Three Things To Do in 2009 - Part A

Here is my list of three things to do before June 30, 2009:
1. Read the Bible
2. Learn French
3. Do a couple of ARE exams

This is probably my last blog for the year. It has been an interesting one. See you next year.. I have lots of wishes and hopes to do, I hope you do to. Like St. Paul said, keep running!

barely good people

I just saw 21 Grams, a 2003 movie by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu and Guillermo Arriaga. I was really 5 years late in watching this good movie. Yep, i think between 2000-2005 I almost lost contact with most of the world out there as I was making love with architecture. Sorry for making that kind of analogy. But I came to realize sometimes when you fall in love intensely, you live in the world but your mind is not in it. 21 Grams was about the grotesque reality that we live in. It attempted to convince us that that the grotesque and the beauty of this life were more intertwined than we thought they were. It dig deep under our skin - inspecting the weight of our soul. At the end of this journey, the medium barrier dissolved and we saw ourselves in the mirror. That we are all barely good people under our skin capable of uncontrolled good (donating heart) and evil (killing innocents) in a switch of an instant. That's the overall impression I have. I am sure if you are familiar with that movie, you have must known about the non-linear montage style editing. It, however, looks very Bressonian for me at the core, with a simple proposition to show effect before cause. Crash (2004) became a little tame after watching this.

Talking about tame movie, I also watched Priceless with the cute Audrey Tautou from Amelie in it. She is probably one of the super skinny actors that I found attractive. I could say Priceless is a totally different genre from 21 Grams but arguably exploring the same issue of: what is the content of human soul?. Didn't feel like that at first because Priceless looks just like another re-take of Hollywood chic-flick made in France. But beyond all the beauty, charm, and glamour of Tautou character's, it revealed the grotesque side of a soul; in this case, of a high class hooker/seducer of middle age men. Maybe kind of like Miss Dupre in Spitzer's scandal back in March. Yes, we are all barely good people.

Reboot - clip

TF is always good in expressing for us, our collective thoughts and also like he said in one of his books "connecting the dots". But reading his articles and insights I often times found these projective possibilites and original ideas from him that are so interesting. One of these nuggets of thoughts is the part that I highlighted above from his Dec 24th, 2008 op-ed: Time to Reboot America.

two

I know somebody will make this kind of movie someday in an elegant way: story of a person torn between two lovers. Might be good, will see.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/50068/movie-trailers-two-lovers

Yesterday, I was surprised to receive a packet from Kazan. I anxiously opened it and found inside a book: The Master and Margarita, the Russian modern classic, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I love it. Never heard about him before, but quite excited to see probably the literary counterparts of the Russo-constructivists. I don't usually expect Christmas gifts. But the one that I always remember was also a book gift from my sister in 2002. It was Borges: Collected Fictions. Aha. Holiday is here. I hope I can enjoy it and also be productive with my other work. Merry Christmas. Peace and blessings to you.

Rich

This is a clip from Rob Bell's NOOMA Number 13 : Rich.

I think this simple message about contentment, being content with what you have, is the key to solve many unhappiness in our consumer-materialistic society.

Genesis 2:24

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." - The Book of Genesis, Chapter 2 Verse 24.

A few days ago Mike Huckabee was in Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart promoting his new book. The Daily Show is one of the very few TV shows (that I watch online) that I watch. After a sets of funny and cordial chattings, Stewarts, a well known but reasonable liberal leaning comedian, cornered Huckabee, a well known but reasonable conservative, on the hot issue of gay marriage. I assumed you are at least like me and lightly familiar with the debate about this issue in American media.

So Stewarts peppered him with a sets of standard questions: why not? it's a fundamental human rights? why not lawful, segregration was an accepted law before? gay couple is just as resposnsible and even more responsible in some cases in child bearing, etc, etc, etc. Huckabee replied, also, with a sets of standard responses; marriage is between man and woman, anatomically determined for procreation; we can't just rewrite the social fabric; a person against gay marriage doesn't mean a homephobe, etc, etc. etc.

The part that I am interested in this blog is when Huckabee mentioned that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman that has been established for five thousands years. We know that Huckabee before became a two-term governor was also a pastor. Stewarts, who had a Jewish background and also well aware about Huckabee's background immedietly brought the B word (the Bible). He countered Huckabee quickly that since the Old Testament the definiton of marriage has been constantly in flux. In fact many of the main characters in the Bible (Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, etc.) live a polygamous life.

That's true. Many of the characters in the Bible live a polygamous life as the culture in the region at the time and even until today. But what I want to say is those characters also live a natural and not-so-perfect life. The Bible is not an account about a group of angelic people but about God's relationship with them. One of the reasons the Bible becomes so relevant to Christians and to myself is because it recorded the life and stuggles of all these "failed" and full of flaws characters. Those people behaved just like us today when pushed into difficult situations and temptations. They always chose the easy way out even when it's against .. anything: the law, their culture, their family tradition, and God.

Yesterday, inspired by Ps. Yo's Sunday sermon, I re-started my commitment to read the Bible front to back in 2009. As always, I began from the Book of Genesis. Hopefully in 2009 I can go further than that. But that's when I came upon the beautiful verse above, Genesis 2:24, that started this blog.

So, I believe gay couples should get equal rights with heterosexual couples in society. I also believe that marriage is a sacred and eternal institution from God between a man and a woman. A man is created to love his wife. A woman is created to be with her husband. Yes, all singular. If the rest of the people even Abraham, David, or Moses choose to live differently, that's their business with God. Just because Abraham did it doesn't mean I can do it too. What God wants is always a man and a woman to love each other. There is a spiritual blessing in it. The New Testaments reaffirm this truth and God's intention about marriage in several passages especially in the Gospels and the apostles letters.

Epilogue:

If I can use Conan O'Brien's (another TV show I watch) session "In the Year 2000" to predict the future, I would say, in 2012 Huckabee will beat Palin and become the Repulican presidential candidate to challenge Obama. He will win.

lucky dude

I am waiting right now to take Jeff to the airport for his trip back to Jakarta. Last time early this year I also sent him and his soon-to-be fiancee to the airport. Of course I didn't know anything back then (and probably so did she) that that dude was going to propose this time. Surely he did. So when they come back from this trip, they will be husband and wife. I can't imagine what he is thinking right now, excited, i am sure, happy, of course, fear, maybe. But this is the thing about him though, that he seems to be pretty relaxed. Good for him. I don't know about me. I don't know what I was thinking too, once upon a time, when I said I was ready to marry. Looking back from now, I don't think I was ready at all. You know, it's always a bizzare to imagine the "what ifs" in your life. The caveat is not just to think about what if you did but also what if you missed it. That latter one starts to creep in my thoughts.

