Grim Dawn Saved Characters

I've found that item sharing for the game Grim Dawn is scarce, so here are my saved characters. Feel free to download and use the items, or test the characters, or use one to farm the Crucible (Holmes). I've collected quite a few mythical legendary items.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c58ggoyo6vhfzem/AADDqMdYNq-PhnkZN3QpyhUna?dl=0

The Lines of the Real

Despite its sizable potential quotes, there’s a line from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love that is surprisingly stuck with me. It is said by the protagonist’s inner voice when she was on the brink of a mental breakdown, not knowing what to do, and wanting to run away from her life. The line was simple and nothing extraordinary. “Go back to bed,” it says. Yet it was the thing the protagonist needed to hear.

For the past few days, lines just like the one above have crossed my path. And also just as the one above, I have come to like them. They all have something in common. They are simple, they are real, and yet, they work.

I believe I’m somewhat an optimist, but I certainly have little care for fairy-tale hopes. Movies like Serendipity, as much as I am entertained by them, don’t hold a candle to my real-life perspective. And it doesn’t help that I was raised Catholic, which mostly involved a heavy dose of embracing reality as it is. I am mostly detached from words that leap too far from reality. Overly optimistic promises of love, success, health don’t ring much in my soul. And so do every life advice that are based on those promises.

However, unlike those advices, the lines that I like are not built on over-the-top promises. When the protagonist in Gilbert’s novel heard her inner voice, it didn’t tell her to leave her life, or stay with her husband. It also didn’t tell her how everything would pan out. It merely told her to do the only thing possible for her at the moment. “Go back to bed,” the voice said. And so she went to bed, which so happens ultimately led her to where she was meant to be.

Another line, “Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly,” also have come to my liking. It is not about doing your job irresponsibly, though. It is about not letting too-high expectation prevent you from doing something good. Amazingly, it doesn't only work for people who have more grounded perspectives in life, but also for people with depression, or people who have lost their hopes. If you can’t shower, wash your face. If you can’t exercise, go out from your house and have some sun. This kind of thought invites such people to move and do something. Because just like how sometimes form precedes essence, doing something, no matter how mundane, enables hope to reemerge. And for the people who are already with hope, it does something greater. If you can’t do kindness to the whole world, do it to this person in front of you. If you can’t write something that will touch a lot of people, write something that will touch yourself. Because everything worth doing is so worth it, that doing it a little is better than not doing it at all.

And even when such lines turn to more optimism, they still remain within the bounds of reality. Just like in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which despite its flaws, has delivered one of the best lines that answers the question about why we should hope. “And even if we fail,” the character Gwen Stacy said, “What better way is there to live?” For me, this simple line answers the question of why we should hope beautifully. It doesn't jump into promises of outcome that it can't possibly keep. It stays in the real. It answers the question by giving value to hope itself, and not to what it aspires to attain.

In the end, I guess the reason the lines attract me is because their comfort doesn't require me to believe in something that may be far-fetched from what I see everyday. They only talk about the now, what you can do, and how valuable it actually is. They don't talk about some prize at the end of the road, because the prize is already here, in the form of the simple actions, and in me doing those actions.

Singapore 18

As the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire Colburn, once said, "Some music needs air,"

one bud was off.

*thanks to Tik for the term

The Redundant Scene

There's a scene in the movie Moana that I like the most. It is the one at the start of the movie. It is cute as a button yet as deep as the ocean (pun badly intended). It tells about innocence in such a beautiful way that it deserves a writing of its own.

However... this is not such a writing.

Instead, this is a writing about how it is redundant, pointless in the perspective of storytelling.


The scene shows Moana who was still but a little child, playing alone at the beach. She was greeted by the ocean, which offered her a stone, the heart of the Goddess Te Fiti. It was long taken from her, causing bad things in the world. In time, Moana would restore the heart to Te Fiti and lift the curse. But at that exact moment, she was just too young to understand anything. When her father eventually came and carried her away, the ocean silently took back the heart until the time it fell on her hands again when she was already a teenager.

