Foot and Postcard

Sekarang saya mempunyai hobi baru, berjalan kaki. Saya merasakan nikmatnya berjalan kaki kemarin ketika berjalan kaki pergi-pulang dari tempat kos saya ke warnet. Rasanya asyik sekali berjalan kaki sambil mendengarkan musik dari ponsel saya. Walaupun cuaca sangat panas, karena saat itu sekitar jam satu siang, dengan bantuan kacamata hitam maka saya melewati jalan (yang sebenarnya rute tetap saya) sambil melihat-lihat rumah-rumah dan kesibukan orang di kiri kanan.

Hari ini saya seharusnya pergi ke perpustakaan universitas tempat saya belajar. Tetapi karena saya semalam susah tidur, alhasil saya bangun terlambat.  Tiba-tiba saja kaki saya mengajak untuk pergi ke kantor pos Tandes. Segera saya meluncur ke tempat tersebut, dengan berjalan kaki  tentunya.

Seperti biasa cuaca panas, tapi karena melewati rumah penduduk yang padat jadi lumayanlah, ada tempat yang teduh di beberapa tempat. Berjalan ke Kantor Pos Tandes dari tempat saya tinggal sekitar 20 menit. Dengan berjalan kaki saya lebih banyak melihat kesibukan warga dan juga bisa lebih jeli melihat tempat-tempat yang biasanya terlewatkan jika berkendara, misalnya penjual bakso dan jajanan lain J

Sampai di kantor pos saya terpana, banyak orang mengantre. Kantor pos kecil itu jadi penuh sesak. Mungkin karena libur panjang Paskah kemarin sehingga kantor pos dipenuhi para pelanggan. Saya langsung menuju loket penjualan benda pos.  Saya berniat membeli 10 perangko nominal Rp.5000,- untuk mengirim kartu pos-kartu pos saya. Awalnya saya berniat meminta ibu petugas memilihkan perangko yang bagus gambarnya, tapi melihat situasi yang ramai saya mengurungkan niat.

Ternyata, si ibu sangat mengerti maksud saya. Ketika saya berkata saya ingin membeli perangko nominal 5000 atau 2500, ibu itu bertanya apakah untuk mengirim kartu pos luar negeri. Saya mengiyakan dan si ibu bersemangat membantu dengan mencari perangko bergambar bagus, yang nominalnya 2500. Wah senangnya. Langsung sumringah. Jangan-jangan ibu itu filatelis, mungkin saja. Yang jelas beliau tau kartu pos dengan perangko yang bagus turut mencitrakan keelokan negeri tercinta.

Dan..bagus sekali perangko-perangko saya hari ini. Jauh lebih bagus daripada edisi katak dan bunga teratai yang biasanya saya dapatkan di Kantor Pos Pusat Kebon Rojo � Surabaya. Berikut gambarnya. Edisi kali ini adalah kain tradisional Indonesia. Mulai dari batik, tenun ikat, ulos dll. Semua kain tradisional ini berasal dari berbagai provinsi dari semua pulau, termasuk dari Papua. Wah saya terheran-heran baru kali ini saya tahu motif batik Papua. Sebenarnya banyak motif lain yang belum pernah saya jumpai. Bertambah sudah pengetahuan saya tentang keanekaragaman kain tradisional Indonesia.

Kartu pos yang siap saya kirim minggu ini:

Going to be sent to Valparaiso - Chile

Going to be sent to Moskva - Russia

Recently I have a new hobby, walking. I started to enjoy walking yesterday, when I went home from an internet caf�. I felt a very good feeling walking in the mid-day while listening to my music from my mobile phone. It was at 1 p.m when I walked on foot to my boarding house, thought it was sunny but my sunglasses helped me to enjoy the hot sun while watching on people busy in their houses.

Today I suppose to go to my university library. But I woke up late because last night I couldn�t sleep well. Suddenly I got a feeling to walk to the post office in my area, called Tandes Post Office.  I grabbed my mobile phone, bag, and walked directly to the post office.

Though it�s still 9 in the morning but the weather was so hot. But I was lucky because I passed a crowded neighborhood I still got some shades from the tree from people�s houses along my way. I need for about 20 minutes to reach the post office. By walking I could pay attention more on my surrounding, the neighborhood, the food seller such as meatball and snacks seller.

When i arrived at the post office i was quite shock. That was the first time I knew the place was full of people. I think it�s because of the Easter holiday last week so that this Monday many people went to the post office. I went to the stamps locket. I wanted to buy 10 stamps each 5000 rupiah to send my postcard overseas. At first I wanted to asked the lady to give me nice stamps, but since there were many people, I decided to accept whatever the stamps she�d give me.

Thanks God, the lady knew me so well. When I said I needed 10 - IDR 5000-stamps, she asked whether I needed them for sending postcard overseas. I said yeah and she helped me to get very beautiful stamps. Each is IDR 2500, so I bought 20 stamps in the end. Maybe the lady was a philatelist so she understood very  well that good stamps represents the beauty of Indonesia.

And�I got super lovely stamps. They are much better than the frog and lotus edition I used to buy at the Surabaya Central Post Office on Kebon Rojo. The stamps had beautiful picture of Indonesian traditional textile. There is batik, Tenun ikat (Ikkat is a technique to make pattern textiles by tie-dye-ing and binding) form many provinces of all the island in Indonesia. The one that stole my attention was batik from Papua. Wow, it�s beautiful. Actually there is many other textile pattern that I haven�t seen before. So today, I got more knowledge about the variety of Indonesian textile from the stamps that I bought.

Here are some postcards that I'm going to send this week (with the beautiful stamps of course)

The left postcard will fly to The Netherlands and the right one will fly to Scotland

These architectural postcards are figure of Catholic churchesin Central Java. The left one will go to someone in HongKong and the right one will go for a fellow in U.S.A

As requested by a friend in South Korea, she wants a vintage postcard. So i will send her this recycled-paper postcard with image of Borobudur, the biggest Buddhist Temple in early 1900.