#13 Smoker

I smoke. A lot. Like 2 packs of 16 cigarettes a day.

I started smoking in college, in a non-relevant event for smoking. It was during a Theater and Acting course that I took in my third year that we had to act Agatha Christie’s “Mousetrap”. The setting of the script was in winter in the UK, and all casts (including the female ones) had one or two scenes in which they had to smoke. Our teacher, Ms. Kay Johnson, didn’t let us adapt any of the acts, except the smoking part, but all of us decided that we would act the smoking parts to make our acting more believable in the always-hot-summer Indonesia.

During the two weeks rehearsal, the female casts would gather around and learn  how to smoke. I also learned to smoke every time the student clubs had meetings. I observed how my male friends smoked and practiced how smoke convincingly.

During the performance, my parents were in the audience and they didn’t raise any complaints seeing me smoke on stage.

Well, the rest is history 🙂

PS: My friend, Adri Sabaora, once protested me smoking. He said that because I was a girl, I should have not smoked. I retaliated by saying that if that’s his reason, I would continue smoking to show that it’s just a sexist reason with no basis whatsoever. For health reason, I would probably quit. But not now.