The World of Mine

The three-day World Peace Forum that ended in Jakarta today has, thank God, confirmed my belief that religions are not the source of global violence.

You see, since the September 11 attack, it seems like everyone starts to think that religion is a source of violence, and that is indeed hurting me as a believer.

The accusation went firstly to Islam, with Osama bin Laden allegedly mastering the 9/11 terrorism attack. Then, perhaps in an attempt not to 'discriminate' certain faith, the accusation spreads to other religions, especially the mainstream ones.

And the results, as these violence and conflict issues have brought religions and believes to God(s) to the lowest level of unpopularity, where people deem the followers as "old-fashioned", "narrow minded", "dogmatic", "conservative" and all other negative labels; more and more people are shifting to agnoticism or atheism, which are claimed to be more "modern", "neutral", "rational" and "timely", although as far as I've observed, people with these stances don't always use rational ground when deciding to be so (anyone can please argue me here).

I don't deny that religious people also accuse one another, either secretly or publicly, of committing violence. And I don't deny that some of them did commit the violence (not only in the form of terrorism, thou').

What I'm denying is the accusation that religion is the source of violence and, hence, the more religious the persons are, the more violent they'll become.

The derivative impact of such ill theory when coming to my own religion, i.e. Islam (I can't speak in the name of other religions because I don't know much about them; not as the followers must do), is that Muslims wanting to adhere stickly to their religion are often abruptly labelled as "fundamentalists", which are then easily and irresponsibly linked to "hard-liners", and then "violence perpetrators", and, lastly, could be "terrorists", too.

I'm strongly objected to such ill accusation, and I dare say it is completely a false one.

Why? Because I myself is a kind of Muslims that wishes to adhere stickly to my religion. And by having such intention to be a pious believer, I've become an enemy of those reckless, stupid, irresponsible and groundless acts of violence said to be committed by Muslim hard-liners.

It is very unfair how wrongdoings of a few of us can legitimize the rest of the world's condemnation to all of us.

That's why it is so relieving to hear that multi-cultural and religious speakers addressing the second World Peace Forum here say that "political violence and violence committed under the guise of religion are rooted in the urge for power, the deprival of political-economic advantages and some religious self-distortion".

In fact, the forum was told, "Conflicts in the Middle East and Iraq are clearly a manifestation of double-standards as major powers are not serious in finding solutions to these problems. These conflicts are sources of many other conflicts and violence in other parts of the world".

By the way, you can find those quotations on The Jakarta Post's June 26, 2008, edition.

Finally, I visited Vietnam. Finally, I got my first foreign assignment. Finally, I took international flights and landed my feet abroad.

Well, well, well, my Vietnamese visit last week was indeed a history to me (If you live so near to an international airport for 25 years yet never even once fly with one of the airplanes passing back and forth just a few hundreds meters above your house, you’ll understand how I feel).

Anyway, let’s talk about more important stuff, that is my Vietnamese visit.

Before flying to Vietnam, I asked my friends who have once come there how it is like. One of them said that Vietnam now is like Indonesia in 1970s.

I see what he means soon after arriving in Hanoi (capital of Vietnam), which I think does resemble Jakarta (capital of Indonesia) in 1970s in term of physical construction (to be honest, I hadn’t even born in 1970s, but I watched a lot of movies giving me pictures of 1970s Jakarta).

There are still large amount of vacant, unoccupied lands; and there are not much skyscrapers to find, a very contrast view with that one can find in overcrowded Jakarta (yes, we have both overcrowded state-of-the-art skyscrapers and overcrowded slum areas here and there).
Therefore, I dare saying that Hanoi however looks more neat.

Unfortunately, though the northern city has actually four seasons (unlike two-seasoned Saigon or Ho Chin Minh city in southern Vietnam), I did my visit during summer, and so I felt it to be no different from overheated Jakarta. The difference is while Jakarta is more humid; Hanoi is rather dry.

Before I did my flight to Vietnam, I had wished I could pay some visit to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Quang Ninh province. However, very unfortunately we didn’t have a time to go there. The picturesque bay is, by the way, as far as only four-hour drive from Hanoi.
In fact, due to my very strict schedule (my trip to Hanoi is a business trip, I only stayed there for two days), I could only visit the “Black Market” in Old Quarter in Hanoi. As a matter of fact, I don’t understand why they named it “Black Market”; it’s just an ordinary night market selling cheap clothing and other goodies, and some very Vietnam-like souvenirs tourists can bring home to show that they did have visit Vietnam.

