Transitions

Nothing injects me with more melancholy than the end of any long holiday. The prospects of trading these joyful anything-goes days with tedious academic stuffs that eats you from the inside is not so great in my book. Even though I’ve gone through this holiday-to-holysh*t transition for a gazillion times, I cannot simply brush it off with a “been there, done that approach”. Pity me :(

As said in Lord of The Rings that “one does not simply walk into Salemba”, I think I have unintentionally compiled a to-do list before waving the semester break bye-bye.

Sort EAMSC memories. I uploaded the pics from my camera and have tagged almost everyone in it, but photos are not the only thing I brought from Bangkok.

First of all, thank you to my AMSA friends for the beautiful souvenirs we hastily traded during cultural night ;p They are very dear to me. I have kept them in a safe place and I will immediately put everything in its rightful place.

Second, I have to arrange who will get which gift from yours truly. Although I am quite flexible on this matter, I don’t want to give a cutey sparkling little Thai elephant keychain to my professors. They deserve something with more dignity, and less sparkle.

Last, I need to properly store my souvenirs from the conference and the Bangkok tour I had. There are conference booklets, business cards, books, fliers, and other whatnots to give home to. Additionally, I am proud to admit that I splurged on sweets in Bangkok supermarkets. Yumm, those chocolate chip cookies sure are tasty.

Reorganize school stuffs. Usually I would have done this at the start of the holiday as a part of my moving-on done-with-you ritual. However, something got in the way this year. Probably laziness.

The ritual starts with moving all the previous module’s materials to an external drive. Because my laptop is one of the centers of life, moving the files symbolizes my strong will to keep school out. And I just don’t like the digital clutter.

 

Then, repeat step #1 but in meatspace (that’s the opposite of cyberspace). As last the previous semester progressed, small ad hoc medical libraries sprouted in every corner of the house. Psychiatry textbook here, atlas of anatomy there, and I was surprised that no book chilled in the fridge.

Next, take care of the piles of medical handouts I-will-need-in-the-future but I’ll-forget-them-soon-anyway. By taking care, I mean buy a plastic folder and let them fall into oblivion there.

Last, prepare for the next module – NOT! The only thing I’ll have to rectify soon is my circadian rhythm, which is now more like a circus than a cycle.

Enjoy live as a free person. The most essential component of any school break.

Monitor the FAILblogs. Watch some weird viral videos. Read a novel. Load my preowned-by-dad iPod with cool apps.  Download the latest episodes of 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live (Eisenberg-Zuckerberg encounter was crayzeeh). Wake up with the sun shining directly above. Eat the whole mall. Come up with other activities normal people do on holidays.

If followed properly with great liberty to modify accordingly, those steps will certainly recharge me for another month of sleeping in class. Medical students rawkz!

My taxi driver said…

(A little detour from the Jogja-Solo journey posts.)

After months of being a TransJakarta victim–an experience I have frequently shared in my previous blog–I adapted to ensure my survival and discovered a faster route to my nest. Now, instead of riding TransJakarta all the way, I take a shortcut by taxi to the Corridor I in Sudirman and get on the bus there. No need to change buses, which drastically reduces waiting time. Let’s just say that at least it halves my travel time.

Today, I hailed a taxi in front of my campus for the first leg of my trip home. When I told the driver that I’m going to a TransJakarta bus stop, he asked whether I’m going to take the bus there. I just nodded and he continued, “It’s a mess, a failure.”

“Yes, indeed. If I get on the bus here, it will waste a lot of precious time. Better to just ride Corridor I,” I honestly replied.

He proceeded bashing Sutiyoso’s pet project. For one, TransJakarta steals road lanes from other road users, yet it does not utilize them optimally. It is definitely not a smart move, considering that there is more car and motorbikes than all of Jakarta’s streets can handle. He summarized that TransJakarta does not alleviate the city’s chronic traffic jams. In fact, in some places it worsens the gridlock.

Next he attacked the management, saying that too many hands are drawing the picture, resulting in utter chaos. TransJakarta’s nine corridors are operated by different companies and they are not very nice to each other. Jakarta’s transportation agency fails to integrate its busway; I’m not expecting them to integrate it with rail service and the mythical waterway.

