two months of blogging

This month I struggled to write once or twice during the month, however I reached the second milestone eventually. I add a new topic which is 'traveling' - a short blog about where I had been. Most of journeys were made years ago that I almost forgot the details. Anyhow I have wrote about the most westerly, easterly, northerly and southerly places that I have visited. I did not include my journey in the US during my years of pursuing my master's degree. I would write about it later. 

As I wrote this blog a war had broken in Ukraine. I should write about it later. I have written some blogs which were based on the news that I read. So this topic about the war would continue that kind has of blog. 

My friend who also has pledged to write 365 blogs this year seemed had stopped writing. I would rather not to ask her about it. I guess she could be too busy to write. The fact that I have plenty of free time is the main factor why I still manage to catch up with my goal so far.

Still 305 blogs to write. I shall literally take it one day at a time. The is the best strategy I have found

  

lost and found

I read two different news about lost and found on BBC about 5 days ago. I had no idea if BBC put these two news  on purpose but they made me ponder about lost and found. The first news is about A dog that has been reunited with her owners in California after being missing for 12 years. The second one is about one criminal who got arrested after 12-year hunt. 

The dog was able to be identified when the animal services officer scanned the dog's microchip. The detail of her owner's contact details was available from the chip firm and she still had the same mobile number. The dog was found about 60 miles from where she had gone missing in 2010.

Police arrested the criminal after they were told he was thousands of kilometers away in Queensland the neighboring state of Victoria where the crime was committed. There had been several unconfirmed sightings of him across the country, but police had reached a dead end in their search in 2017. The criminal had experimented with changing his appearance and demeanor to evade detection, and he was discovered with items that could disguise him, such as hair dye.

Twelve years is a long time. In twelve years three American President would have been elected and left the white house, Australia would have moved 84 cm due north east, 3 world cups, etc. The first story tells me the power of IT. The chip lasted so many years presumably in rather rough condition. The dog would likely be living on its own and there is no telling what kind of life it was. The second one tells me that Australia is pretty vast and rather empty. A fugitive could escape the surveillance despite Police chasing him around (A reward of A$100,000 had been offered for information leading to his arrest). It also be due to people's tendency to mind their own business. In any case the criminal did his part by having items that could disguise him.

I guess this world is getting smaller by the presence of IT and internet. In the future I guess finding things, persons, etc. would be more and more easier so that some gives advice how to disappear from the Internet. Well, we could be lost from the Internet but as part of society we would still be recorded elsewhere, we have ID, bank account, school records etc. which all are available to authorities. 

We would never be nobody

 

  

Living in Brissie

Now it is time to write about the most easterly I have been. In comparison of the the previous places  (Anchorage, Melbourne and Lisbon) I used to live here. I arrived there after a big flood happened. In fact my date of arrival was changed by the company I am going to work for. It was our first journey into the so called western world after living for more than a couple years in Malaysia.

One of the challenges we immediately faced was finding rented house. It was no simple issue as the area we pick would affect eligible school for our children. In Australia each school has its own catchment area basically for children living nearby the school. Later I learned that we could still go the same school even though we have moved elsewhere provided that our children had been in that school for a year of something like that.

Once we picked the areas we would hunt for the house. Typically agents would represent the owner. We go to the houses on the house viewing days. Next we would apply and wait for the respond. We would pay deposit and some agent would visit the rented house periodically to check the house condition. Not a pleasant visits I would say. 

Schools in Australia have their own costumes. Some has even fancy hats. When I ride the bus on the way to my office I could see children of various school wearing their own unique costumes. Those are not cheap, my first office luckily would reimburse the cost of those.

I could pick either bus or train to go to my office. Buses tends to be full and hence I would prefer going by train. The train station is a walking distance from my rented but my wife always fetches me daily the same time as she drove the kids to school. My house is uniquely Queensland style with rumpus room. I put my musical instrument and books there. The living room, kitchen and bed rooms are on the upper floor. All the houses in the neighborhood are pretty much the same. What shocked me the most when I drove around Australian neighborhood was how dark the yards are. In my country people would make sure that the outside of the houses are well lit. Not in Australia. I guess the cost of electricity is prohibitive enough that people would opt for automatic system or have it as option. So apart from street light the neighborhoods are rather dark. Except during Christmas time. During Christmas people  are competing to have the most extravagant Christmas lighting outside their houses

When we lived in Queensland we visited Cairns  and the famous Great Barrier Reef apart from frequent trip to Gold Coast. We rode a boat with a bunch of people to reach the reef. When we arrived there we could swim around. Out of curiosity I tasted the sea water, it was darn salty. Some people would hire a chopper to fly back to Cairns. Other would have to cope with the trip back. Luckily the boat people would provide some entertainment in the form of band and glasses of wine. 

