The World of Mine

Part I: Her Wait

Lonely me
Lonely thee
Along days, months and years
Along the wait, the searches, the hopes
It's so quiet
Oh it's so quiet

Standing-still
Watching from the wharf
Waiting for the longed-one to arrive
For it's been the beautiful blue flower
It's always been the blue flower

'Fool she is,' they said
'Go after other things!' they asked
But, she wouldn't go
She won't go
She would still wait
For nothing is certain yet

Will her faith ever gain something?
Will her wait be eventually paid?
Keep coming the questions
Keep on asked
Keep weakening her

But, she will stay
For it's the blue flower she waits
For none but the blue flower
Can ever make her nestled

Part II: Wonderful Life

Don't ye think it's a wonderful life?
Days have been so bright
Times have passed fast
All hands have been clapped
So thou' pains are certainly never lost
Ye know you shall do nothing but some small tasks

Oh will ye quit grieving?
Oh stop the tears that go on dropping
Why are ye always standing-still and waiting?
Come and join us
Let's go after the other prize
At least ye know ye can easily win
If ye only set up yer best will

Oh dear, what makes it so difficult?
How deep has it been settled?
How long has it been kept?
If time can't heal such a deep scar
If it can't lade such a heavy burden
Will ye consider let it shared?
For even if ye don't think us capable
We are strong enough to be laden

Part III: Both Prizes

O, what makes you think it'll be useless?
O, what makes you think it's such a burden?
I'm wholehearted on each day of my wait
And I'm not not after the other prize
But, I know I can want
And I want my blue flower to be by my side

Life is wonderful
Of course it is
Life is a chance
I know that, too
And I won't let it in vain
But, I do care for my blue flower
For it's been a part of me
It's been the sugar along bitterness
It's been the shelter amid many storms
It's been the summer that any cold kids would die wait for
So here I am waiting
For its coming that's never known when

Oh please let me do it
Oh stop making thoughts it will be useless
Let me do the wait
And strengthen me when I go weakened
For I'm also trying to achieve the other prize
For I know how it's always the most precious one
For I shall never forget and leave it behind

Your offer is very welcomed
Prove that you mean it, please
Don't let me once again think how unreliable your race is
Help me during my wait
Help me make my trial
Help me go on my life
For I can't help achieving both prizes

Part IV: The Blue Flower

You being there
Who's standing-still and watching
There's so much uncertainties
But, I see how you keep on waiting
To me, that's really worth prizing

I'm trying to come
During my journey I always am
Don't you doubt that I've been giving my best try
But I am nothing but a small thing
Which is drifting on a great river
I keep doing what I can do
But, you shall know how strong the current is
Directing me to anywhere it wants to flow
Which is could be toward you, could be not

But, my dearest, isn't life always about fight?
Of yours, mines, and theirs
Fight for what we believe
Fight for our valuable goals
They're surely tiring
They can even cause us many losing
But, we won't have a chance for a happy ending
If we don't present our best deeds

Don't listen to those who can only give you pain
But don't refuse offers from those who've been so sincere
I will come, I will come
Only the Almighty can stop me from
And hence I beg you
Pray to Him, ask Him
For He's the one directing the river flow

And when the time comes
I will dock at your quay
I'll be there to take you away
Then we'll both sail to our final destination
Where our most beloved one settles down

But, during the wait
Will you promise me?
Keep coming close to Him
It'll ease our next work
And it's to make sure that you'll still reach Him
Whether it's with or without my coming

I remember seeing those chickens running back and forth, clapping their wings and pecking at the ground to find some food at the backyard of my house just a few years ago.

I remember how they always came when we called them, "here, chick, chick..." because that means supper time.

They belonged to my grandma, who lives right next to my house (we share the same backyard). She is so old that she cannot make herself busy with even the easiest household jobs. Feeding the chicken, locking their cages when nearing evening (the chickens always knew when it was time to sleep and would already standby inside the cages at that time), watching them playing...those were all her only and favorite things to do.

But, the chickens have all now gone. Last year, one of them suddenly died for unknown cause, and this was soon followed by the deaths of a number of other chickens, who were either found dead in their cages or while were sleeping on the trees (their dead bodies fell just like that onto the ground, horrible!).
Shortly after, a lab test confirmed they were H5N1 positive. The chickens died of bird flu.

Although nobody in my neighborhood was either found to be infected with the virus or dead because of it, this finding forced the district officers to slaughter all chickens reared there by burning them to dead, so as to kill the virus and prevent them from infecting human.

Many human fatality cases reported earlier were found soon after the finding of suddenly-died poultry around the victims' neighborhoods. This has forced the Indonesian government to order the murdering of all chickens and other poultry traditionally reared at backyards of Indonesians.

