I like to write, I do think too much, but for fear of writing and thinking too much and anoy too many people, I have restricted most of my bloggering to contacts only, at least those personal ones. May we all live in peace and harmony. Thank you for visiting my site!
1. Use the color pink (studies have shown pink to be powerful stress reducing color, change laptop wallpaper pinkish, buy a pink fluffy pillow etc). 2. Turn off TV/ don't watch 'too much' (especially the news, use only one source of news info). (I guess same for other media with related content). 3. Laugh (go to internet play games, watch sitcoms on TV etc.) 4. Help other people (thus help to forget own problems). 5. Drink Black Tea (studies have shown black tea have ability to reduce level of stress hormones in body). 6. Find nice green quiet place to pass through on way to work.
reference: my summary of article from "Real Simple Magazine" (they actually use around 4 PhD people in health physical fitness for this piece).
"... swimmers who've come up with all sorts of amusing theories for Phelps' dominance. He's from outer space. He's come back from the future in a time machine. He's some sort of human rocket.
The official Xinhua News Agency dubbed Phelps "the American superfish." (AP).
At first I was very much taken by the "man from future" theory, but now, about couple of minutes after watching Phelps won his 7th Gold Medal in a row by 0.01 seconds, I think he might be related to that sea creature who have managed to evolve on land then came back to the water to evolve into carnivorous-walking-whale (Phelps is similarly highly carnivorous as I had mentioned here), so the Chinese might be on to something. Four-year-old scientist-paleontologist roommate would call this creature Ambulocetus. This early carnivorous 'walking whale' is known to hover beneath water surface and jump out stealthily to prey on creatures by waterside.
Phelps actually jumped out of the water at his final butterfly stroke and touched the digital timer wall even as the guy who eventually got the Silver Medal was 'there' first. One more swim from Phelps to be man with most gold medal won at Olympic event ever ...
Evolution of super swimming creature here. New York Times Coverage here.
ps. I am saddened by fact the my TV do not air ANY badminton tournament! ... grrrrr...
Michael Phelps Statistic As of Aug 14 2008: 11 career gold medals, 5 Beijing Gold medal, "Greatest Olympian Ever" title.
"Start with three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, and mayonnaise; add one omelet, a bowl of grits, and three slices of French toast with powdered sugar; then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes."(Taken from here.)
I like to track the medals here. We Indonesians are very good at lifting weights seemingly. Two bronze already! I remember the first time Indonesia won its first olympic medal ever. I think it was the bronze on archery. It was pretty cool, with all the negative attitude around, to think that some Indonesians can be at international level, go indonesia! :D
Looks like a typical Maryland guy, I know, I used to be a Maryland-er. People from Maryland are never formidable looking, they are too nice, they always open the door for you and smile, even if you are about 20 steps away from the door, they can't help but execute that need to open that door for you and smile. But in the water, he is one you don't want to mess with, he's the guy to beat! (note: 6 gold medals in the 2004 Olympics, 8 olympic medals in total!).
Michael Phelps as harmless smiling dude (Image taken from here):
Phelps in muscle action (taken from news.bbc.co.uk):
When I'm feeling blue, I don't listen to that Phil Collins' song, maybe because I don't have the song in my ipod, maybe because I never owned a Phil Collins' song, but interestingly, Phil Collins' was the guy that introduced me to 'cool music' back when I was ten. My best friend had a cool sister that listened to Phil Collins. I forgot which song it was, but I got how to differentiate cool music from non-cool music through Mr. Collins.
But anyway, nowadays, when I wake up in the morning and start to feel blue, I have this very handy book by Orhan Pamuk called Other Colors. I pick a random chapter, sometimes its one I've read before, it doesn't matter.
The book is a collection of essays Pamuk has written throughout his life. Some can be real long, some just even about three paragraphs long, but they're all great. None of them are too long such that one good read exceeds more than 30 minutes in scale per essay. Pamuk can talk about his watch or a flying bug and make it sound so interesting, better yet, of high worth, even though it is actually nothing, and really worthless. Maybe because you always feel like he is not talking about himself, but actually talking about you, though he is really talking about himself. So you feel you are of worth, even though many times you think you're not, or that it is really just nothing. Plus, he is actually a very funny guy too, so overall you get entertained.
Just now I finished up reading his chapter titled "Frankfurter". Even though there he is talking about himself, how he couldn't resist eating this Frankfurter from the streets, something his mother has always forbade him to do, stemming from the questionable source of the meat within, it was as if he was talking about this one memory I had walking around the streets of slummy Jakarta with my father.
One time we were walking down the slummy streets of Jakarta, about 100 paces from our house, I think I was going to the doctor or something, maybe coming home from the doctor. It was my father that always took me to the doctor. My mother is totally against going to such places. Actually my mother never goes out anywhere unless it is with someone and it is something that is related to grocery shopping or mall wandering. My mother also never dealt with school matters. She rather be home and have my much older lady cousin 'substitute her' to take me to that potential violin class lesson I've been dying to enroll into. One time people did thought that my much older cousin was my mother. They were really surprised when they found that she was only 12 years older than me. Well, it end up I lost interest in the violin class and decided to heck with it and never did enroll. I do have issues with my mother. Though she was a 'stay at home mom', she never really had time to do stuff with me and be all 'mommy like.' But I loved it when she braided my hair.