All right, the lucky dude is here. Got to go.

bleeding

why I don't like horror movie

Firing is horrible. It's always creates uneasiness. Some more colleagues got fired last week. I have been rejected several times for jobs, schools, and girls but not yet ejected from any (ehm, maybe the last one). So this is my learning experience, a process of maturity I guess. I don't worry so much about the aftermath, because you can always do something else, but the shock of the moment. That's why I don't like horror movies, I don't like to be (stupidly) scared when I am least prepared.

This may not be a surprising attitude for everybody else but I am loosing my innocence towards corporate America. For me it looks like a soulless business machine. A machine that, when it's out of oil or fuel, will just spit out it's own parts and eventually slowly crankyly self-destruct itself without remorse. The upside of all this is, it makes us more humble toward other workers and increases solidarity as fellow human beings. That's probably what the CEOs of the big three car makers felt yesterday when they had to ride in their own hybrid cars, instead of private jets, for hundreds of miles to DC to ask for help. Hang in there everybody, we are probably not in the bottom yet.

Another Bright Sadness

Last week I said goodbye to Kate, before I left for vacation, in front of the parking lot outside the office. It was a simple but very vivid event in my memory. You know you have had a good friend by the inner-gravity you felt in a farewell moment like this. It was another indescribable feeling I had when departing from a good friend. So I have to examine it this time.

We have experienced countless goodbyes in our life. Some are memorable and some are just stored in the short-term memory. I am sure you know what I mean. I always remember the memorable farewells in my life with the color mood associated with the events: with Kezia in gray metallic telephone booth the first time we had to leave each other, with my mom and bibi in the yellow living room, with my sister Ling in the red airport, with Amy in my last night wandering around in Shanghai; and the one that started it all (and responsible for making me a melancholic wanderer until today) was my farewell with Angeline at the airport when she was leaving for Melbourne.

I would say that a memorable farewell is state of feeling. It is a type of emotional feeling that you experience for a duration of time, just like joy, sadness, eating, sex, anger, etc. There is usually a slow anticipation of someone (or yourself) departing from the loved ones. This could range from a few days to a few months. Then there is a duration after the goodbye, when you feel a sense of loss conjured up with optimism. It is an optimism from knowing that you have created a meaningful relationship and that person will carry with him or her a piece of yourself (the memory) to the new place.

It is the constant switching between this sense of loss and optimism that creates a memorable farewell feeling or a feeling I would call a “bright sadness” (Charlie Hall’s song). This “bright sadness” will plateau for a while and then slowly recede down. That’s when friendship will end. I don’t like to hear the tongue-and-cheek ‘friendship forever’ thing. For me friendship is like a dashed line, with irregular length of lines and gaps. It is not always continuous and I am okay with that.

off to the east

This year we are going to Harrisburg PA for the church retreat. For some reasons, this year, I am more excited than the last one. Retreats remind me of my family travel ritual back home. I remember, every holidays, all six of us packed and thrown into Dad's Toyota Hardtop and drove south into the inner land of Sumatra. It was a bitter-sweet-and-sour, road trip experience. I hated the trip but cherished the moments spent with my Dad, saw his works, and the jungles. Allright, n'ko is here, so I got to go.

After the retreat, I will continue east to NY. I only want to see MoMA, Met, Gugenheim, and BH Photos store...will try to let you know how it goes. Happy Thanksgiving. Always give thanks to God for whatever you have and whereever you are in life.

Будимэн Вихария Тех

... in Russian

The Handshake

Jim Wallis reminds us the significance of an event that happened last week in American politics. It was the handshake in the White House between Bush and Obama. Most news agencies brushed over it as a regular 'great' news in the week already filled with 'great' stories in the presidential politics. The public in general, including me, absorbed that event just with an enlarged sense of curiosity and bits of admiration for their leaders.

That event, however, is much more than a symbolic gesture. It shows an example that many nations would probably envy. Will the highly powerful Commander in Chief in the country hand over his entrusted authority to the next person, even if that person has an opposing political orientation? It reflects the greater side of the American politics. A tradition that was set in precedent very early on in the 1800s, when John Adams had to transfer the presidency to Thomas Jefferson, a ferocious politcal opponent. That event reassures our hope that, no matter how ridiculous the political theatre may seemed, the human soul will and can prevail against the lust for power. So, like Wallis said, don't take the handshake for granted.

Read Wallis's latest blog here if you are interested.
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3812

Nov 11 Pyramid

It's amazing that people still discover pyramids in Egypt today.

Russian names

I am glad today I got to learn some Russian from Kate. I have been wanting to know how to say properly the names of the famous Russians that I know. It's cool for to hear the names pronounced as they should be and not anglicized. I still need to practice many times or I will forget... Fyodor Dostoevky, Anton Chekov, Malevich, Dziga Vertov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Sokurov... with lots of emphasis on the RRRR, SHHH, FHHHH. Talking about Russian language, was it you, Sri, who told me a story one time about your friend who was studying in Moscow during their hard time in the 90s?

Yesterday, lunch time, I took them to short tour of the campus, primarily to see the archictecture school and the Wexner Center, two of my favorite contemporary buildings in town. Tomorrow will also be interesting as we will go to Akron to see Coop Himmelblau's museum. The last time I visited that building with John R when it was still under construction. Looking forward to it.

Will history or historical will?

Will the present become history or the history become a past? In the next few hours, the Americans will (or will not) engrave a new entry into a history of human accomplishments. If so, I will be so lucky to be in the midst of it, observing history in the making. It will be an interesting day at work today.

Roger Cohen's American Stories

We live in a hyper-information age. Everyday, we are showered by today's world with information, news, emails, and many other junk texts. A lot of it is also our own fault actually, we contanstly and hapticly search for every new bits of information coming in, you know, emails, my space, you tube, or blogs (yes like this one, and like the person writing it now). We live in, William Mitchell's 1995 book, a City of Bits! Anyway, that brings me to the point I am trying to say... Every once in a while, flowing thorough this textual sewer, I would come across a jewel, a piece of art like this article below by Roger Cohen of NYT. This is a beautiful article that I want to archive in my blog so I can read it again. It shows me the profound nature of a work of writing. Something that can move, inspire, and make you excited to live the next day hoping to do the same good work. Crazy hah, but you know what I meant, right, writers out there! If not just read Cohen's article below.

October 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

American Stories

By ROGER COHEN

Of the countless words Barack Obama has uttered since he opened his campaign for president on an icy Illinois morning in February 2007, a handful have kept reverberating in my mind:
“For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

Perhaps the words echo because I’m a naturalized American, and I came here, like many others, seeking relief from Britain’s subtle barriers of religion and class, and possibility broader than in Europe’s confines.

Perhaps they resonate because, having South African parents, I spent part of my childhood in the land of apartheid, and so absorbed as an infant the humiliation of racial segregation, the fear and anger that are the harvest of hurt — just as they are, in Obama’s words, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

Perhaps they speak to me because I live in New York and watch every day a miracle of civility emerge from the struggles and fatigue of people drawn from every corner of the globe to the glimmer of possibility at the tapering edge of the city’s ruler-straight canyons.