Small note on the name - brisbane is /ˈbrɪzbən/. It was named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, the governor of New South Wales. The name is derived from the Scottish Gaelic "bris", meaning "to break or smash" and the Old English word "ban" meaning "bone". The popular nickname for the city that I knew was "Brissie"

Time Out Lisbon

The most westerly I have been was Lisbon in Portugal. I went to Portuguese to do a pilgrimage to Fatima. In May 1917, the children were tending a small flock of sheep in Cova da Iria, within the parish of Fátima, in the council of Vila Nova de Ourém. Around mid-day, after saying the rosary as was their custom, they set about building a small construction out of loose stones on the spot where there now is the Basilica. Suddenly, they saw a brilliant light and above a small holm-oak tree (where the Chapel of the Apparitions now is) appeared a «Lady more brilliant than the Sun». The Lady told the three shepherds that much prayer was required and invited them to return to Cova da Iria at the same time on the 13th of each of the five following months.

Lisbon is a hilly city. I remember riding a train to climb a hilly part of of the city. We stayed in a nice place nearby the city center. We did explore the city even to find a region where we found many Chinese.  We did have a noodle lunch on one of the restaurant there. Our favorite place to have meals was a place called Time Out Lisbon.

When we visited Belém Tower, a 16th-century fortification located in Lisbon that served as a point of embarkation and disembarkation for Portuguese explorers, I pondered what were those explorers thinking before embarking to the unknown. I am sure that without these explorers the world would still be eventually explored (by the other nations) but for sure they did put their marks in the history. 

When the tour that was supposed to take us to Fatima failed to pick us up we decided to take a bus there. Fatima is a mere hour and half (127 km) from Lisbon. The bus stops in the vicinity of the pilgrimage site. When we arrived there we joined a mass, apparently the participants came from Brazil ( I recall seeing Brazilian flags among them). They speak Portuguese so I am sure they had no problem conversing with local even though I understand that they speak different style of Portuguese. Portugal colonized Brazil, while the rest of Latin America were mostly colonized by the Spanish. When we were there the place was rather quite but I could imagine that in May this would be packed by pligrim. I remember when I bought the T-shirt I love Fatima thinking what would people in my country would think seeing me wearing it. Fatima used to be a common name for females in Indonesia. 

Apart from T shirt and other touristic stuff I also bought a fado guitar, the Portuguese guitar,  a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. I remember buying extra set of strings too. I haven't figured out how to play it. It doesn't matter. I treat it as a souvenir from a country where Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born (and yes you would find his T shirt anywhere tourista roam)

 

ticking a box in Melbourne

The most southerly I had been was Phillips island about 125 km (78 mi) south-southeast of Melbourne, Victoria. I went there to watch parade of penguins walking home from the sea. Phillip Island is home to approximately 32,000 penguins, which can be seen by tourists at sunset every day of the year. I recall the trip started around lunch time, We first visited a kind of zoo then drove to Phillip island. Nothing excited on the way back to Melbourne. 

It is obvious that most International tourists would pick Sydney to Melbourne by almost two to one but we were there to tick the box. Been there and done that and yes we did visit Sydney so could confirm why more would prefer going to Sydney if you were given one choice. Indeed there is lively rivalry between  Sydneysiders vs. Melbournites that they decided to create Canberra situated in the middle point between Sydney and Melbourne as the capital of the country. Seems like a costly effective way to settle a debate but I guess if you were passionate money would be secondary

It has been a while now that my memories of Melbourne are almost empty. I guess we did not explore Melbourne enough to create more lasting memories. Such would happened if you treat one place as a tick in a box of your bucket list

Alaska Country

The most northerly I have been was about 61° N, Anchorage in Alaska. The year was when world cup was held in Japan/North Korea. I recall my flight made a transit in Narita Japan before continuing the journey to Seattle. Seattle is located to east of Anchorage hence my trip Seattle - Anchorage was a trip back to the west.  So I overshot by 27 degree westward. I remember thinking about this number as I boarded my flight to Anchorage.

It was summertime in Anchorage hence I experienced the so called midnight sun. I could see the sun just above the horizon as I tried to sleep. Alaska was 16 hours behind my original biological clock when I was there. I struggled to adjust my sleeping time. It made my job hard as I was there for business. I had to attend meetings and went to an offshore facility. However the weather was pretty nice and warm.

I walked around to explore the city. It was pretty quiet. The population was less than 300 thousands or about 160 person per square miles (compare to my home town which has almost 38000 person per square miles). Alaska is huge. It is about the same size as all of Western Europe or Scandinavia. That's 28 countries. There are 195 countries in this world (2021), and Alaska beats all but 16 of them in total area. This means that, individually, 178 different countries could fit inside Alaska. It is interesting that the US bought Alaska from Russia about 150 years ago. 

