The World of Mine

The good part of being a journalist is that you can travel to a lot of exciting places across the country and even abroad for free.

The bad part is such assignments usually require your most of times that you have hardly any leisure to do some sightseeing at those exciting places you visit.

My recent foreign assignment to Singapore, fortunately, gave me very sufficient leisures that I could use my three-day stay to explore many parts of the city-state.

Singapore, to middle- to upper-class Indonesians, is famous for its established shopping centers and emerging medical tourism.

To the lower class, it is better known as a “haven” for migrant workers, who left their homes in Indonesia’s rural, underprivileged areas to serve as housemaids or alike there, with a hope of better payment (indeed, servants' monthly salaries in Singapore, they said, are still bigger than most salaries of university fresh graduates here; ironic isn't it?). As information, the migrant workers leaving for Singapore or other 'popular destinations' like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia are mostly only elementary school graduates; that is why they can only and are willing to work as housemaids and sorts of.

Anyway, this pathetic fact of my country, prompted by the lack of jobs at home, is not of a thing I want to share here.

My exploration of Singapore is the point of this posting.

As Singapore is famous for its shopping centers, I surely did visits to some of its popular shopping havens: the Orchard Road, Suntec City, Mustafa Center in Little India and Vivo City.

Of the four, the Orchard Road, I think, is the most pleasant shopping center to walk around; there are quite many things to see beside the selling items. Mustafa Center is where you can find any kinds of brands of chocolates and highly affordable souvenirs (like the famous Merlion statue miniatures, etc). And Vivo City is where you can find an amazing number of fashion booths with quite interesting and diverse collections. Vivo City, from what I heard, is now Singapore's biggest shopping mall. Suntec…well, you can go there after having a conference in the convention hall, which is in the same building with the mall.

The noted difference that I sense between luxurious fashion brand booths in Singapore and ones in Indonesia is that in Singapore, anyone can just enter and take a look at the booths' collections without fearing that someone will say that he/she is not supposed to be there (for financial state reasonings). In Indonesia, if you are not the rich, you can feel such sensation very strongly that you don't dare to step any single foot of yours in any of the luxurious brand booths.

It is also worth noting that the luxurious brands in Singapore are somehow more affordable than the same brands sold in Indonesia's luxurious shopping malls; which is why I can buy a few branded items in Singapore but can never do it here. I think it’s a problem of taxation.

The regular, well-ordered public transportation system is also among things I will always remember about Singapore. To exhausted Indonesian public transportation users like me, who has to face maddening traffic jams almost every day in Jakarta while breathing heavily-polluted air released by old, pathetic buses I am jammed into like sardines (I have no other choice), the public transportation in Singapore is like some fresh mountain water.

The buses, the MRT...are far from heavily-polluted air, have very sufficient amount and are reliably on time. That have yet to mention the highly efficient, automatic and affordable payment system. Your travel becomes so short and so smooth that you (if you are Indonesians) will believe that you will surely be more productive workers; that you'll become more healthy and more fit because you don't have to smell those heavily polluted air; that you'll have enough time to rest so that you can soon go back to work with renewed spirits (instead of being exhausted in the maddening traffic jams); and you can surely save your energy for more useful activities instead of wasting it for standing exhaustedly in the highly packed pathetic buses for hours (you're stuck in a traffic jam, remember?) and getting mad and depressed for it.

I always wonder what is on my country's decision makers' heads? What makes it so difficult to adopt the efficient public transportation system in Singapore, which is its closest neighbor. I'm sure that the decision makers must have visited Singapore anyway, if not for shopping then for meetings. If they can’t adopt the system for the whole Indonesia, well, at least they can do it for major cities like Jakarta and Surabaya.

The way that Singapore manages its tourism sites also deserves thumbs up. From my visit to Singapore's Sentosa Island, which is likely an artificial island made of imported sand from Indonesia, I see how the developed Asian country seriously handle its tourism.

Even when you first arrived at Changi Airport, you can easily find very tourist-friendly visitors’ guides. You can even find some guides for Muslim visitors, which provide information on halal-labelled restaurants. I really appreciate such efforts, indeed.

