Tika's Site

Been thinking about Homeschool (again) lately, some reasons why:

1. Traffic congestion to and from school while gas prices soaring, took me almost 4 hours everyday to take kid to and from school.

2. Steep tuition rates and blatant commercialism.  Schools here (Jakarta, Indonesia), be it national (supposedly free ones) or private seem to be a magnet for sucking the life out of your wallet, isn’t so much the steep price I guess but the consumerism culture prevalent lifestyle in schools as is the trademark of Jakarta in general.

Growing up in Canadian public school system long ago, school was a safe place where you explore knowledge and learn without being distracted by adds to make you buy stuff.  I don’t mind if it was a walk down the mall or New York’s Times Square, but schools shouldn’t be place for people to make money out of with gaudy flashing light-bulbs, metaphorically speaking. I don’t know, I learned early on that it’s just unethical and a disservice to the children. 

Before it was just the kid’s buying snacks from illegal food-carts parked by the school’s streets, now it’s climbing into the school yard even inside the classrooms yet hidden under the banner of “education for all” and an overall feel good attitude that has become a formidable right not a responsible privilege. Perhaps it isn’t so much Jakarta anymore, consumerism is seeping everywhere all over the world unbalanced, uncontrolled.

3. Questionable curriculum that keeps changing in labeling and yet nothing inherently changes.  Spending all those years in the sciences, it really bugs me to find that the science curriculum in Indonesia is 50 years behind the time if not already nearing a century. 

Even as I’ve tried to work through the kid’s school to override this (as science curriculum consultant), it’s hard cause in the end you have to go back to that outdated curriculum that is approved by the government.  It’s making it hard for teachers to be able to innovate on anything, assuming even you have teachers who are trained to do the job (where in Indonesia, this is very much lacking).

If I was wealthy what I’d do is totally create my own system from pre-K to University even the job market to revamp the whole thing, but I’m not a country, nor do I own an oil company.

The world is a mess, but there is light in the way of hacking the system not from inside, but underground or what you might call “grassroots”, it seem to be catching on, what with the Arab Spring, The Occupy Movments, The Academic Springs, it’s everywhere you find people feeling there is something wrong about something.

So I feel for all the moms and dad’s like me, yet can do nothing but swallow it all inside. Some of us can only be so lucky just to make ends meet. Some of us just do the best we can and hope and pray and keep loving our children.

Anyway, as I forsee it, the school system as we have now, with desks and teachers housed in “landlocked” school buildings, is outdated in general.  In the near future, like the death of the rotary phone trapped in cable wiring from pole to pole, killed by the coming of the cellular, schools will no longer be in classrooms with defined physical coordinates, but more like how one goes on the mobile device to chat with friends. 

Can you imagine our new generation of kids now used to cruising the internet and joining virtual ninja clans accepting to navigate their world otherwise?  It’s a brave new world we are heading off to, the ford assembly line is nearing its saturation point, Aldous Huxley can rest in peace, perhaps.

Some example of these new ways of learning, a glimpse at future schools :):

MIT OpenCourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/

Khan Academy:

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Dari kecil saya ga pernah percaya sama yang namanya hantu dsb.  Waktu orang2 pada horor ga mau tidur dikamar yg katanya ada hantu, ya saya mau saja krn kamarnya asik banget mungil menghadap ke jalan depan penuh pepohonan.  Saya tidur situ nyenyak saja ga pernah diusik hantu. Saya pikir jikapun ada hantu saya mungkin tipe orang yg ga bisa melihatnya jadi tulalit gitu. Jikapun ada kenapa juga mesti terpusat pada satu kamar, bukannya hantu bisa terbang kemana2?! *note: kan hantu itu org mati yg berkeliaran ga jelas, tp sy berkepercayaan dalam agama ajaran mama, cuman ada jin setan dan malaikat yg bisa berkeliarang (yg mati di cegat di kuburan sampe kiamat), trus kan manusia biasa2 aja mana bisa liat!

Anak 8yo juga ga begitu takut hantu tapi akhir2 ini jadi suka takut karena dimana2 temen2 pada cerita hantu dan nonton film2 hantu membuatnya takut.  Dia bilang walau dia ga percaya hantu tapi ko bikin jantungnya deg deggan jadi kalo malem harus nyalain lampu padahal biasanya tidur gelap ga apa2.

Nah sudah beberapa malem ini 8yo ga bisa tidur, trus mamanya dibangunin melulu sampe gegerget.  Tapi suatu malem saat mamahnya lelah banget mamanya bilang ya udah dari detik ini 8yo ga usah takut krn takutnya mau diambil mama, dan mamanya pun mengangkat tangannya keatas kepala 8yo dan menariknya keluar trus ditaro di kepala mamanya ..hehe.

Mamanya pun bobo tenang tapi saat sekitar jam 1.30 AM dibangunin 8yo,  memang jam dimana biasanya 8yo selalu ngebangunin mamanya krn ketakutan, mamanya tiba2 jadi ga bisa tidur serasa merinding2 ga jelas.  Mamanya beri doa2 dan sudah itu berkonsentrasi dalam dalam doanya, atau dinamakan khusyuk banget, memohon kepada yg berkuasa the universe etc. untuk menghilangkan rasa takut anak. 