Perhaps they move me because the possibility of stories has animated my life; and no nation offers a blanker page on which to write than America.

Or perhaps it’s simply because those 22 words cleave the air with the sharp blade of truth.
Nowhere else could a 47-year-old man, born, as he has written, of a father “black as pitch” and a mother “white as milk,” a generation distant from the mud shacks of western Kenya, raised for a time as Barry Soetoro (his stepfather’s family name) in Muslim Indonesia, then entrusted to his grandparents in Hawaii — nowhere else could this Barack Hussein Obama rise so far and so fast.

It’s for this sense of possibility, and not for grim-faced dread, that people look to America, which is why the Obama campaign has stirred such global passions.

Americans are decent people. They’re not interested in where you came from. They’re interested in who you are. That has not changed.

But much has in the last eight years. This is a moment of anguish. The Bush presidency has engineered the unlikely double whammy of undermining free-market capitalism and essential freedoms, the nation’s twin badges.

American luster is gone. The American idea has, in Joyce Carol Oates’s words, become a “cruel joke.” Americans are worrying and hurting.

So it is important to step back, from the last machinations of this endless campaign, and think again about what America is.

It is renewal, the place where impossible stories get written.

It is the overcoming of history, the leaving behind of war and barriers, in the name of a future freed from the cruel gyre of memory.

It is reinvention, the absorption of one identity in something larger — the notion that “out of many, we are truly one.”

It is a place better than Bush’s land of shadows where a leader entrusted with the hopes of the earth cannot find within himself a solitary phrase to uplift the soul.

Multiple polls now show Obama with a clear lead. But nobody can know the outcome and nobody should underestimate the immense psychological leap that sending a black couple to the White House would represent.

What I am sure of is this: an ever more interconnected world, where financial chain reactions spread with the virulence of plagues, thirsts for American renewal and a form of American leadership sensitive to humanity’s tied fate.

I also know that this biracial politician, the Harvard graduate who gets whites because he was raised by them, the Kenyan’s son who gets blacks because it was among them that mixed race placed him, is an emblematic figure of the border-hopping 21st century. He is the providential mestizo whose name — O-Ba-Ma — has the three-syllable universality of some child’s lullaby.
And what has he done? What does his experience amount to? Does his record not demonstrate he’s a radical? The interrogation continues. It’s true that his experience is limited.

But Americans seem to be trusting what their eyes tell them: temperament trumps experience and every instinct of this man, whose very identity represents an act of reconciliation, hones toward building change from the center.

Earlier this year, at the end of a road of reddish earth in western Kenya, I found Obama’s half-sister Auma. “He can be trusted,” she said, “to be in dialogue with the world.”
Dialogue, between Americans and beyond America, has been a constant theme. Last year, I spoke to Obama, who told me: “Part of our capacity to lead is linked to our capacity to show restraint.”

Watching the way he has allowed his opponents’ weaknesses to reveal themselves, the way he has enticed them into self-defeating exhaustion pounding against the wall of his equanimity, I have come to understand better what he meant.

Stories require restraint, too. Restraint engages the imagination, which has always been stirred by the American idea, and can be once again.

My Ironman Buddy

Check out Hansen's blog here: http://hansent.blogspot.com/

-

Halo Hansen, congratulation for the race !!! You did an amazing job, really!!! it's quite an inspiration for me. Sorry, couldn't come to cheer. I totally forgot about this marathon until Fan Ny told me on Sunday.

I hope sometime in the near future, you can share this experience with some of us, the preparations and the race: physical, mental and i am sure, as important as the other two, the spritual ones. Great job bro!

God Bless you, and... Always Strong! : )

- Bud

A Gray October Day

There is something interesting about leaving in a place with four seasons like here. It seems like you can remember better and more vividly what was happening or what was going on at the same time in the previous season. The sense of time is even more intense when the season is changing.

I was walking out of the office today, saw a very gray sky and a chill temperature. Another woman in red coat was walking in front me, a stark contrast to the the gray sky and an immense field of asphalt. That's when images of the past was flashing in front of me and brought me back to a day in October 2003. I had a bird-eye view of myself, an unease graduate student, waiting for a bus, exhausted after a studio class, worrying about rent, debt-collector, and a woman. I remembered that specific day with the mental details embedded in it because of the same seasonal condition, a dull day with gray sky and a little bit of chill.

Ode to My Family

ehm.. have been thinking about my folks at home, especially my brother. I haven't talked to him for so long. God, please bless him in everything he is doing right now. Amen. I also miss my parents. Ergh, maybe this is because of Angel, she just posted her family photo. The photo reminded me a lot about us 10 years ago, a big family with four kids, two girls and two boys. Their youngest is really just like me in our family photo, except that I am a little more handsome :>

topics for tonight

Tries,

Some topics we can discuss in tonight's interview with Prof. Liddle, start with general questions that ordinary people would ask, and maybe if we have time, can dive deeper into more specific issues.

1) Why we should vote? What's the significant of our individual voices? Why does it matter "this time"? What's at stake in Indonesia? What is direct election (pemilihan langsung)? Why is it important (or not)?

2) What's new and upcoming in this election? What's the hot topic? In US this year, it's the economy and the Irag war, how about in Indonesia, what's important for voters? Who's who in this election? Do you think Rizal Mallarangeng (OSU Alum) can attract young voters like Obama does this year?

3) What's the percentage of overseas voters (Indonesians leaving overseas) in this election? What's the roles of these overseas voters like us?

4) Discuss about democracy in general in Indonesia, put the upcoming election in a historical context of democracy in Indonesia since 1945. Discuss about the reformation project: How is it going during it's first decade (since 1999)? Has it slowed down, is it still developing? Is it in danger? Are we progressing as a society in democracy? We are possibly one of the largest democracy in the world after India and US, and the whole world will be watching us next year, just like what happened 4 years ago.

5) In his opinion, what we (the masses, ordinary people) should look for in the candidates next year? Is it their economic policy, religion, religious tolerancy (i.e fundamental islamists vs liberal islamists), past background (education, civil or military or technocrats, role in reformation, etc), their ability to bring concensus (ala SBY), agenda to fight corruption? This could tie into his paper about "voting behaviour".

Ok tries...there you are, my suggesstions for tonight, looking forward to it. See you.

- Budiman

this strange attachment...

