Monday, August 20, 2018

Another loss for the family

My family just held the 40th day memorial for my grandma a few weeks ago. Last Thursday we received a shocking news that one of my direct aunts (i.e my dad's sister) suddenly passed away. It was shocking because we just saw her during ash scattering for my grandma and she was fine.

I had mixed feelings whether to go home again to pay her respect. Since I will be leaving my job and I have to clear my time off eventually, I decided to just use my time off for last Friday and Saturday to fly home again. Our family has stormy history with this aunt. Perhaps we will never know the truth with what really happened in her life but at the end of the day blood is thicker than water and we all had and would treasure the good memories of her in the earlier days. It is the 7th month and we were wondering if grandma decided to ask her to come along and hence she passed away. Whatever it is, we can only think and hope for the best. We know this aunt with her strong personality is also someone who shows her love to my grandparents in a very strong or fierce manner. So we pray that now she will be happier up there with my grandparents.

Just to divert a bit to talk about health related, she can be considered as a case report of what a thyroid condition can do if not treated. She has history of hyperthyroidism but as with Indonesians in general, usually they do not care about taking medicines if they are not feeling anything. That resulted in her stroke a few years ago and she was bedbound since then. Even after the stroke, she did not take medicine. According to my cousins, she had fits on Thursday morning and she was brought to hospital. She could have already passed away before reaching the hospital so noone knew what the cause of the death. I heard another aunt was saying about the skin discoloration so it could also be heart attack. Nonetheless, yes untreated hyperthyroidism causes stroke, heart attack, seizures, etc is true.

Thank God the price of the air ticket was reasonable at $200-ish on Scoot. The Asian Games 2018 officially started on Saturday so the airport was buzzing with the arrival of the foreign contingents. Seeing the officials and all the activities at the airport reminds me of the good days of SEA Games and ASEAN Para Games duty that I had. I miss those days and perhaps they are the only good memories that I will not regret after leaving my current job.

Cremation was done on Saturday and learning the reality actually makes me sad. My memory of my grandfather's cremation was seeing his ashes already piled up nicely when I viewed through the whole after the cremation. That was actually the end product. I get to see what happens in a cremation process. After the burning, family members had to pick up the remaining bones (or bone fragments) which are then ground to result in the ashes that we know of. This knowledge made me quite emo. Such futility of human life.

I did not join the boat for the scattering of the ashes at the sea. It was at a different location from my grandma so I was quite curious. But since there was only one boat, I think the immediate family should be prioritised. I have not fully recovered from the sunburn from my grandma's ashes scattering last time so that was another reason.

After that we had a closing meal at Bandar Djakarta. I don't like to eat seafood because usually I avoid prawn and I also dislike dirtying my fingers. So many crabs were ordered and in the end I could not escape the temptation. I had to dirty my fingers and eat the crabs. Haha.. There was a Starbucks just next to the restaurant and right from the start, I knew I would buy something. So even though I was quite full after the meal, I still bought Starbucks.

I was very tired in the evening and I would like to rest early. I wanted to watch the opening of the Asian Games too although this was the lower priority since I could always watch it another time in Youtube. However, another aunt and my godma were staying at my house so I had no choice to accompany them to go to MKG which happened to be having midnight sale and closed later than usual. I was still full and I decided not to have dinner. I was amazed how others were still able to eat. It was not a wasted trip as Doraemon plushie at Uniqlo was on sale for Rp 299.000,-. Heck yeah!! Lucky I did not buy it last month. I already had one and I wanted to buy more to try making some quick bucks by selling this in Singapore. With nothing to bring over for my flight back, I bought 2 plushies. Hopefully I can sell them. Hehe..

Somehow I got diarrhea yesterday morning. I went to the toilet 3x before leaving to the airport. I had to be thankful that somehow the next episode only came when I already landed in Changi. At least the toilet was cleaner. Lol. I felt so lucky that I did not get the urge when I was on the plane. It would be unthinkable. At Soekarno-Hatta, I still had breakfast in one of the cafes, drank chocolate milk, and went to book store and Asian Games store without any urge to lao sai. My wallet was prepared to buy some Asian Games plushies but after seeing the quality of the plushies, I simply could not buy plushies with slanted nose, slanted eyes, etc. Seriously.. the quality is damn awful.

I am pretty sure the seafood was the culprit (not sure if the seafood was not clean or my fingers were not clean). I even ate roadside mie tek tek on Friday evening just before the funeral service and I was fine throughout Saturday so do not blame me for being too sterile from living in Singapore too long. It had to be the crab. Lol. I have not recovered fully today but with me leaving soon, it will not be nice if I still take MC lah. Hehe.. anyway today was the first day of the person who is taking over my role. We only have 3 weeks to handover things so everyday is precious. Just consider it as being nice and helpful to her for a proper handover.

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