As mentioned the trip was a business trip but my team leader decided to have a team building event by taking the team flying above Mt McKinley. I could not remember if we landed on the summit but I recall the travel agent did offer such option, depending on the weather of course. 

When Disney' Brother Bear was on the theater I remember recognizing the name of Kenai, the youngest of the brothers, which is the name of a city in Alaska. The name Alaska itself reminded me of a song by Shocking Blue which was released in 1970, Alaska Country  

There's no better way of being alone
Down in my land, my beautiful land
A nature of God all covered with snow
A pleasure to be and good times to spend
Alaska Country - stay the way you are
Alaska Country - you never cheated me

our multilingual brain

Around Christmas time more than thirty years ago I was evacuated from a dormitory in a small University in California to a homestay in a city about 20 miles from downtown LA. Nothing dramatic happened. The dormitories were closed during Christmas break so my Indonesian friends and I had to be accommodated elsewhere before we all flying to our Universities. This was the time when I was in the US to pursue my master's degree. There were six of us in that campus and we all went our own ways to different Universities (of which some I would not see face to face until today) 

I was assigned to a house of an International couple. The husband is an American and the wife is Japanese. I recall they had two daughters (or one? I could not be sure anymore - memory fades rather quickly). The daughters speak both Japanese and English seamlessly. Depending to whom the were speaking they would either speak English or Japanese. Without thinking. Obviously they are multilingual

Come to think of it I too am a multilingual. I speak Bahasa Indonesia, Sundanese, Javanese. Later on I learned French and even though I do not speak it fluently I am sure I would not be lost in Francophone world as I would be able to be understood. Checking google it looks like the number of monolingual is less than multilingual

I guess it is getting easier to learn more than one language. English would certainly be learned to some degree by many people (1.5 billions). Most products comes with English menu or manual. Many popular songs and movies are in English. So people would soak English anyhow. 

Sometime I experience that I understand what I am hearing and later asked myself what language did I hear ? Was it Malay, Indonesian or English (obviously the setting was an in flight announcement). Somehow my brain just process the words that I am hearing so that I understand the message - but which language was that ? I had to pay extra attention to recognize the language. But the understanding is there. As if it is independent of the words I just heard

What a marvelous brain we have

       

  

a memory of authentic mie tek tek

One of my favorite culinary of my hometown  is called "mie tek tek". Mie means noodle and tek-tek is the sound made by the peddlers as they walk around the neighborhood to peddle their product. They hit their metal wok with the spatula and hence that sound tek tek 

Apart from the noodle typically you would have some cabbages, shred of chicken, fried onion. It comes in two variants: dry and with broth. It is cooked using a brazier with charcoals. Of course you would ask the peddler to add enough chilly and without chilly they do not taste original. 

As time passed it becomes harder to find peddler of mie tek tek around. My brother claimed that the last time he met the peddler that used to be around our neighborhood was some ten years ago. I guess younger generation would prefer something else. Which is normal, but I do miss this culinary treat.

When I met one vendor recently I bought a portion mostly for a sentimental reason. It does not taste anything like I would imagine but at least I could tick my bucket list. I guess nothing would come close to my memories as it really is a construction of well memories. To have the authentic one would mean traveling back in time, to the house where I grew up etc. It is impossible of course.

But at least I would still able to taste pieces of that memories.  La Belle Époque

A tale of an apple juice boy

I was once slept in my campus even before my first semester had started. Not that I was so committed to study or anything, in fact I was hospitalized in my campus hospital, This was back in Jan 1991 when I was pursuing my master's degree in the US. I got chickenpox, apparently a very contagious disease. In the US the vaccination had pushed down the infection down to 90% but of course foreigners like had no such jab as in my own country such disease is uncommon

Apparently the disease is more dangerous to adult than children. My doctor told me that many American kids had it and hence they had immunity. In my case I got the disease from a friend of friend, or is it my friend who had contact with a local student. It is blur now but alas I also infected my apartment mate. The disease is very contagious indeed.

I remember I had fever and when I checked into the clinic they asked if I had friends and when I said yes they asked me to stay. I couldn't remember exactly how long I was hospitalized  but I guess it would have been 4-5 days. 

I had my own room but of course who wants to be hospitalized - even if it was a VIP room. The food were taken from the nearby dormitory. I always ordered apple juice that they called me the apple juice boy. I remember each evening I heard canon shots. The nurse told me that they were shot to drive away pigeons. Sounds strange to me but each evening I was entertained by that canon shots. I  do not recall if I had a TV set in my room but in any case I was sick enough not to care about it. 

Each day I had my doctor visit. For the first couple of days a male nurse gave me medicine late in the evening. I often was already slept. I had skin rash all over my body. The nurse gave me powder to help me dealing with the itch. I was concerned that rash would stay permanent but turns out they eventually disappeared.