Sudah anaknya terlelap didoakan mamanya balik kekamarnya. Ga tau kenapa ko setelah doa khusyuk gitu dada rasa deg-degan. Mamanya berusaha bobo tapi ga bisa tidur.  Sudah beberapa menit lewat mata perem tapi ba gisa tidur, tiba2 waktu mamanya usaha membacakan suatu ayat yang konon mengusir hantu serasa jantung diperes trus ditarik dari dada dan ada sosok halus keluar dari dada terbang ke jendela..hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Kalo sains mengatakan ini mahluk dari dimensi ke-5-10, ya orang Indonesia namakan hantu! :D

Masa kecil pokoknya cita-cita saya adalah untuk berusaha mengumpulkan banyak ijazah supaya dapat kerja dan tidak jatuh miskin, menjadi sengsara. Mengikuti kata hati mengejar mimpi adalah kata2 asing, jikapun ada mustahil untuk bisa terjadi. Beda dengan anak2 di Amerika yang tanpa harus berpikir panjang dan secara spontan, tanpa terhantui rasa takut terkena malapetaka, bisa dengan bebas merancang masa depan, memilih kelak dewasa ingin menjadi apa. Entah kenapa, menemukan apa itu yang saya inginkan saja saya tidak bisa.

Ayah saya pegawai negeri, ibu saya ibu rumah tangga, hidup kami tidak lebih, tidak kurang, masa kecil bisa dibilang kami hidup pas saja, saya masih bisa punya boneka mainan dan biaya sekolah tidak pernah sulit (jikapun sulit saya tidak pernah tahu). Walaupun semasa tumbuh besar saya hidup berkecukupan saya selalu merasakan adanya hantu malapetaka yang selalu mengintai. Ayah dan ibu tidak pernah mengajarkan saya untuk takut, ayah saya hanya berkata untuk rajin belajar supaya kelak dewasa nanti hidup bisa tenang dan terjamin.

Baru2 saja ayah suka bercerita mengenai kesulitan masa kecil, hidup jauh dari orang tua, perut kosong tidak dapat makan tapi harus jalan jauh untuk pergi sekolah, dan ibu juga bercerita bagaimana sulitnya dulu mendapat pakaian yang tidak bekas/sobek. Semasa mereka berjuang untuk membangun keluarga kami, sering mereka harus meminjam uang dan dibuat malu akibatnya.

Tapi semasa saya tumbuh besar, orang tua tidak pernah banyak bercerita mengenai ini, tidak banyak kata2. Sepertinya, mereka selalu ingin kami merasakan kebahagiaan tanpa  harus merasakan sulit jika ingin sesuatu hal yang diperlukan, utamanya barang2 materi kebutuhan hidup seperti peralatan sekolah, baju dll. Lucunya dulu kalo saya ke toko peralatan sekolah ayah saya selalu berusaha membelikan saya macam2 barang berlebihan padahal ga perlu dan saya menolak sampe harus berantem dengan ayah dan penjaga tokonya sampe ketawa dan berkata, “lho ko mau dibelikan barang malah marah?”

Ayah saya bisa dikatakan salah satu anggota dari keluarga besar kami yang menjadi 'sukses'. Ayah anak petani desa bisa kuliah, mendapat kerja di ibukota bahkan akhirnya keluar negeri dan kini menjadi penopang nafkah keluarga besar kami. Kata ayah ini adalah jerih payah ayah “mengabdi” kepada negara selama puluhan tahun. Ayah dapat terus maju karena melaksanakan kewajibannya mengabdi kepada negara, bukan dengan cara mengikuti kata hati, “mana ada pekerjaan yang kamu 'sukai'.. ” kata ayah.

Jikapun hidup berkecukupan dan ketika saya lulus kuliah, ayah menjadi semakin sukses, selalu saya merasakan ada hantu malapetaka mengintai. Sebagaimanapun ayah ibu selalu berusaha melindungi anak2nya dari rasa sulit dan ketakutan yang mereka alami semasa kecil, saya selalu merasakan bahwa ada sesuatu yang tersembunyi dibalik usaha mereka ini. Semasa kecil dan tumbuh dewasa saya lebih banyak menghabiskan waktu diluar negeri (utamanya di Amerika). Seberapapun lamanya saya menghabiskan waktu di Amerika, saya selalu merasakan adanya perbedaan jauh antara saya dengan teman2 di Amerika.

Kini saya sadari bahwa perbedaan ini adalah rasa keberanian untuk melakukan sesuatu tanpa adanya rasa takut akan malapetaka yang mengintai. Rasa takut sepertinya memang tidak saya dapati lewat kata2, tapi lewat gaya bahasa tubuh dan tatapan mata yang tidak dapat saya hilangkan dari ingatan saat tumbuh besar dikelilingi dengan suatu sejarah bernama indonesia. Tatapan mata saudara sepupu sebaya yang tidak memiliki boneka2 yang saya miliki, tatapan mata orang tua mereka mengembalikan boneka2 yang mereka 'curi' karena mereka sendiri tidak dapat memberikan kebahagiaan ini kepada anak2nya. Tatapan mata dan bahasa tubuh yang berkata bahwa mimpi yang mereka kenal hanyalah mimpi buruk.