Back to Sentosa Island, in term of the nature's beauty, I think it is nothing compared with thousands of Indonesia's enchanting, virgin islands (you can read a review of one of them in my posting on Kadidiri Resort Island in Tomini Bay, Sulawesi).

But, the Singaporean island is obviously managed so well that it somehow becomes a quite nice place to be at, especially if you have to stay long in the city state and have no chance to visit nearby Malaysia or Indonesia, which have more promising nature tourist sites.

Foods, well, they said Singapore imposes restriction over the use of additives like monosodium glutamate. Maybe that's why Indonesian tongues like mine, which have been used to the additive's taste-polishing effect, think that the foods are rather tasteless. Anyway, if it is true that the tastelessness is a result of low MSG concentration, isn't that a good news for your health?

Night trip with river taxi is worth trying, though the short travel makes it feel rather boring.

The Singapore flyer, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel of 165 meters or 541 ft high, which started rotating on February 11, 2008, looks indeed exciting. Unfortunately I don't have a chance to give it a try. Besides, the cost of a ride quite discouraged me; it is around S$30 (around US$21) per person, if I’m not wrong.

The newly-opened Changi Airport's Terminal 3, uniquely, serves as somewhat a shopping hub, too. So if you dont have a time to shop while in Singapore towns or find nothing suits your taste or financial state there, the Terminal 3 is worth visiting, too.

The Terminal 3 is intended to those coming from or leaving for North (Europe and the United States, cmiw).

So; enjoy your visit to Singapore! (Especially if you’re going to do one)

I've heard this cliche even before I was a teenager, but had never really believed it could perhaps be true until recently.

I don't like romance topics, but because this is what I am being engrossed with lately and because I have earlier determined to write only what I'm engrossed with, well, I decided to write about this anyway.

I felt that 'first love' of mine when I was 14 years old and was still a naive junior hi student. I had a crush on this boy who must not be named, who was also a favorite of a lot of other girls at school (sounds very like a teen movie, huh?).

But, well, as he gradually changed into a different person and then we went to different high schools, the love story ended.

He and I remained strangers to each other by the end of the junior high school days; and I remained a "hawk-owl wishing for the moon" (this is an Indonesian cliche, I don't know if it says what it means in English) by that time.

Never seeing him again thereafter made me forget him easily. There have been new people anyway, new "loves" that came into my life; although I've been always aware that most of them were never as exciting as my first love.

And now, 10 years after that first-love period passed, it's suddenly, mysteriously coming back to me now.

My little sister's junior high school graduation recently, I'm aware, is what first triggered the coming back of the memories, which then prompted my search of his traces.

I've tried to search for him through any possible ways: through friendster, facebook, etc, but all the efforts ended up in failure.

Long, busy weeks made me forget about him for a while, but suddenly, last night, I dreamed about him; a rather nice dream, in fact, which has again dredged up my old, beautiful deep buried memories of him.

I realize that hardly any loves after his is as strong as what I had felt for him during that early teenage years of mine.

And that is the reason why I reckon that perhaps it is true; first love does never die.

Anyway, I don't have any intention to fall in love with him again; if he is still alive and I meet him again later on.

I raise this issue, well, just to enrich the discourses over the tale.

At one time, the Took blood in my vein dominates me, causing me an enormous, unstoppable thirst for adventures. Later on, I'm overwhelmed with the Baggins blood and wish to do nothing but staying home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing! -- just as any other Hobbits will do.

A few years ago, before I commenced my career as a journalist, I was a real Took. I so eagerly wanted to see the world. Whenever I heard of an overseas scholarship opportunity, I would run for it. Whenever I heard of a contest or competition whose prize is travelling abroad, I would seek to take part and attempt to win.

But, I had heard only a few scholarships, contests or things as such, which could bring me to the world outside my homeland. And the chance that I could depart with those very few scholarships was so small. I had likely picked a wrong place of study. Scholarships or contests I knew of were never intended to students of a school of pharmacy like me.
Of course there are always those scholarships for would-be lecturers, but I was never among those with outstanding academic achievements, whose GPA is 3.50 or above and whose brilliance astonishes the lecturers; those who can hence access the scholarship opportunities.