I remember I was released on Sunday night. I took a bus to my friend's apartment. I haven't rented my own apartment yet. He was so kind that I was able to crashed there temporarily. Too bad that later on he got chickenpox too

Mea culpa maxima

Pity vs compassion

Reading an anthology of cancer survivors  one writer wrote that she didn't pity herself so she didn't want  from anybody else. Pity is a wasted emotion as far she concerns. I could see her logic. Pity as an emotion would be nothing if there without action. God's pity would be philosophically different as we could assume that his emotion would equal His will. Obviously for us mortal stopping at feeling pity to other would count for nothing. 

This article explain the difference between pity and compassion. Compassion involves the willingness to become personally involved, while pity usually does not. Pity involves the belief in the inferiority of the object and it could be exploited by beggars for example. We read that some beggars are actually rich. Some would argue not to give money to beggars. In fact there are laws against giving to beggars

Being compassionate is apparently wired in our brain, some form compassion is tougher and too much compassion apparently also bad for us (compassion fatigue). Looks like we should always remember that a human being we would need to take care for our self first. With that the concept of self compassion would come to mind. Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment? Despite its logic self-compassion is not always easy. But of course we could not give (including to ourselves) what we do not have

Dying happy

We do not want to admit but someday we all mortal are going to die. In the past death used to be sudden, unexpected and relatively swift — the result of a violent cause, or perhaps an infection but with technology it is now common to prolong the dying process which some would argue that it is far worse than death itself. This issue of death, dying and the process of dying popped to my mind when I read this book in particular the story about Terry Fox.

As a runner I am amazed to read the story how Fox the One-legged Cancer Patient ran 26 miles a Day for 143 Consecutive Days. Basically he ran marathons daily for almost 5 whole months. I have never run a full marathon (my record was half marathon) but what is amazing was that Fox had one leg. In the 1980s people didn’t run on prosthetic legs, running on prosthetic legs was incredibly painful as one's stump would chafe and bleed. Fox trained for 15 months, running 3,159 miles, running until his stump was raw and bleeding, he ran every day for 101 days, until he could run 23 miles a day

Eventually the disease caught with him. He died but he knew that “If I die at least I’ll die happy doing what I wanted to do in life” as he wrote in his diary. I wonder that the story would be different had Fox experienced dementia. I would doubt that he would have run that marathon simply because he would just loss his memory. He would not know who he was and what he wanted in his life. How tragic

One of my favorite prayers is Hail Mary 

Mother of God, 

pray for us sinners, 

now and at the hour of our death  

I am sure we all would want Mother Mary to pray for us when we were the most powerless, the hour our death

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen.

Is hell empty ?

A friend sent me a resume of a presentation titled the afterlife: heaven, hell and purgatory. There Hans Urs Von Balthasar was mentioned. A quick googling informed me that he was famous (or infamous) for suggesting that Hell might be empty.  Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? he asked. Logically all loving, all saving Father would not left any soul left in Hell. This would hard to digest if we thought that all psychopath leaders like Hitler would eventually enjoy the same heaven as those who lost their life in Auschwitz tortured under his cruel command.

I guess the decision to send some souls to hell would be God's prerogative but faithful might ask about God's justice.  After all we would like to know how are we going to please Him as faithful. Random acting God would be hard to follow/obey as we would be clueless.

Some would argue that despite the romantic thinking of Balthasar hell is real and not empty even though despite Church declaring saints (confirmed to be in heaven) there is such thing as anti-saints (confirmed to be in hell)

I thought half of my heart would want God to be merciful that hell would be abolished but at the same time I believe we still need to have some guidance on the implication of being unjust to other human beings. If death is definitive and there is no alter life then the hope a just universe is empty as those evils human beings would escape the punishments as there is nothing left in the other side of death.

Of course all these would still be speculation. There is no way to empirically test any hypothesis. All we have is theology and I would suspect that theology is more or less affected by our understanding of ourselves, human beings. God that is completely outside our  experiences as human beings would be unthinkable. 

 

Our language limitation

One of the guests of the podcast I listened suggested Bahasa Indonesia as the best universal language. The grammar is simple, no gender, no conjugation, no tenses, etc. But other would argue that as a language Bahasa Indonesia is pretty poor in terms of number of words "...foreign translations of Indonesian novels tend to read better, while Indonesian translations of foreign novels sound ‘verbose and repetitive’..". I can see that as means of simple communication Bahasa Indonesia would be one attractive options. But again no one really speaks Bahasa Indonesia as taught for foreigner i.e. Standard Bahasa Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia Baku).  In the old days we had a program in the National TV about Standard Bahasa Indonesia but such important program is no longer there (or is it ? my ignorance). I guess no one speak the standard language on the streets. 