Anyway, I was walking down the streets with my father and I felt really thirsty. We went to this slummy street vending place, with that long wooden bench and swaying rectangular cloth hanging over it. A couple of really dark people were sitting there, some looked like those guys that drove the rickety metal 'bemo' for me to and from school, maybe because everything was just so slummy that everything just felt dark and filthy.
My dad said, "so you want the Teh Botol (sweet tea in a bottle)?". I said yes. The lady asked if we wanted ice in it. I said yes. My dad sort of winced and said that perhaps the ice is not such a good idea. But I didn't say anything back, and since my dad never really liked to say no to any of his kids, he just gave me the plastic bag with the ice in it and we went away. My thirst was quenched and I did not get a tummy ache after it. My father gets really irked when he sees us, now parents, try to say no to our kids. One time he had this great battle debate with my eldest sister over this theme, even though the whole event started with my littlest sister trying to say no to her kid about eating something that was not nutritious. My eldest sister always argued 'for us'.
So this is why I like to read Pamuk's Other Colors essays. Because every time I read them, my mind starts to wonder and recall some of these memories I have stored in me that I had not anticipated to think of when I woke up feeling blue in the morning. Memories are always good, though they might have not been good when you were experiencing it. But memories are good especially those that come from our childhood, as the great Alyosya Karamazov said, though it might have been the monk in him that said it. That last bit sentence is all about the new book I just finished called The Brothers Karamazov, a description of which you can find in one Book Review post previous to this one.
After several lines of "Frankfurter" I got real hungry and turned on my yahoo messenger and started to beep, or actually honk, our beloved father of the 4 year old, as my yahoo messenger is embedded within the ducky sounding Adium software, to buy me up those donner kebab gyro for me, it's all 100% halal New York City. After all, he is the only one of 'us' out there wandering the streets, you can't order these online. You have to physically go to the guy with the hot tongs over the smoking vendor place and verbalize your want, it's $5 a pop, $6 with soda, I think. I will have a great lunch!
"...competition for kindergarten places can rival that of Ivy League admission ... Despite mounting layoffs on Wall Street and the broader economic downturn, private schools in New York City continue to thrive, with administrators and consultants saying this year has been the most competitive yet for admission to kindergarten. Some estimate that several hundred children were rejected from every place they applied....Tuition is $28,000 for the 2008-9 school year, rising to $30,000 the next year..."
Actually Toby pay $0 tuition to play computer all day in Mama's summer camp. Mama is open to watch other kids play computer all day if she is also given $30,000.. yeah! :D.
What happened to Ratna Suminar..eeehh.. sorry.. Yessy Gusman? She left indonesia, got MBA in America then went back to talk to this real slow talking guy to promote her activism on book reading or the building of "Taman Baca" all over Indonesia. Good for Yessy! I knew she was cool!
She was my first Idol, before I knew anything about Lady Diana, Yessy was the most beautiful person ever! (I just wish the talk show guy would talk a little faster, drive me nuts listening to this ! :D).
" ... Ah children, ah dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is if you do something good and rightful! ... You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory" (Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky).
In my pre-Dostoevsky world, my memory was incoherent. I had "read several books of fiction", "several literary works", but now in my post-Dostoevsky world, there can only be one man: Dostoevsky.
If I am stuck in an island and I am allowed to have only one book, I would say The Brother's Karamazov. If I was blind and was never allowed to go out and know anything about the human world, I would ask someone to sneak me in The Brother's Karamazov, then I will never need to go out anywhere. I can just read this book over and over again, it will simulate the human living world for me in perfect sense, even as I repeat, I will always come out different every time. It would be as if I was out there actually living, with all its unpredictabilities, with all its consistencies. Living human is a paradox, it is contradictory. If I was an alien and wanted to find out about how it is like being human and living human, I would read The Brother's Karamazov. It was said that Leo Tolstoy had this book beside him on his deathbed.
I say this because when you read Karamazov you will get everything there is to know about being human: "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss!" -- Einstein. It is not a book about the theory of living, about how the 'world works', about some solutions about how to live, it is a book about living in all its senses, in all its 'human' senses. Living human is never 'resolved.' There are moments of resolutions, but once you reach one, you find something contradictory to that fact.
Dostoevsky has capped human life in a bottle, he has put the human soul into this book, purified, crystallized, yet organic, with all its perfections, its imperfections. Confusing, clear and funny. Some may see it as how it was like to live in pre-modern Russia, but I see it as an orchestra about the human soul. It is that beautiful, it is that sad, it is that tragic, it is that hopeful. If music had Mozart, literature has Dostoevsky.
Each character in the novel is not a representation of some human character, they are essential living human beings, pulsating, breathing, raw and paradoxical, each with his and her own soul.
