The Desire of the 31th

The desire in the last day of the year is always strong, somehow we become ambivalent about letting the day to pass. A desire to work against time but we know it's hopeless. It conjures up the imagery of Atlas holding up a globe, just waiting, a suspension of time, when will he let it go, soon. Last year I made some wishes or resolutions, why? Because everybody else did it. Yeah that's a stupid reason. So around the same time today last year, I made three.

I didn't able to fulfill any of them. My year turned out to be totally different from what I expected. As always, it turned out to be much much much more exciting with a few bits of significant pains. But, hey... Don't want it the other way. Thanks God, He didn't listen to my boring 'resolutions' and gave me something beyond my wildest imagination. 2009 still feels like a dream. It's then time to wake up... Ehm or should I? Our cosmic life doesn't operate on a Jan-December basis, does it? Well... Let's go into 10, here I come.

Gus Away

Gus Dur, our fourth president, passed away today, a few hours ago. He is my role model for a man of faith: an extremist in loving God and loving people. Really a jewel of the nation!

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.

How Old is Old?

I have just finished helping my grandma applying for a US visit visa. I looked at her birthday, it is March 13th 1928. So she is about 81 years old. Can you believe that? I can't. She just stayed over at our place for the last few days. She is a little slow but amazingly still very mobile, moving up and down the stair, helping with kitchen, and still able to converse with us and my sister's kids. Sometimes I noticed that she looks bored and I wonder is she being happy now? But I think she is...

Twitter

Should I twitter or should I not? Ehm very tempting, seems like a little harmless toy. Have you?

The Real Journalist

Did anyone read the story of journalist David Rohde on NYT this week. It is truly an extraordinary piece of journalism, in essence totally redefine McLuhan's "medium-message" stuff. The medium is intertwining with the message, and at multiple times paradoxically blurring and highligthing the contrast. In the beginning, he is the medium and the planned interview is the message. Then he becomes the medium that becomes the message (when kidnapped). From there he creates a new parallel quantum world message and medium existing as one and also distinct at the same time (in captivity until the escape). And finally he (the medium) and his kidnapping experience (the message) are becoming the way (the medium) to create a new message (the NYT article). If I don't express my line of thought adequately let it be so but that article (or a serie of articles) is simply fascinating to me. Check it out.

The Midreview

I was invited by a friend to a mid-review critique in his studio today. I was anxious a bit but felt excited more. This is my first academic review after all, the first time I sit on the other side a pin up board. The experience and result were more exhiliarting than expected. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be when I was a student and for a short moment came the thinking about pay back time; a revenge, sort of, of all the intellectual dignity abuses we endured as a typical architecture student. Fortunely that dark delusional thought from me evaporated as soon it started. We finished the review for 8 students in 4 hours and a lunch in between. Engaging an interesting student project was so so so rewarding, a truly new experience in my life. This is what I am really excited about in my life, the first time in the last nine months after Columbus that I felt so quenched, so fit in: the campus life, the academic atmosphere. Like I told CW in my sharing with her, I don't feel smart, but I feel I can truly contribute something to the education of (some) architects here. Thanks for the chance Henri!... And happy birthday.

No Nuke Please

I have been reading and loving to read headline news for a long time, probably since I could understand a complete sentence. I am always intrigue by world news and the present history. This daily activity serves as my bearing to the world, a landscape of mind with a larger world. But I also approach it (the world headline news) with some triviality and self-dramatization, like a little entertainment or a joy of reading a detective novel.

However one headline today that really strikes my nerve is the latest article on NYT about Iran's nuke and the possibility that there will be a good outcome for all parties in the upcoming negotiations.

If Iran gets what he wants, according to the article, the nuclear latency or the knowledge to create a nuclear bomb, then we all know, more and more countries will follow suit. Ok the nuke club we know today includes US, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, France (?), Germany (?), N.Korea... I think that's all. If Iran is in, then countries in Mideast will start thinking about it especially the smaller but hyper rich countries around Iran. Then what? Then those larger poorer countries around the smaller richer countries would definitely be interested as well. Then the process will get replicated in other region including places near me.

What if countries like Singapore, who I guess always feels insecure about the rather moody larger neighbor, thinking about the same idea? I am not an apocalyptic person, but there is a sudden switch in my perspective regarding this nuclear proliferation thinggy. It is very possible to happen in our lifetime or in my children or grandchildren's lifetime. One day, sooner or later, one of the nuclear eggs will surely break. And I don't like to read that kind of headline.

You Got the Wrong Number

Last week, police sieged a rented room in a densely populated area in South Jakarta, killing two more terror suspects and capturing one. That was the latest string of crack downs on terrorists responsible for the Marriott bombing in July. As we know, the mastermind had been killed also in a similar operation last month. I have to admit the police did an incredible job in rounding up those people responsible. And this time, I need to cast off our general cynicism toward the police institution and all sort conspiracies theories we always have about them. Thumbs up, Pak Polisi.

Two days ago, I was listening to a talk show on the radio discussing about those young people who were recruited to do the terror attacks. They talked about the whys and the hows of these young people involving themselves in that kind of religious radicalism. The panel framed the discussion as one of the social issues facing the Indonesian society. That discussion has been typical of the ways the mainstream media, and I incur the general population, frame and create tone for discussing terrorism in Indonesia.

For me, discussion or reaction on Islamic terrorism like that is an interesting comparative social phenomena between societies like Indonesia and the western countries, primarily the US. Although Indonesia is not a Muslim country, it has a very large Muslim population with its own blend of distinctive Indonesian Islamic culture. In US or other western countries, Islamic terrorism is viewed as a virulent activity that directly threaten the foundational belief and ways of life of the people. It is a political and a dogmatical war. Whereas here, it is, as I obverse above, a societal problem. Much like people in the US treat the Columbine incidents. It is a society’s ill that need a cure not an existential attack.

Yes its true, the young people were exposed to radicalism first in a mosque or in a pesantren (a local Islamic style school) but the case here is totally different from Pakistan or Taliban’s Afghanistan. Even if the radicalism they got in one or a few mosques, that only represents a very very small percentage of hundreds of thousands or probably millions of mosques all over Indonesia. Think about an occasional radicalism that people sometimes received by speakers in churches in US such as the Jeremiah Wright’s controversy. That’s why I think violent religious extremism will not prevail here. People just don’t buy into it. They dialed the wrong number. And that’s also why I am putting my bet on the moderates, and Islam Indonesia, to counter the tide of Islamic extremism worldwide. This kind of terrorism is really the problem unique to our generation. It is something that can’t be fight with conventional war (only?) but with a concerted global effort of countries like Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Peace Guy of the Year

... is Barack Obama. Just announced today early morning US Eastern Time that he was awarded the Nobel Price for Peace this year. I think the whole world is genuinely surprised by the award including him. It's interesting to notice how close we all are, how small the world is, indeed a global village, when little thing like this happen. A wonderful treat for all of us the world news mania. A quote from NYT of R. Emmanuel, "Oslo beats Copenhagen.". Cheers.