Today, i got to tour a construction site of an office building in town done by a friend that is currently working with me. It was a great experience. I can feel his excitement, love, and this strange attachment to this thing called architecture that probably only us can understand. It reminded me again why I am doing what I am doing right now. It is really a silly profession. A passion, a curse, that made me staying up till 2.10 am doing things that I was not really obligued, professionally, to do, but still did it because I just 'morally' felt needed to. No, I do not consider myself workaholic. I will never get a wife if somebody read this, but I will still say it anyway: it becomes your baby, you know, just like Nk and Fi with their new baby. Weirdo! Hahah. One visiting architect in school mentioned about having that strange attachment too. It is that kind of a maternal relationship you have with the building you have been working on and have to release it to the owner when construction is completed. It's like a parent nervously sending a son/daughter off to college. There she goes, you are on your own.

In that trip, I was also happy that I could bring our two new interns who just got here from Kazan, Russia. They just got here last Saturday and probably still felt a little bit disoriented in a new place halfway from their home, literally and figuratively. I think I will try to befriend them as much as possible during their stay here. They reminded me of my time interning also in Shanghai. I felt estranged and dreaded at first for being in totallly new place. But I was very fortunate then to meet some really good people. I had a great time there both at work and after work hours exploring the city. Oh, I miss my friends over there, Dong Chen, Rabbit, and several others.

Now, back to the Russian interns again. They are staying in a hotel in downtown. And of course, they mentioned how strange that our city center was so quiet at night without any night activites. They had to walk so far on their first night looking for food and only got to eat some hot dogs. They said, it was the opposite of the urban life in their hometown in Kazan. Yeah, as a matter of fact, it was also very different from other big cities in Asia and Europe. But still, I think, this city, this place has it's own charm. Anyway, I gave them a quick tour of places they could go on our way back to the office. And then, I told them about the coming presidential debate tonight and how it might be entertaining for them to watch. They just smiled and, I think, sarcastically talked about their recent presidential election and how nobody really care. She even didn't know the name of the new president. I think their new president is Dmitri Meyedev or something like that. But that response was interesting and unexpected for me.

Ok. Next thing that will be exciting for me to do is to interview Prof. Wd together with Trs about our coming election, will keep you posted.

The Black Side of a Baby

So, I have to write my blog right. Ok, what's happening these past weeks. Early morning at am today I sent Wenny to the airport, she was leaving for good. Time past by very fast in moment like this. I still remembered picking her up when she came two years ago. This morning we spent some great time together at the airport’s coffee shop and just had fun browsing her Facebook. Now I think again how funny that last hours were. Most of our times together were also spent in coffee shops in town. She would always study or do homeworks and I would just chill out reading my books. I have seen her grown up and really admire this little sister who is also occasionally psychotic. Unlike her older sister, who is ALWAYS psychotic. Hahaha, what a family. Well, a couple hours later, we hugged and said good bye. I was cool and said “see you back in Indonesia”, but actually I was pretty sad. I am sure I will miss her a lot.

My roommate was also gone. He finally got a job offer and relocated to other city. I was actually happy for him. We have been sharing apartments for several months now, and have learned many things about and from him. One of those things is his smelly towel. :) Hahaha, just kidding. I like him, he is a good guy. We hang out together all the time. But one thing I really learned from him was his true heart toward God. Every night, he would sing and worship God with his guitar. He didn't have a good voice, but it's the inner passion and desperate pleas to God that really moved me. So every night when he started singing, I would cringe but would later be reminded inside my heart, whether I have prayed that day as well. Thanks 'ndre. I hope he didn't forget to send this month's rent.

Finally the highlight of my week is Tiffany. Tiffany is the latest addition to this city and our family here. She is the newly born daughter of our friends Niko and Fiona. I got a chance to visit the one-day old Tiffany yesterday. It was a blessing to see the greatest miracle of life. So tiny, so peaceful. Everything was great up until they started changing the baby’s diaper. I saw for the first time the baby’s black poop. Yuck. But Niko was really good in changing the diaper. Egh.... God, do I have to experience that too one day? I hope I can find a wife whose main hobby in life is to change diapers. J

video

Aug 21: I love making documentary video... just got back from covering our pecha kucha. Can't wait to see the result.

Read THIS

Read THIS

August 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Flush With Energy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em

Excavating Colors

Archeology

Yesterday after church was very interesting. Ron gave an intro to DJ-ing to a few of us and some younger people. It was cool, a totally different world and I can highly respect the profession now. Maybe profession is not a right word because most DJs enjoy what they are doing. I was lost though, that thing is too deep for me, it's not just about putting two songs together, you know. You need a sense of beats, a vast knowledge of records, songs, music, a taste for good sounds, and the most difficult one, an atmospheric sensibility of surroundings and people.

So I paint. I started a new painting today on a bigger canvas. It will be going on for a while. I will basically keep painting layers on top layers of colors. Mixing color feels more comfortable to me and very therapeutic actually. Intermittently I will put horizontal pieces of masking tape across. That will preserve fragments of the existing colors. I title it “Archeology”.

Friedman's June 29 excerpts

New York Times Op-Ed Columnist: Thomas Friedman

Anxious in America

Published June 29, 2008

.....

My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.

I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry.

...

We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. “But today,” added Hormats, “the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.”

If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.

That’s us. We’re at a 34-year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq. We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.

global ghost

I was making this graphic for my laptop background. Red is place that I have worked in. Green is place that I have visited. Orange is place that I have worked in and visited. Pretty cool hah. Now that makes me looking for a place where to put a white dot, place I have lived in, the place that I really feel connected. The pendulum of my territorial existense has swung to the other side from an ideal to a cynical one. I have passed an invisible line, and without realizing, from the self that is aspiring to become a global citizen, well connected to origin and history, to the self that is floating and feeling deterritorialized (if I could hack Delueze's term). I am spiritually and emotionally still connected to the homeland but physically and intellectually more connected to my 'away'land, and vice versa. In other words, today I have become a global ghost.

amman

I fall in love with Amman ... yes Amman the city. I have been researching and looking into the city since October when we started a work over there. You can also got a little glimpse of the city from some good videos in youtube. It's modern and ancient at the same time. The city and government really understood this and provided a very extensive masterplan guidelines for the city growth for the coming decades. The masterplan mission is to provide a clear track for developments and at the same time preserving the character of the city. Check out the city website, it should be an example of what any city should do in sharing with the public http://www.ammancity.gov.jo/english/ . I am waiting for the chance to go there and, oh ya, not to forget also, all the ancient cultural sites from Roman times that are scattered across the hills in Amman.

creature with beautiful form

Betting on Dead Dinosaurs

Ah.. just want to share a quote from "People vs Dinosaurs" the latest op-ed of Thomas Friedman, my favorite journalist. As usual, he is just so sharp and penetrating in his analysis or resistance of the oil economy. Go to the NYTimes website and check it out.

"Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I’m with Buffett: I’ll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs."

About Daisy - Version 1.2

Hey, here is the recommendation letter for a friend I love. I revised to fit into a page in the letter head. I hope it sounds sincere and personal, not too flowery.

June 5, 2008
RE:

Personal Testimony for Daisy D
Greetings, my name is B I am writing this letter as a personal testimonial statement for Daisy D who has been a personal friend as well as a peer model that I respect for many years.

