Nineteen year old Indonesian teenager, Aldi Novel Adilang, worked as a fisherman alone on a wooden raft called a rompong. One day when he was working on the raft a storm struck and lost his connection to his seabed and was sent hopelessly adrift into the Pacific without a motor or paddle. After one week he ran out of the food that he had brought onto the boat and had to survive by catching fish and drinking water that he took from the ocean and strained out through his shirt.

In order to try and contact any nearby ship he lit a lamp any time he saw a ship in the distance, but none could see the little light coming off the small raft. By the time he was three weeks in he had drifted almost 1,200 miles away from his original location. One day when he saw another nearby ship he sent out a light and the ship saw him and he swam to it and the crew pulled him in. On the boat he was given blankets and cookies. He is now back home with his family recovering from the event.