August 17th 2006, it was still in the morning when I got a message from Leo. It said that AIESEC LC UNDIP will hold an LC Bonding Day and I’m invited. I had no clue at all about what a Bonding Day means, but I don’t care. As long as I can go outside and have a good time, then I call it a go. Bonding Day, well like its name implies (no, it has nothing to do with straight hair styling or a spy coded 007), is an occasion where all AIESEC members can hangout together and know each other better. Because that day was Independence Day, is there a better things to do in Bonding Day than to celebrate it?

Bonding Day is held at UNDIP’s economic faculty campus. I arrived around 10a.m, and everyone is already there. We also had friend came along from abroad, Yu and Mariko from Japan, and Linda from Netherlands. We had several games there. You know, some classic games we used to play to celebrate Independence Day in our neighbourhood. Some games were uniquely modified like “kerupuk eating arm wrestlingâ€? where you have to finish the kerupuk fast, while beating your opponent in arm wrestling, Leo won this game. And also not to mention the glorious “face make up from behind contestâ€? where girls did make up to the boys… from behind, the cutest boy and their make up artist is the winner, Yu won this game. I did participate in the game, its collecting coin from flour, and it was horrible! My mouth’s full of flour, also between my teeth, and even inside my nose.. aarrgh…! Even though I collected more coins than my opponent, the game was a tie, because what matter to the game is the amount money we collected (nominal value of the coins). Aww crap, better luck next time! Other games were also exciting, like water hitting, chili sausage drinking marathon, marble in the spoon race and so on.

After the games, we had lunch together. It’s a whole complete Tumpeng! I babbled to Yu and the others that every single food in Tumpeng is representing symbolic meaning in Javanese tradition, but when I was asked to explain more, I just went blank! Hehe… shame on me! It’s too bad that by this time I don’t have any photo on this occasion, the documentation guy haven’t upload the photos yet to AIESEC’s computer.

Next stop is Lawang Sewu. Honestly, I only come to this historical (yet so creepy) place only once before, with friends from ID-Gmail back then. What makes this visit different is that I also went deep down to the basement level. After we had a tour around the building we decided to go to the basement level also. Believe me; once you go there, the only thing you will think of is how to get out. It’s very-very dark, humid, wet, and .. did I already said that it is so creepy? But anyhow, we still took photograph there (look bellow). Thank God, we had a proffesional Guide accompanied us. It was a fun exploration. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but here we are, from Indonesia, Netherlands and Japan, on August 17th, in Lawang sewu building (see what I’m up to?). We learn a lot from history to make a better future; we learn about friendship and mutual understanding and how it can make this world into a better place. Peace forever for this planet!

It was around 5 p.m. when we finished Lawang Sewu tour, everyone’s about going to PRPP, but I called it a day already, I had something else to do next. Thank you everyone! I thought it was going to be a yet another usual day, where I wake up at mid day and go to sleep at morning (don’t do this at home, folks!), but it turned to be a quite nice day! Now, I’m looking forward to AIESEC’s Cultural Day next September 7th!

Yu, me, and Linda : Nice weather, nice place, nice background and nice pose, what’s not to love?

At the basement : pose at one of the creepiest spot of the basement, that’s Mariko next to me.

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Later that night, I received a message from my friend who was still in Yogya, he said that he finally able to have lunch with a girl that he had crush for so long. And I replied “Hey whatever dude, but this day I had lunch with a kawaii japanese girl, how you could beat that?â€? –Without giving him any further detail. Hahahaha..!!–