I've said that the scene is redundant and now I'll tell you why. It adds nothing to the plot. If the scene were taken away, it would change nothing. Moana would still receive the heart as a teenager and restore it to Te Fiti. She didn't even have any recollection of the event due to her young age. And because there was no witness, it was never mentioned again in the whole movie. The scene was an isolated event, detached and lost to everyone in the movie.

Well...
Except for the audience.

It is also why the scene, as pointless as I think it is, remains the scene I like the most.

Most stories I know have an unwritten rule. Pointless scenes get pointed out and ridiculed, and for good reasons. Such scenes clutter the story and take away the meaning. However, this scene does exactly the opposite. It gives another dimension to Moana's quest, a divine aspect. She didn't just make the choice to save the world, as fantastic and noble as it was. She had always been meant, or expected, to do so. What was considered a simple human endeavor for all the characters in the movie was morphed into a quest of the divine.

And let's remember that this perspective is only given to the audience. It was absent to all the movie characters, even Moana herself. She never knew about the great destiny expected of her, not at the beginning nor the end. Only the audience understand that she not only needed to take the quest, she had to. And they get to keep the perspective as they go through every scene that comes next.

It was something I admire in storytelling. I like to write, and the mechanism never crossed my mind. The idea that you can add depth in a story by giving a personal, private, special perspective just for the audience and the audience alone, captivated me. It was genius. And maybe for people longing for a hidden layer of meaning inside their lives, assuring.

Stories of Man

Please kindly play the next video before you continue reading.

It has come to my attention that in my articles, I often quote questionable sources. For example, in Finding God’s Will, an article that is obviously about God, I quoted Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. And in Encounters, an article that is about truly connecting to someone, I featured a cigarette commercial. This habit supposedly comes from my love for pop culture. However, as I have come to realize, that is not the sole reason. The other one is unexpectedly, my wholehearted love for the lives of Man.

Joe Dirt

In the comedy Joe Dirt, a movie about a man who’s trapped in a perpetual bad luck but stayed positive and happy no matter what, there is a scene I adore the most.

Joe Dirt, who worked as a janitor in a radio station, was mopping the hallway at night. Everybody had gone home and he was all alone. When he reached a room with the sign "BOILER ROOM" on its door, he stopped and looked around. Convinced that there was no one, he cautiously opened the door and stepped inside. Right then, we could see that it was secretly his living quarter. He had no money to rent a place so he turned the station’s boiler room into his home.

After closing the door, Joe Dirt sat on his bunk. He took two photographs that he kept on the table. They showed a blonde girl with her dog. We know the woman was not with him anymore because he was living alone. Yet we also know that she remained in his thoughts because of the way he kept the photographs.
Joe Dirt lied on his bunk...
He took a good look at the photographs...
He smiled for a while...
And then he went to sleep...

And all of this happened while Crash into Me by Dave Matthews Band (the video above) played in the background, undeterred by any sound because there was no dialogue.

I wish I could explain why the scene captivated me but I doubt if I can. I can tell you this, though. In what otherwise a loud, raunchy, and slapstick movie, I got to experience Joe Dirt in his silent moment.
And it was a sweet moment.

Movie moments like this stay in my heart. And they fill it up with warmth.

That’s also why I love the horror movie It. Not because it was a good horror movie, which of course it was, but because I love the protagonists, the children in the Losers' Club.

Their interaction with one another was so adorable… and familiar. You can’t help but feel for them. And the stuff they had to put through… oh God. They had to fight an ancient evil entity while they couldn’t even open a blocked door without working together. They were really just kids, who found strength in each other.

And have I mentioned the poem?

When one of the kids, Ben Hanscom, fell in love with the red-haired Beverly Marsh, who was also a member of the Losers' Club, he wrote a poem for her on the back of a postcard.

Beverly Marsh

Your hair is winter fire,

January embers.

My heart burns there, too.

It was the best poem I had experienced for a long time…



I friggin' love pop culture.

