The suicide of a student activist and the wedding of a stupidity promoter's child

It has been quite a long talk these days in Indonesia. The suicidal action of Sondang Hutagalung, a student activist from UBK University in Jakarta has sparked debates whether or not it was a correct action to convey a protest message to this stupid, ignorant government with suicidal action (which is not a 'good' way to die according to most religious groups, alias prohibited: one would not go to heaven due to suicide). The other group looks more on the rationale why he burnt himself: a desperation about the country's human rights and poverty situation; and show their solidarity for him. Regardless of whether he will go to heaven or not, it is definitely none of our business (we, the livings). The Bible says that we need to care more on our life than about those who died, God will take care of them and their destiny, it's none of our business, He said.  

To describe the situation in the country recently is like to untangle tangled cloths. Is like to walk into a labyrinth. All confusing, all connected, like the Enemy of the State, they probably are everywhere, the human rights violators, the corrupt officials, the conglomerates, the mafioso..and whatever or whoever they are, uniting to develop their own network of power, to prevent others to access their power and wealth...far far away from reality of common people's life. From grass root poverty. From the life of you and me, who have to fight everyday to make ends meet. These oligarchs have different definition of 'life'. Life, in essence, for them, is to store wealth, golds, money, obligations, investments, exactly like Jesus illustrated the rich greed man in a parable in the Bible two thousand years ago: 

Luke 12:15-21 - New International Version (NIV)

¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
 ¹⁶ And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
   ¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
   ²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
   ²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

This exactly was the parable I recalled in my mind when I heard the story of a national conglomerate of I****** descendant, the owner of some biggest production houses in this country who celebrated the wedding of his child in Hawaii. He chartered jet(s) to fly the guests to Hawaii, whose accommodation were also paid by him. The television cinemas that he produced, all has no educational content, all are bullshits. In short, he sells junks and poisons to the lower class society in this country. He makes money of their ignorance. He even promotes stupidity and expect that people will stay stupid to want to voluntarily watch his stupid cinemas. And he produces money and wealth which reproduces and reproduces in bonds and properties and what other investments, only God knows. He might have spent millions of dollars for that party, to treat the rich people in glamorous ceremony. This guy, does one have a reason why he should alive? Has anyone ever told him that one day he might die and his wealth will not be of any use down in the graveyard? Has anyone told him the parable of the rich man in the Bible above? He could have donated 1/10 or even just 1 percent of his wealth to help those affected by flood and volcano eruption or building schools and hospitals in remote areas and help poor people there? How many lives he could have saved with his money, with his wealth? Or how about the corrupt officials who have more than five or ten luxurious cars  and houses everywhere, their families live in luxurious lifestyle, with money they stole from public budget that supposed to go to build health centres for poor people? To build schools for poor children? How they made deals with the public officials, the attorneys, the police so that the latter would not inquire their corruptions?

After typing all this, I think I get a little clue why Sondang Hutagalung wanted to die. Because he felt hopeless and desperate that those kind of people will get caught and will get trialed, ever in this world, in this country. He might believe that if he dies, that might prompt more awareness of others to pressure the wealthy and the power controller. I hope he rest in peace, and I hope his cause will get more attention of the powerful people up there, and will get more sympathy from public to give pressure to this ignorant government and ignorant wealthy.     

http://oase.kompas.com/read/2011/12/12/07404972/Sondang.Sang.Revolusioner.Telah.Pergi

December, the fifth, two thousand and eleven

Two thousand and eleven years Anno Domini. Today is our last working day in TL, to undertake the capacity assessment as part of the consultancy job. It all went well, I can simply say. In the morning we encountered the guy from the Bank once more, after a long conversation yesterday, spanned from the topic of nuclear physics to theism and atheism, from NASA’s artificial intelligent project to reincarnation and religion; the difference between monotheistic and non-monotheistic.

It was an interesting talk, everyone left with their heads full of thought I suppose, -including me. This morning we exchanged some small talks about weather and cities in Indonesia and supporting capacity of the environment, over the monotonous hotel breakfast. Five days in a row, -number of days we stayed there, we have only three choices of breakfast: tropical fruits with yoghurt, toast with number of spreads like butter, jams, marmalades and errr…. Vegemite, and some cereals (all sweet, I regret) and some fruit juices. Well, cannot complain more, but imagine the service one can get with US $80/night in Indonesia, yes, that will include swimming pool!

