batas psikologis kita

Pada suatu masa berlari sejauh 1 mil dibawah empat menit adalah kemustahilan, tidak cuma itu mencoba berlari secepat ini dianggap membahayakan kesehatan. Namun demikian Roger Bannister membuktikan bahwa kemustahilan ini hanyalah ilusi. Ia tempuh 1 mil dalam tempo 3:59 menit dan sejak itu sudah lebih dari 1500 orang mengikuti jejaknya.  Impossible is nothing !

Yang masih belum berhasil ditembus diantaranta adalah berlari marathon dibawah tempo dua jam.  Eliud Kipchoge, pelari dari Kenya, sudah berhasil memecahkan rekor ini namun catatan waktuya tidak resmi diakui karena dilakukan dalam setting macam laboratorium. Kipchoge berlari dibelakang sekumpulan pacer yang berlari dibelakang truk yang memancarkan sinar laser demi membantu para pelari tetap pada pace mereka. 

Pada Marathon Berlin baru-baru ini Kipchoge berhasil mendekati batas psikologis 2 jam itu dengan finish 2:01:09 atau 30 detik lebih cepat dari rekor sebelumnya yang ia sendiri cetak empat tahun yang lalu. Secara statistik sebuah blog memperkirakan bahwa rekor dibawah dua jam akan berhasil dipecahkan sebelum 2032. Sepuluh tahu lagi. Namun rekor Kipchoge di Berlin kemarin memungkinkan bahwa -secara statistik- rekor dibawah 2 jam akan pecah tahun depan.

Kiranya bukan soal mungkin atau tidak melain soal kapan. Dan sekali lagi kita diingatkan bahwa impossible is nothing! Potensi kita adalah diluar batas yang kita sangkakan. Bahkan batas-batas itu bisa jadi tempurung yang membuat kita bahkan tidak mau mencoba dobrak.

   

'Mencari' Tuhan di zaman new normal

Pada sebuah pertemuan kring saya dengar warga membahas plus minus nya misa streaming. Yang plus tentu hal kemudahan. Dari rumah orang bisa ikut misa virtual dari paroki mana saja, jam berapa saja. Disisi minus ada orang yang malas datang misa ke paroki secara fisik. Kalau ada streaming misa mengapa perlu repot datang secara fisik ? Warga kring ini mengatakan orang-orang yang malas datang misa offline sudah menyalah-gunakan fasilitas ini.  

Warga lain menimpali bagaimana ia dimasa pandemi memutuskan menjadi anggota Legio Maria - karena ia sangat merindukan pertemuan offline dan kebetulan Legio Maria seturut aturan organisasi mengharuskan pertemuan secara offline, secara fisik. Bisa dipertimbangkan bahwa gerakan  kerasulan ini didirikan tahun 1921, jauh sebelum era internet.

Warga lain mengenangkan bahwa dari kecil ia diajari bahwa tidak ada alasan untuk tidak datang misa gara-gara orang merasa sedikit pilek atau flu. Ikut  misa justru bisa menyembuhkan sakit ringan macam ini. Di masa pandemi tentu saja sedikit pilek bisa berarti positif covid dan menjadi lebih bijak kalau orang tinggal di rumah dari pada berisiko menulari orang lain. Argumen bahwa ikut misa bisa menyembuhkan bisa dipertanyakan, karena yang bisa terjadi justru ikut misa bisa membuat orang lain sakit, dan bahkan sakit berat.

Warga lain mengingatkan andai kita mengalami pandemi disaat kita tidak punya fasilitas online seperti sekarang. Isoman dizaman lampau bisa menjadi sungguh berat. Sekarang paling tidak orang bisa tetap ikut misa, meski virtual.

Pandemi membuka era 'new normal' yang mengajak orang untuk mengolah iman secara baru. Kalau dimasa lampau 'hadir secara fisik ke misa' adalah bukti bahwa orang sungguh mencari Tuhan - mestinya kriteria itu boleh dipertanyakan dizaman internet ini. 

Kalau persatuan dengan Kristus bisa dialami mana kala kita menyantap roti dan minum anggur secara jasmani Covid membuat kita melihat sisi lain, bahwa persatuan ini bisa pula dialami secara rohani. Pilek sedikit justru membuat orang harus waspada akan kemungkinan menulari orang lain. Maka lebih baik tinggal di rumah. 

Satu hal lagi yang perlu digaris-bawahi bagaimana mencari Tuhan lebih sering dipahami sebagai ibadah. Padahal ada sisi lain yang sama sahnya. Misalnya mencari Tuhan lewat perbuatan, lewat tapa asketis, lewat pertobatan pribadi. Hal-hal yang bisa dilakukan online atau bahkan dalam keheningan isolasi diri. 

