Is to be a Photographer

I dont know if I have shared this with some of you. I think the ideal and the coolest profession I dream of is to be a full time (and relatively sufficient) photographer. That's the one that consistently pops-up my mind, with many "wouldn't it be cool if..." moments. I imagine, I will just wake-up every morning or ever ynight just to figure out where is the next cool space I should go now. And then go there and go enjoying the space, probing, interogating, and lastly framing the space into the camera. Click. Other cool professions I consider are: movie-maker, writer, musician, singer-songwriter like Glen Hansard (haha), neuro-scientist, and physicist (is that the correct word?).

PS: I love blogspot, feel so good here, able to vent my thought more than the inhumane 140-character in Twitter. But have you create one? You will love the pain of that 140.

A Prayer for Job on Campus and a Few Other Issues

Wenny baby, I pray that you will get that job on campus soon.

I will also pray that you get a cool one, with cool people around, but with miserable boring unchallenging tasks that you just can’t wait to graduate asap and get a real job. I will also pray that after you graduate, you get jobs that you really like, excited you, with one or two pain-ass colleagues but always with nice bosses and meet many inspire-able mentors. Then I pray that you will get fired, at least one time, hopefully one time only. Then I pray although you need to start over quite a bit but and then you will move to cool unexpected places around the world and see and meet sights, scenes, and senses you never before experience. Then I pray that you will get an even cooler job and kick some ass there because you by then are so good and experienced in what you do. I pray that through all that, you manage to love, to give out and to receive some loves, not too busy at work. You may appear as a busy independent woman but need to be or pretend to be or act to be a little vulnerable woman so some stupid, naïve, but good in heart guys will come closer and maybe give you a little help, a little touch, a little kiss, and some warmth. I pray that then you will break some hearts of one or two of those good guys and will be sad a while but not fall back into the weeping and wailing of those guys, because guys surprisingly are good at that. I pray that maybe your heart will be broken one or two times as well, to be at the other side of the table and gain wit and wisdom. Before that, I pray, you will walk through the valley of sorrow for a period, pick up one or two life lesson objects, leave some of your jar of tears there, and then walk back out of there carrying nothing. I pray that you then will see or learn to see that the daylight is brighter than ever. You learn to pick yourself up and see your heart is bigger, not smaller, than before and capable for more love. Then I pray that you will be an even more beautiful woman. I pray that you will be stronger, braver, more advance level of cosmetic-kery, but tenderly, charming, all at the same time. I pray that you will have an interesting life in a garden of adventurous and awesome life experiences but sprinkled with some flowers of pains. The point is, I pray, you will live a full and unregretable life. That’s my prayer for you Wenny, I guess that’s enough prayer for years to come until you need another from me right?

I love you and I am pretty sure God is too.

Cissy, Xenia, Angel, Sri

Twitter is awesome, create one, create one, please? It's cultic, mysterius but also geeky and cool!!! All in one for the first time in this universe's history. Tweet and you will be set free! :)

Retro-friending

I recently reconnected again with some high school girl friends that I used to hang out with. I haven't talked much with them since those times. Most of them are either married, just married, or soon to be married. So yesterday we group-chatted together rather late at night. The conversations were the boring nostalgic stuffs and I enjoyed it nevertheless because of the sheer weirdness of the topics. The chat topics varied from sex to honeymoon plans to vacuum cleaner to some bleeding issues to gym and to breastfeeding. I was amused most of the time but a little bit reflective on how much change that they or we or me have gone through all these years. I used to have a crush on one of them pretty badly and think still have some good feelings about her until now. But, let's not go there now. All I want to say tonight is I am happy about them all and glad to get in touch finally.

The Audacity of Boringness

Hey, audiobooks are awesome, did you know that?

I just listened to some good classics on some of my long arduous road trips here in Central Kalimantan. First, it is obviously so much quicker to listen to books than reading them page by page. Yeah, you don't get the same depth, but you are guarenteed to get at least the big idea and the nuances of the thinkings and contents inside. Besides, there are a lot of times when I read a book cover to cover and still don't "get" it until months or even years later. Second, one of the things that I (love and then) hate in my current life is the long hours of riding in a car on roads with dirt surfaces. So listening to an interesting reading takes me away a little bit from the mind numbing aspect of the trip and shortens the overall travel time.

And just now, I was listening to Aristotle's Poetics. Did you know that it is the most boring interesting thing in the world. Yes it is. No wonder I was never able to finish the book even the first few chapters. Why did I try the audio version then? You know as design student you always heard about that book and the title "Poetics" tossed around in academic converstions but never really required as a reading in class. And the first few chapters on "the art of imitation" are quite intriguing for us who were just learning to "imitate". And then, the next few chapters on Greek plays are said to be the required reading for movie-making students or whoever is interested in it. I was at that time.
After reading (or listening) to it, it is indeed a difficult read, not really something for lay people like me. And the writer of the preface also convinces me to question the authority of the book in relation to Aristotle. Yes, Mr. Aristotle is a huge name and he might be called the great philosopher or logician but, I realize until now that he is never called the great poet.

He is a history but there are so much history before him on the subject. That notion of periods might be loss to us lay people in the modern time in studying Aristotle. In other words, just because he is Aristotle, doesn't mean that everything he says is as great.

Lastly, the aural experience I got from Poetics is parellel to the visual's in my road trip. It is an intertwined experience of a journey through banalities of repetitive elements that are interspersed with moments of supreme beauty of vast landscapes. In a less perverted sentence: seeing in the Kalimantan road trip is the same cognitive experience as listening to Poetics.

Oh well, that's what I am doing (listening to audiobooks) these days to revive some of my dying neurons in long road trips. Not a bad idea.

Burning Hot

Jakarta is burning! Right now live on tv is playing the secret recording of conversations between Anggodo Widjaja and the police and other. This revelation further enlarges the whirls of ultra high profile conspiracies and corruptions in Indonesian law enforcement institutions pitting the police and national prosecutor against KPK (the anti-corruption investigator). This is hot, surreal, and nobody can predict where this will go, it is truly unprecedented conspiracy explosion in Indonesia recent history.