I do speak other languages (local languages like Sundanese, Javanese, this language that I am using now, some French). I learned other languages to understand the grammar (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, German, Dutch. All using Duolingo). I see that some languages have complexities like gender, tenses, irregularities that makes it harder to learn. Not to mention the spelling. Of course native speakers would not see it the way I saw it. They had plenty of time to learn that language and the surely have the need to do so otherwise how could they understand and being understood.

Back to Bahasa Indonesia. As mentioned I am sure foreigners would easily be understood when they express basic things like (where, when, what, how many) but I guess when it comes to more complex expression Bahasa Indonesia might not have enough words. I thought German could be nominated as the champion (who would came up with  schadenfreude for example?)

But in general I would argue that all human languages are limited in one way or another. Saying like "A picture is worth a thousand words" for example would express such limitation. Feelings often could not expressed with words. Some ideas are even not supposed to be expressed in spoken words.

Let me quote this paragraph about the limitation of language: "...We cannot speak about things if the words don’t exist to allow us to do so. Sometimes, this makes us unaware of concepts others are able to discuss, other times, this limitation renders us incapable of speaking about things of which we are aware..".

How true

Blackout Blessings

My first blackout after quite a long time happened this morning. Of course it was not the first in my whole life but I tend to forget past blackouts and would expect that it won't and should not happen. But of course it happened without warning. The twitter of the electricity service mentioned that such black out was not planned and they themselves were unsure of the causes and they were doing their bests to resolve the issues, standard statement I guess, but anyone in their shoes would mention the same remarks. 

Now that the day has been resumed to normal course I have a chance to reflect that so many things in our life were taken for granted. We -not only assume- expect things to be working as we expect because they should - until they didn't

I think it is not our nature to constantly aware how things in our life were taken for granted. That would take a lot of awareness and grateful exercise. It is not impossible but I would thought that it is not our standard operating mode. I guess this is could be called hedonistic adaptation. We adapt quickly adapt to our current circumstances that we forgot our previous state of conditions. I would assume in itself it would neutral as we could get used to a new normal that is less favorable that the previous one (e.g. wearing masks and travelling less unless it is really necessary during the pandemic)

The other observation that I ponder today it that I tend to quickly dismiss all the time when I enjoyed the availability of  electricity. Basically you never miss the water till the well runs dry. 

Alas how quick do we forget to count our blessings 

Whole Bibit Sequencing

In selecting spouse, Javanese teaching uses the measurement of Bibit (consider his/her family background and good name), Bobot (consider his/her good education and strong morals) and Bebet (Javanese is a paternalistic society, hence, the wife should consider that her prospective husband can be relied as a breadwinner/provider for the family). This teaching -in particular the Bibit- popped out in my head while listening a podcast that discussed about genetic engineering.  The dropping of  the cost of whole-genome sequencing would soon allow us to analyze the genetic of the potential mates to check for his/her genetic defect (and of course his/her superiorities if any)

It wouldn't hard to imagine a scenario where our saliva is unknowingly collected to be sent to a lab for a rapid analysis that would mapped out all there are about our genetics.  Phenotypes are for hookups but genotype is forever. I wonder what romance would mean in the such world ?

I am sure no one with the right mind would want to marry a complete stranger. Dating is our way to get to know more (and also to be known) about our potential mates. Yes of course typically we would show our best sides while dating but with time eventually we expect to see more of the real side of our potential mates. We would know their siblings, parents, friends, pets, etc. 

Hence we do select our partner, carefully in some sense. This is non un-romantic at all. Marriage is no walk in the park. Life is not always easy. Storms would eventually come. Hence the question of being committed to each other -no matter what- is essential. Implicit in traditional marriage is the promise of 'till death do us part. I am anyone would agree that it would be more enjoyable to share our life (and we life but once) with someone that is compatible with us. 

In that context the whole-genome sequencing would completely make sense. Are we genetically compatible ? Is there a possibility that the offspring would have a lethal disease when our genes combine? It might sounds un-romantic at first but it is completely logical if we consider that after all we all want to life happily ever after.  

it might be you

In Marc 14:12-21 we read the narration of the last supper, my interest is in particular verse 19: Is it I ? Such a strange question ? One commentary suggests that the disciples were not aware that there was a traitor among them. They did not ask Jesus : Is it he ? or It is he isn't it. They simply had a self-distrustful question about themselves. Obviously -despite being around very close to Jesus- they were aware that that did not make them free from being sinful. They were all - like we are all - mere human. It is always possible to commit sin despite our best intention.

In mea culpa we pray that we  "... have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do ..." Hence the range of sinful act is pretty wide. Being in-action could lead us into sin as well as actively doing. Even thinking never mind saying things could stain us.

Hence it is  understandable why the disciples asked the Lord if it was he that would do such offense. They were not completely sure if they would not contribute to such act of betrayal. They could have said something, some passer by might have heard the topics that were supposed to be kept among them, etc. 