 

Ready Farrokh ?

In one of Queen songs called "Crazy little thing called Love" you could hear a short question: "Ready Freddie?". That Freddie refers to the singer, Freddie Mercury and of course Freddie rhymes with Ready, obviously. 

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents. He attended English-style boarding schools in India from the age of eight and returned to Zanzibar after secondary school. In 1964, his family fled the Zanzibar Revolution, moving to Middlesex, England. Having studied and written music for years, he formed Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. And the rest was history.

When did Farrokh became Freddie?  When Farrokh was sent to a boarding school in Panchgani near Bombay, where he formed his first rock 'n' roll band, The Hectics. Its as during this period that Farrokh starting calling himself "Freddie". That means since relatively early age (before secondary school) young Farrokh saw himself more a Freddie than a Farrokh. More a Mercury than a Bulsara. 

Shakespeare asked what is in a name? Apparently what someone or something is called or labeled is arbitrary compared to their or its intrinsic qualities. If that is the case then we might as well pick a name that would suit us better in achieving our goals. 

A stage name is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers—such as actors, comedians, singers, and musicians. Such professional aliases are adopted for a wide variety of reasons. A performer will often take a stage name because their real name is considered unattractive, dull, or unintentionally amusing; projects an undesired image; is difficult to pronounce or spell; or is already being used by another notable individual, including names that are not exactly the same but still too similar. 

I am sure to his mom Freddie was still her little Farrokh. At home even a prophet is known with his boyhood name. He might be famous to the rest of the world but still he is our little Farrokh. However little Farrokh new that he was destined to become Freddie the superstar.

Our name is not our boundary. Our heritages should not limit us to achieve our maximum potential. We are all mercurial inside!

Ready Freddie?

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mercury
https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/queen/what-was-freddie-mercurys-real-name-and-why-did-he-change-it/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_name

My IKEA bias

Almost in all the cities where I lived there is an IKEA store: KL, Brisbane, Perth, Groningen. Now there is one in my current city  Bandung. IKEA was a unique experience for me. DIY furniture and Swedish food. Googling on IKEA impact the Swedish GDP I found that back in 2013, according to Statistics Sweden (SCB) and the National Accounts 2008, the manufacturing of furniture sector constitutes 0.63% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) or about 3700 Million USD which would rank 173th in the world (larger than Burundi in Africa. 

IKEA is a multinational group of companies that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture (such as beds, chairs and desks), appliances and home accessories. As of April 2022, there are 466 IKEA stores operating in 63 countries. The store in Bandung that I visited today is one the 11 stores in my country. 

Once you visited an IKEA store you could say that you have visited all. The architecture is standard. If you only saw photo of one corner of the store (without any description to the name of the item) it would be hard for you to guess where the store is located. It could be in any of the 63 countries. 

However you would taste the difference in the cafeteria. The one that visited this morning is very different to the ones I have been abroad. To be honest the taste is on lower end of the spectrum. Even the ones in KL - which is in the neighboring country of Malaysia taste better. Not sure if the distance to Sweden matters as the ones in Australia are better.

Not sure if I was bias, some kind of inferiority complex. Or it could also be due the more zeroes that I saw on the price tag. Using my quick math, converting the euro or ringgit, I could see that the price is pretty much on par But not the taste.

IKEA are the same here, there and everywhere, but NOT its cafeteria 

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/case-studies/the-greening-of-industries-in-the-eu/sweden-ikea-of-sweden-ab-case-study
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_IKEA_stores

Superworms offer hope for recycling

 I read a news about a type worm that could digest plastic. Below is my summary of that topic.

 Australian scientists have found the Zophobas morio - commonly known as a superworm - can survive on a diet of polystyrene. They believe the beetle larvae digest the plastic through a gut enzyme. That could be significant for advancements in recycling. Polystyrene (PS), including extruded polystyrene (also known as styrofoam), is among the most commonly produced plastics worldwide. 

In this study, the researchers changed in the gut microbiome of superworms (Zophobas morio) reared on bran, PS or under starvation conditions over a 3 weeks period. Superworms on all diets were able to complete their life cycle to pupae and imago, although superworms reared on PS had minimal weight gains, resulting in lower pupation rates compared to bran reared worms. The change in microbial gut communities from baseline differed considerably between diet groups, with polystyrene and starvation groups characterized by a loss of microbial diversity and the presence of opportunistic pathogens. This study confirms that superworms can survive on polystyrene feed, but this diet has considerable negative impacts on host gut microbiome diversity and health.