Shortly after that, our host organization in TL came and picked us up to shop for wine and coffee, two most important commodities in there. The presentation went well, everyone seemed to be all right with the findings. After question and answer and feedback session, we bade everyone goodbye, signaling that we will come again next year.

I recalled that tonight I’ve gotta go to pharmacy to purchase Dio’s medicines. I forgot whether I really prayed (or not) that morning, but what made this day special was the way too many, too many indeed, coincidences and fortunate moments that I encountered. I listed down some as follow:

1.      The immigration asked me to put the bottle of wine that I carried to cabin on my luggage. Could have been frustrating to find mine because they have strolled the trolley on the lane to the plane, but strange enough, mine was on top of piles of luggage, just like waiting for me to come. So it was easy to unzip my luggage and put the bottle inside.

2.      The flight was on time, unlike the previous week when it was said to delay for 5 hours!

3.      The transit in Bali did not take much time; unlike when we just came.

4.       After taking out our luggage, I saw that the queue for cabs was way too long. That wasn’t good, I thought, so decided to run to the bus line and whoop! There the Pasar Minggu bus came first, first, like never before..so I jumped in.

5.      Fortunately, it was around 4 pm, and whoa, no traffic jam on the way! So I arrived at home when day was still bright.

6.      I took an ojek from the last stop to my place, and when the ojek stopped, he said ‘alhamdulilah’ for the very short trip, and said thank you and again ‘alhamdulilah’ because I said he can take the change. I could not stop myself from mumbling, following him to say ‘alhamdulilah’, or thanks God (whichever language my mind can speak to God who understands all languages I suppose). If he was able to say thank you for the IDR 10,000 that I paid him, what more should I do other than give thousand thanks for the abundant blessings God has given to me?

7.      I put all the luggage in my room and soon got to get the public transport to the pharmacy, and guess what, no traffic in the street! The street is well-known as ‘jalur neraka’ or ‘hell’s lane’ due to its unstoppable congestion, day and night, weekend or weekday.  So again, I considered myself lucky.

8.      I took the medicines and returned to my place.

Against all odds, I believe that there’s an invisible hand guided me, brought me there and made everything just all right in time. Knowing that, I’m glad that I’m not alone. That the Divine Being is always be there for me, for the good cause that He intended me to do. Ever since the world began.

Adventus

Adventus week has just started today.
It means:
Waiting.
Get ready.
Patiently.
With respect.
For the coming of the Son of Man.

Veni..veni..Emmanuel...

First writing - 2011

I'm back.
Back to my home country.
Back to my hometown.
Back to my blog.
In fact, this is my first attempt to fill this blog again, after, oh, after almost a year (to be exact: 10 months plus so and so days, -will come back later with the detail :).

Oh, ye, hear that, what kind of song that I can vaguely hear from here? Yeah, it's the late Nike Ardilla, Bintang something. Then you know that I'm somewhere in that faraway land from the centre of change in this country. The song from almost twenty years back,which people still love (because of lack of access to newest and latest information? Or simply just because they love the oldies?).

I kinda don't know what to write, too much things squeezed on my mind since then. Much more reflections and less time to write.

NOTE: this post supposed to be uploaded some time in October 2011, but I guess because of internet disconnection, it was stopped in the middle and became a draft, that I happened to find out just now. I put this note and will upload it soon.

Visual person

I have an inability to stay too long with narrow screen. I love computers, but typing in computer sometimes can block some brilliant ideas ('though it's pretty seldom that I have brilliant ideas :). At least twice in in my life I heard that ideas in our brain must be released through our hands, into papers, or card boards, or other media, if possible with colors. Yes, I think I work better with visual. Visual type of person.

Electric Youth!

I heard these lyrics on the radio just now:

Electric youth
Feel the power, you see the energy
Comin' up
Coming on strong
The future only belongs
To the future itself/in the hands of itself
And the future is
Electric youth
It's true you can't fight it
Live by it
The next generation...

It's electric..
-----

It's Debbie Gibson! The pop star of my teenager time! Gosh, it's been ages ago since the last time I heard her name. It was in SMP time. She's so popular and then no more. I mean, never heard of her anymore after the songs like Love is Blind, this one, Lost in Your Eyes and some other I forgot. Where is she now? 

Wintry days

Typical winter days:
*wake up late
*frequent checking of weather forecast
*layers of clothes
*voice of crows
*black fashions
*hard to get vitamin D from the sun
*electricity bill is skyrocketed
*fewer water-related activities

NOTE:
1) this used to be a draft of something I was going to write in 2010 or so, when I was in Melbourne. But then because of one thing after another, I forgot that it's still kept in the draft section, therefore I just post it now, today, in tropical Indonesia where winter does not exist.