It's good.

And sometimes… sometimes, they capture moments... recognizable, familiar moments.

In the movie Before Sunrise, Celine said, “If there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between.” I used to foolishly take this almost literally. But now I picture it as His presence in the wake of life, our actions, struggles, feelings, about each other, and also our lone moments when we long, when we’re connecting to some... thing, whether it is a distant memory, or just the presence of our surroundings. He is there in the moments. Or if I may dare to quote another great movie, V for Vendetta, “God is in the rain.”

I usually end my writing with a long-thought sentence. However, it doesn’t feel right this time. I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’ll leave you with one of the best songs to hear in the lone moment, at least for me.

I hope you will always find your moments. And may them fill your heart.

Stoikiy Muzhik

Colonel Abel and James Donovan in Bridge of Spies

Ever since I heard the phrase in Bridge of Spies, I have been captivated by it. In the movie, Colonel Abel used it to describe the quality he observed in his lawyer, James Donovan. He said the words after watching how resilient Donovan was in defending him. Stoikiy Muzhik, or standing man, the man who keeps standing back even though everyone tries to put him down, ignites something in me. What can be more mesmerizing than the thought of a man who just won’t back down? And the funny thing is, it is not his resoluteness I admire. It is not the strength, nor the conviction. The thing that captivates me the most is the reason. The why. Why does he keep standing? What enables him to go beyond his supposed self?

There is nothing new in my question. It has been brought up numerous times in books and movies. Just like in The Matrix Revolutions when Neo constantly gets back up. Agent Smith asks him why he keeps standing. Is it freedom, truth, peace, love? Neo finally replies because he chooses so. It is an exceptional answer. It is an answer that emphasizes the greatness of a subject that is man, the ability to choose. But it is not the kind of answer that I currently want to write. Right now, I want to write about something that in the perspective of spiritual enlightenment, goes a bit lower. I want to write about the reason that comes not from the inside, like the ability to choose, but starts from outside the person, something that deeply mesmerises him to go beyond his usual strength, something like an ancient overplayed concept, something like a simple love.

I have a friend that I haven’t seen in a while. There are many things about him, but one thing that stands out is his experience with a girl he loved. He once loved this girl so much that he kept chasing her for more that twelve years. Mind you, I never thought of him as a standing man. I would think that the reason that drove a standing man would have to be something greater than mere infatuation. It would have to be humanity, or peace, or something similar. It couldn’t be love.

John Keating in Dead Poets Society

However, my recent experiences has put another perspective on the matter. Why can’t it be love? Isn’t it a grand thing? In the movie Dead Poets Society, John Keating says to his students, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” They are what make life, well... life. They are the reasons we fight so hard to survive. They give meaning to our survival. I have also heard someone said, “Loving is like having a song in your heart.” I know what it's like to be depressed, and I know what it’s like to be so happy that you want to sing. I imagine someone who has a song in his heart, whose heart is constantly singing, to be nothing less than jubilant. Isn’t it the drive of countless great people? Love is a good enough reason to sustain someone beyond his self. Love is more than enough.

Still I think, the rough patches he must have gone through. Twelve years must not have come easy. Happiness in love comes and goes. It can’t be the only thing that sustains him. Then I think that perhaps he managed to go through because for him, the whole deal was who he was. There are things that have put me in pain and distress, and one of those things is having to do something that contradicts my honest being. Maybe it was harder for him denying his heart than going through the twelve years. Maybe at least when he’s with her, he is at peace within his own self, and everything makes sense. It is something that I can only suspect, remembering that when he’s with her he was the most vibrant and giving person I know.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love are what we stay alive for. For the Stoikiy Muzhik in my life, it's what kept him standing. It is what matters. I imagine if I had asked him to pick between living pain free without love or having the chance to pursue a great love, I would have known the answer.

My choice would have been the same.

