CHAPTER 5 – A Very Exhausting Night
Monday evening, approaching midnight, 3 January 2005. We landed at Sultan Iskandar Muda Airport, Banda Aceh, after an approximately four-hour Adam Air flight. My heart was beating hard.
The airport was truly crowded and hectic. Dozens of cargo aircraft carrying aid supplies and passenger planes had to wait their turn before finally being allowed to land. An official even told me that his plane had to fly to Kuala Lumpur due to technical problems while in its holding pattern, awaiting its turn to land.
Thank God, our plane landed smoothly with no problems. Once on the ground we were immediately confronted by chaos, with many people in great agitation and panic. Reporters, volunteers, and NGO activists all spilled over the modest-sized airport. In several corners I saw women wearing high-heel shoes and bouffant hairdos. How they could find the time to make themselves up in that fashion baffled me.
Elsewhere in the airport people were sitting with aimless looks on their faces. It appeared they were local people looking for relatives, or wanting to get a flight back to Jakarta. Photocopies of snapshots of lost persons were pasted everywhere; the walls were also full of haphazard news like “Fulan is safe, heading for Jakarta” or “So and so is with uncle so and so”, or “Father is safe, brother John Doe is gone.”
Wartawan Tempo sejak 1998. Menjelajah berbagai desk, antara lain ekonomi, nasional, kesehatan, sains, gaya hidup, dan investigasi. Sejak Januari 2009 ditugasi menjadi Direktur Eksekutif Institut Tempo, sebuah lembaga yang dicita-citakan menjadi pusat pengembangan jurnalistik di Indonesia. Lulusan Fakultas Biologi, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, tahun 1996. Setelah lulus kuliah, bergabung dengan Majalah Warta Ekonomi (1996) sebagai staf riset dan kemudian menjadi reporter di majalah Panji Masyarakat (1997).