2) The picture here, has nothing to do with winter in Melbourne anyway. It was the pic I took in London up from the London Eye, back in 2006, in autumn instead. But the raindrops effect on the glass creates the 'wintry' effect or so I guess.

Ghost stories in Indonesia are the equivalent of weather small talks in the four seasons countries

These last 3 months have been busy months with the many visits from friends and family members from outside town. Mom, my brother, in law and daughter, brother in law, my sister and some friends from Bdg, Kpg and I forgot where else.

When we ran out of conversations, what do you think is the neutral 'everybody knows and experienced it at least once in their life' kind of topic? Yes, guess you know, it's ghost stories. It's everywhere in country, different styles, similar styles, plethora of them scattered in almost the entire corners of the country. Everybody at least have experienced it once. At least. Meaning, more often they experienced more than once, some have even experienced it daily! Alias, indigo. They smell it, feel it, see it, talk to it, scared to it, dare to yell to it, and only god knows what else. But you know, I have to say that it is interesting because this is a neutral topic. It is not too personal, not too specific. Pretty general, can create a good smooth conversation (yes, you have some agree, some do not agree, some believe, some do not believe, some experienced a little encounter, some embrace the whole encounter -talking with 'them', for god's sake!). A very good stimulation and good ingredients for a good conversation, right? So I'd say, the Indonesian ghost stories must be conserved, or preserved as national heritage. If Westerners have their weather small talk, we have the ghost small-to-big talk! A topic I guarantee will attract people to join and keep the conversation pretty long, will not offend anyone. 

Mr Gaarder was in town!

Yes, the author of Sophie's World was in Jakarta yesterday, and I missed his session because I was just looking at my friend's FB status that morning, only an hour prior to his lecture. That was a mission impossible to go to the venue where he spoke in an hour, during the peak time in the morning. So I just let it go, regrettably. Were I knew it earlier, I would have brought some of the books that he wrote and have his autograph on them. At least the new one, The Castle of Pyrenees, the latest book of him. Oooh..how come??????? This might have been once in a life time opportunity, and I missed it! -If only he knew that I collected almost all of his books, except for one or two that I missed. But I missed him! Aaargh............

This is not allowed

Talking about what is allowed and what is not, is it still matter these days? I know a lot of people make mistakes when they are tempted to do something they should not do, -because of many different reasons such as morality, religious reason, self integrity, rule of law, etc. But making mistakes meaning they realize that it is not a right thing to do, that there is a rule they violate, or standard they do not adhere to, a ruler they jump over. That's a different story. But when they have no idea what they do, and others tell them that they do something wrong, the normal reaction is, usually, they will ask 'But why not?'. That is the problem: these two people have different set of standard. A's standard is 1,2,3, while B's standard is 4,5,6. They will go side by side but literally they will never meet at any point in time because they are like two parallel lines, there's no way that they will meet. Somehow, the experience I've just encountered reflected this illustration. No details provided, but when I tried to remind, say, M, that it was not allowed, this person asked me back, 'But why not? What's wrong with that?'. Then I know right away that we don't have the same set of standard. I walked the other line, and that person just walked another parallel line. We might say hi to each other, but we will never stop at the same point. So I said adieu.

Forever young, so long dear cousin!

That day I slept at 3am. 25th of July? I came back from watching Java Rockin' Land that night. Ed Kowayczky, Neon something, Godbless, Power Slaves, with the main attraction was Cranberries (yeah, they're cool!). I felt good, although it was dusty and crowded in Ancol where the concert took place.

I got the cab back after some friends dropped me in front of the taxi line near a hotel in Salemba at 2.30am. Brushing my teeth, washing my feet, I did sleep a little while.

Then at 4.30 my mobile rang. My sister in law called me and said that my cousin died in an accident. He fell from his motor bike, hitting a tree and died right away, even before he reached the hospital. Perhaps from heart attack. For god shake, he's just 35 in April! The picture of his face kept coming to my mind after my sister in law closed the conversation. She was almost crying, as I did too. I blinked my eyes, trying to get sleep again, but I couldn't. "Oh well, perhaps it was the wrong person she was talking about", I calmed myself. I sent text to my brother in Holland. He verified it. He was almost crying too. He said, "No more T in this world that we know. His life was quite miserable, sorrows came and gone, and it's all over now. The history of T ended today", he sobbed. I felt my nose blocked. Couldn't stop the tears down from my watery eyes.

