1. Gloomy and rainy again. It's December, I can't believe. My sixth December in this country. Hopefully the last for this long term period. Many things have happened, many are still slowly moving. Expectation is still up there. Can't even jump to reach it. Got three to five months left to end this significant part of the journey. Choices: finish well or finish quickly?

2. It's always a pleasant excitement to meet old friends. And I just met an old mate through the web. He happens to live in the other side of the Atlantic. "Notes from Ronver Road", Tomi named his weblog, after his apartment street somewhere in London. Reading his nicely written notes in the blog -- he is a well-known Indonesian journalist -- makes my mind travelling back through the time tunnel. About my beloved country (as problematic as it is), about my hometown, about my childhood...

Tomi was my classmate in high school, 15 years ago in Makassar. We became closer as we both joined a karate club in our school. We managed to go to regional competition. Together, with different results. Tomi won something, I was knocked out by a big guy in the very first round of the competition.... (I was in Jakarta 4 years later when I heard Tomi had become one of the karate instructors, while pursuing his college years doing mechanical engineering.)

While doing economics, I spent most of my college years playing around. Not (really) the bad ones. I was excited being involved in campus journalism. Making friends with so many people. Including those from other departments. One of those young journalist fellows was Karin....

I was surprised -- and happy-- to hear couple of months ago: Tomi and Karin got married! What a small little world. Congratulations once again, fellas.

And, nice to meet you again.