Most Happiest

Today I had lunch with a friend. She was telling me about her love life when she said something about how she picked a significant other. She only picked someone whom she thought would make a good companion. She wasn’t bothered much about his status or wealth. A good companion... That was her criterion.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the above paragraph. However, like most old, overused ideas, its sense of weight only grows larger as I grow older. I too, can’t agree more. A good companion... That is also what I’m looking for.

When I wrote Encounters, I was talking about how although it doesn’t seem likely, people do meet and connect. It is this kind of bond that I crave, a relationship where you truly see and be seen. I remember when Patrick Jane, the protagonist of the series The Mentalist, spent his days in seclusion somewhere in Central America, he had no one to talk to. Everyone was speaking Spanish, a language he’s still adopting. One day, he met a woman at the beach. She was an American. Patrick Jane eagerly tried to start a conversation with her, anything he could think of. It had been a long time since he talked in English and he missed it. “Being understood is an underrated pleasure,” he said in a reflective tone.

Being understood is a great pleasure for me too. And also of course, if I may add, understanding someone. Perhaps it’s because secretly, I’m afraid of loneliness. Perhaps it’s because like the thinking behind The Celestine Prophecy, I’m an incomplete person, looking for completeness in the soul of others, making it some kind of a defect that I have.

I don’t know.

Although, sometimes I think it’s simply because deep down, I believe that happiness doesn’t mean a thing unless it is shared.

I don’t like people in general, so that is an odd thing for me to say. I’m a quiet extrovert though, so it kinda makes sense. And although I’ve often times said that I hated people, it amazes me that almost all my fondest memories always involve someone. May it be a moment with friends or lovers, I’m happiest when I’m with someone. It’s funny.

When the film Into the Wild was released, my friend warned me not to watch it. I had always shown a tendency of doing things alone that he was afraid it would make me worse. I think he was dead wrong. The film was about a young man who was disgusted by people and the social structure and so lived his life in the wild in isolation. It didn’t work out for him. His supplies ran out and he was forced to eat plants, accidentally eating the poisonous one. In the last moment of his life, he wrote his realization in his book, “Happiness only real when shared.”

I guess the theme resonates in a lot of hearts, because a lot of films seem to adopt it. After having a great success without the presence of his wife, Jerry Maguire said, “Our little company had a good night tonight. A really big night. But it wasn't complete, it wasn't nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn't share it with you. I couldn't hear your voice, or laugh about it with you.” Even Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother said, “Whatever you do in this life, it’s not legendary unless your friends are there to see it.”

I’ve always wanted someone. I guess I’m one of those miserable people who were born to share. There’s hardly anything grander for me than a true and honest connection. It's a must have for me. We may come into this world alone and leave it alone, but I think... it doesn't always have to be that way.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 'the' Eye Candy

Mad Max; Fury Road is an eye candy so sweet, it's deemed to give you diabetes. It has one of the simplest plots in a movie: let's take our heroes in a ride, race them with baddies, and see what happens. But the same seemingly senseless plot acts as a plate to serve what it really aims, a full-time visual spectacle.

It has diverse gimmicky characters, from the horrendous ventilator-assisted grandpa, to the wacky fiery guitarist, and finally to the war-cyclist grandmas. It's as if all the characters in Mortal Kombat, or Kill Bill, or The Raid decided to do a destructive car chase.

And the car chase, oh my... There were trucks, armored cars, motorcycles, god-knows-what scrapped vehicles, hooks, chains, poles, and obviously spilled gasoline. Try imagine them in one picture, and that's what you get.

Sometimes there is meat hidden in the dressing, but in Mad Max: Fury Road, the main course 'is' the dressing. And it is a beautiful one. In the midst of movies with hidden meanings and heavy plot, this is a welcome break. Sometimes all we need is a movie where you can scream, "Holy sh*t!"

The Best Place to Be

Only quotes this time, taken from the movie Chef and Apollo 13.

"...I'm, like, fucking lost."

"I think that's a good place to start."

- Carl and Molly in Chef

Television Reporter: Is there a specific instance in an airplane emergency when you can recall fear?