In our undergraduate years at the Ohio State University, we managed to form an intellectual discussion group with an eclectic group of Indonesian students who were interested in social and political issues on Indonesia. We then met regularly in coffee shops to discuss the larger and historical purpose of Indonesian students in America. Without any practical or technical knowledge in journalism or web publishing, we pulled together a website and self-published a magazine that featured articles and creative works from fellow students in the United States and Indonesia. The fruits of those days can be seen six years later now in which many of the former members are dispersed to different part of the globe. They continue to pursue their social passions, first ignited in that humble group, to become a journalist in a major news network in Jakarta, a renown political commentator in Jakarta, an architect practicing in China, and a Phd student in the United Kingdoms. Daisy was the key figure in that group.

My respect for her continued to grow later on as I pursued my graduate studies in Architecture at the Ohio State University and Daisy also went on to get her Master degree in Management at Devry University, one of the top business and management schools in Ohio. She cleverly used her on-going professional management training to lead and organize various events that related to Indonesian students as well as many city-wide events.

Daisy was very active and influential in reviving the Indonesian Student Association or known as PERMIAS, a 300-member strong organization and one of the largest foreign student bodies at the University. She was also the creator of an annual event by Permias called Indigo or Indonesians On the Go. She rallied her fellow students and turned the otherwise predictable annual party into a more focused Indonesian cultural event, opened to the general public and the whole city. That is a testimony of how a vision works in combination with handy leadership skills. Moreover, she was always seeking to grow and never limited herself in term of abilities and responsibilities. I have had seen and been asked to volunteer in many of the social events that she was part of. Those events ranged from a biking event for a social cause to volunteering in martial arts booth in one the largest festivals in the city.

Many of us have had the privileges to know or learn with many talented and distinguished leaders in different phases of our life. I can assure you, Daisy certainly belongs to that breed of talented and distinguished leaders. She is not only equipped with professional educations but also filled with a positive spirit and fully trained with many practical leadership experiences. She is a natural team player that will energize and motivate whoever she works with. If given the right opportunity and mentorship she is the type of a person that will bring any good organization to that next level of achievement.

Thank you for this opportunity to share with you about a comrade as well as a character that I will always look up too. Please contact me at my number or email below should you need additional information.

Sincerely, B

About Daisy

Greetings,

My name is B. I am writing this letter as a personal testimonial statement for Daisy D who has been a personal friend as well as a peer model that I respect for many years.

I came to know her in our undergraduate years as students at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. In the midst of our busy college studies and lifestyle, we managed to form an intellectual discussion group with an eclectic group of Indonesian students who have same interest in social and political issues on Indonesia. We met regularly in coffee shops to discuss the larger and historical purpose of Indonesian students in America. Without any practical or technical knowledge in journalism or web publishing, we pulled together a website and self-published a magazine that featured articles and creative works from fellow students in the United States and Indonesia. The fruits of those days can be seen 6 years later now in which many of the former members are dispersed to different part of the globe. They continue to pursue their social passions that were first ignited in that humble group ranging from a journalist in a major news network in Jakarta, a well-known political commentator in Jakarta, an architect practicing in China, to a Phd student in Sociology in the United Kingdoms.

Meanwhile, my respect to her continue to grow in our graduate school years as I pursued my graduate studies in Architecture at the Ohio State University and Daisy went to get her Master in Management at Devry University, one of the top business and management schools in the State of Ohio. She cleverly used her on-going professional management training to lead and organize various events that related to Indonesian students as well as many city-wide events.

Daisy was very active in organizing fellow students through the Indonesian Student Association or known as PERMIAS, a 300-member strong organization and is one of the largest foreign student bodies at the Ohio State University. She was the creator of Indigo or Indonesians On the Go that basically turned the predictable PERMIAS annual parties into something more noble and became city-wide Indonesian cultural event for the general public in Ohio. That is a testimony of the combination her vision and handy leadership skill at work. Moreover, she never contained nor limited herself in term of her roles and responsibilities to one area or the other. I have seen and been asked to volunteer in many of the social events that she was part of. Those events range from a biking event for a social cause to a martial arts booth in Asian Festival, one of the largest events in the city with 50.000 attendances annually.

Many of us have known or interact with many talented and distinguished leaders through our life. We know and recognize them immediately through our interactions and not so much by their titles or assigned roles. So, through out my personal, academic, and professional years of learning and interacting with influential characters, I can assure you, Daisy certainly belongs to that breed of talented and distinguished leaders. She is trained not just with formal or professional educations but also full loaded with a positive spirit and practical experiences that some people would call street leadership as opposed to theoretical leadership. She is obviously a natural team player and will always energize and motivate fellow team members. Like what she has been doing early on, she will again bring any enterprise to a notch better than it is before. If given the right opportunity and mentorship she is the type of a person that will bring a good organization to the next level.

Last but not least, I want to thank you for this opportunity to share with you about a friend, a comrade, and above all, a character that I look up too. Please feel free to contact me at my number or email below if you have additional questions.

Sincerely,
B
June 4th, 2008

bank

I am pretty excited going to start project for a bank hq. Got to learn more about the banking operation holitiscally both from the insider and customer's point of view. That's it for now. Will write more later.

Cloud and Moonlight

May 14th gibberish, part 1.

I had a good day today.

I got a lot of sleep and came in to work around noon time. At work, I got a forwarded email of an interesting photo taken by our colleague in Dubai from the top of the Al-Burj tower, currently the tallest tower in the world and is under construction. Because of the height, it looks like a photo taken from a helicopter and shows a spectacular view of the skyscraper-tops on Sheik Zayed Road surrounded by clouds. All the buildings are literally on the clouds and you really feel like floating in the sky. I have seen these kind of photos of Dubai before on internet blogs but this one is much more interesting.

Now, looking at this photo, there is a conversation in my life that I always remember vividly because it teaches me an important lesson about life. It was toward the end of the senior year in high school. I sat down with a friend on the side of the soccer field and we started to chat about what we are planning to do after high school. I told him, I am planning to study architecture. He sneered and told me something that sounds like this “Why do you want to do that? Aren’t those people job just imagining something absurb and building on the sky or on the clouds?” At that time, I think I didn’t response anything and maybe deep inside thinking: “Really? Wow… that’s actually pretty cool and better than what I have in mind, thanks!” And on top of his discouraging comment, almost most of my family, except my oldest sister, had no clue about what it is and were not very supportive as well.

Looking back at that moment (and this particular Dubai photo), my friend was prophetically right on, however, that is also only one of many other exciting things from I architecture that I would come to discover. Until today, I am always grateful for that early impulse to pursue the path that I am in right now although it was kind of foggy and unclear at the time. I guess that’s what people call faith, right… So, the lesson for me is to always trust your dream and pursue it with passion and determination no matter what your circumstances look like at the time. It will not always be an easy road but it will certainly create rewarding experiences in life. So a note to myself: Paris, Firminy, Rome, Vienna, Amsterdam, & Dubai… wait for me.