For those who don't know, since bird flu was found infecting human in Indonesia, there has been 139 human infection cases and 112 fatalities across the country, making it the largest contributor of deaths caused by bird flu globally.

Both the infection and the death rates have been reportedly declining since 2007, but rearing chickens at backyards are still banned under fear that the current bird-to-human infection will transform into human-to-human infection. If the latter indeed happens, that will mean pandemic, which will surely claim not just hundreds, but even millions of lives. I personally think this pandemic threat is too absurd, but the government and even some international institutions (including the WHO, the FAO and the ILO) are in fact anticipating that.

Well, as the bird flu pandemic is still looming, now those running-free innocent animals are no longer anywhere to be seen in Greater Jakarta, a thing ones could have never imagined earlier.

Now my grandma can only stare at our empty backyard, and the empty, now-also-wrecked chicken cages. Me, sometimes I just miss the cock-a-doodle-doo sound I used to hear at dawn.

I was so stupid. I sat right next to this man in a meeting this morning, but wasn't at all aware who he was until the mc invited him to speak in front of the forum. O, no, he is that senior official from the health ministry! He was a source person I once interviewed through a phone call, and the same person addressing a recent press conference on hiv/aids!

He remembered me (for I was the only journalist asking a question during the press conference, I reckon), I saw that in his glance, but I stupidly didn't recognize him!
This is so horrible. I don't know will he ever forgive my negligence of him and let me interview him next time.
Well, of course, a senior official like him should be professional in their job, and not decide to answer or not to answer a journalist's question based on the latter's attitude toward him, which could be disagreeable.
But, what if he can't ignore that? What if he can't forget the fact that I evidently ignored him the last time we met?

He shouldn't blame me for that, I've only seen him once, couldn't possibly remember his face in the second meeting, especially when he is not that popular that the TV stations have to frequently air his footage.
But, well, who can tell a man what he should or what he should not do, especially when it is us that need something from him and not fairly vice versa.

Well, well, well, this is one of my weaknesses, cannot easily remember ones' faces. I need to see the faces for at least some couples of times before being able to recognize them at once on the other time.

I just hope he won't remember me next time I have to interview him, or at least forgive my error...sigh.

The reasons why I recently bought John Connolly's "Book of Lost things" are:

1. Its cover drew my attention (for reminding me of magical and adventurous fiction genre like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings).
2. Its synopsis (on the back cover of the book) makes me feel that the book has been made for someone like me, an adult who refuses to, or is trying to grow up. It says that the book is intended for adolescents wanting to grow up or for the grown-ups who want to remember their journey from childhood to the adult world.

After reading it, well, the book indeed helps me fulfill my longing for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings kind of books, as it tells a lot about magical creatures of Western tales and adventurous travel.
Many books under this genre are available on book shops, of course, but unfortunately I think they have too strong sense of copycatting, which causes me reluctance in reading them.
The book also successfully retells famous fairy tales, such as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood in highly creative way, which ones could hardly ever think of.
So, in term of the first reasoning to buy, I can say that the Book of Lost Things has met my expectation.

In the second reasoning, well, I admit that the book indeed has a strong moral message that everyone has to grow up. They have to be able to face the fact that life is not always as beautiful, as joyful as happy childhood memories (for those who have ones, of course). Instead, it often turns out to be full of bitter, perhaps seemingly unbearable, realities. The book tries to tell that we have to face the realities, however bitter they are, and learn to live with them instead of running away from them.
The book, as a matter of fact, uses the harshest, cruelest way of telling people about this.

Well, I agree with the book to some extent. And indeed it has made me learn something about growing up. But, I reject the idea that we should always learn to live in bitter realities and make ourselves get used to them. In fact, I think people should not be so pragmatic and fatalistic.

If they are surrounded with horrible situation, have to endure so many hardship in life, I believe people should not easily give up and end up learning to live with that horrible situation. Instead, I believe they can fight, they can struggle to change the situation so that it won't be that horrible anymore, so that life can be something better to live on. And I believe people have to go on fighting until they really meet their limit. These struggles in life will teach people to slowly but surely grow up, too.

Of course, this applies different in different situations. And I guess readers can judge themselves when they should fight and when they should learn to live with the bitter realities.

And, in some cases where the realities are too bitter to live with and on the other side are also too impossible to be changed, well, there's always the third choice, running away from them, as the book condemns.
This third choice is not that bad, indeed. I call this a self-defense mechanism, which can be different in one person to another.
This self-defense mechanism can appear in such a way that although one has to live in very unbearable situation, he or she doesn't have to end up committing a suicide or turning insane.
He or she can still have normal life outside that very horrible and unbearable situation, using this single mechanism, which I think has saved millions lives and wits across the globe.