Jim Lovell: Uh well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shrangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know... what... what events are to transpire to get you home.

Finding God's Will

There’s a story I once heard about a climber who climbed a mountain alone on a cold and moonless night. He climbed carefully because he almost couldn’t see. As expected from such a reckless action, at one point he slipped and fell. He didn’t go all the way down because he was still attached to a safety rope. Suspended in air, he thought about what to do. He couldn’t pull himself up because his arm was injured from the fall. He couldn’t cut the rope also because below him was a dark and bottomless pit.

For hours he did nothing. He was still thinking about the situation when suddenly a voice was heard. “Cut the rope and you will be fine,” said the voice. The climber was shocked. He turned his head around but he couldn’t find anyone. “Who is that?” he yelled. The voice didn’t answer; instead it said the same thing. “Cut the rope and you will be fine.”

The climber was perplexed. He was too scared to cut the rope. He tried to listen more but the voice was never heard again. He finally decided to ignore it. He spent the night suspended in freezing air, waiting for daybreak. The next day, people whom he was supposed to meet looked for him. They found him hanging, frozen to death, and only two meters above a steady rock. Had he cut the rope that night, he would have been saved.

The morale of the story is simple: listen to God’s will and you will turn out fine, do the opposite and hardships will surely follow, because after all God’s ways are not your ways.

In life, we are often faced with difficult options. They don’t usually concern ethics (which will surely make them somewhat easier to decide upon, such as to kill or not kill), and yet, they are important to us. Work problems, love problems are the commonest issues that usually involve this kind of options. Should I work here or there? Should I take a risk with her or go? Most often, there is no morally right or wrong value in these choices. They’re just options, and yet they affect us deeply. That’s why they are so hard to pick.

Dealing with such a situation, we may wonder what God’s take is on the matter. We may pray for Him to show His true will. We want His guidance. Just like the morale of the story, we don’t want to pick the wrong option, the wrong decision, the way He doesn’t want us to take. We refuse to be brought down to a path that leads us to bad consequences. We need the correct answer.


I used to think the same way, but for the last few years I’ve grown further and further away from the concept. The reason stems from my own personal experience. Unlike the story, the voice of God in my life, if there is any, has never been clear. He has never truly uttered a single word in my heart. Perhaps it is my fault, perhaps I sin too much or I don’t open my heart big enough, but still I have to admit that my questions usually go unanswered. It’s just like what the guy from the film The Island says when a clone questions about God: “You know—when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you.” I don’t know what He wants in my situation. I’ve never heard Him say it. Sure, there are a lot of signs everywhere, but they so contradict each other that I think they are products of my own imagination. The voice of God is the sound of silence. I often feel lost and don’t know which way to go. And it is that kind of thought that used to make me very scared. I often thought, “If I’m a bad sheep who’s not able to hear His will, then how will my life go?” I feared that I would make a lot of wrong decisions and thus my life would be miserable. Had I just been able to hear Him, I would have gladly done what He said, but the fact was I couldn’t.


The experience drove me nuts until I decided to develop my own subjective truth. The story may be right for someone lucky enough to be able to hear God’s voice, but it is definitely not right for me. I even start to think of it as rubbish. The idea of God as a powerful being who likes to play guessing games with our happiness as stakes sounds ridiculous for me. I may not know who or what He actually is, but that seems a bit low... and off. The story stands on an assumption that life can only be good if it is done according to God’s will, and it can only be bad if it is not, while the will itself is a mystery. People who believe it and obviously don’t want to live a bad life will desperately try to uncover the mystery, regardless of its plausibility, and live accordingly.

But does it really work like that?