1. Pendidikan bagi anak yang tidak berfokus pada membanggakan diri/harta fasilitas kolam renang pacuan kuda berbahasa inggris (tapi bhs indonesia dodol) dsb. jadi heboh nyontek (dan udah gedenya jadi korup karena ga bisa kerja skill rendah akibat kebiasaan nyontek jadilah dengki hatinya), tapi pendidikan yang berfokus kepada berakhlak budi pekerti luhur, kemanusiaan dan pemahaman akan 'the value of nothing'.

2. Bukan iming2 gaji gede dan gedung berkilap2 dan cap medali anugrah dari presiden dan pemotongan pita bersama peraih nobel dsb., tapi dukungan moral spiritual agar dapat melakukan penelitian dengan tenang, pendanaan yg jelas menunjuang penelitian berkualitas bukan jadi terpaksa kepepet nyari proyek ga jelas sana sini jadi ga sempet neliti yg bener krn sibuk harus masuk koran tv dsb.

Masih banyak lagi tapi nanti kepanjangan mesti kerja dulu ;)

Semoga ini bisa tercapai amin.

Terus terang akibat memang benar hidup di indonesia itu susah sekali saya sering menjadi rasa putus asa pengen kabur (kenapa tidak kan gampang kabur tinggal kirim cv ke berbagai tempat dimana pun negara maju dan kerja kerja kerja hidup enak ga usah mikir tiba2 bisnya mogok dsb. dalam hal saya alhamdulillah ada sopir ga usah naek bemo hampir tewas dilindes kereta lagi kayak jaman dulu tapi sekarang sering tiba2 pak sopir yg antar anak sekolah berlagak menjengkelkan ga masuk jadi ngerusak pikiran krn harus bikin rencana ulang hari membuat psikopatik).

Tapi ya buat apa hidup jika harus untuk kabur ?  (maaf bukan maksud teman2 yang tinggal dinegara-negara maju itu orang-orang yg kabur, pasti banyak alasan macam2 dan pengalaman yang jauh berbeda, tapi ini khusus utk saya sendiri jika saya ngelamar kerja di negara maju sebenarnya saya pengen kabur).

Jadi mungkin petualangan di Indonesia ini akan menjadi seri kedua petualangan sering putus asa pengen kabur tkmaia take 2, cuman bedanya dulu pengen kabur dan berhenti dari studi doktoral ga tahan kejam penuh penindasan tangis darah (walau darahnya ga beneran cuman meweknya doang), ya sekarang ternyata jauh lebih berat karena perjuangan saat ini adalah senyatanya perjuangan hidup di dunia realita (bukan kampus yang sudah bersylabus dan jadwal terpapan tulis).

Salam kompak dan halo lagi mp tempat curhat tiada henti LOL..(graphic kabur lagi menurun sekarang melekuk ke arah optimis sedikit walau hujan jadi tegang). Untuk sekarang saya kasih jatah 4-5 tahun untuk menetap di Indonesia dulu, mirip jatah stipend program doktoral. Setelah itu, ya namanya juga petualangan hidup, ga tau dimana bulu ayam akan hinggap moga2 ketempat dimana ia harusnya terjatuh... *lagu latar belakang forest gump melantun *

Hidup di indonesia itu penuh kesusahan dan saya acung jempol bagi mereka yang setiap pagi bangun meneruskan hidupnya mengurus anak keluarga dan diri. Pokoknya percaya deh, dibanding orang Amerika, orang Indonesia itu bisa dibilang jauh lebih hebat karena bisa tahan dan terus berjalan walau begitu susah untuk mendapatkan hal2 yg sudah tidak harus dipikirkan lagi bagi mereka yang hidup di Amerika karena semua sudah tersedia dan dianggap sesuatu yang tidak harus terpikirkan lagi apalagi diperjuangkan susah payah, sementara diIndonesia hal hal yang dianggap kecil bagi orang Amerika ini harus di perjuangkan dengan penuh lusuh keringat bahkan darah.

Begitu saja dulu, semoga 2012 ini semangat berjuang terus berjalan karena memang di Indonesia itu diperlukan mereka yang memiliki hati pejuang bukan yang merasa segala itu hak yang harus sudah tersediakan. Jika Obama berkata bahwa ruh Amerika adalah tangan-tangan kasar kuat yang membangun rumah dari batu bata yang diangkat satu persatu, ruh Indonesia adalah negara yang dibangun atas hati kukuh yang tak kenal putus asa merangkai atap jerami demi berteduh dari badai hujan yang membanjiri tiada henti.

I’m collaborating with scientists at the Human Dynamics and New Media Lab on this Narrative Transmission experiment. The idea that stories that represent ideas and beliefs can evolve in society much like organisms do, but what are the laws that govern them?

