Post China Guangzhou Summer Camp 2013

Hi, readers! Once, once, again, it took me forever to finally post another thing on this blog. Actually, there are many, many posts waiting to be posted here, but I finally gave up chasing after the non-existent deadline to post those, because I just remembered the reason I created this blog in the first place; to improve my deteriorating English and to prepare me for the was-upcoming interviews. Now that there are no more interviews, I have somewhat lost my main drive to write. Therefore, I think I will just turn this blog into a kind of my record of thoughts instead of my life record. And as a consequence, I may post even less frequently than now, though there is also a possibility that I post more frequently since I can just post anything, however short or long, not confined to certain events and free to omit any information that is irrelevant to the thoughts I am writing about. And all the above changes about the content of my blog will start from this very post.

Firstly, I want to let you all know that one reason of my another long hiatus is that I went to China between 24 June to 4 July, accounting for 12 out of the so many days I have stopped posting stuff here. I was thinking of posting the whole series of events happening on the 12 days, but due to the reasons I stated on the previous paragraph, I cancelled that plan. Anyway, the China trip was actually a kind of a camp; they have a timetable of events in place and we participants were supposed to follow them. It started rather crappily since I was forced to go for the camp in the first place, and the accommodation I got was rather... below my expectations. My siblings went for similar trip and they got to stay in a hotel while for this year I got a freaking dormitory of a freaking vocational school in a freaking suburban area of the luckily 3rd/4th biggest city in China.

For those who did not get what I am "freaking"ing about, Chinese (refers to the mainland Chinese, not Singaporean, Indonesian, Malaysian, or whateverian Chinese) are rather uncivilized in their toilet standards. They pee at quite a distance from the urinal and often spit before peeing, resulting in unnecessary pool of unidentifiable liquid on the floor below each and every urinal you will ever see in every corner of China. And I think I would leave out the toilet bowl part before someone's breakfast/lunch/dinner got out from the wrong hole. Anyway, the bigger and modernized the city, the better the toilet standards but even in Beijing and Shanghai, the above still occur on 40-50% of the urinals and toilets you will encounter. Thus, the word "freaking" before the "suburban". As for the other two "freaking"s, it is because I got a dormitory while my siblings got hotels. I am not sure about the school they visited though. It is none of my concern anyway, since we hardly interacted with the local students anyway.

Just to emphasize how bad China's toilet standard is

Despite my bad first impression, the camp turned out to be a quite interesting trip and experience. I was rather overaged (the opposite of underage, anyone?) since the camp was meant for 13-18 year-olds while I am 20 this year. Surprisingly, I am still not the oldest among all. There are two sisters who are both older than me. Despite their young age, I was surprised to see that some of those 13 year-olds kids are quite.... cute and even pretty. Call me pedo or whatever, but even some of the 16-17 year old participants agreed with me. One even confessed his love to one of the 13 year-old. Imagine! A 16-17 year old dude fell for a 13 year old kid! What has the world turned into?

Despite the strong temptation, I did not falter and kept my calm as one of the oldest in the group. I acted as their older brother; acted as rear guard when we visited tourist attractions, played with them, attempted to prevent them from doing funny and dangerous things, and helped them to sort things out if they still did. I was not really alone though. One of the 15 year old who is also my roommate, who turned out to be quite mature in some aspects but not in others, helped me in doing the abovementioned things should I was faced with difficulties, especially in the last few days when I started to get really tired of being a guardian and started to wander off by myself, both physically and mentally. 

Anyway, I met this another 13 year old girl, not the pretty and cute ones, but one that attracted my attention more. She is not bad, appearance-wise. She comes from a really Chinese family; a father who wants his daughter to be feminine but she refuses to and a mother who wants her daughter to excel academically. She also speaks really decent Chinese and I believe, quite a good English, since she came from an international school in Tangerang. She is also really kind-hearted and sincere, qualities that I value highly. She also has a pessimistic view of her love life, a somewhat similar view with mine. I feel a connection between us, but the problem is, since she is a sincerely nice girl at heart, I cannot say for sure if the comfort I feel whenever I talked to her is because of our connection or merely because she is good at making people comfortable in talking to her. Well, actually, some people may find her rather fierce because she is quite direct in expressing what she wanted to say, another quality that I look for in a friend because I dislike interpreting people's minds from their behaviors and words just to end up interpreting them wrongly. However, due to my role as an elder brother to them and my own promise to myself not to start any relationship with anyone just based from a 12-day trip, I kept holding back myself from getting too close to her.

Now that the 12-day has passed, I find myself missing her. Missing a freaking 13 year-old girl who I only got to know for 12 days. Not the cute and pretty ones, but the one with personalities that unbelievably fits my expectations for a dream girl, and a face that gets, let's just call it, a good pass. I do not know if this is just another a few-days thing or not, but I hope it is, since I really can see no future in attempting to start a relationship with her. A pessimistic view of my love life.

Anyway, that is all for my thoughts regarding my trip to China. Back to current reality, I am being forced once again by my dad to go for an event meant for doctors and nurses. It was a 3-day event held in a hotel. The only attraction to me about this event is the part where I got to stay in a hotel, and for free, I think, since it should be paid by my employer, my father's friend. So, now I am writing this in a hotel room in Jakarta, enjoying it while it lasts since tomorrow would be another long day of doctors and nurses' event... or not. For the more complete picture of what I meant by "not", hopefully it will be posted tomorrow or the day after. I am really tired now and really can use a good night sleep. So, good bye for now! Hope you enjoy this post as much as I enjoyed writing it! =D