I don’t believe that that's the way life runs. The seemingly good choices don’t always make good consequences, and bad choices don’t always result in bad ones. Even a single choice can have various consequences at the same time, good and bad. Good things and bad things happen to anyone regardless of their choices. Everything is almost as if it is made out from chaos. And such a chaotic notion contradicts what the story’s trying to say. You cannot expect to find God’s will to make your life all good and happy. Bad things will always happen. Perhaps the whole point is not to guess which option is the one that God really wants. Perhaps it is about choosing one anyway and accepting all consequences that follow. Perhaps that’s also the reason why God always sits in silence no matter how hard I ask. God’s will is never really found standing behind the right option. Instead it stands with us - the persons who are trying to choose, willing for us to pick an option, live through it, and grow from learning to deal with anything that comes after.


When I first saw Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, I liked what the character Han told the character Sean. He said, “Life is simple. You make choices and you don’t look back.” The statement is an oversimplification. Letting go of the past is never simple. But still I think it aims at a good point. Life is not about making the right choices, because sometimes there are none. It’s about living anything we choose. Good things may happen and so may bad things. But we try to go through them anyway, making up answers as we go. Perhaps, only then will God’s will truly be served (if He did will us to grow and not just guess correctly because correct options didn't exist anyway). And perhaps, only then will our prayer turn into what the character Maria in the film Sound of Music says. It is not “God, show me the correct path so I can be all happy,” it is “For what we receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.” I think now all I can say to myself is just, "Pick a choice, live through it." If God does exist and is as loving as everyone says, He will be there all the time with me while I grow through the consequences.

Encounters

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, didn't believe that we could truly meet someone.





Sometimes I believe him.



Afterall, we are independent beings cut off from the world. What we know for sure is only our very own existence. I cannot tell with the same confidence other people's thoughts and feelings, and I never will.

And again, how could we?

Everytime I meet someone, I don't truly meet him. All I meet is what I assume of him in my mind, and so does he. We may both meet in flesh, but we never truly face each other. All we ever face is our own assumptions.

We never perceive through anything but our own existence. We are private beings, dettached from each other. There's no one in our hearts to talk to, only our voice. Other people, no matter how close they are, remain objects to us. We spend our lives by ourselves. We are truly alone.





Sartre was right.
Truly meeting someone is impossible.








There are other times when I don't believe that, though.


One is when I watch this TV commercial.



Contrary to what I wrote above, stories of encounter, just like the ad, interest me. I guess in part it's because they remind me how at times I do feel in sync with someone, even when I realize that the other part is my own wish of not wanting to believe in Sartre's words.

Either way, people do meet.

Sometimes, they may even take a higher level, just like the commercial. Its characters violently contradict Sartre's words. Not only is the male shown not knowing who he is, he also only succeeds in doing so after looking at himself through the female's eyes.


He finds himself through the eyes of someone else.


Ain't that grand?


A simpler, yet richer encounter can also be found in the film Before Sunrise (yep, that movie again). The characters Jesse and Celine blatantly mention it when they talk about losing oneself.

Jesse & Celine at the Park

Jesse: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. Its just usually its myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, its just they are sick to death of being around themselves. Lets say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way, uh, the way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it made me feel like I'm somebody else. Y'know the only other way to lose yourself like that is, um, y'know, dancing, or alcohol, or drugs, and stuff like that.

And again in numerous ways in the film Before Sunset, one of which is this powerful scene.

Jesse & Celine Embrace

So,
can people truly meet?


I certainly hope so.


Although ironically, and also obviously, it seems we are only able to do that exactly when we lose ourselves and stop being subjects anyway.


Well, as long as we get the chance of experiencing and remembering it, you won't have the slightest objection from me.