Quakezilia

Another quake hit us here, on the west coast Sumatra, west of Padang the capital of West Sumatra Province. This is the second one this year on this line of quake zone. I was in a mall in Medan, North Sumatra yesterday when it happened. People ran out for a while but resumed their normal activities soon. The shake was felt in Singapore as well. Earlier yesterday another hot news incident was happening but got subsumed by the quake news. A group of gangsters stormed the counter of one airline in Jakarta's International Airport. They just went in and did the rampage. The concern for me was that my sister was there and joined the staffs and others that ran for life. That's insane right. Well, that's a snipet of life here, always around some CNN headliners.

My Little Prayer

I am saying prayer tonight for my sister and her baby girl. May they get well soon.

A Gondryesque Experience

Memory is a curious thing. This trip to the city I grew up until 12 years of old has been fascinating. What I like is not because it has been so long (16 years) but more of the heightened transient experience I got going inside. I don’t think I can have this rare experience again on my next trips.

Everybody, and the brain, is constantly producing new memory and probably shelve the old ones someplace in the multiplex of folds. Memory of sequences and spaces are recorded as well. More relevant to many people are places in the childhood. Some occasionally float through the present. Some come out and reconfigured in dreams. Some are retrieved by external means such as conversations, photographs, and retold stories by others. True? And as a natural biological process, these old memories are then reshelved again. The process continues indefinitely and produces one composite memory of a place, the official version that is reported by our brain to us. Wait, wait, did I just say “reported by our brain to us?” Let’s not wake-up Mr. Descartes. I think I am not I think therefore I might be something else.

So this time, I got to revisit places that have existed in memory for so long, and have gone through so many auto revisions. As I go to places physically, I am also making a parallel neuro-trip in my space/time memory, repatching and fixing the database of images inside. Some places are so familiar but also so unknown at the same time. This amnesiac experience is really surreal.

The most obvious difference is the scale of things and places. The version in the memory is always bigger and more spacious than the revisited realities. One common comment from me is “Wow, the streets are much smaller than I remembered.”

The other interesting moment was when I was lost driving around and stumbled on my grade school building. I parked my car and decided to go in. Fortunately, it was Sunday so no regular school activities and just some extra curriculars. The next thirty minutes of life was the most filmic and Michel Gondryesque experience in my whole life. I passed by the cart vendor with students buying snacks, myriads of good memories and good feelings returned. I continued walking inside slowly going places where the memory led. I went to the playground, watching little me climbing and running around. I went to the boys toilet, just seeing faces and smiles of all of us 20 some years ago queuing in a line to go pee. I went to several classrooms where I used to be. Here, unlike in the US, you only change classroom once a year. The teacher is the one that will come to your class. Therefore, each classroom that I visited is also a container of a very distinct set of memory. Each room has it’s own story of friend, fun, and fear.

About Medan

Medan is the capital of North Sumatra Province. It is sandwiched on the top by the Aceh Province, a place well known for it's unbelievably strong willed people or the rest of us would simply call hostile, the Acehnese. They have been fighting all foreigners in the widest range of it's meaning for as long as the name first noted in history. Below, it is sandwiched by the Riau Province, the richest province in Indonesia, so says the newspaper. So what's up in North Sumatra today? How would one sum up its character. I would say probably a combination of Riau and Aceh, of wealth and the roughness of the people, but without the extremes. Medan is the number three city in Indonesia with a significanct commercial influence for the country.

The areas surrounding the city have been the traditional home land of Batak, or Bataknese, a group of people with a proto-Malay facial or racial characteristic. Some of the names of these people are the Karoneses, Tarutungs, Mandailings and few others that mostly refer to the locales where there are from. The source of uniqueness of Medan actually comes from it’s colonial past. It’s a major Dutch trading post with the harbor, Belawan. The city was contending head to head with other British ports right across the straits, Penang, etc. In addition to that, the areas around Medan were spread with plantations (probably sugar as the bigger one) hungry for man powers. So the Dutch transported hundreds of thousands of Javanese from Batavia and the inlands of Java, and other Dutch subjects from around the archipelago. As in many parts of the country the Chinese were also part of fray. Some were from the previous waves of immigrants. Some were from more recent ones. One of the hikes of these “more recent” incoming Chinese laborers was in the 1920s-30s, a time of great turmoil in the mainland. My grandparents were part of this group. Set off from villages in the Fujian province, they joined thousands of others and departed from Xiamen port to seek for a slightly better life. I can’t imagine how difficult life must be there in their homeland that they were attracted to go to a new place, the Dutch colonies in the south, to work for their gruesome economic machines, to be laborers in sugar plantations there. The Malays have always been the regular character in the region. They had been crisscrossing the cities and ports between the Malaka straits for centuries before the Portuguese arrived. They sewn the trading net between the Sumatra coast and the Malaysian coast. Their traces and imprints are very clear in our daily life even until today, most obviously in Indonesian language. Medan also has a sizeable amount of people with Indian origin. Again, this was because of the geography and the presence of the Belawan port. No other cities in Indonesia that I know yet have historical Indian immigrant enclaves like in Medan.

So although the demography in Medan may seem like the typical composition of major cities in Indonesia, the bits of history above make the difference. The Javenese, Chinese, Indians, and Malays in Medan today are the descendants of migrants but they have deep roots to the land. Through out these times they all live and blend relatively well with each other. Sometimes they fight and most of the time they are good neighbors. So it is this character that differentiate Medan or North Sumatra from Aceh to the north and Riau to the south.

On a Wing

Email and His Friends

Did you ever travel without your laptop or any familiar mean to get connected to net? It's a blessing isn't it? You would feel a dire feeling but eventually it will cause you to pay attention more to your material surroundings.

In a somehow related matter, I have also been thinking seriously about all these recent internet fuzzes, What and how much should I follow the flow, Facebook, Twitter, those kind of things. All my good friends have been tempting me to use them. I almost did many times but fortunately I haven't. Sometimes being labeled or feeling old-fashion is not that bad at all. I grew up in the nascent age of email and I think I will be proud to stay that way, to always see email as a phenomenon of the century, to continually be fascinated by it, a real revolution in communication. Maybe some of my "younger" friends will see this attitude as I see my "older" friends relation with other previous communication tech phenomenon such fax machines.

Another obvious downside of all those social networking gimmicks is that you are not too socially networking. I got to find a name for that later. I still prefer the primitive way to socially network, whenever possible, which is to meet and chat over a meal or coffee, to converse through sounds, eyesights, and bodies. I prefer the primal intensity of human communication versus the spread-out frequency of virtual e-bytes exchanges.

On Sep 09 National Geographic Traveler magazine, they did a page on Tweeter. One part of the article that caught my attention warns that, "twittering so much that you're not living the moment , which is akin to seeing your vacation through the camera viewfinder." That's kind of true isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I know it is argueable... But come on, think about it longer. It has some truths to it. Go email! You are still the best!

Some Ramblings on Eid

It's the second day of Eid. As has what happens every year, millions leave for their hometowns in the villages all across Java or as they call it here, the "mudik". The city is deserted. Like an old piece of furniture that is just dusted-off, you can experience it differently with a new charm. Now I am in Palembang. Quite nice, got to see some old friends. We went to eat, cruised around the city a bit, saw the Ampera bridge, and the fame Musi river. This is actually another big trip for me, to set foot on Sumatra. A small leap for a jetplane, but a giant leap for me... haha. Saturday will even be more historical or maybe a little religious, I guess... I will be returning to Medan my hometown for the first time after 16 years, that's a perfect time to realize or reflect what "long" means in real time...to think how old I have come to be.

