The Things My Girl Has Ever Done

1. Saying that it was Judas who demanded to touch Jesus' wounds. I still believe it was Thomas.
2. Saying that Moses had an affair and took someone else's wife. I think she was referring to David taking Bathsheba.
3. Insisting that prayers from sinners are heard by God (doa orang-orang berdosa didengarkan Tuhan) because she felt she had read it somewhere in the Bible, only to have second thoughts when I said, "Isn't it supposed to say 'prayers from the oppressed are heard by God' (doa orang-orang teraniaya didengarkan Tuhan)?"
4. Pronouncing bear as beer, while still pronouncing a polar bear as how it is supposed to sound.
5. Pronouncing fusion as fashion.
6. Calling me Poo, without the slightest idea of what it actually means; and not knowing my full name for a full month, despite our relationship.
7. Saying lots of things in English. Some of the time it's American English and some of the time it's her own kind of English.
8. Failing to tell a buffalo from a cow. She once said that her Chinese zodiac was the cow.
9. Failing to tell a lion from a tiger.
10. Making one plate of fried rice with seasoning enough for two, forcing her guest at the time to live with the consequences.
11. Making very well-done toasts with too much jelly in it, forcing her guest at the time to live with the consequences.
12. Making a plate of spicy rice with one fourth of processed chilli, forcing her guest at the time to live with the consequences.
13. Putting me in a lot of mysery, agitation, and stress that sometimes make me want to go, "Aargh!" on her.
14. Running back to a bookshop while her flight was almost leaving, just to get me a few books.
15. Forcing me to study, because most of the time I won't.
16. Never failing to make me smile again, no matter how many times I want to go, "Aargh!" on her.
17. Telling her stories for hours nonstop, playing her loud music while she's driving, screaming around at random moments, making me miss her when she's not around to keep my ears full.

I care about my girl.
A lot.

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.

Yogyakarta 11

There were a couple of highlights:
- at one time, most of the family sat down together and painted (too bad I didn't take pictures of the paintings)
- we went to Kuwaru Beach, which was beautiful... and also eerie when fog descended and covered the whole place
- and, I got to meet my newborn nephews (there were two of them)

Happy times :)

The Third Thing

Once there was a guy who had had enough with women who kept saying, “Men love women because of their physical appearance. The prettier the women are, the more love the men give.”

The guy happened to have a beautiful girlfriend whom he loved very much.

So when on a dinner a female acquaintance mentioned the same thing, he just couldn't take it anymore and stood up.

“There are three things that I want you to remember!" he shouted.

"First, those who can choose physical appearance because they are secured and independent are definitely not worse than those who cannot because all they ever care about is to be loved, no matter where it comes from!

Second, most women fall into a trap of thinking they can only be picked! The reason the idea stands is only because it comforts and assures them that they will all eventually be picked!”

“And third,” he slowed down as he pointed his finger at the beautiful girlfriend.

“The reason I love her and why she stands out so much...
is because she's among the few who doesn’t give a damn about the first two things.”

I always think that a great woman is carefree. She’s larger than life, and definitely larger than insecurities or cheap dramatic ideas served only for comfort.

So yeah, I’m not telling the story because I’m a misogynist.

I’m telling it because I’m a feminist.

A Good Night

Let me write this just for the sake of it.

In the midst of cold air and warm feeling,

I just had a g...


...great night.

I Want Money, a Whole Lot of It

There's a time in every weekday when I close my eyes and shut the world outside. The time varies but the place is always the same. It's a street right beside Jatinegara market. As the bus that takes me home passes it, I will be found cowering, eyes tight until I'm sure I'm well off the place.

I never have the guts to see,

not with all the horrid torture that's going on.

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.

Seeing in Retrospect and Saying, "Aw Dude..."

I found a journal I had completely forgotten writing a few days ago. It's only got five entries, so no wonder I couldn't remember.

It doesn't change the fact that I was very happy when I found it, however, because I don't keep notes about events of my life very often (even this blog mostly consists of articles, not private writings). So finding it is like having a second chance to relive a particular moment. I mean, you can imagine how much connection you can have by reading your own writing if in daily basis you already relate to writings of people you don't even know.

Anyway, I'm not going to post the five entries here, just two... Well, one and a half, because one is just the cover. The entry was written on August 31st, 2008. To give it some context: I just graduated from med school, didn't have a clue about what to do in life, and it was a day before I went on a road trip with my best friends. There were supposed to be eight of us, but one female friend, that I cared very much, cancelled at the last minute. Her mother and boyfriend at the time told her not to go.

It shouldn't have been a very special case to me. Sure, it's upsetting but people cancel all the time, right? The only problem was, then, I was so engulfed with her situation. She hated her boyfriend, while her strict mother worshiped him. Obviously, I responded the way an unstable man in his mid-twenties would. I acted like a passionate hero.

