Sleeping over my car

From the desktop of Nathanael Fraix

Whew!

It's been quite a week today.
In my last blog I mentioned that my cousin Ernst was having a birthday. We celebrated it last night at steakhouse in Gading (namely Mel's steak).

But let me give you a rundown of what happen last Wednesday night:
Tanya asked me to drive her to a certain hospital in Jatinegara (namely R.S. Mitra Internasional a.k. R.S. Mitra Keluarga) where she wants to check up with a certain doctor (namely dr. Teddy). The purpose of the check up is for verification purposes only. I don't know why she had to go the that doctor at Mitra hospital is practically the other side of the city from her home (which is at Kota) aside the fact that people say he's good and he knows his stuff. Anyway Tanya got the appointment number 14, and he practices from 6 till 9pm.

We arrived at the hospital on 7, and I went through the hospital's parking lot twice to find no parking space so I decided to exit, pay my parking fee (Rp.1500) and search for a vacant space nearby the hospital. My choice of parking space was the lot in front of a Christian bookstore name Kalam Hidup. It's just next to Dandy bakery and Bakmi Keriting restaurant where my aunt frequents before. Settling and turning off the car, I left my blue Mitsubishi Kuda Grandia locked and settled and head towards the hospital hoping that the parking attendant won't be upset by me.

There was the routine registration purposes/looking for the doctor/where's the doctor stuff, and at 7.30 we waited and waited in the waiting room (it's about to get boring from here) and noticed there more guests waiting for the same dr. Teddy. Fortunately on of the room's TV sets was showing a satellite channel of HBO, which was showing a cool action movie starring Russell Crowe (with his handsome charming look) and Denzel Washington (with a rugged hardened look). It was a nice movie with good performances from Crowe and it ended around 8.55pm. By then the doctor still hadn't appeared we were beginning to get hungry.

"Let's find some food," I said to Tanya.

We walked back to my car and hoping to find the Bakmi Keriting still open. It wasn't. Neither was Kalam Hidup store. They closed on 8. Worst of all, the owner of Kalam Hidup usually chain his fences to prevent any vehicle getting in or out with my vehicle being one of it.
There were two cars still behind the store's inner gates, and the owner was apparently gone. The locals told me that the owner is going out for a while, and will soon be gone. They expected him to return by nine or ten pm.
I waited... and waited.

Even Tanya accompanied me and waited till it was midnight.

It was very... toughening experience. By the time it was midnight I felt that I had to take Tanya home, but I also couldn't leave my car (which technically was not my car but my dad's office's) so I made her promise to go home on a cab by 1 am. When it was 1 am she still waited with me and we spent the night talking a lot and fighting local mosquitoes.

We waited longer and longer till the sun rose up around 5.30am, and one of store workers carrying the keys arrived and let us out by 7am.

We got back to my home very tired and spent. Try sleeping in your own car with lots of mosquitoes running around.

But I never felt sure or grateful knowing that Tanya really accompanied me through that night, and didn’t complain much about.

I know she probably was a bit guilty, knowing that me driving her to the hospital led me to that... but it was a real experience that night of September 29 2004.