Publication of initial results are in preparation. Basically we selected stories with a specific narrative structure and see how they maybe changed through its recall and retelling between individuals or groups.  Over 500 people from all over Indonesia participated in the initial part of this study.  We want to measure how variations in text as it is propagated through the population can tell us of patterns that govern the proses of memory making, the development of beliefs, norms and ‘morality’.

We know that memory maybe divided into two kinds of information, the data to be remembered and a theory consisting of prior expectations concerning the likelihood of this data.   Previous studies suggest that the content of story tend to be progressively assimilated to the norms of traditional storytelling (Kirsner 2010). In our study, we would like to see how prior norms (ie. beliefs and tradition) may affect how stories maybe reproduced, transmitted and  “evolve”.  My own interest in the data science part is in developing a metric that can be used to capture the process of cultural change in society and the making of memories. Indonesia is a society currently under flux thus provides a great backdrop to study the dynamics of such processes.

The online survey hopes to capture some of the patterns that maybe correlated to this process of change.  Here, we ask respondents to rate a randomly selected story based on several questions that classify it into different forms of narrative structure, thus determining the extent of change after it has been transmitted between individuals or groups.

I hope those who read this can help us on this survey by taking a moment to sign up, read some stories and participate in the process of meaning making .

Bagaimana balon gas dapat terbang? Kenapa matahari terbit dari timur? Mengapa api terasa panas? Bagaimana binatang dapat tumbuh? Mengapa saya suka merasa lapar?

Sains adalah ilmu yang tumbuh melalui pertanyaan.  Dalam proses bertanya, tidak ada jawaban yang benar, hanya ada pertanyaan yang benar.  Hal yang tersulit, bahkan bagi ilmuwan yang telah bertahun-tahun menekuni sains sekalipun, adalah untuk merangkai pertanyaan yang benar.  Pertanyaan yang benar adalah pertanyaan yang dapat menghasilkan banyak jawaban, bukan hanya satu! Kenapa begitu? Karena menemukan banyak jawaban memungkinkan kita untuk menemukan penjelasannya.

Sains adalah ilmu yang mempelajari alam, baik itu unsur alam yang hidup maupun yang mati dalam bentuk wujud materi yang dapat ditelaah lewat panca indera manusia dan alat-alat ukur yang mempertajamnya. Alam sangatlah luas, begitupun telah banyak yang kita ketahui mengenainya, jauh lebih banyak lagi yang tidak kita ketahui.  Ilmuwan Sains bertugas untuk merangkai pertanyaan yang dapat menghasilkan jawaban yang banyak karena kita tidak tahu jawaban mana yang dapat 'menjelaskan' proses alam yang ingin kita ketahui itu.

Jika kita ingin mencari jarum yang tertimbun dalam tumpukan jerami, kemungkinan untuk dapat menemukannya adalah untuk mencoba mencarinya di berbagai lokasi dalam jerami. Jika kita berpusat pada satu titik dalam jerami saja, kemungkinan untuk menemukannya menjadi sangat kecil bahkan hampir nihil jika jarum itu ternyata terletak di lokasi jauh darinya. Kemungkinan untuk menemukan jerami menjadi tinggi jika kita membuka lokasi lain dimana kita dapat mencarinya.

Walaupun demikian, jika tumpukan jerami itu sangat luas, semisal seluas alam semesta, kita berbalik kepada masalah awal! Karena tidak mungkin bagi kita dalam usia, waktu dan energi hidup manusia yang terbatas, untuk menelaah tiap batang jerami satu-persatu, demi mencari dimana lokasi jarum itu tertimbun. Kemungkinan untuk menemukan jarum itu berbalik menjadi suatu yang hampir mustahil!

Nah, Sains memberikan kita berbagai metode 'jalan pintas' agar kita dapat menemukan jarum itu, walaupun sepertinya mustahil, agar kita dapat menemukan jarum tanpa harus menelaah tiap batang jerami di tiap sudut pelosok tumpukannya sementara tetap membuka kemungkinan untuk menemukan dimana jarum itu 'sebenarnya' berada.

Dengan membuat rangkaian pertanyaan tentang bagaimana jarum itu mungkin berada, kita membuka kemungkinan untuk menemukannya tanpa harus mencarinya pada setiap sudut tumpukan jerami. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan ini membatasi lokasi untuk mencari jarum itu dengan tingkat kemungkinan yang lebih tinggi bagi kita untuk menemukannya. Pada posisi koordinat terakhir kali manakah jarum itu terletak sebelum jatuh tertimbun dalam jerami? Berdasarkan ciri-ciri fisik jarum, apakah kemungkinan ia tertimbun di atas atau di bawah jerami? Secara rata-rata, seberapa padatkah spasi antara batang jerami untuk menampung jarum yang berukuran dan berat sekian-sekian? Dsb.

Dengan itu, landasan utama Sains adalah mengasah kemampuan untuk menyusun pertanyaan yang dapat memberikan jawaban banyak namun bukan jawaban 'asal tebak', melainkan jawaban berdasarkan pertanyaan yang terarah (educated guess), berdasarkan apa yang kita sudah ketahui mengenai proses yang bersangkutan. Kadang kita hampir tidak tau banyak mengenai proses yang dipertanyakan. Dengan itu, seiring dengan usaha kita bertanya, kitapun berusaha menyusun suatu peta atau gambaran ciri-ciri dari proses yang sedang dipertanyakan agar dapat lebih mungkin untuk menjelaskannya. Dalam kasus jarum, kita mungkin harus mencari tahu berat, panjang jarum, materi yang menyusunnya, dsb.