I can say I had 'finished' reading the book, but I can never finish it in a real sense. You can ask me what the book is about, what the plot is, but my describing it will just lessen things. I can say that it is about fathers and sons, about brothers, about mothers and daughters, about lovers, about friends and neighbors, about the weak and the strong, about being poor, about having it all. It is about the mind and the heart, about love, hate, about faith and disbelief, and those many things in between, the numb feeling, the excruciating pain, the humour. But I can tell you that the ending is all about happiness. It is about peace. The peace that you can only get after living life, looking back, stopping, then facing that end of the line we humans call death. Humans never satisfy, but humans can make peace.
There is just too many things to say, that can only be said by Dostoevsky, that can only be perceived through the lens of The Brothers Karamazov.
Perhaps such a grand work of art, as I see The Brothers Karamazov is, can only be written by Dostoevsky. On April 23, 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested and ordered to be executed. This is his description of the event written as a letter to his brother Mikhail:
"Today, December 22, we were driven to Semyonovsky Parade Ground. There the death sentence was read to us all, we were given the cross to kiss, swords were broken over our heads, and our final toilet was arranged (white shirts). Then three of us were set against the posts so as to carry out the execution. We were summoned in threes; consequently I was in the second group, and there was not more than a minute left to live. I remembered you, my brother, and all yours; at the last minute you, you alone, were in my mind, and it was only then that I realized how much I love you, my dearest brother! I also succeeded in embracing Pleshcheyev and Durov, who were beside me, and bade farewell to them. Finally the retreat was sounded, those who had been tied to the posts were led back, and they read to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives. Thereupon followed the actual sentence ...
Brother, I'm not depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no mater what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter -- this is what life is, herein lies its task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood. Yes, it's true! That head which created, lived by the highest life of art, which acknowledged and had come to know the highest demands of the spirit, that head has been cut from my shoulders. Memory remains, and the images I have created and still not molded in flesh. They will leave their harsh mark on me, it is true! But my heart is left me, and the same flesh and blood which likewise can love and suffer and desire and remember, and this is, after all, life. On voit le soleil! Well, good-bye brother! Do not grieve for me ... Never until now have such rich and healthy stores of spiritual life throbbed in me." (Translated from Russian by Richard Pevear)
So then I will quote a passage of The Brother's Karamazov (translated from Russian by Richard Pevear and Larrissa Volohonsky) as I close in its more 'complete' form, the scene by the stone where the now dead boy Ilyusha once visited with his father every afternoon to make their dream. As they parted,friends and the young man Alyosya Karamazov paused and stood by the stone:
"My little doves--let me call you that--little doves, because you are very much like those pretty gray blue birds, now, at this moment, as I look at your kind, dear faces -- my children, perhaps you will not understand what I am going to say to you, ... but still you will remember and some day agree with my words. You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially from childhood ... And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation. Perhaps we will even become wicked later on .. will laugh at people's tears and at those who say "I want to suffer for all people" -- yet no matter how wicked we may be .. as soon as we remember how we buried Ilyusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we've been talking just now, so much as friends, so together, by this stone, the most cruel and jeering man among us .. will still not dare laugh within himself at how kind and good he was at this present moment! ... Let us never forget him, and may his memory be eternal and good in our hearts now and unto ages of ages! " ... Ah children, ah dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is if you do something good and rightful!" -- Alyosya Karamazov.
I am finishing up the book I will never finish reading tonight, so happily I went to the bookstore today to replace it. Actually it was an accident, as in actuality I have several books already lined up that I have not read due to being distracted by the PhD (by and by I do find that the PhD is a very annoying afterthought, like a horrible rash that will not go away!).
Anyway, we had finished with our watch of the live spectacular "Walking With Dinosaurs" event at that great Madison Square Garden place (where in year 1971 Muhamad Ali made his smashing boxing fight match), and right beside the place is that big commercial Border's Bookstore. We were very happy and went inside (note, Dinosaur event will be updated in another blog coming soon).
I grabbed the book by great guy Randy Pausch (which I took to read up and then cried over while waiting for kid to peruse the store's collection of Dino books and the papa to browse and collect up on new books on finance and the likes). Finally, I decided to finish up on my weeping (also bits of laughing and being inspired as this book is an extension of his great lecture that is all that which I had just said) I placed the book back on its display rack.
As I was doing this motion I realized that the display where the book hung on was actually attached to a rack of books written by people with last name "D through Dostoevsky", actual guy who wrote the book that I will never finish reading. Though, interestingly, Pausch's name has no letter "D" in it. I know God put Pausch's book there in purpose, it might be Pausch is watching over me too, may his family be blessed, may he rest in perfect peace. It is interesting to find that Pausch's book is also available in Spanish!
So then the cycle of book meandering got started, ending up with these new books that I plan to replace thebook I will never finish reading:
1. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Written by same guy who wrote thebook I will never finish reading, but this one is much shorter (only 130 pages vs 800 pages) and I guess I can recommend it to those who plan to never want to read those other thousand page books by him but want to know the roots wherein these monstrous stuff came out from, thus feeling much rejoice over it. "Here is a central feature of that special kind of fiction Dostoevsky created in the great novels beginning with Crime and Punishment: the tendency to parcel out to his characters portions of his own beliefs and doubts, mixing truths and half-truths, qualifying a statement through the tone of voice in which it is uttered, having the utterer himself call it into question elsewhere -- and all in the absence of any such authoritative author's voice as might provide some ultimate point of view in more conventional novels." (Donald Fanger, 1974). No authority? I like that!
2. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann.
I am guilty of being attracted to stuff written by people who are dead, except for my idolatry of the still living Pamuk. So most books I am "attracted to" somehow end up being written by someone already dead. Dostoevsky is dead, Thomas Mann is dead. So moving from Russia (Dostoevsky), I meander to Germany (this is Thomas Mann). I am very interested in this description of the book: "Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947.. a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkuhn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul-- and the ability to love his fellow man. Leverkuhn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism" (From Book Back Cover, Vintage International, August 1999).
So I am moving far to the end of my rope now, from east and west saga (Muslim vs Secularism) that is Pamuk, then to grappling the meaning of belief and faith versus non-belief that is Dostoevsky, then finally to that edge of nothingness in Mann. To tie it all up, I consistently go back to Woolf, in her quest for ultimate freedom as related to our own humanity.
So why am I reading these books? Who knows. It is really a waste of time as it would be more profitable for me to write codes on the computer so that I can finally be cured of the PhD, but it beats Gossip Girl, though I still like Law and Order (Criminal intent), and a bit of King of Queens reruns, though the father is now caught up in Grey's Anatomy. But there is something that you may never find in TV and movies that can only be experienced through the act of reading a Novel, that may never even be replaced by short stories and essays (as Pamuk suggested). So I read these Novels because I like to have these experiences, making my day run better, more interesting, less boring.
I take solace in these works as I am forced to face such 'human plight' we all have to grapple with everyday. We never asked to be born, we never asked to be put where we are now (most of the time), we don't know where we are going (except this one unfortunate event we are always sure of at the end of the line), but we sure heck 'feel' all the time that it is happening to us, things we think at times to be impossible to acknowledge and like to 'forget' or rather shuffle under the rug. I believe that happiness is about accepting this fate and embracing life at its greatest moment of impossibility. These books are testament to this 'impossibility', an acknowledgement of our being 'here', whatever it may mean. The Novel is a superior form of this expression.
Why do I care? Because such things just 'haunt' me, and these people who took time to write about them amuse me, help me feel less bothered about things. So then, I can have a happy glorious time commencing with the new season of American Idol, coming soon, without feeling too much distracted over these 'nothings'. But first, don't forget the 080808 Beijing Olympics, I always like those gymnasts and the swims, especially people jumping off planks, something I had never learned to be brave enough to do, so I got a 6 on ORKES (that is Olah Raga dan Kesehatan, a long and boring Indonesian form of sports, which I first thought to be an acronym for music learning for some reason). The 6 is indeed one mark away from total failure!
We are stable now progressing in the beingness and state of zombieness. Both tkmaia and robymuhamad have been working very hard to attain such zombie state, a state that has been very hard to come by, taking about 4 years to modify and perfect.
This success is perhaps related to the fact that the baby alternate of the zombie (that is the offspring of zombie tkmaia & zombie robymuhamad) has grown into a more 'manageable' entity.
Zombies work 24/7, resting only during sleep (which means a reduction of around 5 from the 24 hours), though at very rare moments, each grown zombie is entitled to replenish blood by doing non-zombie related activities, that is pretending to be human.
So last Tuesday at around 5pm, zombie tkmaia decided to transform to the human state for about 2 hours, as indeed the movie "Batman", actually "The Dark Knight," takes that long to end, a perfect match to the ~800 odd page Karamazov book she carried with her that day, which she tried to decipher as she waited for the lights to dim, eating some bits of M&M along with bottled filtered water, while guy with giant popcorn beside her tried to gawk. Everything in total is 3 times the price it should be, including the movie ticket.
She was moved somewhat to find that the storyline matches that of the Karamazov world, though maybe it is because her head just like to haphazardly connect everything now with that world, as she is indeed a loyal fan. As she ended her reading with the dialogue between the devil and rational Ivan, merging into that famous murder trial of the father (page. 666), the lights dimmed, the movie started (though not exactly, she had to wait about 10 minutes or so for the pre-movie commercials to end, which excited her into wanting to watch these soon-to-come-out-movies: the new 007, the new brad pitt/john malcovich/george clooney dark-satire-semi-slapstick-comedy, the new White guy Robert Downey Jr. surgically transformed African American war-action superhero actor put into island of real guerrilla warriors out for revenge and need to kill Americans satire-comedy. Comedy and action is her main deal, but action is the thing to watch nowadays, exponentially eye-catching real 21st century stuff, the wave of the future).
Many times did she get lost inside the 'highly philosophical' dialogue of this comic book turned big screen, which some critics have suggested as the 'Godfather' of the comic book movies. The Joker (a.k.a Heath Ledger, may he rest in peace) was so cool, soft-spoken persona turned devil incarnate, she can't believe it!
Yes so indeed, many times did she get lost in between these comic book lines, at times thinking that it is a tad bit more 'archaic' than the Karamazov book she is reading. Though perhaps this is also related to the fact that she can be 'hard of hearing'. She plans to re-see the movie when it comes out in DVD format.
