Bye Bye BBC Chicks

Three and a half years in Indonesia, Rachel and Becky flew back home yesterday(June 26th 2006). Yes, those foreign correspondents come and go all the time, but this time it was damn difficult for me trying not to cry.

I worked with them since they arrived here in 2002 till about 3 months ago.

Those chicks are the best people you could ever work with, smart, funny, a bit crazy, caring, respectful to others (it’s a rare quality and a very important one when you have to travel everywhere and meet all kind of people and get stories out of them) and what great talents!

I’ve never seen a reporter like Rachel who could do rants about anything on camera (try, ask her to talk about dog poo, for example) for I don’t know, a full 2 minutes?! Without a single emmm or eeerrr or repeating information. She’s always so smooth and clear. The only time I saw her choked was when she did a radio stand up on the roof top of an only building left standing in Kampung Jawa, Banda Aceh looking out to the totally tsunami wiped out village and tried to put what she saw into words.

Girl, you are an awesome gob on a stick ;D

And Becky…everybody loves Becky. She surely knows her way around all those cables and fancy broadcasting equipments. That is one girl who can do everything. BBC’s producer who’s always ready to help anyone in those too often chaotic moments for TV and Radio and make things right, but then we all know it wouldn’t be broadcasting without things getting screwed up with no apparent reason once in a while. And I was always ready to supply her with a nice kretek fag when things got a bit too much.

For me they’re a lot more than just people I worked with. You can’t possibly spent more than 3 years traveling all over Indonesia together, sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags, running out of rooms in the middle of nights because of earthquakes, listening to people’s dramatic stories from one island to another, drinking beers, playing cards, arguing, and a lot of other things without feeling close to each other.

So now Rachel soon will appear on BBC News 24, and be famous. Becky will be a producer for BBC World Service Radio..and I’ll be working here in Maverick. It’s the end of an era for BBC Jakarta office….he he

It was a great 31/2 years Bubu n Bebek, thanks to you both.

I know you guys will do fantastic back in London and you don’t need no luck for that.

I miss you guys so much…

Bu bu loo