Dengan ini, usaha untuk mencari jarum dalam tumpukan jerami, selain membuka kemungkinan kita untuk menemukan jarum, membuat kita menjadi 'lebih tahu' mengenai banyak hal lain lagi seputar jarum dan jerami dsb.! Sains membuka pengetahuan kita lebih dalam dengan membawa kita kepada penjelasan akan fenomena lain yang awalnya tak terpikirkan. Jikapun akhirnya kita masih belum juga menemukan dimana jarum itu berada, kita telah menumbuhkan pengetahuan yang lebih dalam mengenai luasnya alam semesta dan pola keteraturan hukum-hukum yang membentuknya. Jadi selain sedikit membantu manusia untuk memecahkan berbagai masalah kompleks dalam kehidupannya, sains membuka wawasan manusia untuk lebih mengapresiasi kemegahan alam semesta yang luar biasa...

original post http://tikays.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/sains-ilmu-yang-tumbuh-melalui-pertanyaan/

Did it exist in pre-historic tribal societies? Back then, most people probably had a role that they are required to do, from birth.  They do this for the very existence of the tribe they depend on. Their obligation to society guarantees them their very existence (ie. a supply of food, shelter and protection).  No one is dispensable, requiring resources to be distributed almost equally to all members since the existence of each member is necessary for the vital existence of the group. No one goes hungry without the whole group going hungry.

Surveying the customs of rice harvest of Malays, Dayaks and the people of Bali and Lombok at the end of the 19th century, Scottish anthropologist James Frazer noted a diverse array of rites sacredly bound to the harvesting of rice that is tightly linked to their allocation to members of society. Those who break rites maybe “viewed with disgust by their fellows and branded as pigs and dogs. Nobody would ever sell these holy (rice) sheaves with the rest of their profane brethren.” (from The Golden Bough, 1890).

‘Work’ or what we term now as ‘profession’ was designated and is an obligation. In return, this work guarantees protection and access to resources. This reciprocal interaction perhaps evolved out of the property wherein the existence of each member of society was necessary for the survival of the tribe. One member in danger of hunger threatens hunger for the whole tribe. Fluctuations in the state of existence for each individual was probably keenly felt and directly observed by others of the same group. These may have allowed rites to eventually evolve to counter such disturbances and became the binding force that connects each member of the tribe to another and to the ecology that supply the resources they depend on. Rites defined the tribe where each member of the group are obligated to be a part of.

Modern civilization came about as a reaction to the oppressive state that came about as tribal societies grew into a centralized state …”when men and sometimes women became powerful…” (Renfrew, 2007) and expanded into civilizations . These societies became more efficient in gathering resources (ie. food), and the number of individuals bounded in them increased.  This allowed for greater ‘reproductive success’, the numbers of individuals bounded into society increased, allowing interchangeability of roles or profession of one to another. Perhaps overtime, as a result, there emerged individuals who became more or less ‘dispensible’, whilst, a smaller percentage able to garner roles less dispensible, hoarded society’s bounty. Society no longer offered protection and guarantees for individuals as usually supplied by the smaller tribal state, as the danger to each person’s existence no longer poses much threat to the existence of the society as a whole.  There is always backup, one takes leave another can take his/her place, society survives. Perhaps this is when poverty and the group termed as ‘the poor’ came into being.

original post http://tikays.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/how-old-is-poverty/

Udah cape ngetik-ngetik dari lepas subuh, sekarang mau istirahat dulu nunggu buka puasa (ko tapi ya masih ngetik2 hihi). Puasa beneran enak jadi produktif ga mikir apa-apa lagi, walau kadang-kadang perut nyanyi-nyanyi tapi ya ga apa dibiarin aja nyanyi-nyanyi, ga kaya klo lagi ga puasa jadi panik cari2 makanan hehe.

Memang kerjaan akhir2 ini banyak ngetik-ngetik. "Ngantor" tetep kayak dulu jaman menjadi mahasiswa abadi (dirumah) jadi ga banyak keluar rumah. Tapi kadang keluar rumah. Kebetulan hari ini keluar jemput anak sekalian belanja karena nini aki pergi jadi takut ga ada makanan buka.  Jaman sekarang ga kayak dulu jaman mahasiswa pemakan alpoket lagi, udah enak ga mikirin makan akibat tinggal sama nini yang ngatur-ngatur semua hihi.  Tapi hari ini nini ga ada lagi ke bandung, jadi  tadi pergi beli buah-buahan dan siomay sekalian jemput anak. Hebat ya jaman sekarang siomay itu bisa didapatkan di pasar swalayan ber-AC bersih rapih.