At those times I had no idea how I would ever depart, how I would ever find the way to visit other countries, to travel to the land of my dreams, which that time was focused on Britain. My Took bloods overwhelmed me, but I could do nothing to fulfill its desperate thirst for adventures.

I decided to finish my study immediately. Many scholarships require a minimum of two-year work experience, so I thought I had to get that experience sooner. Then, maybe, I could get some chance to win a scholarship, though I had yet to see any scholarship availabe to pharmacy graduates.

But, I couldn't just earn a Bachelor's degree and find a job. The degree, for a graduate of a school of pharmacy like me, is not enough. I need the apothecary status in order to find a good job as pharmacist in Indonesia, so I took the one-year additional apothecary study, which would make eligible for a sort of a certficiate of competence as pharmacist. That time, it sounded like the most sensible thing to do to earn a scholarship.

But, it wasn't a smooth journey. After a year of study, I didn't pass the awfully horrible final exam and had to wait for another semester before I could give the exam another try.
I ended up doing a total of three interns in a clinical laboratory and two pharmaceutical manufacturers during the one-year study and the six-month wait, and they appeared to be a real test to my Took blood. They helped me find that I was a real Took, and that I therefore could never work in such places, which would oblige me to be in the same room, to meet the same people, to walk the same alleys and the same paths every day in my life. Gosh, how boring, how distressing it would be! I could never stand such uniformity!

So, in rather desperate attempts to escape from the prospect and to cut the dependency of my future to the results of the unnecessarily sophisticated final apothecary exam, I used the remaining few months of my wait to search for jobs that could be an answer to all my problems.

I searched for jobs in marketing departments of some health businesses (ones that I desperately thought could perhaps bring me nearer to my dreams of travelling abroad), while, due to my family's awful financial state, also applying for jobs unrelated to health matters but could still suit my taste; as long as it can produce money. As I like writing and novels and was so eager to use my English, I apply for some translating jobs and, finally, a reporting job in a local English newspaper.
I had some interviews, for both health-related and -unrelated positions, and ended up getting a job as reporter in the publishing firm I'm currently working in.

I had had no idea of what a journalist would have to do; no one I knew was a journalist.

But, then, after doing this job, little by little I realize that this is the very job that can fulfill my Took blood's thirst for adventures. Every day I meet different people, visit different places, and not just finally visit other places outside the island of Java, I finally also travel overseas, to places outside Indonesia; as exactly as what I had been dreaming of, though I still haven't seen Britain (anyway, I rather believe I will fly there, too, someday. I've only worked as journalist for 1.5 years; so I believe I still have many times to see the chance, if Allah gives me longer time to live).

Unfortunately, even before that particular dream of visiting Europe (particularly UK, Switzerland and Austria, plus Russia) becomes true, my Baggins blood has been taking control.
Especially in the last few months, I have lost my eagerness, my appetite to travel to Europe. And I've appeared to be not so as enthusiastic as I thought I would be when I finally fly with the giant, steel birds and visit the foreign countries.

Now I'm just a Baggin, and just as ordinary as any other Hobbits, who have no desire to do anything but sitting lazily in my warm Hobbit hole under the ground, while reading some books, waiting for the kettle to sing and baking cookies for the tea time.

How have I lost my Took blood? Where has it gone?

I have no idea...

I'm sorry, I can't help writing on this sensitive issue. I write mostly about what I'm engrossed with, and now, due to an intensive exposure over this faith stuff recently, I'm now fully engrossed with this religious or cultural discrimination issues.

In my country Indonesia, over 80 percent or maybe even nearly 90 percent of the population is Muslim, or at least that's what is stated in their ID cards.

However, outsiders have to know the fact that most of the Indonesian Muslims are the so-called moderate, if not secularist Muslims.
We are not by all means resembling our brothers and sisters in the so-called Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, whose snapshots in the lives of especially Muslim women have often been exposed in (mostly Western) media, and then used as basics for stereotyping and ill-judging, if not condemnation against us Muslims in addition to the stupid terrorism acts.