Those complaints came from a taxi driver, and whether he knows it or not, that shows genuine care for his city and its people. He drives around, gets stuck in the choking traffic jam, and sees all that’s speeding in the wrong direction. Like it or not, he has to witness it all. I can not belittle him by saying “it’s easy for you to complain” because that is what he can do. I don’t want him to use his deadly ninja skills to hijack the whole TransJakarta operation.

On the other side, there are those who actually have the power to make the change. In Jakarta, one of them is called the Governor. The law gives them power to place things in the right spots and to make sure that whatever that thing is, it keeps on working efficiently. They can get things from the wrong place back to the right place.

But where are they? I don’t see them complain about how Jakarta’s traffic problem is getting worse and is routinely complicated by the flood, let alone make decisions to solve the problem. The blaring sirens of their motorcade proudly roars to the world that they are above being trapped in traffic. They can afford to not see the mess they are living in everyday. They can live without caring.

The traffic problem is but a pebble in Jakarta’s mountain of problems, yet it can give a hint why we are not seeing real solutions. Instead, we are forced to cope with ephemeral glitzy projects that dies before the day ends.

Jakarta!

Just a few days ago (June 22, to be exact) Jakarta celebrated its 483rd anniversary. Netizens took to Twitter and Facebook to share their love for the city. The media ran articles about Jakarta’s history and rapid development. Local shopping centers joined the party by taking part in the Jakarta Great Sale Festival. Last and as usual, poorly-designed and easily-misunderstood banners by the city council are flown all over the city.

In written media, the attitude towards Jakarta can always be simplified into a sentence: ‘Despite its frustrating <insert negative points here>, Jakarta is a wonderful city because it <insert positive points here>’. Popular negatives include traffic jam, pollution, lack of green areas, and atmosphere of utter chaos; on the other hand, the positives center on how Jakarta is growing very rapidly and how Jakartans generally have more fun than their neighbours across the strait. (We got Beyonce a few years ago because some wacky Malaysians thought she was too entertaining to do a show there.) But this is not news.

What actually stole my attention was the banners. White background with green design. Green, green, green. Everybody’s going green. The Governor’s smile graced the banners and beside his face, a sentence along the line of “with our diversity, let’s make Jakarta an environment-friendly service city" bravely expresses its designer’s confusion. And we say, “WHAT?”.

Living in an environment-friendly sustainable city is every citizen’s dream, and changing Jakarta into one is our responsibility. In fact, most Jakartans I know are currently trying to reduce their negative impact on the environment. For example, plastic bags are beginning to lose favor and the Bike-to-Work community is thriving. I, along with many friends, actively choose to reduce our paper use by going paperless as often as possible and printing on both sides of the paper.

However, I still cannot make any sense of the banner. First and foremost, its green theme suddenly popped in without prior brouhaha. While Jakarta has been known by many names, I have never heard anything so defiant like ‘Green’. The lack of empty campaign is quite surprising actually, because if you need to get a lot of mouth (and no action) on an issue, you can always rely on Indonesia’s government. Perhaps they are not trying hard enough to fool us.

Next, what on Earth is a service city? A city that provides real public service so that its citizens can achieve high quality of life? Definitely not Jakarta. Just take one example. Applying for a Jakarta-issued national identity card can take as long as waiting for the Halley comet – and as expensive as lunch for ten people.

Ultimately, it is a sign of pure ignorance and shamelessness to put up such banner. The go-green motivation is noble, but when we put that banner in Jakarta’s context, it is just sad. As the world proceeds to embrace more advanced green-living principles, Jakarta consistently fails in fulfilling the basics.

Just another example, flooding is a common complication of rain in the city, and when traced, it comes back to people who throw away their thrash to the streets or into the rivers. In addition, the city government neglected their duty to regulate the development of gigantic, green-space consuming multi-use shopping centers.

At the end of the day, I can only sigh with shame. I love Jakarta. I have tasted the cities of Europe, America, and Australia, but I have always foolishly said Jakarta is better. As the years pass, it takes more and more effort to do declare my unconditional love for the city. But, finally, I can only say “Happy Birthday My Dear Jakarta”.