Siomay itu makanan favorit semenjak SMP (kalo orang bandung menyebutnya baso tahu, orang cina dimsum, ga tau deh kalo daerah laen menyebutnya apa). Doyan banget sampe sempet gendut gara-gara kebiasaan tiap sore beli siomay, si abang saking seringnya dibeli udah tau aja tuh kalo pulang sekolah nongkrong depan rumah ngelirik-lirik, sepedanya parkir di pager masuk rumah! Suka gengsi pura-pura ga mau beli, padahal perut kuruyukan.

Sekalian nunggu buka puasa, ngetik ini sambil nunggu anaknya ngerjain matematikanya. Sebenarnya sih dari sekolah ga ada tugas (jarang ada PR), tapi mamanya ini iseng suka ngasih tugas berlebih supaya anaknya bisa lebih pinter. Dia kan seneng matematik, juga seneng baca.  Tiap hari ditugasi latihan matematik dan baca satu chapter novel apa aja. Alhamdulillah udah kelar hampir 2 novel.  Moga-moga besar nanti bisa lebih pinter dari emaknya dan sekolahnya bisa jangan kelamaan sampe jompo grad school shock sydrome..hihi. Lumayan juga untuk bahan menunggu buka puasa.  Tiap hari juga anaknya suruh ikut klub olah raga, tahun ini futsal dan renang. Abis tegang kalo pulang rumah maen komputer melulu, takut kecil-kecil kena encok (waktu liburan kemaren maen komputer dia suka kesemutan dan leher pegel2 ..serrreeemm).. kalo udah olah raga kan tenang.

Ketik apa lagi ya? Eh ko anaknya belum juga ngerjain kerjaannya, malah liat-liat youtube. Ya ga apa asal ga yg horor seri xxx kekerasan dslb dan sudah dipasang safety mode on. Cross fingers bismillah. Ok mau nonton tv aja deh sekarang. Awas kalo berita pindahin aja, bikin geram dan bisa batal puasa! :D

.. that is ALWAYS the question.  Before it was to keep on schooling or not to school, to have kid or not to have kid, now its to leave jakarta or not to leave jakarta, it seem so endless, like i'm trapped in a never ending shakesperean play!

But really, in fact, this is a sign that we are alive. Life is not one without confronting choices, else this means we've equilibrated a.k.a dead! Now that's another story :)

The most worrisome experience I've had since our move to jakarta is the level of air pollution that has many times cowed me to the point that I really want to get out of here.

Totally toxic air quality, since my move, my lungs have been filled up with mucus, and lightheadedness/headaches a constant thing, now even increased memory loss which is getting to be a very annoying experience. All symptoms of toxic air quality.

Luckily i work mostly at home so i only have to experience this when I'm out in traffic. So then I worry about the 7yo who goes out everyday to school. Maybe I sound like a whiner for many jakarta folks, but maybe for many jkt folks having mucus in the lungs /headaches etc ect is something they've had as a child and think it is how people go about their daily normal lives. I should say that the gov is making a bad deal on you. Who gets the most mucus but the good people who have to walk everyday to work.

Usually the kid is taken to school by driver (im am pretty lucky here) so i wont have to be reminded of this but today he's decided to show up late.  So everytime I have to take the kid the school, i always have a feeling of wanting to run away from the place like its killing us.

Anyway, jakarta better shape up its air quality or lots of folks who can do better elsewhere will eventually have to move away.  It's hard enough to contribute to the things you can do to fill your share to help out around here, but having to deal with "how to get air to breathe" is too much. What, do i have to provide the air as well!?!?!

*whilst in the middle of writing this curhat, I got some emails about post doctoral jobs galore that is blooming for folks like me in places with good free oxygen ...its getting harder to look away from those..yaks!*

I'm in the middle of reading the book "In Praise of Shadows" (陰翳礼讃 , In'ei Raisan^?) writen by Japanese author and novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (originally published 1933, translated into English 1977) . Through contemplative observations of architectural forms and design, he tries to explore the meaning of beauty in forms as it is viewed from the shadows that they make in contrast to the light that casts them, a 'meditation' of aesthetics of the East when contrasted to the West.  This foreword by Charles Moore (School of Architecture, UCLA) is very eye opening,

".. in the West our most powerful ally is light...it comes with the thrill of a slap for us then to hear praise of shadows and darkness; so it is when there comes to us the excitement of realizing that musicians everywhere make their sounds to capture silence or that architects develop complex shapes just to envelop empty space."

Modern science, as an invention of the West, can be traced back to Newton's observations of light as it passes through a prism and broken apart into its many colors, it can even go so far back as the use of the sun to measure time as opposed to the moon.  So I am made to wonder, what would science be like now if it was discovered as a contemplation of shadow instead of light, taking the moon, not the sun, as it's clock? Measuring silence instead of sound?

“...I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, or medicines, the products of our industrial art—would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact, our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of the Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form.” – Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Geneticists now use these patterns of silence in our genomes to measure how much they have changed. Things that seem nothing in fact represent the bulk of who we are, a theory on the evolution of life forms developed by Japanese biologist Motoo Kimura.