I Love Bookkeeping I Love Bookkeeping, I Love Bookkeeping, I Love Bookk... I Love...I Love...

As told my friends recently, one of the things that I regretted the most for not taking more seriously at school is business related knowledge. In those days, I viciously ignored all things related to it including my personal finance management. And now is the harvest time. I reap the results: many not so delicious fruits. There are always challenges when you want to start something new in life, a new job or a business. But that ignorance contributes a lot to the stress I got. I was overwhelmed by what I had to do in business administration, you know, where to start and what to do. So I have been trying to catch up with it little by little: reading how to create a business plan, visiting the sba.gov site, pay more attention to my personal expenses, bank accounts, credit cards, read the AIA Handbook (a great resource… by the way), and most recently learning how to use Quickbooks. Yesterday was my first day of officially using it. It really stood up to its reputation: an easy, flexible and powerful book-keeping software. It was really fun to use and took less than a day to understand the basics. The main key is to understand the difference between sales receipt, invoice, and statement. I started to memorize what is credit and what is debit. One is out and the other is in, right? Right? It really makes a difference in the way I go through my daily life (and spending) now, just become a little bit more thoughtful and less repulsive.

Crossing the Telen

I have been crisscrossing the Equator here in the last couple weeks. Yes, literally passing back and forth the zero-degree line, the middle earth. By the way, I started to get more accustomed to the travel terrain here, the vast landscape of Kalimantan Indonesia. The tropic heat, the cool breezes, the dirt-roads, the jumpy and broken inter-province roads, mountains, forests, fields, blue and white cloudy skies, street warung foods, bugs, squat toilets, and many more excitibles that one would hate and then love. All composed into a beautiful song of mind… still playing on.

A slice of that experience was a few days ago when crossing the Telen River, a branch rivers that feeds into the mighty Mahakam. Obviously, there was no bridge connection yet so we had to park our car and then took a (sort-of) boat taxi to cross the Telen. Unlike other parts of remote areas in Kalimantan, there were more native Dayaks on the riverside here. Not so many people around but everybody was looking at everybody, just imagine the small town scenes in the wild-west film right before the protagonist riding in on a horse. A little eerie for a self-professed Jakartan like me but still ook-lah.

Our boat came and I jumped in immediately. The boat was quite low on the water level and I was just sitting so liberally stretching my arms and legs feeling like an MTV travel channel host until… Until I remembered the many crocodiles with their big smiles that populate the rivers here. I, instantaneously, in approximately one-over-a-thousand second, reworked my sitting position and be in a little less machoistic pose. Yeah, crocs are just the scariest animal to me.

The return trip was more memorable to me because it was after dark. We came to the riverside with a windowless jeep transport along dusty roads. While waiting for our boat to come, I looked up the clean cloudless sky and could see all the stars quite clearly. We got on the boat and I sat nicely (this time) and as close as possible in the middle. The moon light was shining so bright, maybe because of the dark surrounding. It was during that time that I encountered a new kind of aesthetic unlike anything I knew before. The moon light was reflected off the river and casting an even dark gray uplight on all objects. Everything is a profile, a silvery outline. It is surprising to me how much one can see in total darkness. The faces of the people on our small boat were dark-blue-ish or gray with long shadow under the eyes. The air was cool and fresh. I felt like there was only me (with a very loud boat motor) and a vast and black idyllic quietness beyond. I link this to the many interesting “river-ee” moments I have: walking along the Scioto in downtown Columbus on a snowy night, observing the busy Rhein on a cold spring day, Soane under the flickering Eiffel Tower at night, and zipping through the Venetian canals at night on water taxi.

The Moderator

It has been a week since the bombs in Jakarta. Investigations are still going on, the victims' families are slowly emerging from the painful facts, and the nation is building up momentum to further fight the terrorist activities through-out the country. This Sunday, there will be an event going on by musicians and other cultural or public figures to speak out against terrorism in Indonesia. They are trying to garner up support from the whole country to speak up and unite against extremist thinking and activities within us. It is also an indirect but bold statement from the Indonesian Muslim majority to reject the effort by the terrorists to freely hijack their religion, Islam. And they are a few more spontaneous and grass-root events like that among the communities in Indonesia that are standing up to highlight their rejection toward this sort of violent and foreign extremist activities in the country. That’s a good sight for me and am proud of it.

Once in a while in the US or European media, there is a always a talk or sort of “cry-out” of the failure or ineffectiveness or slowness of moderate Islam world-wide to contain the extremists within them. While acknowledging the progress of the moderate movements in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, or Turkey, the majority of the global community still expect a more effective (or “fast”) solution to this endemic. But as many experts have said on this issue, there will be no fast way to fight religious extremism like this. The key solution is always a combined effort of pervasive economic and educational strategies. It seems to me, for them, the best way to combat the surgical effectiveness of extremist terror tactics is with a long-term, slow but consistent therapy of common senses.

So in light of the two phenomena that I observed above, Indonesia, I think can be the best bet for moderates in the Islamic world to counter that narrow but potent stream of violent and extremist thinking. I hope the moderate Islam (not the ‘liberal’ one) in Indonesia can be as effective as the moderate majority in the United States in countering the resurgence of an extreme right wing thought in American politics. Well, by the way, what I mean by the moderate majority in the US is more like the NYT readers or NPR listeners although I know most people there wouldn’t think about those two as the “moderate”. One example is the recent case of Henry Gates, the Harvard professor. I am impressed to see how well the moderates there, because of their intrinsic nature, can quickly rebalance the public debates on high-expletive issue like that.

Me Too

A Hope for Baktays

I watched “Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame” on Sunday, it was part of the Kids Film Festival here. So lucky that I was able to watch it, I guess it will be pretty hard to find small film like that without Netflix. Andrea was also there, she volunteered for the event and was part of the translator team, because… as they said in the credit part of the broschure, “she has a good English”, good job ‘ndrea!

The film is quite nice with a simple message of the importance of education. It highlights the impact of war, the madness of Taliban and the American invasion, on the life of children there. It’s good enough to give the general audience a glimpse of the life there. I am sure the reality is multiple times tougher than that. The story is about the journey of a little girl named Baktay (Nikbakht-Noruz) who is innocently trying to go the school despite all the hard circumstances. The girl’s journey is only a day and that makes the 1 hour 20 minutes film felt incredible long. She plays the role quite well. She is just adorable and super cute. The only sad feeling I got after the film is thinking if the living condition of the real young girl (Nikbakht’s) is the same as depicted in the film. She is living in a cave and part of a small village in the desert. Ehm… It is very possible.

Coincidentally, the same day I watched the film, Tom Friedman wrote an article “Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No” and is about a similar subject, children education in Afghanistan. In that article, he wrote about his visit to a small village in Afghanistan with Admiral Mike Mullen to open up a school. He said in the beginning, “I confess, I find it hard to come to Afghanistan and not ask: Why are we here? Who cares about the Taliban? Al Qaeda is gone. And if its leaders come back, well, that’s why God created cruise missiles.” Then after going through his usual style of self thinking and musing in a jocular way of serious subjects, his brain churned out a concluding impression, “I was dubious before I arrived, and I still am. But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it’s hard to say: “Let’s just walk away.” Not yet.”

