Hey we’re back at this topic again.
As far as I can remember, I was always a handful little kid back then. I was an active and quite smart kid at school. And I was so used to all the good attention on me.
As a kid that made and raised (I wasn’t born there) in Bali, I had a pretty strict religious parents that sent us to a private Islamic school, where the students were max. 30/intake/year. Fyi, it was a little number compared to public school.
Majority Balinese population believe in Hinduism, so my parents think they got all the reasons in the world to send us to a private Islamic school.
We (the kids) were not super close to our Dad because he was freaking busy pretty much ALL THE TIME. We were considered lucky if he got time to go grocery shopping with us once a month. He only got sunday off at work and he used that day off to sleep. I mean, now that I am adult and employed, I got it why he only wanted to sleep on his day off. During the weekday I feel like there are so many things I want to do on my day off, but when the day comes, too tired to do things.
Back in 2002, I remember clearly it was a World Cup year, and there were huge euphoria in TV, magazine, newspaper and whatnot. My Dad was a typical Dad who reads newspaper on daily basis, and I was a typical daughter who cut things or make something out of the old newspaper. That day, I saw a quiz in it from the newspaper collaborating with this famous soda company, Coca Cola, or Coke (not an ad) which gave readers lots of prizes and merchandises related to World Cup if you can collect the bottle cap. There was motorbike as a grand prize, TV, boombox and stuff, and amongst all the stuff my eyes caught something I want to win, soccer ball with the company’s logo all over it lol.
So I brought that page of the newspaper to my Dad and told him ‘I want this’ while pointing at the soccer ball prizes. I didn’t remember how much exactly the number that we need to collect the bottle cup, but it was somewhere between 2000/3000pcs. Yeah it was a lot for a ball, but surprisingly my Dad agreed to help me to collect the bottle cap.
That time, my Dad was a bar manager in Hard Rock Hotel Bali. I mean the bar, or hotel in general served lots of cola, so I thought he could do some tricks to help me collect the bottle cap from his work, plus it will be a lot faster.
So we spent a month to collect the bottle caps because we doubled the number. My parents thought me and my sis would fight over it if we got only one ball, so they help me to get two soccer balls instead.
Once all the bottle caps collected, we set a day off for us to go to the newspaper office. That time we lived nearby the touristy area, around the airport, and the newspaper office located in the capital, Denpasar, which was an hour away. But Dad was willing to spared his time off and gave me a ride to go there. Looking back at it, we got a car, but I didn’t remember why we chose to ride instead of drive.
After an hour we finally arrived at the newspaper company and of course, we went straight to their quiz office. Sadly, we were not lucky. There was actually a rule that stated if you are a student, you have to bring your student ID along to redeem the prize. I was only 9, and my school didn’t have such a student ID thing. But again, I don’t remember reading the rules or why couldn’t just my Dad claiming the prize. Anyway, we rode one hour away for nothing.
We were kinda tired on our way back and we nearly fallen asleep on our ride home. So we had to stopped to refresh for a bit. I remember we stopped at a small car cafe that sells fresh coconut water. As we both sat on the foot path drinking the coconut water, I remember Dad wasn’t mad at me at all and was like “It’s alright, you don’t have the student ID anyway. We could go to Galeria next week and get you the soccer ball okay.”, and I was smiling.
As soon as we got home, Mum was like ‘Where are the balls?’, and Dad had to explain her the story.
If we could learned something from the story, the silver lining we can get from my parents parenting style was; there is no such a thing as a shortcut, we gotta work for the things we want. I mean, looking back at it, I could’ve easily asked my Dad to buy me the soccer ball, as it was not something expensive to buy, or Dad could’ve easily buy me straight away without even sacrificing his day off. But I wanted to do something and get a reward. And my Dad was encouraging me to work it out to get what I want.
Dad was a man of his words. We went to Galeria the following week, initially, to buy the soccer ball, but once we got there, me and my sister changed our minds and bought basket ball and the ring instead.
I know, we were not that girly-girl 😛
thetropicalbabe 