Fasting is a measure of strength in faith, where faith is a belief in something in the absence of things, in the cast of the shadows from the forms that make them, whilst moving in between light and darkness, in sight and blindness, between the seen and the unseen, between knowledge and faith. The month of Ramadhan to me is a mediation of this other way we view the world. A contemplation of life as it occurs in praise of these shadows, a celebration of movement in the night, as the bareness of the scorching daylight make way for the night and our thirst ends.

*original post  http://tikays.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/ramadhan-in-praise-of-shadows/

*original post here

by Tika Y. S.

. . . my work, which I’ve done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek. Letter of June 12, 1716

The buzzword nowadays is anything and everything to do with information, how it grows, how it is stored, how it travels, how it changes your life. Nothing changes your life more directly, literally, than the information as stored in your genes. What are genes?

It’s really an old term, nowadays people talk about genomes, that is the compilation of all the genetic material that you are composed of and directs how you are to be “made”. A gene is but a small portion of what’s contained in your genome. Compiled, these genes code for the proteins that form the parts of your person, like your hair and your fingernails, they code for those proteins categorized as “enzymes” that play top role in the myriad of interactions that make us what we become.

Before we continue talking about genes, let’s talk about what you are basically made off. You, a Human Being of the Latin term Homo Sapiens, are made up of about 100 trillion cells (that’s 1 with 14 zero’s trailing after it). In 1665, at the same time the technology of brass, metal, glass and mechanics grew in sophistication, and hence microscopes came into invention, Englishman Robert Hooke, as he placed a piece of cork under a microscope, discovered a network of honeycomb structures making up the tiny parts of a piece of the oak tree to which the cork came from. He termed it cellulae, that is a Latin word meaning “little storage room”, suggested from their resemblance to monk cells then prevalent during England’s “dark” middle ages. Presumably, as electricity and the light bulb was still a long way from being invented, these rooms where the monks dwell in meditative prayer, the writing and reading of sacred texts that revere the spiritual being of creation to which they live in servitude to, were mostly, literally, after hours, hover in darkness.

Thus, Robert Hooke found that the oak tree is made up of these structures that we now term as cells. As the technology of the microscope became ever so refined, more and more of these structures were revealed in other life forms, from animals that harbour trillions of cells to microbes that are made up of only one cell. Thus, we have come to regard the cell as the basic structure to which living things are made off. You can’t see them, but everyday your skin shed them (you’d notice them by the dark clumps that aggregate the folds of your skin prior to bath scrubbing, or the light clumps that cling and plaque your teeth and gums after several months of not going to the dentist). It is interesting how Hooke incited the monk’s contemplative dark sanctuary as the reference to which he defines these minute compartments that house the secret to life.

To make things simple, we travel 330 years ahead into the future, and now, we have the ability to visualize deep within these tiny structures that to Robert Hooke was a mysterious meditative sanctuary of darkness. Our ability to break apart then piece together what it is that these cells are made of show that within and surrounding them are vast tracks of information highways, whose core is orchestrated by the strings that make up the code of life that we call our genome.

Our genome’s backbone, when stretched open, can be seen as a chain made up of five ringed pentagon structures strung together and stacked one on top of another. These pentagons are the sugar deoxyribose linked together by phosphates, that on its own, forms a monotonous chain, like exact beads on a string, but once appended at its side by four different nucleic acids, it is transformed into something a little special. We recognize this as the infamous Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid or DNA, that is a sequence string made up of a combination of four nucleic acids known as Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine(C) and Thymine (T) appended to a sugar deoxyribose. In a human genome, that is made up of 3 billions of these Deoxyribose Nucleic Acids stringed one to another, the scale of the combinations that result from this sequence approach infinity. Our genome is composed of a pair of these chains, linked together in the rungs by the hydrogens that compose our waters, into a spiraling staircase that link A to T, G to C. Now you know why water becomes the crucial source for life.

By harnessing the vibrations of electrons and microcircuits to process and calculate, we now have the capacity to piece together the full sequence of these chains, the combination of A,G,C,T, that is like strings of letters, words and sentences, a book of stories. We can now reveal these letters, words and sentences in a mater of days, weeks or months, what it had took, just 10 years ago, years to define. But what do we really know about them? What are the stories contained in them that we can take meaning from, to give us some clues about who we are? Like the monks in their prayer cells, repetitively reading and writing the sacred texts, we are perpetually uncovering those many stories from our sacred text of life, that reach the infinite. The story of the gene is one of them, pieced together in a patchwork of color and light. This picture is a 24 hour snapshot of the genes of a female fruit fly that directs the making of its eye. Each point represents one gene, each color the gradation to which it is awakened.

Like your blog, Twitter, or Facebook page, this collage of light and color is but one story from the flow of information that we are continually growing, storing and transmitting at a rate many times over the miracles of a thousand monks iterative prayers. But what do these all mean? For the fruitfly, another snapshot in time and condition will exhibit an alternate array of color and light, which, in and of itself, gives us little difference on our understanding of what makes it what it is.

A change in the sequence of the DNA, a change of when, how and where a fruitfly’s gene is probed, is like changing your profile picture on your facebook page or the status in your twitter account. In essence, it is these changes that interests us most, as it evokes a story behind a mystery that always seem to be waiting as a burst of revelation. Still, like the monks of long ago, much like a spiritual quest, the age of information has made the quest for such revelations even more palpable and overwhelming. We now call it science, humankind’s infinite quest for knowledge and the meaning of why we came to be, it is what makes us who we are.

