roller-coaster

A series of happenstances took place these past few weeks. Some were good, some were bad, and some were surreal.

First, the BAD news. 

My only assistant / helper-at-home: Ningsih, made an impulse decision to get married to her ex-boyfriend during a 5-days leave.

(Read that again, and please emphasize on the word "only".)

Here I am, trying to juggle making 200pc of cardholders for a friend's wedding souvenir in July (my biggest order to date!) while also running my currently out-of-stock e̶t̶s̶y̶ facebook shop. By the time i wrote this, i still have 80pc to go, and i am up to my fourth book of wallpapers.

I love the idea of having more assistants for a long time but anybody who's in the handmade business will tell you that it's. not. that. easy.

... aaand it takes a lot of patience (which i am often lacking of).

Not everyone is capable or even has the same standard of neatness when it comes to making things apparently. I've had an assistant in the past who can't even cut straight lines with a ruler and a cutter (yes, believe it). 

This catastrophe is daunting me for weeks, up to the point where i find working by myself in the middle of the night was more bearable than during the day where we normally do it together. 

She was there when i first started Paperpleased and had constantly delighted me with her excellent standard of work. She was the only one i trusted with everything in the house and I always refer to her as my assistant (not a house maid). I encourage her to be on TV with me and along the way we've just sort-of become best friends since we spend most of our time together at home (cant believe, i am this emotional when it comes to her).

I'm still looking for a new assistant at the moment, while still persuading her to come back temporarily (u see how desperate i am?).

the only photo of me & ningsih (taken by hubby)

Now, the GOOD news.

As some of you might know if you follow me on @paperpleased, i had won a free Jakarta-Taipei-Jakarta ticket from Garuda Indonesia!

I've never won anything major before and this was... on a radio!

How many people do you know actually take part in joining them these days? i know none, but apparently this makes me one of them now.

The news led us to the SURREAL part of  this post... my passport.

It just so happened that my passport expires on Dec this year and i had to renew it. However, i found out that i had lost the original copy of my birth certificate and thus, couldn't do the normal procedure of passport renewal.

Being the wanna-do-it-all kind of person and not wanting to spend millions of rupiahs on some agent, i decided to take the trouble of renewing my birth certificate myself. It took 8 working days and cost me only Rp25.000. I felt proud of myself, even if the Catatan Sipil office took two hours to get back and forth (thanks Jakarta traffic!).

Back to the gathering of my documents, i had found out that i could not find my passport. 

Yes, my old passport that i had to renew and which i had in my hands prior to renewing my birth certificate a week ago! 

After turning the house upside-down,and preventing myself from going hysterical by taking a deep breath (it works), i checked the calendar and found out that i couldn't afford to wait til some fairy brought back my passport since i will be flying in July.

On Friday, I decided to go back again to the police station to ask for another Lost Statement (the first was for my birth certificate). Twice in a week to the police station for the same cause is embarrassing enough, but luckily i had a different police to assist me for the second time.

I was planning to go to the headquarter of Immigration very early the next Monday, when the night before just before the midnight strike, i received a tweet from someone. 

"Sis, I found a passport by your name few days ago. Did you lose your passport? If yes, how shall i return it?"

Unbelievable.

I went hysterical right away (this time for a good reason) and hurriedly arrange with the wonderful Atma Jaya student, Marcell, to meet up at Plaza Semanggi the next morning.

Apparently, his friend's mother had found it on a parking slot at where she works (which must be the Catatan Sipil office) and put it in her son's car, which then was found by Marcell who shared a ride with him. It had been laying there for days when Marcell found it and just instinctively tried to find me on facebook and twitter. (God bless him!)

By the time i'm writing this post, i have filed my documents to the Immigration yesterday and waiting for a photo-taking session on the 15th. What an emotional roller-coaster ride this thing had been.

Now, i'm still counting on Ningsih's comeback... wish me luck!