May 14th gibberish, part 2.

Since a month ago, I have been helping a former professor and a friend to do some projects. I just want to say that I really enjoyed it. First, it’s great to work with a person you admire and whom has influenced you so much. Second, I just like the place and setting. They have a small office in one of the turn-of-the-century towers downtown. There are only three persons: Shn, Glz (my professor) and me, and everybody has a day job. The setting is very basic but I feel really cozy.

Occasionally we are accompanied by Kev, Shn’s 10 year’s old son. He is very smart and funny. He is also very close with Glz who is like a grandfather to him. So you can imagine the atmosphere in that office; a kid who is acting like, well, a kid; a father who is trying with all creative efforts to balance between making his kid comfortable in the office but also making him doing his homeworks; a professor who is acting funny and playful; and amidst all of these, all of is committing deeply in the act of architecture. I have a kind of “romantic” (not the romantic love’s romantic but the historical romantic era’s romantic) way of looking at the profession. For me, it feels like Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck in how it portrays the profession of journalism or Salles’ Motorcycle Diaries in how it portrays idealism. Well, lastly for tonight, what I like about it is also to get a little bit of extra money to fund my other pursuits in life.

The Innate Goodness of Mankind - Sendler - YAHOO News

Sendler, savior of Warsaw Ghetto children, dies

Mon May 12, 7:52 AM ET

Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said. Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority, Yad Vashem, said in a statement that it mourned her death.

The web portal of Poland's leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, said Sendler, 98, died in Plocka Street hospital early on Monday. The hospital declined to comment on the report.Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: "Irena Sendler's courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind."

Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys. The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, created by Nazi Germany in 1940 for the city's half a million strong Jewish population, and given new identities.

But in 1943 Sendler, who led the children' section of the Zegota organization which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Nazi officials, who left her unconscious but alive with broken legs and arms in the woods. "People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare. The world would have been a better place if there were more of them," Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said on national television.

His sentiments were echoed by former Polish President Lech Walesa as well as religious leaders. Sendler was honored with Israeli Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965 for her actions, and later made an honorary Israeli citizen. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Price last year but, despite her bravery, she denied she was a hero. "The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little," Sendler said in one of her last interviews.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Jon Boyle)

my passport

is found... After almost two month floating somewhere, this past friday, a faculty member from the agriculture dept emailed me about it. I have no idea nor interested how it got there. It just feels so good when you receive kind act like that from a total stranger. It is because of experience like that in life that makes you wanna continue to do good deeds and be kind to people around you. You know what I mean, you want to be kind to people because you have tasted one. Just like what the movie says: 'pay it forward', please. Thanks P.

my driving license

is valid now..., next, go to the traffic court, get police report, go to chicago and get my new passport...

the mummy and the ontology of cinema

Hmm.. quite productive tonight in my reading... started Andre Bazin's 'What is Cinema?' and trying to finish Linda Cowgill's 'Writing Short Films'. I think Cowgill's is very conventional and more about the 'classic' story telling style, very different from Bresson a few days ago or films that I would consider 'interesting', some, not always. But that's good, at least it gave me some foundational stuffs or a starting point. I will probably dream about three of them tonight...

Robert: "Cinematography is a writing with images in movement and with sounds."

Andre: "The process might reveal that at the origin of painting and sculpture there lies a mummy complex."

Linda: "...these elements endure: Hero, want, action, conflict, climax, and resolution."

Robert: "Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theatre (actors, direction, etc.) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create."

Linda: "If the plot is a mere natural sequence of incidents, with no real orchestrated rising action, it'll be ineffective as well."

Robert: "Dismantle and put together till one gets intensity."

Andre: "Our intention is certainly not to preach the glory of form over content."

Linda: "In theater and literature, "the action" means the main subject or main conflict of a story, as disttinguished from an incidental episode."

Robert: "No marriage of theatre and cinematography without both being exterminated."

Linda: "In a film, the climax must be visual and visceral, not internal."

Robert: "When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration."

Andre: "Viewed in this perspective, the cinema is objectivity in time. The film is no longer content to preserve the object... The film delivers baroque art from its convulsive catalepsy. Now, for the first time, the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were."

Robert: "Cinema films controlled by intelligence, going no further."

Andre: "In short, cinema has not yet been invented!"

the inner cinematographer in you

...finally got the chance to dive into henri bergson, also, re-reading gilles delueze but with special focus on the cinematics, discovering the beauty of robert bresson through his little zen-style book 'notes on the cinematographer'... agh all the frenchs... they are actually one people that I would really envy because of the numbers of mind-slicing intellectuals that they contributed to the modern civilization...

... my life these days... eight hours in architecture eight hours in cinema and eight hours in dream... which one is? all three deal with the realm of constructing meaning… in one way or another shuffling around images, sounds, and other sensory experiences with consciousness… through the same wires in the brain… that’s why I was always fascinated by dream… because that’s when all these images and sounds constructions coalesced together, trespassing their own boundaries… like the scene in toy story when the silent toys all ‘wake-up’ and come alive when the door is closed… a magnificent movie editing box right inside yourself… that’s it! that’s why cinema, that is the composition of images and sounds, as a medium is so emotionally captivating… it mirrors the very fundamental experience as a human, to dream, as important as to breathe… dream is when information is overlapped, layered, fade in and out, cut, juxtaposed, multiplied, exaggerated… remember michel gondry’s science of sleep?

a little confused

a little confused now, i lost my passport in the mail...

March 18 Speech

I just want to share Obama's speech (in the attachment) he gave this morning. I believe we are living and witnessing a very exciting moment in American politics and history in general. In every period of time and in every generation, there is always a spark of history definining event or character that creates profound shift in society. This speech could be one of it. We never know, but like MLK's "I Have a Dream", only history will tell us 20 or 30 years from now. Meanwhile don't miss some of what could be history-defining events unfolding in front you. Personally, it just feels great to read something positive and optimistic like this in the midst of news filled with negative stories, wars, scandals, etc.

the joy of movie making

I went to see Michel Gondry's Bekind Rewind after work today. It was Monday night and less than 15 people in the theatre, actually the best moment to see large screen films. The film itself is just another beautiful film from Gondry, ... absolutely love it. Gondry with his playful style reminds us all the joy and romancticm of movie making and movie watching.

Something quite funny and personal for me. I just got a VHS 1987 video camera from a friend at church that she bought for $40. It is the same type of camera depicted in that film as well. That's probably the camera that Michel and his generation used when they were young. John Carney from Once also mentioned about using that old VHS camera and playing around making movies every night on the streets of Dublin.