Everyone’s a fan

That is what generally happens to the Earth’s population every four years. Perennial football fans will find their cheers amplified by World Cup enthusiasts; people who couldn’t have cared less about soccer for 3 years and 11 months are suddenly converted into football fanatics for a whole month. My observation presents 3 major groups of these die-easy fans.

First, guys (or even girls) who are genuinely into World Cup football because of the festive atmosphere and they do feel that football is interesting. These people can be quite well-informed, although their penchant for showing off sharing soccer trivia can be annoying at times. They usually root for certain teams and make fairly good match predictions based on their knowledge.

Next, good-looking soccer players draw a considerable crowd of overexcited girls and gay guys. These romantic football fans always predict that the team of their hearthrob will rule the world, and their favorites are quite typical. In case of yellow or red cards, they will turn into the world’s greatest defense attorney and will bring the best evidences to prove that their star did not kick his opponent in the nuts. Heck, if Iranian clerics can blame women for earthquakes, why can’t we blame Miley Cyrus for Zidane’s headbutt?

Last, kids and the young-at-heart gladly joins the worldwide party just for the fun of it. I used to belong in this group in previous Cups, before I learned to believe that ‘I don’t have to like what you, or all the Earth’s ten continents, like’. They are a blast to be with, even if you don’t have the slightest idea what Jabulani is, and won’t judge you if you chose to let the quadrennial ball pass. Just don’t ask them about any World Cup things after the event.

A Passion for Hatred?

“I could kill all the Jews in the world, but I kept some alive so you can see why I was killing them.” – Adolf Hitler

Living in a predominantly Muslim country, I have to admit that the air here is polluted with blind anti-Israel sentiments; more so in recent years as Islamic conservatives tighten their grip on the society. Thus, it was no surprise that in response to the Gaza flotilla clash, the above quotation spread so fast like chicken pox in an elementary school.

For years I have resisted condoning, let alone being tempted, by the regrettably racist behavior by my fellow Muslims. I simply kept my mouth shut up. Only occasionally have I tried to correct the narrow-mindedness. My position in this matter is that Indonesia should not get too involved in the fray, lest we be caught in a bad romance.

For one thing, it has become very impossible to take sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict, which started an extremely long time ago. In any fight that goes on for too long, no one is free from blame and no one deserves too much sympathy. I’m not saying that we should leave the people of Palestine and Israel be. They do need our help so badly. However, I wouldn’t throw all my sympathy to one side or another. A bullet through the heart is a live lost, doesn’t matter if he’s a Palestinian or an Israeli. A house rocketed is a home lost, regardless of the flag it flies.

But for now, I cannot allow myself to be silent. I do understand that Israel’s raid on the activists’ flotilla is a tragedy for humanity; moreover, the incident is another episode in the already violent history of the region. We have to demand an independent and thorough investigation regarding this attack. Nevertheless, this trend of quoting der fuhrer is utterly racist and disturbing. The toxic words, along with the ideas it carries, should be stopped as quickly as it had started.

First, we are speaking for humanity and humanity deserves a better spokesperson than Hitler. Thousands of influential figures from the past and present, and people come up with Hitler!? If any of you has forgotten, he threw millions of people into suffering. Surely we don’t want our quest for peace to be blurred by gas chambers.

Second, the act of passing on the message means that people give their nod to genocide. I don’t have the slightest idea why people could agree with such massive killing. What good would it bring anyway? Furthermore, people are being blatantly unfair. Try replacing the word ‘Jews’ from the quote with ‘Muslims’, no doubt mobs with pitchforks and torches will siege the German embassy in a flash. With the do-unto-other spirit, I say we should say NO to disseminating this hate message.

Last, I humbly ask everyone who claims to ‘support the path toward peace’ in the Middle East to rise above all the anger and hatred. Anger and hatred are what had started this chaos; we must not let them take control of the situation. What this world needs is, as clichéd as this may sound, compassion. If that’s not possible in this heated atmosphere, then restrain will do just as fine.

We have to stop Hitler, once again.