For me, the self-defense mechanism is to forget that I have that horrible situation when I do don't have to be reminded of that. Or, to create my own world where such thing could not affect me nor hurt me in anyway; it is creating a different reality, though it sounds real only to me. Or, to write books, fictions, which could be intended for me only as the reader, in which I live in different worlds with different situations and different people.

For Sybil and Billy, the self-defense mechanism means they developed 16 and 24 different personalities, respectively.

For Andrea Hirata, that seemingly means three best-selling novels. For Pramoedya Ananta Toer and greatest world authors (whose lives I don't know quite well), the mechanism means best-sellers, too.

For you? It's up to you. You can try one of the mentioned ways, or create your own way.

But I can tell you one other thing: this book, unlike Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, are definitely for children. It is too literally sadistic in many parts.

O, no, the crisis threat is getting real now.

While some too optimistic politicians said it would not severely hit us Indonesians as it has hit the developed world, now every body here, especially the businesses, are already anticipating for the real impacts of the stupid credit crisis to Indonesia.

The real threat for me is the very big possibility that I won't see raise in salaries next year. O, no...

It's just not fair. They have always raised salaries of the employees every year, at the beginning and the middle of every year to be exact, and I've been waiting for that since I was promoted to permanent staff from a trainee in February.

After being disappointed with no change in salaries this July; just because I was just being promoted several months before, I have expected to see the raise early next year.

But, hey, came then this stupid crisis, which has cruelly destroyed my hopes, making me wonder how can the rest of the world are so dependent to America that it collapses, too, when the latter collapses.

The other question is why the rest of the world didn't fairly grow, too, while the United States was growing?

And why while some of other countries are hit by economic, financial or whatsoever crisis, like Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries experienced in the late 1990s, America is not hit, too?

How unfair! How strange! Or am I too idiot to understand the mechanism of the global economy? Perhaps I am, otherwise I'm the only clever person alive in the world to ever inquire these questions.

Okay, I know that countries like Indonesia could be also affected by the crisis in US because US is one of our main export destinations. And as it is, too, Japan's main export destination, the crisis it has now transmitted to the Japanese subsequently transmitted us, too, with Japanese being our biggest export destination.

But, the question is, who has created this stupid global financial mechanism in which just because the economy of the US, the superpower, is slowing down, the rest of the world has to slow down, too, but the same thing doesn't apply vice versa.

O, I'm just an ordinary girl in this extraordinary world. And I can only keep on questioning without perhaps knowing why the world has to be so unfair...

(A Poem for hopeless, saddened souls)

When sunshine goes dimmer
And the sky seems like being darker
Don't let hopes leave you away
Clouds don't always mean rain
And they will finally move anyway

When the wind blows through your hair
And you shiver from its cold air
Don't hide and weep over the pain
It won't be cold all day
'Cause summer will always come in the end

You may see the leaves fall from trees
And you may find them scattering helplessly in the streets
But why shall it make you sad?
Can't you see the beautiful brown, yellow and red?
The trees may have lost their leaves
But you'll see them grow again indeed

Lift up your chin!
Open your eyes and set up the grin!
The sun will soon come out
The birds will soon fly back from South
The rain will stop
And you'll find the next best moments of your life

Okay. The three terrorist convicts have been finally executed. The fire squad, after long wait, finally shot them dead on early Sunday.

I'm glad this is finally over. Before the three convicted 2002 Bali bombers were executed, the Attorney General's Office had continually delayed the execution, perhaps in fear of bombing threats from their fellow radicals, with the National Police earlier announcing that terrorist groups were eyeing to attack government offices, especially those involved in the execution plan.

But, while the bomb threats were never really implemented (thank God!), the delays, which were followed by excessive TV coverage, have resulted in unexpectedly growing sympathy for the convicted bombers.

Well, how it wouldn't, with TV stations intensively airing footages of the convicts' daily lives in prison in their last days; of their three-year old son, wifes, old mother and family who were not allowed to see them for the last time; of their supporters' grief... This is a horrid!

Even my friend, who is obviously a secularist, finally sympathizes them after seeing the "touchy" footages over and over.

She wondered why the three bombers should ever be executed, and why the government did not just let them stay for the rest of their life in the prison.

Me, I'm indeed outraged with these three mad men said to be members of underground movement Jamaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to Osama bin Laden. Seeing the way they spoke on TV, how they, without any clear reasoning, continually said that non-muslims should be killed. How they literally opened their eyes widely and rose their punches while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is the Great) over and over...I just can't stand it!

Not just that three men have recklessly tainted the image of Islam, which never by all means provides ground for their radical ideology; but they have also indirectly victimized individuals like me, whose "conservative" Muslim attire (which is not so common in Indonesia) were often soon, irresponsibly associated with their stupid radicality.