Nothing I can do in that part of the world other than to hope for a success for Americans and Afghans there in rebuilding the children’s life and thus the country.

717

July 17 will be another sad day for us, the people of Jakarta. This morning right before 8 am, two suicide bombers hit two five stars hotels simultaneously killing more than ten people. I feel the pain of the city, the heartbeat of the nation. The attacks were directly aimed at the international exhibition football match that would be going on in three days between Manchester United from UK and the national team. Each of the two hotels hit will be used by the MU team and the national team. In fact, the bombs almost got the national team if they didn't leave for the 6 am practice. The terrorists are surely gaining lots of ground this time. The match is cancelled. Millions of dollars burned. Our self-pride evaporated. The news spread like the wind. Visitors and travelers flooded the airport trying to leave the city. And the darkest reality is that lifes terminated. Lifes of ordinary honest people who were killed while eating or serving breakfast. It is really a pain, a bereavement. Today, they won and we all lost. So my question is: How do we deal with people who are willing to explode their own heads just to get ours. How do we fight an evil like that?

Election

The election is coming in two more days. It's interesting to see the whole getting up and partaking in the reformation that started in 1998. This round of election we have three candidates fighting for the No 1 post. The debates and discussions are all going pretty intense, a sign the country is re-discovering the joy of democracy after the early one abrutply terminated in the mid 50s. This is also one of the important elections for the global community but it hasn't got as much review as it should. Maybe seconded by the news and worries in Iran and North Korea.

Manhattan

I am back in Sampit now. It is funny how preconception works and how it influence your psyche. The first time in the city my head is filled with negative preconceptions on horror stories and news about the riots that happen here 7 years ago. The second time everything is much different. I am more familiar with the surroundings. I am not as afraid as before.

But maybe that is not the explanation at all. Maybe it is the aftershock effect of my wandering time in the last few months. In January I spent my entire time repacking 10 years of life back to fit into two suitcases. In February I slept in a sleeping bag for a month at my sister’s place in Los Angeles. It’s inconvenient but I enjoy it nevertheless. An interesting metro-nomadic life. I went many times to LA library and visited many interesting architecture. And then in March, plunged myself in Europe and zipping through cities there. In every other day I had to live in a new environment, always alert and self-conscious on everything I encounter. During those times I was so physically disoriented, mentally lonely, intellectually displaced, and spiritually restless. In April I thought the turbulence was over when I landed in a place called Jakarta.

So wrong. That month I went through all the philosophical stupidity of what it means to return, what is change, what is home, and what is shit (just kidding on the last one). No choice because I am interested in it, “stupid-ness” and the philosophical musing of it. And a few days after that I have to go to Kalimantan, another crazy place, a land the size of Germany with road network the size of a 1st century Roman province. In a week I passed through most of the major cities there. Maybe that’s the reason. So maybe it has nothing to do with preconception. Maybe it is just pre-smartness. An aftershock effect on a mentally disrupted person.

Ok back to Sampit. I just want to jot down my thoughts, my incoherence-now (thanks Cissy for the word, like it) for later plans. I visited many cities of various size and range in the last month, right. Sometimes I am so bored in the car seat and just want to bang my head to the window. But I don’t need to because the roads are so bad here and the car window will bang your head for you. Well, all this trips are actually quite interesting if I can use it to observe more closely the development of cities. We know that an urban area always consists of a set of universal elements, the DNA of a city such as commerce, density, infrastructure, politics, dichotomy of private and public spaces, etc.

This should be an opportunity to document it. For example, what is a mall before a mall, how does it develop? There are plenty of proto-malls here, each with it’s own architectural strategies of a commercial building (façade, site, and section). Of course we can know all of these from previous studies and other technical literature in the field. But this is direct observation and has the potential for new conjectures. It is just like how 19th century anthropologists from Europe “discover” primitive tribes in parts of Asia and Africa and are able to postulate new theories on the development human civilizations including the ones in Europe. Parallel to that, maybe I can compile an investigation on cities in Indonesia and fit it into a larger historical genealogy of cities. In this trip, I bring my Delirious New York with me for inspiration. It is amazing in re-reading Koolhaas, how so many ideas or thinking in that book still permeate through many of his projects today. The form of the writing itself (not the content) is already so interesting. It seems like after 1978 that he just used that book as manual for his practice and all his works today.

I am Legend

MJ has left the house. He is really something, the fullest expression of human and creativity, a true artist and a true artwork. He is a Legend, our generation's Warhol.

black magic berry

I have used a Blackberry for less than a month now. It is the most amazing thing, no 3 in my personal list (the first one is airplane, second is petebakar). You may have noticed that I sometimes posted my blog from it. And now I am typing this in my car on the trip from Samarinda to Bontang and I used blackberry as a modem for the tiny acer netbook. The last time I had an internet connection while moving was on the hi-speed Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris. I was quite stratled at that time thinking if Einstein is still alive he would probably think the same too. So having an internet on the move is huge technological feat for mankind, in my opinion. And I can use it just with a blackberry is really cool. That thing is like a black magic. And it is much cooler than Iphone. So are the users. : )

Tailess

I have a new friend. Her name is Tailess. She is a little shy when we first met, always hiding behind or under the curtain. But now she relates better and always come by to my desk whenever I am working in my room. If I am not looking at her, she will move back and forth in front snaring unhappily with her big black round eye. We see each other mostly around midnight or early morning. I am not sure if she has a family here, will ask that next time.

Mini Skirt

I am curently doing a project for a back wall or "fence" of a highrise on one of the major streets in the city. Initially when I got it, I thought it would be a simple, no-brainer, time-filler, etc. project... But now it is actually a quite interesting design problem, a real urban project and my first here. How do we create a transition, a separation between a group of big buildings: two 20m garages, two 55m office, and one 160m tower, with an 8m back alley street of low rise complexes. On top of that we only have 300mm width of space to use. In other words, how would you design a mini skirt for a group of tall post-mo buildings (by rtkl)? The goal is to make it sexy and not gross.

A reunion

I took a picture of our food today, a plate of grilled eggplants and pete or grilled pete, hence petebakar! It is my first reunion. Pete is a kind of bean, a heavenly bean. It's always crisp what ever way we cook it. It will release an aura on a bite and your mouth will feel spacious afterward. Agh so goood. Now, I really feel at home.

Highway Workers

June 2, 17.39 Jakarta. Like Rahab, I also live right on the city edge. The outer ring road highway outside my place is rapidly undergoing construction. The site had laid dormant for 10 years since I left. It just had a few concrete pylons, a monument to Jakarta's notorious infrastructure project. The project was restarted early this year and will be completed before the end of the year. Construction is buzzling day and night. I pass by the site everyday and so does my mind, a place to escape the slow buzzling traffic scenes. Jakarta anesthecizes your conscience until scenes like this photo reawakens you. A scene of normal life outside your rat race track, a scene of human life, a father, like yours, spending time with a child, also like yours. A snap shot of normalcity, a conscience connection. The others, are us. There, are here. Then after that shocking jolt, I would awake from the reality and back to my life.