And just a couple weeks ago I just showed a strange movie that me and my sunday school gang created. The great thing is that it was shoot and directed by Gabe, who was just 8 years old, with my small digital camera. Although it was a silly movie and received quite "chilly" by everyone at church, I was really proud of it as a work of art by the kids. More importantly it also taught me about the real and fundamental joy of movie making.

What is God's color?

I was reading James McBride’s 2006 memoir The Color of Water. I picked up his book unexpectedly in my local bookstore when I was looking for some books on Martin Luther King Jr.’s at the African American month section. Well as you probably know, I mentioned him a few blogs back about the Spike Lee talk that I attended. He was sort of the interviewer in that award and appreciation event for Lee. Later I learned that he was also the author of the 2002 novel Miracle at St. Anna that is being made into a film directed by Lee.

So, I was just curious thinking this must be another novel he wrote. It grabbed me immediately by the subtitle that it is actually his memoir and “A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother”. First page, ehm interesting, I thought. Second page, wow, this is an unusually interesting story, I was drawn (or drown, doesn’t matter which word) in so deeply after that. Now I understood the real reason he wrote the novel Miracle. Well, I say my thought about his real reason, there was actually funny moment that night at Lee’s talk and kind of revealing the humble character of McBride. He asked Lee, why did he want to make this movie, Miracle? Lee quickly replied, something like this, ‘you understated your role man, YOU are actually the one who came up with this great story.’ Then Mc Bride explained the reason or the origin of the novel for him, which registered in my impression of that time just as a typical writer’s interest on a particular issue. He also added that compared to the huge success of his previous novel, Miracle was actually doing very poorly in the market before Lee made it into a film.

But, I think the real reason he wrote that novel is not merely a writer interested on a particular issue but instead it is a deep personal existential urge. It can be found in his memoir, The Color of Water. The story in Miracle (see my Feb 12th blog entry) is so intertwined with his own personal life, his family, and mostly his beloved ‘Ma’. He dedicated the memoir to “my mother, her mother, and mothers everywhere.”. In that memoir, he talks directly to your soul about his mother who “raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers – yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story – the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942 – and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past.”

This is a story about a mother’s pure and saintly love. I and probably most people would rarely cry reading a book. But I did on this one because I was so emotionally moved. Try it, read this book, you would probably cry too. Read it also to grow your soul. You will be so grateful about life, love, and family. You will look up at the ceiling and say ‘ah, life is beautiful, indeed.’

Some thoughts to Antony's article forward

I agree with you Ton... the global economy is always changing... Gua yakin akan ada gelombang pertumbuhan ekonomi berikutnya setelah negara-2 yang sedang bertumbuh pesat (dengan steroid) saat ini seperti Cina , India , and Rusia mencapai suatu level yang lebih stabil.. nah the 1 million dollar question, will we be ready... we better... soalnya akan banyak negara-2 lain yang hampir siap... tetangga manis kita Malaysia, they are actually already ahead of us, trus Vietnam yang sedang sibuk berbenah and mempercantik diri, Thailand juga diam-2 menunggu opportunity mereka untuk reclaim title sebagai macan Asia Tenggara, of course juga ada negara-2 dari region lain seperti Kazakhstan, Rumania, Polandia, Ukraine yang sedang aktif membangun juga..Semua negara itu mempunyai kesamaan dan berpotential besar karena mereka mempunya human dan natural resources yang besar... just like Indo.. so kalo kita, generasi muda Indonesia tidak siap, kita akan ketinggalan kereta sekali lagi...

Ini sesuatu yang harus menjadi latar belakang kegiatan kita, terutama generasi muda yang berada di luar negeri. Kita haru mempunyai suatu rasa tanggung jawab untuk mengemban "generational mission" ini dalam segala aspek hidup kita, bekerja, belajar, bermain, dan berkreasi. Generasi muda Indonesia mempunyai sejarah yang tidak kalah dengan bangsa-2 besar lain dalam hal menjadi "agent of change" dalam waktu-2 kritikal bangsa-nya. Anak-2 muda Indonesia tahun 20-an yang sedang sekolah di Belanda (Moh. Hatta dkk.) maupun yang sekola dalam negeri (Soekarno dkk.) berjasa besar memperjuangkan bukan hanya kemerdekaan tetapi lebih penting lagi derajat kita semua sebagai suatu bangsa. Tom Brokaw, jurnalis terkenal, menulis buku tentang Ang 45 sebagai “the greatest generation” bangsanya. Menurut saya, the greatest generation kita adalah Angkatan 20 itu. Peran yang sama juga dilakukan Angkatan 45, 66, and yang terakhir, I would include, anak-2 muda Angkatan 98 yang baru saja menyelesaikan tanggung jawab sejarah mereka. So now, 10 tahun kemudian, tongkat estafet ada di tangan kita… seperti kata Antony , “Time for our generation to seize the day” .

It’s time to think about our existence as part of a larger whole. A whole that is much bigger than the parts combined. Don’t miss the next wave of global and economic development. Be prepared, work hard, study hard, be a “good” representative for Indonesia wherever you are placed. A lot of work to do as we are competing with the young generations from those countries I mentioned above. We all need to be global and savvy. No time to complain. Tetap semangat. Indonesia Raya.

yeah, they won...

glen and marketa's falling slowly just won the oscar for original song, ten mins ago... alriteeee.. 'keep dreaming' she said at the end... just suddenly thinking about my good friends... ton and daize...

92

... just came back from talk by Spike Lee. I was introduced to his work first in the video editing class I took in grad school. I was quite impressed and thought that he must be more popular in the indie film scene. Well, that's also because I haven't seen any of his feature films. But that might not be so true now after looking at the list of films (and provocations) he produced combined with the jam-packed auditorium tonight. Quite an interesting night... learned that he was in the same class as Ang Lee in NYU back in the 80s... He also talked about his upcoming movie, the Miracle at St. Ana, based on a novel by James McBride. It features a really important but often neglected stories of the all black soldiers from US 92nd Division that fought in WW2 in Italy. I was quite honored tonight actually because they managed to bring two of the WW2 veterans from that batalion in the audience. It is moment like this in your life that keeps you inspired in a sublime way... something that's always etched in you and all your creative works...

The Living Room

sia

I am listening to Sia right now... very cool voice and music. Really help the mood while I am working from home Friday night. Sometimes I am very curious about my taste of music, it seems that I am always attracted to female singers with distinctive, light, and cool voice. Is that my personal preference, something unique to me or it is just a more banal-bio-evolutionalistic instinct of all guys? I would like to believe it is the first one. If it's more of the second, does that mean most women are more likely to listen to male vocals with deep bariton voice?