The minimal weight gain of the larvae on a PS diet will probably hamper their use in the PS recycling process. In particular, downstream applications such as biodiesel production from superworm fatty esters, an approach that has been proven feasible using superworms raised on regular feed,  might not be achievable. Diet diversification, for example by supplementing styrofoam with food waste, could help to counteract the dietary deficits of the unbalanced PS feed and might increase gut microbiome health and subsequently host weight gain.

The researchers hope to identify which enzyme is the most effective so it can be reproduced at scale for recycling. Plastic would then be mechanically shredded, before being treated with the enzyme. The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value compounds such as bioplastics. 

Despite the promise from this study, the scale-up and translation of research like this is always a challenge, which is magnified in the area of plastics by the incredible scale of the problem and the economics in terms of how cheap new plastic is to produce.

References
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61727942
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/mgen/10.1099/mgen.0.000842

it looks a lot like Christmas

I love carols! I love listening to Christmas songs anytime. And it is more sentimental listening to those when I was away from home. I seldom being away alone during Christmas time. I could only remember once when that happened. When I was in the US (1990-1992), I spent my Christmas time away in Azusa, California. Not completely alone as I had a couple of Indonesian friends. The next Christmas I took a holiday in Indonesia and I graduated on August 1992 so I spent Christmas of that year in Indonesia.  

I recall weeks before having vacation in Indonesia (Dec 1991) I listened to songs like "I'll be home for Christmas" when different sentiments. I am thinking about all those things that I have missed being away for half a year and a half in the US.

Christmas time where I lived in the US was without snow. Cold and wet. My only snowy experience was January 2016, after New Year. We spent our Christmas in Berlin. It was cold but no snow. We went to Copenhagen to celebrate New Year with an Indonesian family friends. Cold and no snow either. The next morning after we were back to Groningen we had rain of snow. Our very first. What a dream came true. 

This morning after my running run with the sun already up I happened to listen to a Christmas song. My memory brought me back to those cold days in Texas. I shall be home for Christmas. I wish no one would be lonely on Christmas

 

     

Fake it with Strava

A while ago I read someone's blog stating that Strava app has made each exercise a race and he hates it. Too bad that I could find the link anymore. However when I googled "why i dont like strava" I found hits that I am summarizing below

My reaction seeing strava for the first time was that Strava is essentially Facebook for runners. Strava allow user to post their work out (not only running, but walking does not count in the monthly report). People could be member of clubs and join challenges. Like Facebook we could follow and be followed by others. We would see how far some one runs, how fast, how high he/she climbs, etc. Strava would also record the path taken during the exercise. Of course users are able to post photos. 

Obviously we could (and would) compare our performance to others. How far have we run? How fast? At what heart rate? I am not sure of many elite athletes would post their exercise there, but of course their performance would be google-able and hence one could see where he/she is relative to the pros. 

One long example is the story told on ref.1 about some guy who faked his cycling time to nab a "King of the Mountain" badge on Strava. The article mentioned about the types of doping in this digital age: motor-doping, digital-doping, or just plain old ‘doping’

Point is there is limit to human capability. True that records are broken here and there, but the current men's world record is 9.58 seconds, set by Jamaica's Usain Bolt back in 2009. Hence some dude who ran faster than Bolt would likely be doing one (or more) doping type mentioned above. 

I remember last year my office had a virtual running events which used Strava to record each participant's performances. On guy was spotted to run faster than the world marathon record. It helped that the committee decided that his time was not counted. Looks like he rode a bike and recorded it as running - which is easily be done in Strava.

Like any other social medias in this digital era, Strava could be abused. Of course to some purists fake exercise records are obnoxious. So much that many would claim the hatred for Strava. See one example on the ref 2. 

Recently I stopped using Strava to compete to one another. I admit that I did that in the past. Now I am using to record my exercises. It does not matter if I ran slower or faster. I am no pro and hence I do not have to be perfect at all. If anything I am just trying to maintain my walking and running streak. I assumed that to maintain streak I need to run minimum 2K and walk 1K. I just made it up myself. Recently I injured my left knee and during the recovery I just ran the minimum at slower speed. 

No worries, I am just a regular Strava user.  

References
https://cyclingtips.com/2022/04/exposed-by-a-strava-kom-the-many-lives-of-a-fake-pro-cyclist/#seventeen

https://flowmountainbike.com/features/this-is-why-i-hate-strava/