Testing mobile blogging

I am testing the amazing mobile internet technology, blogging on the move. Yes the information age is far from over.
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Batavia yang Beringas

Beringas is an Indonesian adjective word that means: in a constant state of anger fluctuation, fierce, having a spiky temperament, capable of finishing a work or a life quickly, swiftly, crudely and devastatingly, always on the edge emotionally, and, lastly from me, have the capability or the desire to eat a whole homo sapiens alive. I don’t know the origin of the word, it might be an archaic Malay or Java. But that is my impression of Jakarta in the first month. Jakarta, Jakartans, and everything in it, them, are quite “beringas”. From the streets, the people, the things, and down to the mosquitoes. They all suck bloods out of you. I have nothing but my conscience. And everyday I have to trade it away to live. A Dutch painting of old Jakarta, Batavia Castle, at the Rijk Museum in Amsterdam still represents quite accurately everyday life (or butchery) today. The coconut trees sway tall and elegant like the rows of highrises on Sudirman-Thamrin and Kuningan. The market stalls on the left are the many hectic commercial places ranging from the tiny shed under a plastic tent to a gigantic upscale Grand Indonesia mall. The tropic clouds are still deceptively soft and 'cushionee' until the annual rain peak when they pour down the water and drown the city. I call it the Baptism Day. The river Ciliwung is the unattended bride of the city. The castle on the background is carefully and intentionally screened. It is all the unseen forces, the power centers, and the master puppets that each control one or few of the millions (8.8 to be exact) of strings below. Now the people scene in the fore-and-midground is the part that is more interesting to me. It represents all hues of richness or poorness of life. A rich man might have a poor heart (in health and in deed) and vice and versa. That is Jakarta, charming but dreaded. Beringas.

a good talk

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May Notice

Life is under construction, will resume business when done.

Kelu Malaikat

“ku susuri lembah nurani namun tak kudapat apa

di taman jiwa ku duduk dan bertanya pada asa yang resah”

– Kelu by Flabbergasting!

Angel, our friend is amazing. The quote above is from her latest poem on her blog. It’s always interesting to read poem from people you know. Because then you have another way to understanding or experiencing the magic. The particular passage above expands or illuminates the territory of the inner soul. I also see it as a painter painting the landscape of the heart, it’s vast and seemingly endless. Before all this I only know her as a sweet multi-talented girl that is occasionally strange. But little that I know she is also a psycho (in a “Van Gogh”tian’s style) when writing a poem. The photo above is from a photo I took today of the mountains of Kalimantan on my way from Banjarmasin to Balikpapan. I think if feelings have eyes, the quoted passage above will look something like that photo. The rest of the poem is even more overwhelming.

A Word with A Thousand Thoughts

Today, Cissy sent me an interesting excerpt from a travel book she is reading. Every cities has a word that defined it, a word that ALL people in the city is thinking at any moment when you stop and ask them. Rome is SEX, Vatican is POWER, NYC is ACHIVE, LA is SUCCEED, Stockholm is CONFORM, Naples is POWER. Now, I am thinking what if we can tweet our life. What if one month is one minute, what would you tweet?

"go and see"

Palangka

Hey, "clean city" in Indonesia is not a myth. Pardon my Jakartan snobbishness who sometimes sees and measures the rest of the country with it's own glasses including on city progress. Palangka Raya is clean and nice. It is the capital of Central Kalimantan and has a population of 110,000+ only. It is located inland just like Columbus. I love the buildings here all have huge and expressive roofs. Many big to medium normal buildings spent a lot of effort on the top. Just like the Baroque cities like Vienna or Prague. Palangka is a modest city with attitude and style. I might live here someday.

The Alchemy of Fear

Did you ever stay in a new place and have a deep fear of your life? Is fear a healthy food for your soul? I have quite a few in the last few months, one in Amsterdam, one in the night train from Lyon to Rome, and a recent one is right now in Sampit. Mostly those fears are the result of one irrational summation of a series of rational analyses. I arrived in Sampit, South Kalimantan yesterday. Everyone in Indonesia still remember the frenzy ethnic killings here in 2001 between the local Dayaks and the Madurese. The images of chopped heads can easily be found in the internet. I recommended you not to search it because I, stupidly, did. That’s one of the reasons that triggered my fear. I was feeling uneasy through out the night and couldn’t sleep until around 2 or 3 am because of those images. That’s the alchemy of fear: I created all kind of nightmarish and paranoia thoughts that were getting worse and worse into the night. That night was the night that I prayed really, extra, double, more, serious, and multiple times before sleep. So I woke up this morning feeling better (of course after making sure that my head is still intact). I was able to go around the city in daylight. It is actually a really nice small town with grid streets and rather clean. I got to talk more with the people as well and understand better the demography of the populations. We went to the river harbor, the fish market, shops, and commercial streets. However in the car we passed by one hotel that they used to put (pile up) severed heads of people in 2001. Ugh. Ugh. And I started to fear again. There were not many things going on at night. We ate a Chinese restaurant by our self in a room about 30m by 60m. That itself was quite surreal. We went back to our hotel and straight to our rooms. I laid down in the bed and felt asleep. That was still before 9pm I think. Then, then I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there were a few policemen outside the room and asking for my identification. I was in fear of course but didn’t think about it. My only identification was passport, so I gave them that and asked what’s going on. After that I went out to the lobby and sat there to make sure everything was okay and I was more shocked when I saw more policemen mixing with a few intel civilians walking around and a big police trucks outside. That’s really scary. Maybe that what some Indonesian migrants in the East Coast felt when there were raids by FBI or Homeland Security. Both are not good, not nice. That is fear working. After talking with some people there, they said it is one of those irregular razias or police searches for prostitution activities in hotel. I know you will say “what” but that’s the way it is apparently here. But I guess maybe that’s just a pre-emptive police operation to clean out provocateurs. Don’t know, who knows. I will be leaving tomorrow to Palangkaraya, the capital of this province. Will let you know what’s up there. Cheers, there.

the other city dwellers, ghosts

Every cities has it's own ghosts. That I know. Really, awful things that happened to the people. Rotterdam and Berlin were blasted and many people died crushed or burned. The tsunami in Banda Aceh. Earthquakes. But the place that I will go today I am sure will some some younger ghosts. Mainly people that died and got chopped up in a brutal ethnic conflict not so long ago. I am little bit worry now though... maybe not as enthusiastic as other cities, maybe. I hope the feeling is wrong this time.

Berlin to Borneo

I was packing again tonight. Tomorrow I will be flying to Borneo. Another journey. The world is a beautiful place. After seeing Berlin with all her drama, Jakarta with all her ruggedness, I will be seeing cities in Borneo (Kalimantan), from the small ones to the very small ones. My dad bought me my first boots a few days ago, ready to go into the jungles.

what and change

On a plane one day, I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. More interesting than I expect. It has quite a few very interesting dialog lines and I don't know if those come from the original Fitzgerald or from the screenwriters. I will share one here.