Image sources:

http://smd.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/data/viewDetails.pl?fullID=34727GENEPIX0

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/biology/bio4fv/page/molecular%20biology/dna-structure.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke

Once upon a time, as a kid, I saw this small vine covered brick house with a red door and said, ‘That’s it! That’s what I want to be when I grow up!” Yes, I wanted to have a brick house with a red door. One time I told someone this and he said, “that’s easy, just get a door and paint it red and stick it on the house, voila!” Indeed, dreams are silly, but somehow just getting some odd door and painting it red didn’t quite fit the picture.

(“The Little Street”, Johannes Vermeer)

I wanted a house with a red door that … , like a heroine in a novel I read once said, “.. GREW out of the ground!” It’s about the experience of watching something once tiny and insignificant spurt out of the ground as it blooms into a form of beauty that is of its own but also a part of the surroundings to which it came from. Sticking some odd door in some odd house won’t quite make it, because it isn’t about getting the door on the house and painting it red. It’s not about the act of possessing a red-door-house and having the ability to state the finality of “now I have a house with a red door!”. It’s about capturing the sequence of moments that lead up to it, as we know that even the red-door-house like the law of life itself is a thing ephemeral, it too will eventually die.

How can one take claim in the ownership of something that is as transient as, “catching a moonbeam in your hand” ? In reality, we can only watch it pass through our fingers. Knowing this, having the finalization of the red-door-house won’t cut it because we know that there is nothing that we can ever posses. The statement of “I want to have a house with red door” can only take meaning by creating an imaginary chamber of memory that is a rendering of process and transformation, even as we know that memory too, as it inhabits the transient form of the human mind, can die. The only salvation to this statement is the belief that these slices of time, as captured within the confines of human memory to which moments are composed off, will be trapped somewhere inside the infinite property of the universe.

A butterfly becomes a thing of beauty not just from how light that strikes its wings transforms its image into the human retina as a dance of colors, but a form that is composed of processes that make up the layers that become that image. Even if we know that in reality, such an image will last only a moment, which in the timespan of the infinite universe, amounts to nothing.

*originally from http://tikays.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/a-red-door-house/

"We are all connected by the spirit that made us a nation. I can only hope that by taking up this promise, my young son will also grow to learn and understand..."


http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/05/20/the-spirit-a-nation.html

Original long version posted at akonlabs (includes pic of roby muhamad's mom hiks).

Why am I so positive. Here it is.  I was born not quite so privileged but also not very poor.  I was average, never stood out in class, sat in the corner back, that if suddenly I died probably nobody would even notice! I was the most boring person one could ever find, just a speck in the crowd, but hey, most everyone is except Justin Beiber!

So I went along in life not really feeling any positve or negative, I was just neutral at everything.  Friends called me the neutral one and so made me sit with the girl who had the cooties everyone hates cause hey, I dont complain.  Never had any wants, never had much accomplishments, but never much failures either. Its just living in bland and almost feeling-less world like clockwork. I was an assembly line process. You can say I was a ticking timebomb. Cause a human being is made to feel not be assembled.

Then crap happens, lots and the worse happened couple of years back while I was finishing my dissertation. Lets say a member of my family was kindapped and the only way to save this family member was to obey whatever the kidnapper wanted or he will be killed and maybe they kill you too.  They doing this indefinitely, with you not knowing the next step of the procedure, ambiguity is a common form of oppression.  Its a surgical mind manipulation. You want to shout out what they are doing to you, all the traps and the electric zappers, but nobody would believe you. Cause the kidnappers all dress themselves in pure white, its deceiving. Its like a psychological trip, these conflicting messages, like a rat put in a maze that moving at any position will get you zapped.

So I had to do this for couple of years, stay mute not going anywhere or be zapped. It made you want to blow up something or just jump out the window.  People in burning buildings do this, jump out the window, its biologically wired way to try to save yourself. Let this be a lesson, people who strip themselves with bombs are probably not much different from you, the only difference is, they have been trapped for such a long time that they see no way out. But fortunately I was "sane" enough not to do those things (though the urge is big, its biologically wired!), so but then I had to gather so much energy just to keep still, keep sane, it was exhausting.  I was incapacitated for quite a while, I decided to drop out of school (how i got back in is long story).

The only way out for me, to keep me alive,not to strap myself with bomb or jump out the window is to do stuff that breaks the doors open and lets me out of the maze. This can't be done with intelligent sarcasm and people telling me its useless and impossible just aggravates me, hey dont talk to a trapped rat about how its like to be in a trap! grrr Those sentiments just makes me feel so insane I want to jump out the window.

So call me crazy but here I am.  Trying to do stuff not because I want to prove anything to anybody, act special or be a saint or anything. I just want to beat the monsters and make them go away. That's all I want. So hey, put me up as punching bag, Im up for it. If I had a choice Id stay content in peace, but does a trap rat have choice?