Reflecting on this short question we could ask ourselves is we had committed to such action (or failed to do so) that might have hurt others. Self doubting ourselves, such thing is completely possible. 

One small note on the translation of such phrase. I happen to have a French version of the new testament. There I read the question is formed positively "Serait-ce Moi?" (would it be me?). I thought this version of self doubt capture the grieve of those apostles. They were not just doubtful but they were an inch closer to confess that they might have done bad things that would lead their Masters into trouble

Mindless watching

One book argues that people tends to mindlessly watch anything that appears on TV. This reminds me how seldom I watch TV lately. Well I guess I have not randomly flipping from one channel to another for quite a long time now. I think I could not afford spending hours in front of TV anymore. If you work about 8 hours a day you would only have a couple hours in the evening and of course you would not spend all of them in front of TV. Secondly YouTube would allow me to watch exactly what I want to watch. I do not have to wait for the exact moment (unless on live event). Thirdly -I guess this the main reason- I do not have TV cable. 

When I was a kid we had but one channel, the government TV channel. I think the first private commercial TV channel in Indonesia was established in 1989. Since then it is essential to have a TV set with remote control. When I lived in a city in Borneo I had a satellite dish which is necessary to watch TV. Relying on regular antenna would yield blurry picture of one channel only. The satellite dish would give us access to many channels including channels from abroad like French and Australia.  Now the remote control would even be more essential.

About five years ago, returning to Indonesia having lived abroad I had quite a lot of free time. I did watch TV from time to time but quickly I realized that I do not share the tastes of the people behind those TVs. I thought most sinetron are insulting our ability to think. The storyline are unrealistic, the dialogue are rather stupid to my ears and all in all they are waste of time. Moreover YouTube was easily accessible. I guess -to me- that was the time when TV changed role as means of entertainment. TV is now just a screen. A device to view things. Things that could also be accessed via smartphones or laptops.  

Cat Debate

Recently in news a footballer lost his sponsorship deal and fined by his club for kicking his two cats. I do not have any pets and I watched the video of his acts online. To be honest I wonder if the punishment balanced what he has done to the cats (they are still alive obviously) 

Of course social media world reacts immediately. Some argues that the punishment is not fair. He is being punished severely because he is black. Another footballer was punished relatively lighter for kicking a human being   

Animal cruelty to pet is one thing but how about legal hunting on African big games ? 

The world -with social media around- is not the place it used to be. Back then taking video and posting it (where?) was time consuming, difficult and well impossible as there was no media for sharing. So what ever people do in their privacy would remain private. Now even company like Adidas had to succumb with the public pressure. Of course people would debate why Adidas seems to care more about cat than human being. Some would even call for boycotting Adidas (I would doubt if it would work moreover the first to suffer if Adidas went out of business would be the factory workers, human being)  

I would not expect this cat kicking news would start a raging fire. I am sure it would be forgotten rather quickly. The media would be busy posting other things. Our attention is pretty short  

Path dependence

The other I heard this term of 'path dependence' when I listened to a podcast. Checking wikipedia I got this definition:   Path dependence is when the decisions presented to people are dependent on previous decisions or experiences made in the past. I guess the equivalent of this concept in physics is called inertia (the resistance of any physical object to a change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object's speed, or direction of motion). Looks like in nature and in social life we tend to stick with the status quo.

Of course from time to time there are mavericks (an unorthodox or independent-minded person). Imagine a world without Einstein then we wouldn't have GPS, solar cells, etc. He was (still is) a maverick that opened a new dimension for other to explore. He created a new path, essentially.

I guess despite our inertia from time to time people like Einstein knocks our door and eventually the reality would made us change. It takes time I would assume and sometime time is the luxury that we do not always have. Covid 19 and its variances -for example- forces us to act differently. The best example is I guess the online education. I am sure people have considered about online education for quite sometime now. but Covid 19 hasten the application of such system that we were dragged into the journey rather forcefully. We are learning to swim as we are plunged in the water.  

The world is changing at a faster rate and to survive we need to be adaptive. Some would certainly be left behind. Sad reality. Darwinian evolutionary theory would say "survival of the fittest" even though this article suggest that maybe there is a way to survive as a community ("survival of the kindest")

In any case I would argue that we should always be open to adapt ourselves in face of rapid change of economics, politics, environment and technology. Open your eyes and ears. Read and learn

Covid choice

I could not understand why a number of Canadian truckers protesting the government regulation to vaccinate those crossing the US-Canada border. They drove their trucks to the capital of the country, parked and crippled the business in some parts of the city. They also constantly blare their air horns to the annoyance of local. Some of the locals are understandably protesting back against these truckers. But after a number of days looks like status quo remains. 