"It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you." - Benjamin Button

(from IMDb's website)

A Jacobian Struggle

A city is not just a place one merely exists but a living person-like with whom one engages with daily. It’s sensorial, you feel it, you smell it, you touch it, and most importantly you wrestle with it everyday. It is even more so when you walk in the city at night because by then there is no sky and no background and not much energy left. It is just you and the city, face to face, blocks by blocks. A survival act and at the same time a sensual one too. One story that reminds me of that combination of feelings is the nomad Jacob’s struggle at Peniel at night with a being. After a long day of moving, and then alone. Jacob is overwhelmed by that being (God?, Freudian’s dream?, angel?, man?, robber?). But he never let go and employ all his last strength to hold on that being until he gets it. Then he goes to sleep and continue his journey the next day. Therefore I think living in a city, in one’s city, is a serious physical engagement. And when you are traveling to a new place that feeling and sense of engagement is heightened or more documented in your senses. You will get to know a city very intimately after a full day of walking on its surface. Cities have scars, pains, are breathing, constantly laboring, are friendly, occasionally fierce, always traumatic, paranoia, could be sensual, could be unapologetic, could be wringkly or youthful, monumental or monument-like, are faking, are partying. I love cities.

levitation and others

I found a few artists that I really like at the Leopold Museum the other day, the expressionist painter Egon Schiele and expressionist sculptor Ernst Barlach. Schiele’s paintings are very figural yet abstract. His color palettes are cool. The good ones are the Levitation and some other scenes of roof tops. Barlach’s sculptures strangely I found are elevational and quite ‘gravitying’. Meaning, it is not merely an object on a pedestal like the classics. The ‘pedestal’ here is the integral part of the whole sculpture. And that makes it a natural (or of nature) object wrestling with gravity. His pencil and charcoal drawings are so interesting too. It convinces me to keep studying monochromatic arts. The next day, I visited chbl’s gassometer. I think it’s really nice and makes my trip there worthy. Really, it’s much more than interesting or eye-catching images as we have seen before, maybe, in magazines. It’s consistent with their body of works and his philosophy and attempts on urban spaces.

Punches

I met quite a few people on the road and they are all interesting. But there are two groups that give me a little inspiration. The first is a Danish-Spanish guy who is living with his Italian wife in Mantua. We talked on the train. He just quited from his own packaging company and planning to start again solo. I liked his business/sales attitude that is to sell a succesfull product you need to be able to sell yourself first. That's a lot of what we do too, or what we need to do if start our own practice, right? The second group is my recent roommates two architecture students from Norway. So they are probably four years younger than me. They were in Vienna to visit a site for the competition they were doing. I chatted with them about many intereting things and learned something about the Norwegian school system. Once you graduate from architecture school there you are immedietly licensed for Level 1 Architect and allowed to do small scale projects. Not like in the US where you have to go through the exam and licensing process. One great thing they are trying to do though is to push the limit of that and trying to figure out a way that make it legal and safe for student to do real projects. Those projects are small scale projects that do not fit the economy of an office. Isn’t that a good idea for training young architects. Students are already doing it there but illegally. Just before our conversation they already found and were working with a ‘customer’. But they were a little disappointed because they just got an email from that ‘customer’ that he already found other architect. It’s like a punch in the face, one of them said to me. But that punch and a few more down the road I think will make them strong, I think. That is an inspiration. Thanks guys! Thanks for the Linies too.

Lamentation in Vienna

Today is the fifteenth. A few more days from now it is your birthday. I remember because every year you always ask me what I want to do that day. I remember because I like the way you think and expect the present you want to buy for yourself. I like it I remember because it is just the other side of the mirror of me. And that is why I am always intrigued by you too, the flipside of the mirror of me, always opposite but strangely familiar. I am currently in Vienna, a place that I told you I really want to be years ago. I say that because Vienna represents an improbability of my imagination at the time. So here I am now, don’t know what to feel, it’s quite bare inside, but just want to imagine again: to be there. There, is a time when I talk about wanting Vienna. When I remember that I want to move back through time to there and be with your smile. Idiotic and lame, I know. But so was Vienna. Can it possibly be? That is the question I asked then and I will ask again now. This is for Question only and I don't expect Answer to come.

be still

This is just a clip from NYT's article today on Mike Nichols exhibit at MOMA. I think he is right. Silence or stillness is a lot more interesting. And I think we all need it, a meditation, a prayer state, to meet self and Creator.

Self-portrait at the Welt

It was April 13th, 2009 11.40 AM when I encountered it. A moment I will never forget. Walking up out from the subway station at Olympiapark, I unexpectedly arrived right in front of the Welt in Muenchen. It was really a breathtaking project. I was absolutely stunned. W. Prix once told us that one moment in his life that got him into architecture is Corb’s La Tourette. He visited the site when he was young and mesmerized by it. Before that he was already quite familiar with what an architect does. His father was an architect and he spent many times in his office. But his presence at La Tourette was the defining moment. He said to himself, “if this is architecture then he wants to do it.” Munich is that moment for me. After Firminy and Munich. It sealed my fate to architecture. I have to say sorry to my other personalities and closed the door for them. I think this is what I will do for the rest of my life. I will spend my life to do this kind of architecture… architecture that is so heavy and light, architecture that gives so generously to the city, to the people, and to the individuals. Whether I arrived there or not, although it will take many turns and detours, but that is my direction.

Most importantly my main motivation and faith in the ability of architecture to subvert social and political structure is confirmed. Architecture is not a decorated shed. I love Venice and I took pictures of the Palladios there, but the Renaissance turbulences are far over. I saluted Borromini for starting this impulse to deconstruct the classical. I appreciated the Baroque for demonstrating their uncomfortness with the return to classical movement. Although we, today, owed Alberti for pioneering the discursive practice of architecture but the manifestation of his theory and the blooming of Renaissance and it’s many off-springs was regrettable, I think. If Firminy ends a 100-year chapter in modernism, then Munich starts the next one. It is anti-facade, anti-classical, and downright modern that is it’s embrace and search for cinematic effects with architecture.

Photos for Cissy

Update on The Plan

This trip is a personal pilgrimage for me, maybe a little “Grand Tour”. But the apex of this trip is definitely the one that I will be making tomorrow to Firminy to see Corbusier-Oubrerie’s Firminy church, completed in 2006. It is also the last of modern architecture to be built. Will that christen me to be a modernist then? Or will that church represent my Jordan river? Time will tell.

When I started school, my first assignment was Jose Oubrerie’s Miller house. That was almost 9 years ago. I considered those era as my Romantic Agony age (still in my art history fever from the Louvre). So it would be good, I think, to end it also with another Oubrerie. So that church will be a closure for my education. It is also a climax for the plan that I have plotted for many years. The subplot then is to see the only and all three religious buildings by Corb: La Tourette, Firminy, and Ronchamp. Other than that, that grand agenda, hahaha, Lyon is, a surprise, pretty. Paris is like a sized down beaux-art NY and is braggy. Amsterdam is chic. Bonn is cute. Koln is delicious. La Tourette is really floaty. I took plenty of photos and started to feel overwhelmed now on what to do with them. I know I have to be diligent and post them ASAP otherwise it will never get out.

