Sipping American Jamu

When in doubt, rendezvous with yourself.

World is a wrecked train every day. Beautiful world only belongs to those who choose to open their eyes and arms wide enough to learn how to accept it, to love more. I’m learning to be one of them.

I’m hours away from turning 22 (although technically I’m already 22 in the other side of the globe, like Sydney?). Anw, I have spent most of my summer time at a place I’ve called home since four years ago, instead of doing one of these things:

-a coding bootcamp in NYC (applied – got excited – lost my desire because…)

-a decent internship in a Washington-based nonprofit (something went wrong)

-traveling the world through Middle East and beautiful places across Europe (I thought, how about I wait until I have enough money and time to live there, not just a quick visit (: )

-a southbound road trip from New York all the way to Mexico with a brother from another mother (we’ll work on our Spanish first)

-go to Lombok and build the NGO I’ve wanted to build with the people I’ve worked with for years (I’ve tried to)

Result: Here I am, rendezvoused with my impaired-self at home, crossing off all the other options above while making myself a jamu. Yes, I need to make jamu, American jamu. These are the 21 ingredients of my Jamu:

1. Return to another home that’s 23,000 miles away from where I was 20 days ago, from the world’s second largest megacity, stepping back from fast-paced life. Why? Because family matters the most, whatever your definition of family is.
2. Drink beer with with my adopted parents for the first time. It felt weird.
3. Pulled the largest camper the world’s ever seen down to Pennsylvania and spend a few days at a campsite with my amazing nieces.
4. Spend days with beautiful family and friends, whom I have dearly missed, by the lake, over board games accompanied by the finest wine in the area.
5. Take a trip to 1,000 islands, NY and spend around two hours on a boat on Canadian waters (better than the trip to Toronto I was gonna do too).
6. Take the bus alone to Rochester downtown, one of the NY’s most dangerous places to be after 6pm, just to find food for 3 hours by foot (found nothing, seriously).
7. Take the 11.15pm bus to the airport from the ghetto and eat breakfast in the heaven of world’s political leaders. Call it the Capitol of Obama and friends.
8. A few hours later, be surprised of how howt LA air is once you get out of LAX.
9. Hang out around Hollywood and be happy about your friends making it to Hollywood movies. And celebrate it with the greatest Mexican and Japanese food in town.
10. Cancel the meeting and take an impulsive road trip all the way to North California for 11 hours. Get ready to be welcomed by amazing friends at the bars in the mecca of tech entrepreneurs (Bay Area of San Fransisco). Don’t sleep and get ready to head back to the south after a quick meeting with important people while drinking a shitty Starbucks coffee to stay alive.
11. Stop in San Jose for touristy food and check out the valley scene.
12. Arrive in LA 2 minutes before midnight and catch up with good sleep at a beverly hills-style house.
13. Wake up in Venice Beach and enjoy Malibu before I catch my red-eye flight back to the other side of the country.
14. Wake up in the worst place you can get stuck in for 5 hours. However, this mecca of comedy relieves you with its food. Yay Chicago-style pizza for breakfast!
15. Forgot to sleep? It’s ok, rest your dead body in Brooklyn 6 hours later.
16. Make a mistake. Preted you don’t know you have $9 left in your wallet and call a few friends you can trust in other countries to help you with the crisis (using wi-fi that only works for 30mins at the airport to call friends). Miracle happened. However.
17. Beat the hell out of New Yorkers by walking from the Union Square to 56th street in 19mins. Never eat Italian food in Little Italy, because.
18. Meet a few friends you’re supposed to meet. Let one of them cry because she can’t go to a Beyonce concert with you since the singer decided to reschedule it to next month. Pretty insane.
19. Take the bus to Corning and get an ice cream with your mother.
20. Spend more days at home. Change your morning ritual from: wake up-coffee-kick ass-workout-sleep to wake up-coffee-hot tub-little walk-solo karaoke at home-watch movies-experiment with food-drink-eat out-sleep.
21. You’re healed. You miss everything about life, that scent of hustling and building things that could mean something for you and others.

So, when someone said ‘go home, son’, they mean it.

And I’ve been home, making my jamu before 22 🙂