But, here, I will focus not on those three. Instead I will make discrimination, which is an impact of the stereotyping, etc, a central issue of this posting.

Back to Indonesia, the country to which I was born and raised, and now still lives in; as I've said earlier most of Muslims here are of moderate, if not secularist types.
But, outside this dominant majority, there are smaller groups with different extents of attachment to Islam.
Polarizing from the moderate people, there are these so-called fundamentalist and extremely liberal Muslims.
Even these groups can be parted into many smaller groups with their wide varieties in ideas, which leads to the point that you can't generalize them all.
I reckon you can see here that in my country, Islam is very colorful.
But, we can still say that this group or that group is just this or that color of Islam, and not of different religion because basically we still have something in common, and that is what we call aqeeda, which in English is similar to creed. This same aqeeda means that either Sunni or Shia people are Muslims anyway.

That's why when the Ahmadiyah group, which says that Muhammad saw is not the last prophet (which is one of Islamic creeds) claims they also Muslims, most of us here in Indonesia cannot accept that, though they show they disapproval in different extents. Some only disagree but say nothing, while some staged rallies in rejection and demand that the government ban the group. A few others, attacked the Ahmadiyah followers with violence.

Came then these defenders of Ahmadiyah, with the most vocal are of course those from the liberalist groups. Regardless the fact that Ahmadiyah has different faith but claims to be in the same faith with us, these liberalist groups have been voicing strong objections to the government's finally banning of Ahmadiyah (the banning is on the propagation and not on private prayers).

And these liberalist groups, fortunately, mostly control the local medias.

I will honestly admit that I'm not on the Ahmadiyah's side, but I'm also not on the side of those aggressively demanding for their banning. I believe that these belief matters cannot be settled with violence nor punishment, but rather with objective, intellectual discussions.

I'm therefore against whatever subjective and biased stance, either that in support to them or in opposition.

The liberalist-controlled medias, unfortunately, I think are so biased that I can't help feeling angry for their reports. If you read them, you'll see that they never try to cover both sides in their reporting on these matters. Their judging is so ill, so unfair.

I agree that the group that has stupidly attacked Ahmadiyah mosques and followers is guilty. But that doesn't mean that they're wrong in anything.
And the Ahmadiyah followers, I agree that they're victims in this violence attack against them, but it doesn't mean they're right in anything. Hence I believe that news reporting should however be based merely on on-going facts, however difficult it was to exclude the writers' stance in them.

But, these biased medias don't have the same principle as I do. Their siding with Ahmadiyah means that whatever they do, the Ahmadiyah followers will always be on the right track. They're always victimized angels that should be defended forever. The attackers, meanwhile, will always be the culprit and hence the medias' eternal enemies, those that deserve bad stigma and sterotyping in each stories that tell about them.

In regards to Indonesia's independence day in 17 August, one of these medias have planned to make in-depth, featurized stories of those who have been suffering from either religious, political or social persecutions. And the victimized, marginalized, discriminated groups in this media's eyes are, of course, always no other than the AHmadiyah followers, the ex-PKI (Indonesian Communist PArty) members and their chidren and grandchildren, the Chinese ethnics, the homosexual and trans-gender group, and so on...

They've been so unfair. If they're fair, all discriminated people, including women like me, who due to our appearances have difficulties to find jobs, face discriminations in offices, receive sanctions in schools, and stared with ill-judging look, should have been given place in the media, too, with reports of the discrimination we've been facing.

But, different from the Ahmadiya followers, to ex-PKI members' relatives, the Chinese ethnics, the gay community and so on, we're on the opposite side from these liberalist medias. We're the so-called fundamentalists, though we're not by all means among those who went too far with their violence attacks to Ahmadiyah members.
We're called fundamentalists simply because we want to adhere to Islamic values, which they despise, which they hate so deeply.

I think it's clear that the medias are so biased. They pledge their allegiance to those who can help them reach dreams of making this Majority-muslim country a liberalized, free-to-do-anything nation;
and certainly will never make us the "fundamentalists" (really, I hate this stigmatization) "the good character" of their stories, moreover "victims" of some oppressive authorities.