Version 5

unflat my life

It's sunday night. Driving back from church, I did a little detour to downtown trying to see Moneo's church and Prix's school in Bunker Hill area. My GPS was suddenly dead and I got lost. But I kept driving west from there and saw LA neighborhood zones at night that are very vibrant, raw, but pretty nevertheless. I saw El Salvadorean groceries, Guatemalan cafes, Latin discos, 24 hours hamburger stands, neon signs of Korean churches, restaurants, Japanese fastfood and finally, ended up at the posh Beverly Hills. What a show. I parked on a street with many little shops and cafes (Beverly Blvd?), took a little walk and bought a delicious looking cakecup from Crumbs. I though I would eat in the car. And guess what, got flat tire, blurb, blurb, blurb, blurb.... and I said "s***" :) Hahaha. Gone was the message today about letting God dwell in my heart, can't even stay in my mouth, not always smelling good...

I thank my brother everytime I get a flat tire. He taught me once many years ago and has been super useful skill ever since. Especially if you are a teenager living in Jakarta driving around past midnight and getting a flat tire. At least in my hyped-up paranoia perception, you would be dead meat on the street... actually more like a steak (medium well).

I came back home, washed my dirty hands and mouth. As usual, in my world (inside my 1300cc jelly meat), everything has to mean or be something, hahaha, including this one. Flat tire is the most uncomfortable annoyance. It shocks and angers you. But you will quickly get up and try to fix it at soon as possible no matter how messy it is. When it's done, you are relieved and can't believe how easy it is, and most importantly be able to get going, and appreciate the comfort of moving again. Well that's my state of feeling(s) now. I am cranking up the heavy object and know pretty soon I will get going. Then I will be able to sing Ray Charles' Unchain My Heart tune and replace with ooohh, unflat my life... please set me free...

Uumhh my coconut cup cake is really gooooood. I think they have it NY too, Crumbs bakeshop.

mental matter

Two things in life that always fascinated me every time in the most elemental way are brain and airplane. I wanted to think it out a little here. On brain, I always imagine that our feelings and emotions are not as fleeting as we thought or as used in literature and pop culture. Feelings and emotions are a type of material substance. Maybe they are like hormones. But for now, I want to believe they are different although they have some similarities. They are like liquids in stored in neuron jars in our brain. My unscientific proof of this is that when we sleep, the neuron jars that contain our feelings and emotions get poured out and mixed together. And like mixed paints, they create new combinations of feelings and emotions and as the result also creates these bizarre realities we know of as dreams.

Last week, I listened to Jonah Lehrer, a science journalist, on Fresh Air on his new book, How We Decide. The most interesting part was the second halves of the interview when Terry asked him questions about the role of dopamine, a type of neuron transmitter, in our decision making process. From that I gained additional insights into the working of this substance in our brain. Dopamine is not just responsible for creating sensation of joy in drugs or sex and a Parkinson’s drug. It is crucial in driving our emotion. When it’s excreted out, it activates our emotion, as opposed to our rational, to think and make decision quickly. It’s good at finding patterns that will maximize our reward. It’s also a switch that turns on and off our motivation. One example he brought up was the role of dopamine in gambling addiction. The gambling apparatus with it’s signals and random pattern of sequences has successfully hijacked our dopamine to keep coming in our neuron, to keep searching for a pattern, that will never exist, for a reward. Interesting, hah. Maybe dopamine is the guy I am looking for my theory on mental matter mentioned above.

Quite interestingly, Walter Benjamin also mentioned about this attempt we have to de-abstract the concept of mind and memory, although only passingly, in one of his writings, Berlin Chronicle. First he uses memory as an example. It should be thought about in a more active role in our daily biological operation. He said, “Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater.” How so, one would ask. “It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.” Benjamin thinks that memory is matter and should be used likewise too. “This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.” He then further illustrates his thinking with the earth and dirt metaphor. “For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth; the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand – like precious fragments or torsos in a collector’s gallery – in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.”

the end that is the beginning

Feb 20 was the last episode of Late Night with Conan. It was a great experience watching him, a truly outstanding person. I watched in from the internet with a small screen and a dark NBC website background. The frame became so important with his figure moving across, in and out of the traditional TV frame. That's what Conan's specialty, I believe. He knew what the TV "frame" was, an inherently 2D phenomena, and turned it into a 1D entity and crawling on it like MC Eshcer's ant. I like Will Ferrel, crazy. White stripe, always theatrical, beautiful. Andy Richter, not sure about him, but funny. And finally, I love the ending tributes he gave too. Good stuff.

Kesan Pertama

Kesan Pertama, Bagian Pertama.

Hari minggu yang lalu saya pergi ke gereja IFGF yang di Arcadia untuk pertama kalinya. Seperti biasa, selalu timbul rasa malas dengan sejuta alasan kalau ingin berangkat ke gereja, apalagi kalau berada ditempat baru dan untuk pertama kali. Tapi akhirnya saya berangkat juga, dibantu GPS di netbook baru saya – dari ujung kota yang satu ke ujung kota yang lain – dari daerah pantai di South Bay tempat saya tinggal ke daerah pinggir gunung di bagian utara. Sepanjang perjalanan, saya menikmati “urban landscape” LA yang sarat dengan ekstrimitas gado-gado gaya arsitektur tapi juga diselingin dengan “vignettes” pemandangan perpaduan alam dan infrastruktur yang spektakuler.

Begitu tiba, saya cukup kagum dengan komplex bangunan yang baru mereka beli dan gunakan beberapa tahun terakhir ini. Bangunan itu terdiri dari dua gedung komersial dalam kondisi sangat bagus, dengan parking lot luas, dan terletak di lingkungan retail-residential yang strategis. Beberapa saat ketika masih di tempat parkir dan ketika pulang, saya sempat merenungkan hal-hal yang berhubungan dengan bangunan gereja mereka itu. Dan hasil renungan itu yang ingin saya bagikan dulu di dalam tulisan ini sebelum saya melanjutkan dengan kesan-kesan pertama saya yang lain.

Usaha membeli gedung-gedung komersial seperti yang dilakukan oleh IFGF LA dan juga beberapa IFGF lainnya di Amerika Serikat mempunyai dimensi kultural dan spiritual yang lebih penting. Pertama, secara kultural. Sesekali di berita hati kita terenyuh mendengar bangunan-bangunan bekas gereja tua yang dibeli dan diubah menjadi bangunan komersial, hiburan/rekreasi, atau tempat ibadah agama lain. Tapi gereja kita secara keseluruhan justru sedang bergerak kearah sebaliknya dan sebisa mungkin mengadaptasikan gedung-gedung komersial untuk kepentingan ministry dan pelayanan. Mungkin ada orang-orang yang melihat usaha ini sebagai suatu “economic necessity” atau keterpaksaan keadaan, tapi saya justru melihat ini sebagai salah satu fenomena pekerjaan Tuhan.

Kedua, secara spiritual. Bangunan-bangunan komersial pada umumnya dibangun berdasarkan prinsip ekonomi: Menghasilkan pendapatan sebanyak mungkin dengan pengeluaran yang sekecil mungkin. Setiap inci ruang harus dibangun se-efisien mungkin dan menghasilkan dollar sebanyak mungkin. Alhasil, bentuk dan tata ruang tipe bangunan inipun merefleksikan kepentingan ekonomi yang berlawanan 180 derajat dari tipe bangunan eklesias seperti gereja. Inilah problem utama yang harus dihadapi saudara-saudara kita ketika membeli gedung komersial seperti ini untuk gereja: Bagaimana caranya memanfaatkan ruangan-ruangan kantor dan komersial dan mengubahnya untuk perkumpulan orang banyak dan beribadah. Dan kebanyakan dari mereka hampir tidak ada dana tambahan lagi untuk melakukan renovasi interior yang signifikan apalagi memakai jasa konsultan tata ruang professional.

