To begin 2018, although it’s a bit late as it’s already 13 days passed the New Year, I wanna start it with a serious unanswerable blog.
So while I’m traveling, I get this question quite a lot, “Where is your home?”. To make it simple and quick, I usually answer with Jakarta as that’s where I live. But if they have the time to hear a longer version, I sometimes said, “I don’t know where my home is” and I have to give them a couple of reasons why.
There are a lot of definitions of home, and it all depends on their perspective. One thing is definite, Jakarta is not my home. Few people who are close to me (apart of my family) know that I don’t like the city and planning to get out from the city as soon as I can. Despite the fact that my mom and my other sister live in Jakarta, I have many friends there, I love how easy it can be to get the food from an app (Go inside Gojek app, click, click, click, voila! Your food is delivered at your house), but I don’t like the vibe and the people (my friends are not included).
I’m not trying to generalize Jakartan, that’s what people of Jakarta usually called, but I feel that most of them are suspicious, selfish, ignorant, and in a race of being in the top or try so hard to be outstanding among the crowd (e.g. going to a hip place, wearing the latest trend of fashion, having the most expensive stuffs, etc.). Let me give you a simple situation. You are waiting for an elevator, there are other people waiting for that same elevator. One of them greets and smiles at you. Will you greet that person back sincerely or you greet that person back but in the back of your mind, you are questioning the kind gesture, “Why is he doing that? Is he nuts?” Most Jakartans would never greet that person back. Instead, they would give you a look saying, “Don’t greet me, you moron!” Some of you might say I’m exaggerating, but look around you, observe.
I can’t deny the fact that Jakarta is the place where I grew up (FYI, I wasn’t born in Jakarta), the place where I used to work, and the place where I found my close friends. But other than that, it’s just the city that I don’t quite like. The idea of home for me is when you are away, you miss the place, not only missing the family, friends, food or your own room. Home is a place where you can feel the warmth of everything, the sincerity of the people, the place where you don’t wanna go away for so long. and the place where you can project yourself spending the remaining times of your life there.
So where is my home? I still haven’t found it yet…