She loved the ending where Batman, the Cop and the Two-Faced District Attorney spewed out corny comic book grandiose one-lined statements, as she is indeed a person of simplistic taste. Moral of the story:
In these 'dark times', people need to have faith, but they also need a place "to blame" for this "faith" to be real. Who is our true hero? The person we put our faith in, or the person we blame? It doesn't matter. Sometimes, people don't have to know the whole truth.
So Batman drives away as that ultimate loner 'tragic-hero' (tkmaia has always indeed been into that tragic hero motif), in one dark wide-wheeled motorbike. "Blame it on batman" she thought, "blame it on batman!" It doesn't matter, "I can take it", Batman ended, his suit indeed awesome-ly made. He is our "Dark Knight."
Incidentally, the cool Batman suit is out on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, along with other superhero outfits and some other non-wearable undecipherable superhero inspired costumes made by upscale world-wide fashion designers, this includes hair-do made of coca-cola can bits and electrically wired shoulder pads. Believe me, I've seen it!
To end this post, I will promote you with some bits of the Joker, of course also some of everything else in between:
The death of that young Indonesian scout reminded me again of how short lived an Indonesian life span is. In an unrelated event yesterday, robymuhamad suddenly came into news of some morbid statistics about his friends. He found out that one of his childhood friends have been dead for quite a while. This surprised him as all this time, having not been in contact with the friend since childhood, he assumed the friend to still be alive and kicking, as all people of his generation should 'normally' still be, those still reaching the age of 35.
Then he started to find out about the fate of his other friends, some were murdered, some died from some fatal disease, some were killed in some sort of 'accident', all this happening to them at an age < 35 years old. Pretty morbid I said.
I'm always apprehensive now when an text message comes into my cell phone, many times it is about the sudden death of an uncle or aunt, and since I have a lot, in a year I can get about 2 to 4 incidents, with deaths occurring at around 50-65 years of age, mostly resulting from blocked access to 'proper' medical care. For example, the recent death of my uncle happened as he was in the hospital in small town Sukabumi, still 'waiting' for the doctor who had left for the weekend. There are only so few of these medical professionals around in Sukabumi. So many times, you just have to wait. I can only imagine what it's like somewhere more remote.
Of course then I begin to think about my parents who are still living, my mom is 62, my dad going on 68 years. I feel very apprehensive about these things. The Indonesian statistic is midway between the prosperous Americans and the warring state of Afghanistan (see life expectancy statistics below), a very ambivalent state, with no definite identity.
So I started to think on how all this ties into the drama of 'being Indonesian', of being relegated as those people of that exotic 'third world', which is somewhat of a curiosity in 'prosperous' 'modern' and 'western' America. And since I live in America now, I think being Indonesian as a curiosity as well.
The Indonesian story is always short lived. Our heroes are always those tragic ones, like that scout who made it up one of the tallest mountains in the world, but for some unknown reason, died after doing it.
I find this story inspiring in that it resonates the common story of being Indonesian. The scout is one of the lucky few who was able to realize his dreams, though through some luck of the draw, he didn't have much time to enjoy it (he died around 10 minutes after he stabbed the red and white flag on top). Such is the lot for most Indonesians. This is 'our story,' the odds that we have to deal with everyday.
For many more Indonesians, being able to have a dream is a dream in itself. Such is the odds of living in the state of ambivalence, of not really being anywhere but in between grasping that top of the mountain and having the means to climb it or even to think it. We can only hope that we make it to the top, as so few of us manage to do so. Those who fell while in pursuit of making this dream happen, who have struggled ahead of us, can only serve as our guide, our reason to pick up the pieces left behind and climb on, we call them our heroes.
We hope that many more of us will have the chance to join, that the dream be passed on. I hope that someday, many more of us can enjoy the view at the top for more than just 10 minutes. We want the dream to last longer, as it is like for most Americans now. This is my dream, that 100 years after this 100th Indonesian mark of "awakening", most of us will have had the chance to savor the view from the top, to not just be 'awake', but be fully alive and kicking.
Indonesia Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 66/69 Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2003): 57/59 Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 34 Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 231/192
USA Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 75/80 Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2003): 67/71 Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 8 Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 137/80
Afghanistan Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 42/43 Healthy life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2003): 35/36 Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 257 Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 500/443
Indonesian Rover died after reaching Mt. McKinley summit
An Indonesian Rover Scout Pungkas Tri Baruno, 20, showed an enormous display of courage as he bravely reached the summit of Mount McKinley at a height of approximately 20,320 feet in Alaska, USA on 7th July 2008, and minutes after his sweet victory, he breathed his last.
Pungkas is one of the members of Indonesian Scout Expedition 2008 to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Indonesia’s National Awakening Year (1908-2008) and also part of the 100th Anniversary of World Scouting (1907-2007).
Before his death, Pungkas and another member of the team, Hartman Nugraha, who is also an Indonesian Rover Scout, were accompanied by two members of the US National Park Rangers and successfully reached the summit. While at the peak, Pungkas held the Indonesian flag and Hartman held the Indonesian Scout Flag. On their way back to the camp at 17,400 feet, Pungkas fell down. Though, he tried to stand up, he fell down again and was unconscious. The two US Rangers immediately gave Pungkas CPR but failed.