Double Stupidity

South Korean troops mistakenly shoot at Asiana Airlines jet
Reuters, SEOUL

South Korean marines fired rifles at a South Korean commercial aircraft flying near the sea border with North Korea, thinking it was one of the North’s jet fighters, but they never hit their target, military sources said yesterday.
The shooting illustrates the level of tension between the two Koreas, still technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, which came close to all-out war last year.
A Republic of Korea (ROK) Marine Corps spokesman said two soldiers guarding an island on the waters off the South’s western city of Incheon fired their K-2 rifles for about 10 minutes at around 4am on Friday.
The plane was later identified as an Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 flying from China making its descent into Incheon International Airport.
A South Korean defense ministry source said the plane, carrying 119 passengers and crew, was undamaged as it was about 500m to 600m out of the range of the handheld K-2 rifles.
Yonhap news agency and other local media said the soldiers believed the plane was flying north of the normal air corridor. Asiana officials told the news agency the plane never left its scheduled course.
“We checked yesterday through the air force and the airport control center to make sure there were no abnormalities such as being off course,” Yonhap quoted a company official as saying.
An airline official confirmed the plane was an Airbus A320, but made no other comment.
Yonhap and other news reports quoted ROK Marine Corps officers as saying troops would undergo thorough training on how to identify civilian aircraft. Airlines will be asked to ensure their planes do not deviate from set courses.
The North denies responsibility in the sinking in March last year of a South Korean warship and says it was provoked in the second incident, the shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong after the South test-fired shells into disputed waters.
The two attacks killed about 50 South Koreans.
The North this month rejected a proposal from Seoul for a series of three presidential summits after a secret meeting of officials from the two countries. The North denounced the South’s call for an apology for the two attacks.

I guess sometimes we are graced with two strikes of stupidity that cancel each other out.

Major disaster, avoided.

The Blasphemous Act of Waldjinah

Waldjinah as Ratu Kembang Katjang, 1958

When Waldjinah, the famous singer, took the stage and sang in the 1960s, the place was always full.
And when Waldjinah, the singer, went down the stage right after, the place was never less crowded.
The people were all waiting for her to do one more act.
She was expected to touch them.

Waldjinah is a legend in the world of Keroncong. She rose to fame in 1958 by winning a radio contest that granted her a record deal. In 1965, she won the President Soekarno trophy while seven months expecting. Charmed by her voice, the President went as far as giving a name to the yet unborn child. Kris Biantoro, the famous all round entertainer, also loved her voice, calling her ‘Meteor dari Sala’ (‘the meteor from the town of Solo’).

It was also the same voice that kept the people in their place. They were so deeply captured by it, that they even considered her touch as grace. The pregnant women wished that it would grant their child power to sing, while the mothers with sick babies hoped that it would bring out health. Waldjinah would gladly answer their hopes, touching them one by one before eventually leaving the place.

Had this interesting thing happened 50 years later, it would have been considered a blasphemous act. Especially when we put in mind how the country is now filled with people whose god is so weak that it has to be chosen all the time and put in a constant contest with its own creations.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

It happened in the time when people lived with a very different set of values.
It happened in the time when people wanted their offspring to have a knack for things that, profit-wise, questionable.
It happened in the time when people were able to appreciate the most subtle-and-easily-fall-to-boring-in-nowadays-standards-things, such as Keroncong.
It happened in the time when people were closer to God, in a much more profound way that involved mundane things, than wearing specific attire or screaming some exact words.
And in such a time, Waldjinah shone like a crack in the skies. Through her voice, people were readily taken away, brought to a transcendent connection with the Absolute itself. Simply, when people saw her sing Keroncong, they felt God.

So, surrounded by this kind of beautiful blasphemous realization, the people earlier did what their heart told them to do. They waited for her and asked her to share some crumbs of that once felt connection left.
“Touch your hand to me and my baby, and everything is good,” they said.
Waldjinah would humbly answer their hopes, touching them one by one before eventually leaving the place.

Nietzsche and the WWE

Friedrich Nietzsche

What do Friedrich Nietzsche, a famous 19th century philosopher, and the World Wrestling Entertainment have in common?

It’s the same preferred morality.

If you watch the WWE, you’ll see that it has a different standard about what’s good and bad compared to general perception. Its good guys aren’t exactly the most humble, pitiful, or sympathetic people. They are, in fact, evil and arrogant sons of a gun; literally no different than its bad guys on that matter.

So how do we tell them apart?

It’s by looking at what they’ve actually got. The good guys are the ones who have what it takes to back up their attitude. The bad guys are the cowards who don’t even stand a chance in a fair fight.