The recent insult I had to bear was when a stupid middle-aged man -- likely a food vendor -- intentionally asked me a few days before the execution (I was just having dinner with a friend near office), "So, are you mourning"?" while smiling cynically.

Knowing not what he was trying to say, I innocently asked back, "Huh? Why shall I?" and wondered was it there was something bad happening with one of my colleagues.

He replied, "Amrozi and the gank (the three convicted bombers) will be executed," and then laughed.

Gosh, I was so mad at the man; the stupid man I wished to punch once right at that very moment.

But, you know, I couldn't do it. What I did was merely giving him a bitter smile, meant as replacement for cynical words "yeah, right, very funny", and fled. I meant to show him that his ill, stupid remarks could not affect me, though actually it indeed outraged me.

Two of my friends, who are barely Islamists, were also outraged with that ill-address, and said that I should have shown a dignity by asking him what the hell he meant with that and telling him firmly that I didn't like the remarks.

But, that is not the first ill remarks addressed to me, simply because of the way I dress. And I don't think I can or shall yell at everyone insulting me that way, though it indeed hurts.

But, I think my friends are right. I should show my dignity in front of such people. I shouldn't look weak. I should protest such ill stereotyping whenever I get a chance to.

Anyway, back to the execution of the three terrorist convicts, I am indeed glad it's been finally done. They have slaughtered 202 people (mostly Australians), so I believe they deserved the death sentence.

And outsiders need to know that although the number of their sympathizers is surprisingly quite significant, it is still less than 0.0000...percent of the Muslim population in this predominantly Muslim country of 230 million people.

I hope no terrorist attacks will ever hit us again. To me, and many other Muslims here, it is quite weird how Indonesia suddenly becomes a "terrorist hub" (as Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew accused us of, which soon sparked protests) post the Sept. 11 attack.

It was always peaceful here before, even though the Palestine-Israel conflicts had been taking place since tens of years ago.

The only big cases of human rights abuses were only those allegedly committed by former president Soeharto, and that affected only so few of people here.

It is still hard for me to believe that an African-American now leads the US.
Given the fact the country is the only global supreme power, which was traditionally led by a white, the triumphant victory of Barack Obama as the new U.S. president-elect still sounds like a dream.

But, the dream is among those that come true anyway.

Everybody, not just the American supporters of Obama, are now seemingly lost in the euphoria of his historical triumph. So are so many Indonesians here.
From elementary school students to university lecturers, from journalists to senior government officials, from rural to urban people, they are surprisingly overjoyed with his victory.

In addition to sentimental reason related to Obama's brief stay in Indonesia's capital of Jakarta during his childhood, we seem to expect much from the first ever U.S. black president that he will indeed bring changes.

Not just a little changes that have always been done by former U.S. presidents compared with what their respective predecessors did; but very significant changes, notable changes that are as notable as the history Obama has just made.

We expect that United States' foreign policy will change substantially, as the Illinois senator has always promised during his presidential campaigns.

We expect he will give fair treatment to Guantanamo detainees, draw the U.S. military troops from Iraq, and be perhaps less Islamophobic (this last one is of Muslims' expectation, of course).
For Indonesians in particular, we naively expect that his winning over the U.S. top seat will change the way America sees us, and make it pay better attention to us (This is quite embarrassing and sounds pathetic to me, indeed).

But, the big question is, can he really bring the much-expected changes?
Will the changes he bring as substantial as the history he has made?

While formerly I was blurred over these questions, which most of his Indonesian fans don't seemingly really care about, a news analysis that one of my senior editors has recently written gives me a better sight.

The points of his writing is that unfortunately, the fact is Obama hardly mentioned Indonesia in his campaigns, so our fool, pathetic expectation that America will thus pay us better attention won't likely become true.

And of his foreign policy, we might still be able to expect that the U.S. military troops will eventually leave Iraq (because the Iraqi war makes US bankrupt anyway), and that Guantanamo prisoners will be treated better.
What about Islamophobic? I'm not sure about this, indeed. With Obama being associated frequently with Islam and then terrorism, I'm afraid that even if he doesn't hate Muslims as much as Bush does, he won't obviously show his sympathy, too.

In the case of Palestine and Israeli conflict, that boss of mine also makes things much clearer for us; that the United States will never leave its traditional blinded siding with Israel. And so, the bloody, long conflict will likely never be settled.

So, although Obama's victory at the presidential race is indeed a dream coming true, it is unlikely that other dreams related to him will all come true, too.

I just wonder then, how much changes he can bring?
I'm watching...

Hi, every body....!!!!! Let me introduce you to my cute little cats (and kittens). Skinny, but lovely, aren't they?

Pictures taken in Kadidiri Resort in Togean Islands, Tomini Bay, Sulawesi, Indonesia in February this year.