Close to my graduation day, Rachma promised to treat me a jumbo ice cream at a shop in Musashi Koyama. But since there were lots of things to do during graduation day (such as party, party, submitting papers, preparing for moving, party, and party :-), look, it’s not my fault that everyone’s so fancy about graduation party :-) ), eventually we didn’t go. And as I moved to Fukushima soon after the graduation, it was harder for us to go fulfilling the promise.
Anyway, last December, I had the time to pay Tokyo a visit. Actually I left a shamisen at Rachma’s place during my moving, and Rachma was already screaming that it took spaces :-), so I needed to get it back. I wasn’t in a hurry this time, that’s why we said that we’d go to the ice cream shop. Yuli, Rachma’s husband, was already in Japan this time, so the three of us went.
To make it short, we got in the shop. Rachma and Yuli quickly asked.
“How big is the jumbo one?”
“I’ve shown you the picture, right? If you two can eat a lot, we should go for it.”
“Are you sure?”
“The last time I went here it was me and 3 other friends, and we could finish it. Well, it's just three of us now, but if we try a little bit harder...”
Rachma and Yuli bought my explanation, so it was set. We went for the jumbo ice cream.
By the way, about me and 3 other friends that successfully finished the ice cream, I forgot to mention one small detail. When we went there, it was summer. This time, it was winter. I was thinking that it was not a problem at all, until I saw the waitress came bringing the iceberg, oops, the ice cream… oh my God, was it that big?
The waitress put the ice cream in front of us, and I started to think that it would be an uphill battle to eat it... (well, 'up-iceberg battle' would be more appropriate :-) ).
Some other guests that just came in looked at us in awe.
“Three of you gonna eat that all?"
“We’ll try”, I smiled back.
And so begun the battle of iceberg... :-)
We started taking the ice cream to our bowls, and the first couples of it went to our stomach without any problem. Anyway, we like sweets. But as I continued to eat, an unpleasant feeling started creeping all over my stomach, and I felt like I wanted to throw up every time I gave another bite. Well, actually my stomach wasn’t full yet, it just refused sweet thing. People used to say that there is a butterfly in their stomach if they get nervous - well, it's kind of like that, and the butterfly started to fly frantically every time I gulped more ice cream :-). It looked like Rachma and Yuli also felt the same, and finally we gave it up and left two small bowls of melted ice cream.
Even though I could manage myself not to throw up, I was just not feeling well. As much as I like sweet stuff - and I was thinking that I can never get enough of it - I can’t take it anymore if it’s too much. And the lesson was simple: there’s a limit for (almost) everything, and overdo something would lead to no good.
Rachma, Yuli, and I parted ways at the station. Since I’ve been not in Tokyo for quite sometimes, I took the time to visit the Seino family. The family was one of the closest families to me, and the parents, Rainier and Grace, were already like my own brother and sister (The couple actual names are Yoshiteru and Kyoko, but since I knew them as hippo members, I called them with their Hippo nicknames, Rainier and Grace - can you guess where they got these names? :-) ).
Still feeling sick of something sweet, I headed to their place. Haruka, their sweet 5-year-old daughter already waited in front of the elevator when I got there (she’s so sweet, but I don’t have problem with this kind of sweet thing :-) ). She showed me the way to their apartment, where the rest of the family had been waiting.
“It’s been a while! How are you doing? And by the way, what do you want to eat today?”, Grace bombarded me with questions, but the last question about food was the one that caught my attention :-). Grace is a good chef, and a lot of tasty foods flashed in my mind when she asked that question. Anyway, my stomach was still not full and it would welcome anything... anything? Well, 'the butterfly' still rejected sweet things, though... :-)
“I’ll eat anything”, I replied, and after a brief pause I added, “as long as it’s not sweet.”
“You’re sure?”, Grace looked at me as if my head had been hit by something. “I thought you really like sweet, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s something today, and I don’t want to eat anything sweet again for at least a week... well, I’ll tell you later why.”
“Okay, but that’s too bad... Actually I prepared kolak when I heard you going to come...”
Kolak? Oh, how I’d love to eat it... but of all things, why should Grace made kolak when my stomach refused sweet stuff? It’s not fair… but it looked like Grace still not finished yet.
“...I use brown sugar this time, you know. And because you said that you used to have it very sweet in Indonesia, I made it extra sweet today...”
I stopped, tried to control 'the butterfly' in my stomach that started to fly in panic again :-).
“Grace, can you help me and stop saying sweet? It makes me sick just to hear the word...” :-)
