Winter goodness

Note: the following accounts were separately written according to the time frame.

Three weeks ago.

Forlorn grey cloaked the sky for the past week; no more rays of evanescent warmth for you sun-lovers. Haha. I’m quite the sadist. Although now I’m actually the one having a jolly hard time contending with the frosty wind that keeps finding their shrewd way into our already-sealed windows. So by right I should be shuddering at this turn of weather and pray hard for spring to come to light. But I’m not, because… well. I love winter. Even if I did fall last week on the icy slope and got a brilliant green bruise on my thigh, or that my fingers were this close to getting frostbite (hyperbole) from dusting snow crumbs off my bag (inside out, too) due to evil works of a classmate (I got him back big time; don’t ever mess with the snow queen. Hoho). Because, because, because… the sight of pure white grounds beneath your feet with sparkling diamonds of frozen canopy above your head on the way to class is simply worth it. It’s like something out of Narnia, as someone puts it; enough to make anyone’s heart spouting poetry (a bad example in my case as you can see).

A fortnight ago.

When snow melts, there goes all the fun. In fact, that’s when trouble beckons. Picture streams, not just puddles, of mud that bar you from crossing the road to get to your hostel, and so you keep walking upward to find a better way out. The trouble is, there is no better way out, and you keep swaggering further and further from your destination until you’ve had it and decide to cross anyway, even though it means drenching the kain of your baju kurung, and yes, it is eid morning. Silver lining? It snows afterwards! And thank God for black baju kurungs =p

Last week.

Too slippery for words. Numerous wobbly moments. (Fall-o-meter: 0. Yay!).

Last night.

Temperature: 20-something degrees below zero. expected to reach 30 during the coming weekend.

Remember Balrog from the mines of Moria in The Lord of The Rings? Remember the dum-dum sounds the Fellowship heard before that fiery ancient demon appeared (did those come from him or the Orcs before that, btw? Argh, must have a rerun again sometime soon.)? Well, the sounds banging against the window of our room at this moment eerily resemble the aforesaid ones. Outside, you can even see violent swirls of wind as they fuse with traces of snowflakes (I saw but a glimpse from the kitchen window, a friend related the more violent ones). Luckily it’s a one-week New Year holiday now, so I don’t have to experience this vicious side of Mother Nature firsthand. But then, being cooped up in the hostel isn’t such a cozy idea either, since our condition here is nowhere near the word cozy, or even acceptable. We’re living in a giant freezer. Imagine me wearing long johns, two woolen jumpers, an over-sized sweater, two pairs of socks, and shivering after half an hour typing on the laptop…(?!!) And they forbid us to buy our own heater because we may whack the circuit dry, which is the case every night because almost everybody secretly owns a heater anyway (not me, though. I’m an Eskimo wannabe). And can anyone blame these people after seeing those feeble, metal thingies they suspiciously call heaters? It’s come to a point where I have to sleep either with my headphones on or by cocooning my entire body inside the blanket because my ears can’t stand the cold. Sad, sad, sad. I already lodged a complaint to our rep so, well, I guess we can only wait. And wait we will, do count on it.




Both pics: Frost on glass. 9th February 2006.


Motifs on the wall of the central market. 8th April 2006.


Impressive facade of a bank, somewhere nearby the academy. 17th July 2006.


Messing around with fallen leaves. 15th November 2005.