I read that the main reason the protest is simply that "...unvaccinated Canadian truckers crossing the two nations' boundary to quarantine once they've returned home..." which of course makes sense to me. Well not to them. Of course behind them are the opposition who saw it as an opportunity to increase political pressure to the government 

I could understand that opposition would do whatever it takes to gain political advantages but I guess this is why many - me included- think that politics is dirty unethical business. Yes in democratic country the citizen has the right to express opinions, to oppose the government etc. but my freedom is limited by other's people freedom  

If you don’t want to be vaccinated, that’s your decision. But then, stay home, so that responsible citizens can get on with their lives

Everything takes time and usually goes more slowly than you would like

Life is not always like walking in the park. It has bumps and hilly terrain too. When your road is rocky and slippery, when the sky is dark, when the end of the tunnel seems nowhere to find you would realize that life is hard. 

A friend reminded me that '..Everything takes time and usually goes more slowly than you would like...'. How true. I think our first reaction tends to me us think life is harder than it is. But often we were wrong. Given time, after we calm ourselves we would see that there are ways out, there are options, there are still opportunities. The end of the world is not tomorrow for all we know.

Everything takes time and usually goes more slowly than you would like

I think learning from what I experienced so far it is better not to over react. If anything let it settle down first. Sleep on it. Let another day pass by. Pray. Meditate. Allow time tells you what to do. You would be surprise that eventually answers would come to you unexpectedly. I guess we are all have resources that would allow us to cope with anything life throws on us, but it takes time for us to recognize it. 

Everything takes time and usually goes more slowly than you would like

Be calm, walk on and let time heals 

Tangerine Dream Pirate Radio

Once a bunch of my buddies created a pirate radio  called Tangerine Dream Radio. Tangerine Dream is a name of  a German electronic music band that listened to when we grew up as teenagers. We played funk, jazz rock, prog rock music but I don't think we played any of Tangerine Dream music. I guess my buddies picked that name because it sounded cool. 

I remembered one of my buddies painted posters that we thought appropriate to be put on the wall of the room that we used. One of the posters was of course the cover of Tangerine Album (see above). All of the posters were black and white. I could not remember where did he get all the ideas from. But I thought the posters are cool.  

To my recollection the government allowed such radios to broadcast only during the month of Ramadhan. During the fasting month people would get up early and obviously having such radios would be a nice distraction. I am not sure how far people could listen to our Radio but it did not matter at all. We thought it was cool to broadcast songs that we love. I don't think we took any requests from listeners. I am sure we had no phone in the studio so we just play songs that we love and it is up to whomever to listen. 

I am not sure whether my buddies would ever considered to have a legal Radio at all but I am sure we all would cherish this memory of Tangerine Radio for ever. 

 

Football magic

I haven't written about football for a while now but the lost of ManUtd  to Boro - specifically the question of what next for Manchester United has made ponder about professional football. I have been working in Oil and Gas  business for more than two decades and I completely understand that it is business and nothing but business. Yes we do care about environment, employee safety etc but those are part of business necessities. We do that to comply with regulations as failing to do so means loosing license to operate which means loosing money

So money is the driver of all professional clubs like both United and Boro. There is a pretty wide gap between the two. United is pushing to the 4th position of premier league while Boro is currently 7th in the Championship which a league below Premier League. The game was played in United's home and the most expensive of Boro player is less than 10% of the most expensive player on United side. The odds were of course against Boro and yet they were drawn and United lost on the sudden death part of penalty shoot out. United fans would certainly complained about the equalizer but of course they should know better than United should simply kill the game by the end of the first half. 

Why would United fail to win the game ? Boro's supporters would not care how but they might say it was magic or luck. Human beings do believe such thing as luck - otherwise how would you explain Ronaldo -of all players- missed the penalty? but of course human made mistakes and that would be more plausible to explain the lost of Giants like United. There is uncertainties and randomness, but human brain would resist to see that and instead believes that somehow order would prevail. 

This uncertainty if favors minnows like Boro would certainly gives impression of magic, being lucky and believe in fairytale. If the game were to be replayed in another alternative universe United might simply won it easily. Statistically they should but of course there is always chance for the unthinkable. And that would makes life more interesting, isn't it - specially if you were no fan of United 

     

Drowning in trash

This BBC article about food waste made me think about my contribution to the problem of waste in general. My mind concern is plastic. In time plastic would  be deteriorated and broken into small pieces called microplastics. Microplastics are harmful to our ocean and aquatic life. They also dangerous to humankind. The question is : would we return the a world without plastic ? I guess no. Hence how do we managed this useful stuff but dangerous as waste? 

Of course we often hear the cliché of of reduce, reuse and recycle. One article quotes 9% as the amount of recycling we do. If this is correct than more than 90% of waste are accumulated somewhere and as we only have but one planet eventually those waste would drown us.