Unique things I see in Hanoi were its unique-shaped houses, which are typically slim and tall. Perhaps because of worried that available space won’t be enough for everybody, people in Hanoi turn their supposed-to-be two-floor large houses into four-floor narrow houses.
If you still don’t understand my description, I will put a photo of such houses later on (I can’t do it today because I don’t bring my camera).

The food…I’m not sure how it tastes. In fact I turned into a vegetarian during my two-day visit there because I’m worried of ingredients might be contained in their meat-cuisines (as information, I’m a Muslim who don’t eat certain foods and beverages like pork and liquor). But, I can say that Vietnamese seem to use a lot of coriander leaves (my friend said it was the name) in their meals, and I’m not very comfortable with the taste sensation that the leaves produce.

The immigration officers at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport, thank God, didn’t give me any difficulties as I had been earlier worried of (you know, I wasn’t so sure that they’re quite used to headscarfed women like me. But, they appeared to be quite used to, and so are other Vietnamese).

The disturbing things is that I almost failed exchanging my remaining Vietnam Dong back to U.S. Dollar because money exchangers at the airport did not want to buy it, saying they ran out of U.S. Dollar (how could they? Haven’t many foreign tourists come to them and sell their dollars?).
Thank God we can still get some Euros; money exchangers in Singapore and Indonesia don’t want to but Vietnamese Dong, what do we keep it for?

Well, that’s the report of my short visit to Vietnam, which I reckon is not quite satisfying for you want to get enough information before paying a trip there.

Chao Ong and Chao Ba! (is this the right Vietnamese words for goodbye?)

Tears often drop when we don't want them to; there's nothing wrong with that. What confuses me is that in many cases they also often drop while we feel no sort of emotions normally making us wanna cry.

Well, at least it is what has been happening to me in the last two years.

I used to be emotionless years ago, especially when I was still a high school student. As a young girl from an underprivileged family, I hardly shed any tears however difficult, however painful the circumstances surrounding me were.

Such psychological state was actually a result of so many hard times, hurtful situation I had had to endure before. As those terrible times had used to leave deep pain within me, I then learned not to feel.

And I succeeded. I turned into a robot; could work and could think, but could not feel.

Indeed, that helped me a lot in going through my days. Thanks to such stance, I underwent my teenage time without so many difficulties, though on the contrary my family was having hardship with my dad just losing his job. He was unemployed for years, following the monetary crisis and then political crisis hitting our country some 10 years ago. I cannot imagine how he afforded our life, how he could still send his two elder daughters to universities and the two younger children to school that time.

Anyway, the emotionless state was not always beneficial. It did help me survive my teenage, but on the other hand it was killing my relationship with people. I had almost no close friends from that high school era.

Being emotionless made me used to show no emotions; whether I was deeply thankful or terribly angry. I turned untouchable; there were always invisible walls between me and people around me. I was cold, aloof and reserved; I was anything but a friendly, amiable person to make friend with.

That time nothing made me fear, nothing made me sad, nor made me sincerely laugh (I laughed a lot that time, but hardly ever with my heart). Every time things became more unbearable, I ran to this 'world' I had created and expressed all my emotions there. So when I got back to the 'real world', I was no longer troubled.

Such complex self-defense mechanism, isn't it? But, I guess I'm not so different with many people in term of this.

Anyway, what I am trying to tell now is how confused I am that while I never shed any tears when I was at high school, however right for crying the situation was, tears drop so easily on my face now, causing me a lot of embarrassing moments.

Along with my being more open, more sociable and more touchable to people around me, my emotions, too, become vulnerable; so vulnerable that I can't control it.

Now I often easily shed tears whenever I feel sad or touched, but the strangest thing of all is that I also often do so while I am so fully conscious that I feel no single emotion making me want to cry.

How does it happen? What makes it so? Is this a result of years of restraining? Are those tears buried emotions I should have released years ago?

I have no idea. Now I'm just struggling to be 'quite normal'.