feelings and learning to accept the fact that there's a strong likelihood we won't be able to get married on Aug 22, or this year at all.

It's not personal. So I am calm.

Also cause it hasn't happened.

For all we know at the end of the day my big mouth could be of no use whatsoever when the heart is too broken to believe a word coming out of that mouth.

Hope not.

May 5 - Plans, Plans, Plans

Here's to addressing the elephant in the room. Hmm, more like the world. Like on every continent there is.

Obviously we have set our big date to be on Aug 22, 2020. It was supposed to be a jam-packed, crazy day: holy matrimony in the morning, Batak wedding in the afternoon, gala reception in the evening. Well, the hotel for the Batak wedding called last week to inform they're closed down until Dec 2020. That leaves us to the other 2 events, but the current state of the outbreak honestly encourages me to cancel the gala reception altogether.

Heck, I'll be lucky if we can still do the holy matrimony at all. It's not so much that we're worried the church would, too, stop officiating marriages, but if Luis still couldn't fly in later in August, I wouldn't have a groom to say I do to! :D (PS: It's been established that Luis has only 2 tasks in this whole wedding fiasco: 1. to halve the expense with me and 2. to show up on the d-day and say I do. With the efforts I've put in, in making sure the wedding is the closest to what we (I) have in mind, I'm certainly not going to give him a hall pass by foregoing 50% of the expected work coming out of him, hahaha).

I often joke that, seeing how well we've mastered the key to staying sane in our close-to-7-years LDR, maybe we should just attend the meeting through video calls. Install a giant screen at the altar, have the other party ready to roll, and exchange vows through the camera.

This is a challenging time for so many reasons. One of them, our wedding plans. Subsequently, our moving plans. Cause any change made to the original plans would result in other plans. How many times can one person say the world 'plan', really. How many times can they make and amend them, really. Keeping our fingers crossed that, regardless of this seemingly-endless chaos, everything would turn out okay.

Mar 4 - Life Happens

Can't believe I hadn't been posting for 1.5 years! 

The year of 2019 was by far the busiest set of 12 months of my life. So busy that I couldn't even keep a journal. I was on a business trip to Singapore with my new boss, discovered a new soulmate (hey, Allie, if you're reading), experienced total sakura-coma following a 10-day trip to Seoul and Tokyo with my girls, achieved my all-time lowest weight on scale, celebrated my 3rd work anniversary, went blackout drunk in Bali which was a sobering incident on its own, received an overdue promotion, planned and completed another big-ass Eurotrip, met colleagues in our Amsterdam office in person, parted ways with some of my fave people at the office, and paid my respect one last time to a dear colleague who lost her battle to cancer. All that and I chose to give in to my, uh, mind of the flesh, trading precious memory book with a few extra hours of sleep and mind-untangling.

It was also the year my parents gave Luis their blessings to propose to me and so he did, in the most magical city of Budapest, Hungary. (Thinking about it never fails to jelly my knees - everything was simply just perfect. Maybe I'll share it here one day.)

How I wish I had documented the different flows of feelings and emotions running through me during each specific event, but I guess sometimes life happens. It overwhelms and lets you keep only truly the memorable ones to stay in your memories.

Of course I forgot to use the better quality camera(s) and show the correct hand. What do you expect? Everyone and their mother already know I'm not that smart.