No waste in nature - we know that. Nature has great mechanism to recycle everything nature produces. That is basically the circle of life. Leave by itself nature would exist indefinitely - well so long as the sun provides the energy.  But of course modern life would disrupt this balance of nature. To some degree nature would be able to absorb the impact but eventually it is overwhelmed and now we are experiencing the impact too

I hope that someday the technology to process plastics and other modern product would eventually save us.  Judging from the leap of technology development I am sure this is a wishful thinking. Until then I do hope my small contribution would at least buy us some time

 

Every thing they did were magic

Believe it or not, I ever played one cassette over and over until the tape lost the sound. Apparently each time we play a cassette the head of the tape player erodes a bit of the tape surface so that eventually nothing came out of the tape other than hissing noise. In my case that cassette was Aquarius produced The Best of The Police

I knew the band pretty late, well after Aquarius issued this cassette. Pretty bad for a person who thought he knew good popular music. This cassette was issued I guess around 1982. It  compiled best songs from The Police first four album. The Police had five studio albums. More on the last album later

When I was in my Junior High year I knew a guy who collected The Police album. I thought he was weird. At that time we were into discos and pops, but he collected this band's album with weird names like Outlandos d'Amour, Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta. An the band called themselves The Police ? What a bunch of weirdos. But of course my weird friend (whom name I forgot, too bad, I wanted to congratulated him for his musical connoisseur) was all correct in a sense of collecting one great band's albums.  

Anyway I listened to this cassette over and over. I thought their music is great. I was crazy for the first two songs of Side A and one song on side B (Bring on The Night) were the highlights. I have never heard New Wave music before hence The Police was a complete novelty to me. They play reggae/ska, unique guitar sound, strange drum beat and of course great vocal from Sting. I tried to learn the chords but those songs were just too hard to me.

When the last album was issued it would not be possible to escape one day of radio listening without hearing Every Breath You Take. That song would appear in any compilation. Ask anyone who grew up as teenager in the 80s about this song and I am sure 90% would remember it. The Police were Gods.

Yes I learned the chords of this song, I thought it was strange that The Police played it in G# (standard guitar tuning) so I played it normal G. It required some kind of acrobatic fingering but it could still within my reach. When I saw the music video (pirated Beta videotape) I was blown away. The video was black and white. Sting played upright bass and it made the video more special.

When The Police were quiet and later disbanded I was really disappointed. How could a band so creative and successful would left the stage forever. There were reunions and remaking of an old song but of course The Police were over.

Of course nothing would last forever, I am grateful growing up in the 80s accompanied by these three musical geniuses who called themselves as The Police

Every little thing she does is magic

Everything she do just turns me on

The Power Of Early Effective Intervention

This morning I read BBC news that Australia is on track to eliminate HIV from the country. 

Australian HIV diagnoses have hit an all-time low, with the country in sight of eliminating transmissions. It's a legacy of Australia's early, effective response

The article is pretty short for me to understand the details but I thought the keys are in these words early and effective. The government did not hesitate to act nor got bogged down in length empty narration or debates. Some things need to be answered immediately. 

I remember when this disease was first mentioned in the news. As it was spreading among gay people I could almost hear people would say let them die as the punishment of their crooked sexual orientation. But of course AIDS was also transmitted via infected blood donation to non gay communities. This disease did not have morality. It will affect any people as long as the virus is transmitted regardless the means of transmission.

 Back to Australia. I thought it shows us the triumph of humanity over horrible disease like AIDS. Now we are still under the grip of Covid-19. But we could see that slowly the vaccination and health protocols would allow life getting back to (new) normal. This is of course a collective efforts that requires all of us to buy in participate with the efforts.

I am sure eventually humanity would prevail. Yes there are casualties but we would march on. 

Yessongs

 I could not remember exactly if I started to listen to Yes music started when it was radio friendly pop and easy (90125) or when it was complicated (Fragile) but I remember that Relayer was too hard to swallow when I first listened it back when I was around 14-15 years old. This album but three songs. The first song is 22 minutes long which one side of the LP. 

For sure when 90125 was released Owner of The Lonely Heart was immediately a hit. Yes became household name. I often resented band that turned pop but in case of Yes I listened to this band started with this radio friendly album then worked my way back to their older albums. 

Later I found out that this band changed personnel so often that in their 1991-1992 tour they had all eight members of the band performed on a revolving circular stage. Anyway I thought my favorite albums are Fragile, The Yes Album, Close to The Edge, Tormato and Going for the one. Obviously I prefer Anderson, Howe, Squire and Wakeman which is the classic line-up

My Yes favorite song however is Onward composed by Squire. The lyrics is so poetic
There's a love I feel for you
Proclaimed in everything I write
You're the light, burning brightly

Contained in everything I do

This love song was simple but deep - Onward to the night of my life. I would agree with Squire that it is the best song he ever wrote well in my case YES ever issued.