Since the evacuation process of Pungkas’ body was not easy due to the bad weather, it took the Rangers two days to carry the body back to the base camp. From there, the body was flown to Talkeetna and then to Anchorage. The body is expected to arrive in Indonesia either 13th or 14th July 2008.
In Jakarta, the Indonesian Minister for Youth and Sports, Adhyaksa Dault, extends his condolence to Pungkas family and would lead the funeral process. Meanwhile, the Chief Commissioner of Gerakan Pramuka/ Indonesia Dr Azrul Azwar, said that Pungkas served as a great inspiration to all Indonesian Scouts especially to young people because of his courage and determination in finishing a highly difficult task.
-- Berthold Sinaulan
Assistant National Commissioner for PR Gerakan Pramuka/Indonesia
"...I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today.
Yet all too often, evolution — insofar as it is taught in biology classes at all — is taught as the story of Charles Darwin. Then the pages are turned, and everyone settles down to learn how the heart works, or how plants make energy from sunshine, or some other detail. The evolutionary concepts that unify biology, that allow us to frame questions and investigate the glorious diversity of life — these are ignored."
In response to this article (about the current ~Rp. 1,000,000 price/semester of textbooks for kids in public school system).
Here are my suggestions that you might like to use as part of your 'managerial' scheme:
1. Re-use textbooks that is not over 5 years old (If you want, I still have one SMA Kelas 1B biology textbook that is still in good shape. Although it is already ~20 years old, I assure you that biology is still biology, even if you did 'rename' some of the chapters 20 years hence). How you can go about actually doing this 're-use-ing': -make kids 'borrow' these books at beginning of semester from school. -make them return to school at end of semester (we hope in 'good condition'). -Repeat next year. -Repeat again for at least 3-5 years.
2. Stop re-arranging national school system names acronyms (ie. SMU, SMA and SMAN all start with 'SM'. Changing the end part won't make one acronym look 'prettier' than the other).
3. Stop the uniforms and make kids wear their actual clothes to school. If you must know, uniforms will not help 'cover up' that 'socio-economic-gap' between kids, kids will always get jealous of what other kids have WITH OR WITHOUT THE UNIFORMS. Anyway, some kids will always get the better white shirt and the hipper grey skirt.
4. Stop smoking cigarettes (they might give you cancer), instead, look around and find out if ALL KIDS actually have access to computers, a fully running internet, along with printer and ink and papers and actual personal budget for this all BEFORE you suggest putting out online textbooks for use in public school system (make sure to also cross your fingers so that the long hours of textbook downloading time will not coincide with electricity blackout rotation).
5. Please tell your teachers not to make kids buy certain color of notebook for different subject area of study, then make the kids tape/glue an additional book cover over it. Anyway, a red physics notebook will not make those physics formulas be easier to crack for any kid, compared to say a blue physics notebook. Those book-covers won't help either. No, books won't feel any 'remorse' when they are not covered, they are inanimate objects! Tell your teachers to stop making kids think books are human beings.
I guarantee that this will save at least Rp 1,000,000 per family (if not some electricity bills).
So long ago, I don't remember when That's when they say I lost my only friend Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease As I listened through the cemetery trees
I seen the sun comin' up at the funeral at dawn The long broken arm of human law Now it always seemed such a waste She always had a pretty face So I wondered how she hung around this place
Chorus: Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me & Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight
She said it's cold It feels like Independence Day And I can't break away from this parade But there's got to be an opening Somewhere here in front of me Through this maze of ugliness and greed And I seen the sun up ahead At the county line bridge Sayin' all there's good and nothingness is dead We'll run until she's out of breath She ran until there's nothin' left She hit the end-it's just her window ledge
(chorus)
Well this place is old It feels just like a beat up truck I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn Well it smells of cheap wine & cigarettes This place is always such a mess Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn I'm so alone, and I feel just like somebody else Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same But somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams I think her death it must be killin' me
*note mp player bug seemed to have been fixed by multiply!
Rolling (by Better Than Ezra played live at The House Of Blues, New Orleans)
Rain drops bead again They make a tide pool On your summer skin
Shoplifting corner store I should have got, Should have got some more.
How'd you get so low? How'd you get so low? Baby I don't know.
God, how you look the same. I recognize the face, But not the name.
Pull over, never stop A caramel-colored girl in a halter top.
How'd you get so low? How'd you get so low? (She said)
Me and you Got a lot to do. We go rolling From Friday till Sunday noon. Stop! Start a letter, Rent-A-Saint in back Want to hit the interstate in a Cadillac, And we're rolling.
Could it be that hard To never mind the rent And then quit your job?
Flying, at what cost? Shout outs to the ones we've lost.
How'd you get so low? How'd you get so low?
Don't mind me. Me? I'm fine. I just get a little lost sometimes. But what I really meant to say, I couldn't live without you another day.
How'd you get so low? How'd you get so low? (She said)
Me and you Got a lot to do. We go rolling From Friday till Sunday noon. Stop! Start a letter, Rent-A-Saint in back Want to hit the interstate in a Cadillac, And we're rolling.
Are you just worried to see me? Are you just worried to need me?
