After our flight from Hong Kong landed at Soekarno Hatta Airport, aunt number 2 and her husband picked us up and took us to their house located in the Kemang area, South Jakarta.

Stayed in aunt number 2's mansion for 6 months

When I arrived at their house I was surprised to see a very large house, several luxury cars in the parking lot, swimming pool, spa room and also had some housekeepers and 2 drivers. For me who comes from Hong Kong and has never seen luxury houses in Indonesia, I feel like I belong in the world of western movies that I have seen on television. Moreover, we will be living with my aunt's family for 6 months, so I feel very happy and at the same time tense.

Surprised to see cousins served as the king's children

My aunt had 2 children at the time: the oldest a 12-year-old boy who was only a few months younger than me and a daughter who was 2 years younger than me.

We arrived at my aunt's house, and at that time dinner was served at the dining table. I was very surprised to see some domestic workers serving my cousins, such as preparing rice, side dishes, and even adding drinks, just to shout, "Mbak, drink!". After 4 years in Indonesia, I am still not used to asking the domestic workers who work in our house to help refill drinking water for me.

These events really confused me because in the 1980s in Hong Kong there were very few families with domestic workers, so Hong Kong children at that time were very independent compared to today's generation of Hong Kong children.

One room with my male cousin

Due to the language barrier, in the first week my cousins and I were not close, even though we lived in the same house. Finally, what made me and my cousin close started with the game console, the Nintendo NES. Almost every day my cousin and I used to play the game console together. At that time, my cousin was still in the 6th grade of elementary school. In the mornings when my cousin was in school, I often spent time playing the game console myself.

At first my father, mother and sister slept in a guest room at my aunt's house, then after I got to know my cousin better, I moved to my cousin's room. Surely my cousin accepted me to sleep in his room with pleasure, because my cousin's room bed was very large and at night we could secretly play game consoles together.

Nintendo NES, a game console that became one of the most common activities I did with my male cousins.

Often swimming with cousins

Another activity that I often did with my cousins is swimming in their private pool. When I was in Yuen Long when I was 7 years old, I used to swim in public pools, so I had no trouble playing with them in the pool.

The adaptation period at the beginning of 1.5 years in Indonesia turned out not to be as smooth and easy as I imagined

Readers may think I am on my way to a happier life than I was when I was in Hong Kong. However, this was actually the beginning of greater pressures for me at the beginning of our 1.5 years of living in Indonesia. In addition to having to adapt to a new environment, in the past 1.5 years we have experienced many problems that have made me and my family depressed to the point of depression.

In the next articles, I will tell you what happened to us during the adaptation period in Indonesia.