A Time of Test

It has been 10 hard days for him. And he still has at least another 10 hard days to bear. But he’s glad he done it for people that he love. He never liked Tangerang, an industrial region full of factories, pollutions, heat, poverty, ambition, uproars. He can’t find a safe, comfortable place for him to be alone with his works, with his hard work to earn some money, to feel the most the writing can give.

His mother’s house was too small to bear his wide imagination and ambition. In the night, he can have the entire front part of the store but at the afternoon he has to shrink away into the small bedroom of his older father and mother: a tiny room of 3x3m, without sufficient ventilation. When he came here 10 days ago, he thought that he can write and work in the tiny bedroom.

The small desks that he had bought two or three years ago were still there and he thought that he could write by sitting on the floor just like usual. After he had changed the lamp, the lighting is sufficient enough for working but the heat was unbearable.  He often had to take his shirt off because even the electric fan was not able to sweep the heat away.

His cousin, a mother of two small children, was living with his parents in the house. She was going to divorced and he had brought her smallest son along. The child was a nuisance for him: he, that loved the silence, has to bear, everyday, the juvenile of a small child. That cursed devil gave him a big test: on the first day he had been able to share his laptop with the child for a session of online game but on the next days he didn’t want to do that again because if he did it then he wouldn’t be able to work.

His girl at Denpasar added to the test. The woman’s jealousy, caused by a friend’s comment in his Facebook account, raged and he had already thought to end the relation. But this morning he text the woman and apologize for his last night attitude.

His Internet connection was another nuisance. His data plan ended last night and this morning he can’t contact his agent. Fortunately, there was an Internet café not far away from his mother’s house. The payday still two days away and he was to shy to ask some money from his parents, even if he had to count the money as a loan.

There is still another 10 hard days to come. He puts his headset on and reaches for the laptop. The music bang in his ears and he feel secure – and lonely again. Today he will work as hard as he can. ***