Me and you Got a lot to do. We go rolling >From Friday till Sunday noon. Stop! Start a letter, Rent-A-Saint in back Want to hit the interstate in a Cadillac, And we're rolling. Yeah, we're rolling. Me and you, we're rolling.
I know Capitalism is bad, so it was sort of hard to keep on reading the book Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata (which I will translate inappropriately into "The Rainbow Group"). Why read something that my mind is really already automatic about: that Capitalism is a bad idea?
At first I thought that my disinterest after reading parts of the book came from the many Latin references to biological species names and terms. I thought, "why can't the author just use regular names for, say, the tree so that I can get on reading the story without being distracted in thinking about the Latin?" The Latin is not helping me feel more attached to the tree (usually authors try to allude to symbolic words to make the reader feel more attracted to the object of narration, thus understanding it better). But then I found the glossary at back, which explains everything, but then it started to make me feel angry. Is he just trying to smug me?
Next, I thought that it was the wording of everything, how the author puts his sentences down that seem to me very dogmatic in some way. A dogmatic narrator is never interesting to me since it just makes everything predictable. A story is never interesting once it becomes predictable.
But then I figured out that the hardest part is the fact that I already know about this "Capitalism bad and Islam good" tale, so why keep on reading about it? What can be new in the ~500 pages book that has not been already been made known to me by other people?
So I threw the book to the floor. I was somehow angry at it for not being able the show me anything new after 70 pages of reading.
But then my mother in Indonesia called, asked me about the book(s) she sent me. I was the one who asked for them as everyone else was reading them, being that I was adamant about being knowledgeable in all things "literary", especially anything "Indonesia". She asked, "So did you read the book?"
So after additionally then reading the many reviews of this book by all the people in blogosphere, I got to thinking that I must, really must get to know about this book.
So I started over again. I put the book flat on my table, opened the book back to page 1, then closed my eyes and just thought about my father. I thought about how he used to tell me stories of when he was a kid growing up in this small village up in the hills, how he loved to swim in the muddy rivers by hanging on those vines that were tied up on some tall tree and jumping from them (he has a lot of back pains now as a result of this one nasty fall from some such tree), how he walked in the cows home during sunset with strong fear in his heart that a great big black cat would pounce him.
But the tale he likes to repeat over and over again was how he was able to graduate his small village school in such extraordinary fashion: out of the 40 kids in his elementary class, only him and 3 other kids got to actually finish grade school. He takes pride in this very much. He tells us how even there wasn't even a classroom to go to. His classroom was this place under a tree, where everyone, all 40 of them, sat and listened to a teacher without even shoes on (you walk around miles and miles to get to this school under the tree without shoes on!).
So I closed my eyes and pretended these kids from Hirata's book were my father and his friends as the book is a story of how 10 really poor kids from some remote village in the middle of a nowhere island between the Pacific and Indian ocean, tried to beat the odds and get an education. Hirata alludes to this one tree that they all like to gather under and dream together, though in this book, they had a classroom to go to, even if it is very run down, so the tree serves as a gathering point only. After this "change in perspective", my reading went much more smoothly. I had removed most of my biases about the book by thinking of my father and really then started to enjoy it. I actually managed to finish the book in a day! I can say that this is due to Hirata's easy-going narration.
It was indeed a very entertaining read, many times funny, and is a good book for anyone wanting to feel uplifted and spirited about helping the poor get some education, but the catch is, you have to do it with a certain philosophy of Islam (Hirata's version of Islam, which to me mimics the Islamic philosophy of the prominent Harun Yahya).
The kids call themselves Laskar Pelangi or The Rainbow Group and while trying to beat this "odds", they managed to make long lasting friendships and had a good time, though their school was the poorest and the most tattered and mediocre in quality, and no one really wanted to go there since the poor don't really see any practical value in education (the school almost closed down if not for a last minute entrance of a mentally challenged kid marking as the 10th kid deciding to go to school there, 10 is the cutoff, less than this the school shuts down).
It helped a lot that their teachers were very dedicated and willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing for the sake of the kids. Though they are not gifted in the mind, they are very gifted in the way of the spirit and always talked in a very uplifting way. They symbolize patience, hard work and perseverance. Though they were trained only to teach a certain subject area, the impoverished state of the school has forced them to teach the kids everything from singing to physics. Fortunately, through the grace of God, two of the 10 were born geniuses and managed to teach the other kids things of the mind that the teachers can only be amazed about.
The antagonists in the story are the people from the PN or Government Company that works to exploit the vast tin reserves in the remote Island. They are the unhappy greedy lot living behind a giant wall Hirata calls "The Tower of Babel" that blatantly separates the dirt poor from the filthy rich. Inside this wall everyone eats appetizers, chicken cordon bleu and listens to Mozart under the lull of birds sitting in cages that surrounds Romanesque pools with Victorian splendor, while people outside the wall barely get enough to eat. A sad girl lives in one of these great mansions in the walls, not wanting to play the piano as dictated by her stern sitting father, she imagines herself as half-boy and prefers kick-boxing. She plucks her way in that fancy school all PN kids go to, which is filled with phony and stuck up people that makes her feel all angry and wanting to escape. So by the end she joins The Rainbow Group.
