A Mediterranean Memento

Jakarta, 31/10. It was midnight in the middle of a workweek. Felt quite nice to finally lay on my side of the bed, fingers scrolling mindlessly across my glaring phone screen amid the dimmed light of the bedroom as my husband was already asleep. I had surrendered to the algorithm that put me in the never-ending loop of irrelevant streams of content when a notification popped up.

A French local train app, delivering a message of traffic reduction in Occitanie. I didn’t even remember I had the app installed.

It has been a few days now after my return to Jakarta, following a little over a month of travelling around France and its vicinity. Mainly for work in the city of Montpellier, although it wouldn’t have been me if I hadn’t purposefully crammed a few short leisure getaways in between and at the end.

Suitcases unpacked, apartment a mess, cat barely remembering what I smell like, plants withering, myself forgetting the direction of qibla and where the switches are for each light in every room (in my defence, we had just moved to this place a week before I left and we spent the whole week just unpacking and rearranging without fully settling in yet);

and my mind still travelled back to late September to October every few times in a while.

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Life was good – or great even. It was almost everything I had been wanting for a little while. Doing work I actually enjoyed, in a walkable city with historical significance and facades of neo-classical gems, not far from some of the most picturesque Western European and North African cities. The office was nested in a low-rise, almost completely rectangular-shaped building, which meant I got to walk those flights of stairs daily instead of relying on elevators – something that might seem quite trivial yet personally very important to me that I’ve been missing from my corporate routine in Jakarta. The people would exchange a substantial amount of “bonjour” and “ça va ?” on a daily basis, and I followed along (even if we didn’t necessarily know each other, which made the exchanges feel even more mindful than just a courtesy). Some spoke the common language, some did not – but it did not matter. Great things were still brewing and happening regardless.

The app notification prompted me to think of the place once again. Not that I had completely moved on from the experience anyway, so the timing was fitting.

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If I were still there, I would normally have another hour before logging off at 19h00, and then taking whichever bus going towards Place de l’Europe comes first – either 9 or 51. I would eat out someplace in Place du Millenial or Place du Nombre d’Or before heading back to Citadines, trying out a different place for each day until I exhausted all options by the end of my stay. On my “lucky” days, I would have to do laundry followed by ironing my cotton shirts and trousers, and that would take an entire evening to finish, but I didn’t mind much as I barely had anything else to do anyway. I would then sleep early and wake up by 06h00, and be at the office by 08h30 the latest. There were fluctuations each day but more or less, each Monday to Friday remained similar.

Life was simple, organized, maybe a little mundane; yet nevertheless and most importantly, it had a touch of newness. And that was exactly all I needed for that time being.

And on the weekends, I would hop on one of the TGVs or TERs to visit a nearby city, maxing my free time to the absolute fullest, before coming back home very late at night on Sundays. Nice, Monte-Carlo, Geneva, and Andorra La Vella were on the checklist.

On Mondays, people would ask how my weekend was going – some out of routine, some genuinely, actually wanted to know – and I’d happily tell them my whereabouts the past two days. And they would either be impressed by my commitment to commute for hours in the span of 48 hours, or proceed to think, “Goodness, are you not tired? Are you even that loaded to travel all the time? In goddamn western Europe?”

But the entire no-life weekdays and live-life-to-the-fullest weekends dynamics was an ideal and fulfilling routine to me. It was what I once envisioned, now already a memory.

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And of course, the people. Yes, the even better part. Like all of my travels – leisure or business – it’s the faces that eventually linger.

I made new friends, and then some more, and still there were more. I had not realized the number – not that it matters in any way though – until I bcc-ed those I had meaningful interactions with in the thank you email and noticed I had put at least 30 names in it. Those that I got along with because we worked together; those who shared impromptu chats with me at the pantry, hallways, parking lot, food truck nearby, and so on; those that I first met through mutual friends; and everyone else that didn’t quite fit any usual category.

Lunchtimes were made memorable. A friend would give the three of us a lift to a nearby Lebanese restaurant that had multiple semi-outdoor cats. We were all in the same age group, despite racially very different from one another, nonetheless we got along well easily from the start. Another car ride, different driver but still quite a road-runner – which I observed to be the typical way people in this office drive somehow – this time with a much bigger group as we celebrated a friend’s 30th birthday. Lots of laughs, humour, and also support that I should talk to one of the managers to apply for a position they’ve been begging to get filled for a while. The next car ride, one with probably the most silly laughs, as a friend was squeezed at the back and we couldn’t figure out how to make the front seat stop moving and smacking him. A final car ride, the big farewell lunch, with mostly expats who were ganging up on the only few French about all things that are not making enough sense in the country.

But even the routine lunch at the pantry was just as refreshing. Learned about things I’d been wanting to know about this side of the business that I wasn’t able to gather from halfway across the globe; had a long rant session with a friend about each other’s homeland and everything that went wrong in the world; and of course, impromptu chats with strangers who eventually became friends.

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Until it was the final Friday. Farewell gifts received, which included a stuffed pink flamingo and a few corporate-themed stuff; farewell lunch done with the portfolios and engineering lead; the possibly career-defining chat about my eagerness to be considered for a full-time role here done; and still, a few more strangers turned friends until the end.

The following week, I flew south to the Tunisian Sahara to have an overdue proper vacation – which deserves a separate post of its own. (Yes, I do consider the weekly weekend trips insufficient that I had to add an additional week-long trip at the end of the month.)

And then after eight days of my first visit to the African continent, I was back in Montpellier again.

The final 24 hours, squeezed between five legs of flights across Djerba-Tunis-Montpellier-Paris-Singapore-Jakarta, before I had to say à plus for good, for now.

There was a final plan to be done with a friend. Truthfully, they could’ve taken a rain check for various justified reasons that are the heavy, unstoppable rain; the crappy weather of Montpellier overall around this time of the year; and the bad cold, but I’m kinda glad they didn’t. It’s appreciated that I got to see a familiar face before my departure – both as a symbolic gesture that I seemed to have eventually built a tiny bubble of familiarity in this city within a short period, and also, just because. I wanted it to happen.

It was something that made me happy for the time being, and that was all that eventually mattered.

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Jakarta, 01/11. It is past midnight now.

I’m still caught up in the afterthoughts about a city that I admittedly fell for. The constant quietness even though everything was moving steadily; the yellow trees drenched in downpour; the symmetrical layouts of the alleys I took every day when I got back from work. The sense of having a grip on life. The feeling that I wasn’t a stranger. The kindness of its people that made me believe that the joy was shared and reciprocated.

Will they think of me every once in a while? Do they? Do you?