Back to campus

After nearly five years I visited back University of Indonesia, the place I used to call my campus.

I was awestruck, I feel like a tourist. I wish I had a camera, how things have change.  Now you can borrow official UI yellow bike to travel anywhere in the campus area, there’s less ojek than it use to although few can still be spotted. I was told I need to present a student card, so I didn’t get to use it.

No more food stalls on the way between the train station to Humanities Faculty, no more football field to. Just deers, yap deers…like the one in the zoo. Oh and the walkway is perfectly paved, not a crack.

Arriving at Faculty of law, not much has changed. But a stinking rich lawyer firm donated a multimedia room in a screaming red and blue paint.

I felt like an alien just landing to earth. Don’t know where I’m going, I need a guide, or someone to talk to.

I can see the campus has gone much further to the right, even worse than when I left. Anywhere there’s not a billboard without someone condemning Israel offensive. Some students asking donations for Palestine. Why not the poor and street children sleeping with a kick to their stomach I asked myself.

Not much change in Psychology Faculty, except they had a nice little cafeteria called ‘little cafeteria’ or Kantin Kecil. Humanities still the same.

Letters Faculty, well they come up with their own archeology sites for their archeology students. Complete with temples, cave, cave painting, fossils. Dude, nothing beats going to the real thing, trust me. They also display works, books, researches published by their faculty members. Hmmmm…what does engineering able to come up in recent years?

A bridge….a big f-ing red bridge, cutting the lake, giving the much needed access from Engineering to Letters faculty. But why post modern red? I remember some ten years ago, we had to walk along the lake to get where I was going. I see the waters are pristine. I feel like in the country side, or abroad.

The air doesn’t suit a metropolitan guy like me by the way….too much oxygen.

Then I met the giant monster. A post mo building, Faculty of Engineering’s library, standing there like a megalomaniac anti social guy who refuse to fit in. Dwarfing the Bali inspired buildings surrounding it. When I was an architecture student, I used to like it but now I understand why many criticize it. Poorly executed exposed concrete…I can see why nobody goes there. I didn’t…. ever and not the slightest curiosity.

Oh look…more monsters. Some installation, you can tell its first year architecture students. But looks of it, they’re permanent..fixed in concrete and stone. Hideous!! Just Hideous.

Guess what, no familiar faces. I felt like a stranger. Never have I felt more awkward  before. I saw one of the lecturer, I didn’t bother to say hi to him. Campus then for me was a place to hang out…never to study.

Like some old timer going back to his hometown telling his children and grandchildren what used to look like in the old days. “We didn’t have this, or this and there was no this, this use to be this” That’s pretty much what I was saying. The difference is there’s no one to tell it to.