The Rainbow Group seems to be a very powerful force, able to beat the fancy PN kids at everything, though the PN's are contrastingly bathed in all the luxuries of a modern international standard education, with brass trumpets, expensively branded boots and the Drs. Physics guy, who is brilliant, but unfortunately arrogant, coaching them through a "Cerdas Cermat" type competition. Lintang (which means star), is one of Rainbow's genius, goes about actually beating the much older Drs. Physics guy at a sudden physics match during this competition about light and color. Amazingly Lintang has not even finished high school while the Drs. has actually read Newton's Principia, but Lintang beat him through his more enlightened knowledge of Newton even if he didn't have real books to read through. The judges of the competition can only shake their heads in amazement.
So the dichotomy is clear: you don't want to live inside the wall's fancy houses and go to the fancy PN school (though it has a medical aid kit in every classroom, posters of multiplication tables and colorful textbooks) unless you want to be unhappy, phony and greedy. They are like that because they are cursed through their extremely unfair exploitation of the island's tin reserves. You are lucky to be outside; though outside you go to a school that even cows park at during closing hours, driven by poverty through the extreme greed of the Babelonians inside the walls, you are happy and true people, and through perseverance and God's grace, you hope that in the end, things will go your way. Everyone outside the wall is good; everyone inside the wall is sad. Only if you are out of the wall you can strive to be good.
Indeed, in the end, much like the crumbling of the actual Tower of Babel in the myth, the arrogant greedy lot succumbed to the wrath of God and got a taste of their own "pill", while the people outside the broken wall had a field day. This day happened as the price of tin suddenly decreased by more than half. Everyone within the Babel wall became confused ghosts, scraping their way without direction, while the true people eventually took the tin back. Though the price of tin was halved, the rightful poor managed to make profit out of them for the whole of the people in the island, even though they practically used their hands to do dig them. They profited much more than those Babelonians ever did with their modern technology of fancy boats to "steal" this tin mine.
The story is good if you are into the this type of Islamic philosophy as I say the narration is easy going and it has a lot of funny events sown into it, such as one meet with a scary guy who practices witchcraft and is half ghost (he has been known to be able to walk on air). It might be a very good read for the kids too.
A lot of people into science would like the book since it embraces science to the full extent that Islam will allow. Within this bound, science embodies the idea of true knowledge seeking. This unending pursuit of pure knowledge, that can be obtained by working hard, persevering and "staying in school" not only leads one to achieve great things in life, but is also the commended Islamic way for one to achieve spiritual peace. All of this is explained in Chapter 7 Langit Ketujuh (The Seventh Sky).
But you are not to go behind the bounds that Islam will allow. Hirata explains that stupidity lies above the 7th stratosphere of the earth. "If you want to find stupidity ... use a rocket and shoot upwards, don't ever stop... In this foreign place, a place where there will never be a name, here is where stupidity lies. It is like a thin fog ... So if you ask the stupid people, they will answer with a lot of words, hiding their stupidity with their fast talk, finding many reasons, or even diverting the question. Some will sit and stare, their mouths gaping, they are covered by fog with eyes staring blankly into the distance." Indeed two characters from Rainbow went into the distance (something to do with the funny witchdoctor scene and their failing grades) but almost died because of it. So they submitted by going back to school, studying and kissing the teacher's hands. One of the two is the sad girl half-boy wannabe who used to go to the PN school inside the wall but then moved to the poor school through her attraction with the Rainbow group. After such experience of going through the distance, which in the end showed nothing but the stupidity of it all, she suddenly accepts her female identity and starts wearing the Hijab and is at peace.
Additionally, knowledge such as science according to this chapter does not come from looking at universes outside of your own mind. The genius Lintang is able to disprove a hypothesis simply through mathematical manipulations, no need for experiments or data gathering as Lintang is of a genius God given and pure, he makes no mistakes. According to Hirata, this was how even Copernicus was able to come up with his scientific theory "no need to go on those crazy expeditions. The skies and planets are already in our heads." You can imagine everything up and do great science without much data or experiments.
This is how science is according to Hirata's philosophy, which unfortunately for me is the opposite of the science that I have ever been taught in school. Science for me is all about data and experiments brought about by going on these crazy expeditions; be it over the 7th heaven, or within the molecules of our bodies (though hopefully not having to resort to a witchdoctor). Even more unfortunate for me is this remark of the genius Lintang about Darwin's theory of evolution:
"Tapi jika anda seorang religius maka Anda tahu bahwa teori evolusi itu palsu, dan ketika Anda tak kunjung mempersiapkan diri untuk dihisab nanti dalam hidup stelah mati, maka dalam hal ini Anda tak lebih dari seorang sekuler oportunis yang akan dibakar di dasar neraka!"
Basically, this statement says that I will be burned in hell fire, at the lowest pit of hell (along with other "secular oportunists"), as I am now doing research actually using Darwin's theory of evolution while claiming to still be religious. According to Lintang a person like me is worse off than even a true Darwinist atheist! So I guess, by this ending, people like me should actually dislike the book, if not just accept the fact that hell fire is waiting for us unless we start to accept and amend our ways.
But as I say, it is very entertaining book and if you are into this type of Islamic philosophy, then this is the book for you!