Or in other words, the WWE’s morality is about power.

Bekasi Boys

The most impossible computer generated internet ad...

Oh really?

Reality

Infinity times infinity.
No words suffice.

A BRAND NEW Reflection on Relationships

I once wrote that a true relationship can only be reached when there is a common ground. The closer the common ground is to our hearts (beliefs, perspectives, what we love), the better it becomes.

In a way, I still believe that.

However, yesterday I found out an interesting take on a SIMILAR subject in a work.
In the work, the writer wanted to determine what really constituted a FRIENDSHIP.
He tried to do this by observing the ones around him.
From his observation, he noticed that people of different nature had good friendships. So, he concluded that differences between the persons involved were the ones that constituted a friendship.
In other words, differences make a relationship work.
Besides, differences give people a chance to complement each other, right?

However, as time went by, he found that people with more things in common also had good friendships, and even at occasions, better than some who didn’t.
This finding put the previous answer in shaky grounds.
Do differences really constitute a friendship? Or do things in common that really do the job?

He gave it another thought,
and finally he was able to reach a conclusion.

Miss Indonesia Qory Sandioriva’s Interview in Miss Universe 2010

Being a woman, what piece of advice would you give to a man?

I think that when you downed the women can make you up and(s) I think that women can be said they I have advice for you that (em) if you way up you have to be nice to people (ex) (e) include women so when you downed women can be [clap] nice with you.

What is the best gift you have ever received?

The best gift somebody ever given to me is the one(d) box but (e) the character is is not a good or beautiful but it’s it it have a sounds a beautiful sounds that makes me love music.

I love music now and (um) now I’m a singer and I’m study at a singer for jazz (um) for classical and of course for pop.

That is (e) makes me know what I want to do.

That makes me know what I love it what that makes me know (um) what jobs or what kind (e) activity that I love it. [clap]

What is the worst date you have ever been on?

In one restaurant and that is the day is that I know she (eh) he is a playboy so (eh) he he have a three girlfriend like (e) include me. But before that I know that they have (e) more than one one hundred girlfriend [small laugh].

It’s very bad but I know but it’s the good is now he always care for me care not be a best friend for me and he always protect me don’t please Qory don’t like me, don’t don’t don’t same like me, you you are a nice girl, you are-

So he never touch me like a you know like a playboy but (um) he always (um) make comfortable in beside her and (um) yeah it’s very bad bad [small laugh] bad day but (um) he inspiring me to be a tough woman.

-transcribed by hub-

I'll post a note later.

UPDATE

(due to certain developments, I am obliged to add something blue to my previously planned writing)

From the above paragraphs, what do you see?

If you see a beautiful dumb girl speaking in broken English humiliating our beloved country, then I suggest you bear these things in mind:

- Qory Sandioriva is barely 19 years old. I can’t remember of achieving something special now when I am in my 27th year, let alone when I was in the same age, which I believe is also the case with A LOT of people.

- Miss Universe is the largest beauty pageant in the world. You can imagine how intensely nerve-wrecking it is, being judged from every possible angle and at every second without a break. I doubt anyone can handle that.

So if you’re going to say something pointless, baseless, and unnecessarily harsh, please think it over. It’s just drop dead idiotic and rude.

Now, let’s get on with it.

Perpetuum Jazzile!

This is a performance by Perpetuum Jazzile.
It's a Slovenian jazz and pop choir. They often do a Capella, such as in this cover of Toto's Africa.
It blew my mind away. :)

I Will Read Your Mind!

Yes, you got me right.

Through this ordinary blog, I will scan your thoughts and see the depths of your soul.

All you have to do is look closely at the screen and focus.

Don’t try to transfer your mind to me, that’s my job.

Just simply open it, and let me in.

OK, are you ready?

Focus...

Relax...

Breathe...

And let me in...

...

...

Mm.. yes I can definitely see it.

...

Yes, it’s so vivid.

...

...

And STOP!

I’m done.

You want to see what I’ve got?
Here it is.