Clearly, this ended up with a disaster, a whole year of it as a matter of fact. However, it also spawned a lot of good other things. What happened next was one of the reasons I started this blog, although the aftershocks, which were definitely not smaller in scale, hit me so hard that I left it for a good four months in 2009.

All in all, the journal gave me back a piece of memory I didn't know I still had, about a moment right before a great fall. And now, looking back from the safe and understanding future, I just can't stop saying to myself, "Aw Dude... You don't know what's coming to you."

Damn, I was off back then. :)

Slapsgiving: an Interesting Sunday Mass Sermon

Matthew 5:38-48 (New International Version)

Eye for Eye

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love for Enemies

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

This is a long overdue post, based on a sermon I heard weeks ago.
But in my opinion, it is still worth to write.

The priest opened the sermon by referring to the latest headline at the time, the occurrence of some religious persecutions in Indonesia. He said that it was hard to be a part of the minorities in this country, especially considering how powerless the government was against groups of religious fanatics who were free to roam and wreak havoc in the country, all in the name of a loving God.

“So based on the passage, what should we do?” he asked.

All Lovey Dovey in Hastily Speedily

A week ago, I was having a discussion with some friends about the act of marriage when two questions came up.

What is your take in love (as in the romantic one)?
and
Does it exist?

This is what I came up.

Years ago, I believed everything about it, even its divine attribute, like ‘your soul mate is set in the heavens’.

Some time after that, I didn’t believe anything about it anymore. To me, it is no more than our biological tendency as sexual beings that because of our developed minds receives new values, such as friendship, devotion, monogamy, or even an unconditional state (just having the words biological and unconditional in one sentence alone does feel a bit odd, doesn’t it?).
That’s why I think love is almost impossible to define, because for the most part it’s filled with make-beliefs that are, of course, subjects of subjectivity.
So, does love exist objectively? Of course not.

But lately, I’ve begun to warm up to it again. My understanding hasn’t changed (I still believe that it’s a hyped up biological tendency), but my reaction towards it is not as harsh and more hopeful.
Does it exist, objectively? My answer is still no.
But does the fact that it exists mostly subjectively mean nothing at all? My answer is definitely hell no.
Now I say, if you believe in it, it exists, and if you don’t, it doesn’t.
The make-beliefs that I didn’t put into consideration before are now playing an important role.
Because if I believe in something, don't my views, my actions, and my whole entirety change according to it?
And if the effects are real, is it still easy to say that what I believe in doesn’t exist?
Perhaps that's the whole point about love. Its reality lies in the way we live the idea.

So consequently:

• I don’t think there’s a universal truth about this kind of love. No rules and no guidelines, like ‘if he does this then he doesn’t love you unconditionally’, or other mumbo jumbos.
• Love is much much more personal than I thought, and that’s why I think it is important to find someone who has the same belief about what it is.
• The thought shows me how our ability to create our own reality is amazingly vast, which is also the subject of some schools of thought, such as idealism and Buddhism.

And on a more personal note, well, now I get to love again.

The Man Who Is My Father

If there’s one thing I like about growing up, it’s that I get to know my parents better.

As years of my life flip like a torn up calendar, I begin to take a lot of things in the way I see my parents. It almost seems that every now and then I have a chance to do these completely new close-up shots of them that I didn’t even know before. They started out as Mom and Dad, figures of authority who brought me to this reality, but ended up as a dude and a girl who happen to be my parents.

I quite enjoy it.

I don’t know exactly how it happens. Maybe it’s because as I get older, my life and my parents’ start to mirror each other (you’ve got less change when you’re older, right?). But one thing for sure, it always keeps me nailed in place every time I find their old photographs or hear some revealing stories about them, which are curiously always come from someone else.

Blackberry: Gallivanting towards Collective Awareness?

For the past week, I’ve been using the friggin’ device. Apparently my old cellphone couldn’t stand being submerged underwater (along with the handler as a matter of a fact) for a good 15 seconds.

Anyhoo, I wasn’t exactly ecstatic of using it. And the reason was simple. It was too much of a cost for something I wasn’t sure of needing. And of course, there’s also that thing about my obsessive-compulsive tendency which would surely give me a pain in the ass if I ever tried to build a whole new set of meticulously detailed contact list,
which
only a smart phone can give.
Hoh…

Nevertheless…
Here I am now, BBMing (if there is such a term) my fingers off. I haven’t got any problem with my contact list also (since I strategically haven’t started building it).

The Path to Redemption Starts Yesterday... Or Much Earlier

I'm starting to build my life with true blocks of medicine again, I guess.
I just hope the beauty of ideas doesn't elude me.

Have always been stuck within the two worlds anyway, so why not just have fun with it?
An MD and a jack of all idea-trades.
Kekeke...