Check out Sia's website to listen to most of her songs and see a few weird music videos... http://www.siamusic.net/

While I Am Sleeping

When you are past 25

The weirdiest thing just happened, dad just called me out of nowhere asking me to email somebody I don’t know. This is the second time he called me in a week, that’s quite unusual because we usually talk once every several months. Yeah, that might be strange to you but believe it or not, that’s normal to us. Anyway, when he called me Monday or Tuesday morning, I was working in the office frantically for a deadline so the call was really unexpected (and unwanted). Especially when he told me about a daughter of his business friend and asked me to introduce myself to her. I said ‘what…..?!’ and then went into another room away from my desk. I just kept smiling afterward, couldn’t believe it. Other than getting a first dating lesson from my dad, the idea is just so silly to me.

Maybe there is a preconception in me about the notion of match marriage or match dating as desperate and .. ehm, lame? That preconception might not be true, because at least one-sixth of the world population, the South Asians, think otherwise. I have heard from many people that match marriage is actually quite beautiful because you get to fall in love slowly and deeper after the wedding day. That concept doesn’t make sense to many of us I think because we are so preconditioned to the modern slash western way of marriage/courting. But that modern slash western concept of marriage or courting is also changing all the time and has never always be like we know it today. And many will point out to the high divorce rate in our society today with what we think as the ‘ideal’ way of courting or marriage.

I remember Jhumpa Lahiri’s and Mira Nair’s Namesake, one of my reference film. It’s a really good movie if you haven’t watched it yet. One of the background themes is actually about the culture of arranged marriage. She explores the issue with two examples that have two different outcomes. The first is between Ashoke and Ashima. That’s the perfect example of falling in love after the wedding. The second is between their son Gogol and Moushoumi. Their’s is not an arranged marriage in a traditional sense but can still be categorized as “arranged marriage” and it doesn’t work out well.

Another thing comes in my mind is when I watched the news a few days ago, Bill Clinton was asked by a young girl, what is marriage like. He said marriage is like when you meet a person who becomes your best friend. And the best part is you get to live with your best friend for the rest of your life. His answer is actually quite eloquent, although it’s kind of weird to hear it from Bill.

So now let’s get back to my problem. What should I do? My dad’s idea still sounds silly to me after all the dialectic above inside my mind. Not that I don’t know how to express my feelings to girls, because I do… or at least I think I do. I know some people will be skeptical about this because of the nerdy way I write my blogs. But asked K, she will tell you. Talking about her, ehm, that’s one the reasons I am hesitant to think about another date. I still can’t forget her. Now I understood all the country singers who are always lamenting about losing their women. It is not that we can not forget or move on and become suicidal but it’s because when after you are in a deep relationship with some one, the feelings and memories can never disappear, instead they are ingrained in you heart.

Well, these are the sort of things you have to deal with when you are past 25, parents trying to get you a date.

animation and painting

check out really cool works by Jeff Scher, a hybrid of animation and paintings... http://scher.blogs.nytimes.com/ or his official webpage http://fezfilms.net/remember.html

the old man has moved on

well... when I heard today that the old man has passed way... there is some sort of a strange relief in me. I, like many of my fellow countrymen, respect him and his contributions... but we also would never forget nor miss the latent mess he had left behind for us… So today the dawn of a new era has come, a time in which we are all working hard and anxiously waiting to catch the next wave of development called the post-China world. An important time indeed for our generation to pave the way for a better future of our people and beloved land. The Thais, the Malays, and the Viets are all already in front of us but not very far… can we make it this time?

the god of laptop

well, i am sure you have seen the macbook air right? i am not an apple user but always amazed by their products... so cool... makes me feel stupid right now typing on my "big" laptop...

Some Notes on a Gray Day

4.14 pm. A note to myself. Sometimes I found it a little weird with this architecture thingy that I have wired myself so into. I look at cool buildings and get high. I can call a building sexy. I thought that's the normal, but it is not.

I love the work of Coop Himmelblau and admire Wolf Prix. I always considered my self a student of Eisenman. I was trained in the midst of people debating about his works and theoretical polemics. I claim my historical and theoretical genealogy through him to Rowe, Wittkower, and eventually to Wolflin and Worringer. Corb and Oubrerie would always be "the" spiritual aspirations. And along the way for the last three years I have also encountered characters that provided the other realms of this journey.

But now, in the middle of a gray day, I asked the question, what it means to practice architecture after all these great buildings of my time: Gehry's Stata Center, Koolhaas's CCTV, Herzog's National Stadium, and Prix's BMW, get built. How would I situate my discourse and build upon it in the next twenty years. A question that will continue to occupy me in the coming years. Hopefully it will be an interesting one.

Impact

I got into a car accident today in Csy's car. We were driving out to lunch when we were hit on the driver side by a big Dakota SUV. The car spun around and hit a wood electric pole. The driver’s glass shattered, all the airbags came out, and overall the car was in pretty bad shape, an 8-inch indent into the frame. All that happened within a mile of where I live, an easy and slow residential neighborhood, and is actually on my daily route to work. A police car, a fire truck, and a fire ambulance all came within five minutes, no wonder it is the UAFD. We went to ER because Csy had some minor cuts and muscle ache. But thanks God, there was no major body injury to both of us.

The impact was really shocking and had shaken me quite a bit. It’s not enough to be careful, because you can’t control what other people will do right? Life comes at you fast, hah… it’s so true. This accident adds to the list of people I know that got into major car accidents like this: Ken, Henry, John, Sam, Andre, and now me. What a way to start a new year! Be careful on the road out there.

080101

Well… it’s that day of the year again… trying to write something down. There are so many happenings in 2007 in my life but is there one that is really different, one thing that is not merely a progression in life? So sorting through my journals, I pray and I think and I seek. Is there one thing, what is THE one thing? (Ps. DH, Dec 5, 2007, Chicago).

And finally, I found one. In 2007, by God’s grace, I was blessed with the opportunity to teach and interact with a larger group of young people especially the teenagers in our church. When I say ‘large’ it means 10 to 15. But still, it is the most precious gift I got this year. The experiences are so rewarding, exciting, and always challenging to me. I feel like I am doing ‘not too bad’, you know. Haha. Although a lot of times I also felt lousy and should have done better. I thank God that He opened the ways for me to be a part of their life, to teach them about God, to build their faith in Jesus, to help them find out their purposes, and more importantly to be a good friend who makes a difference in their life.

I tell you, it is the most exciting and challenging things to do, couldn’t be better than that. I have to learn and re-learn so many things about being ‘younger’, not that I am old now but you can say I am just young. Then, I have to update myself constantly about what’s current with young people (the future us, the future “kita”), what’s the latest about teen datings, technology, books, games, musics, hiphop, rap, curse words, sex trends, drugs uses… you know, all those fun stuffs.

So in 2008, there is only one thing that I wish for: to be a better teacher and friend for the young people around me. Hey, what about you? What is the one thing that you are really grateful for in 07 and the one thing that you really want to get in 08? Today and this month will be a good mood to do exercise like that.