Then I remember the last conversation we've had the last time. He said, "Few months ago I had an accident when I and my friends were in the car, from our way back from out of town. We hit something (I forgot), then the car was almost flew, cracked everywhere, no one died, all passengers were injured, but I was the worst one. I was in comma for quite some times. I clearly remember the time when I opened my eyes and felt myself back in my body (the spirit perhaps?). I felt heavy. I opened my eyes and saw all people wearing whites and the light glared my eyes. I thought I was dead. Then I saw doctor. Then my brother. These are faces I know. And I started to feel my skin. Oh, maybe that's how the feeling when one dies!", he said in awe.

I clearly remembered his countenance when he talked about it, and how we joked when I said that means you were given a second chance to live, to breath. He said yes and he said he was going to fix his life. From the problems he had with the family and everything. And I realised that he died, and this time it was for real. "How was it feel, brother? How was it feel to die?", I whispered. I hoped the pain was not too much for him. I hoped he left in peace. I prayed that he lived peacefully in eternity. Leaving this world and all his problems behind. And meeting God in heaven. Rest in peace my brother, rest in eternal peace...

*In memoriam, our beloved cousin, TF, a people's people, a friend to everyone, from rich to poor, from the popular to the unpopular. Who could blend with almost everyone without border.

Should have been in December 2010

Yeah, that's when U2 came to have concert in Melbourne. I should have written this in December. I have bought the ticket for 46 dollars, with the expectation that I would have been able to fly to Melbourne to watch the concert in early December. To see U2 in person is one of my bucket list I need to check, -I'd often say to myself.

Then my friend, P, woke me up from the utopia, from the lies I kept telling myself. I've been fooling myself by pretending that I would have got the visa in an instance, that's before I transferred money to P to buy me ticket Jakarta-Melbourne for 1st of December 2010. P asked "Hey, by the way, do you have your visa already? cos I have mine, extended for a year stay". I said, "Nope, but I'll try". I did downloaded the visa form, filled some rows already, with too much expectation. Then P said, the sentence was like lighting crashed upon me, like a bucket of ice cubes pouring on my head, waking me up from my dream (OK, that's lebay:), "Ria, I don't think you'll get the visa within 2 months, in addition to the fact that you've just returned from Oz in August. Remember that your scholarship does not allow that you'll get in to Oz before two years". Oh gosh, I thought I should have known that earlier. But I was too nekat, blinded by my strong wish to watch they sing in person. And he told me the truth I didn't really want to hear. And I was sad. He transferred the money for ticket back to me, and I realised that U2 was not yet within my reach..the bucket list #something has not been ticked, yet. SOmeday maybe..someday I hope....

*PS: I met my friend P the other day. He told me that by accident he shook hand with Bono on their way into the stadium where the concert was took place. When he said that, I felt like a brokenhearted person..Broken heart for remembering the chance that I've missed.. :(

First is number 10

Yeah, my first blog post post-Melbourne time is on October 4, 2011 (month number 10 of a year). What a long break! "Where have I been?", I am asking myself the rhetoric question. I don't know, it's probably just the laziness on my part, but to write well I need a combination of quietness, cold weather, beautiful, picturesque view, -a bit of elevation perhaps (to create a sense of perspective, distancing myself from others), -based on my experience in Melbourne.

Ah, I'm exaggerating here. I've been pretty productive with my FS blog, remember? Where have I been when I wrote those things? In Makassar. In Jakarta. In Kupang (I did start writing there, yeah, hot weather, lots of mosquitoes, not quiet at all I reckon, -in one of those new years' eve, I forget the detail). Perhaps it's the combination of poor internet connection, deficit of ideas on my side, a way too much distractions from so many people being around, and so on. Maybe I am just looking for excuses.

Well, again, I don't really know what should I write. But I know WHY I write now. Because I, again, am facing this stuck of ideas to write my ToR (darn, ToR, stuck? that is soooo pathetic dude, we're not talking about academic paper or article or anything, it's a T-O-R, for god shake!). This signifies the urgency of this problem. Of the deficit of ideas. I don't know. I don't really know. Maybe I'm just too tired. 4 days and nights in a row, working all day and night (till midnight, pretty non stop meetings and discussions), have made my mind dull. I wish, this stuck -ing will be over sooner than later. Coz the deadline is on the way. Tomorrow it is.