Tapi pada akhirnya, para “interior designer” cabutan IFGF ini (dengan Business atau Computer Science degree mereka) selalu berhasil dan dengan kreatif mengerjakan-nya juga. Meskipun begitu, ruang-ruang kantor yang diadaptasikan menjadi ruang-ruang ibadah ini akan selalu menciptakan sebuat ketidakstabilan emosi untuk orang-orang yang hadir. Jemaat tidak akan merasakan suatu “kenyamanan” atau “ekspektasi” gereja yang telah dibentuk oleh kultur kolektif kita: Kultur evolusi tipe bangunan gereja selama 1600 tahun sejak orang-orang Kristen pertama kali secara luas meng-adaptasikan fungsi basilika Romawi yang mereka warisi sebagai bangunan gereja dan tempat beribadah.

Tapi justru ketidakstabilan emosi ini merupakan suatu “jump cut” kita melewati tumpukan tradisi dan budaya manusia selama 1600 tahun itu dan “connect” langsung dengan pengalaman Musa dan bangsa Israel di gurun Sinai. Sama seperti kita sekarang, tempat ibadah bangsa Israel tidak selalu berada ditempat yang ideal atau kondusif untuk beribadah. Mereka berhenti dan bergerak berdasarkan petunjuk Tuhan. Dan dimanapun mereka berhenti, mereka tetap beribadah sesuai dengan cara yang diperintahkan oleh Tuhan, meskipun kadang-kadang dengan menggerutu. Konsekuennya, bangsa Israel di gurun Sinai itu tidak mempunyai kesempatan untuk merasakan “kenyaman” beribadah dan hanya bisa (dan harus) fokus ke hal-hal yang paling essensial saja dalam menyembah dan berinteraksi dengan Tuhan. Menurut saya, efek ketidak-stabilan emosi atau “restlessness” dalam beribadah seperti itulah yang agak susah kita rasakan di arsitektur gereja yang “nyaman”. Tentu saja tidak ada yang salah mempunyai gedung gereja yang megah atau ruang ibadah yang layak, tapi sering kali kenyamanan itu bisa membuat kita pasif dan hanya menjadi “spectator”.

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Kesan Pertama, Bagian Kedua.

Dari awal masuk ke gereja IFGF LA saya sudah merasa seperti di gereja sendiri, meskipun tidak ada orang-orang yang saya kenal. Waktu itu timbul juga rasa sedih dan kangen dengan teman-teman yang lain di Columbus yang saya tahu juga sedang kebaktian pada saat yang bersamaan ribuan miles diatas sana. Ada beberapa observasi yang membuat saya merasa seperti gereja sendiri dan mungkin ini sudah menjadi ciri khas gereja-gereja IFGF di Amerika Serikat. Yah, pertama, saya datang telat 20 menit karena (ehm… gak bisa pakai alasan karena jemput Ray atau orang lain lagi), karena, saya masih baru dan belum terlalu tahu jalan.

Begitu datang saya disalamin usher yang gagah, tegap, berotot, tapi bermuka lucu. (Ciri khas #1: Usher rambo). Waktu masuk saya tidak merasa malu datang telat karena semua orang sedang memberi perhatian ke depan dan worship. Tips, saat paling tepat untuk datang ke gereja IFGF tanpa diperhatikan adalah saat mereka worship. (#2: Heavy priority on worship) Saya kemudian duduk di paling belakang yang artinya saya sebenarnya belum terlalu telat, soalnya orang yang telat banget harus duduk di paling depan. (#3: Selalu ada yang lebih telat datang.)

Setelah duduk, dan melirik sekeliling, saya mulai mengikuti sesi worship mereka. Tim musik sangat terampil dan aktif mengajak jemaat untuk berpartisipasi dalam worship. Mereka juga berpakaian rapi dan berdandan sederhana tapi cukup. (#4: Tim worship cantik, tampan, dan “talented”.) Mereka menggunakan audio-visual equipments paling mutakhir tapi dengan sensibiltas yang agak “off”. Dalam ruangan yang agak kecil itu, sound system terasa cukup keras dan sedikit menggebyar di telinga. Mereka juga menggunakan dua projector besar di ceiling yang diproyeksikan ke dinding yang tidak terlalu jauh. Diatas terpasang track dengan lampu-lampu sorot modern tapi dengan lighting arrangement yang sekilas mirip diskotik-diskotik dangdut di Jakarta 20 tahun yang lalu. Tapi yang paling penting adalah saya bisa langsung larut dalam suasana penyembahan dan terasa seperti Sydney Mohede dibelakang sana. Sebenarnya saya kurang tahu Sydney Mohede itu seperti apa. Cuma setelah kebaktian, worship leader bilang ke saya bahwa dia sempat mengira Sydney datang ke kebaktian dia ketika saya masuk tadi. (#5: Peralatan AV yang canggih tapi canggung)

Selesai kebaktian, saya mulai dikenalkan dan berkenalan dengan beberapa orang disana. Saya juga baru mengalami rasanya menjadi orang baru di gereja setelah sekian lama. Saya merasa sangat “vulnerable” dan “uncomfortable” kalau tidak diajak bicara oleh orang-orang sekitar. Dan sebaliknya, merasa lega kalau ada yang mengajak ngobrol meskipun cuma sekedar kenalan atau pembicaraan ringan. (#6: Suasana “after church” yang dingin untuk orang baru, awalnya).

Dari pengumuman setelah kebaktian saya mendapat informasi tentang aktifitas gereja untuk beberapa bulan kedepan. Salah satunya adalah misi mereka ke Nigeria dan “Blood Diamond” Sierra Leone. Usaha mereka ini meng-“encourage” saya tentang “passion” Ps. Dani dan jemaatnya yang tetap mau melayani Tuhan bahkan sampai ke Afrika ditengah-tengah suasana krisis global. Kemudian, ada pengumuman dari istri Ps. Dani untuk acara paskah yang akan datang. Acaranya akan dibuat dalam bentuk “live drama and musical performances” di sebuah teater di downtown. Dari yang saya dengar, acara paskah selalu menjadi acara paling besar untuk gereja disini. Mereka bahkan membayar professional scriptwriters dari Hollywood untuk membantu merangkai cerita untuk performance itu.

Istri Ps. Dani baru kembali dari Indonesia beberapa hari yang lalu setelah menguburkan ibunya. Dan dua minggu yang lalu dia, beserta Ps. Dani, juga baru menguburkan ibu mertuanya di sini. Saya kagum dengan dia karena diatas semua peristiwa itu dia tidak kelihatan sedih atau letih seperti orang yang baru kehilangan dua orang tua. Sebaliknya dia dengan semangat berterima kasih untuk dukungan dari jemaatnya dan memberikan kesaksian betapa ibunya tetap melayani Tuhan sampir akhir hidupnya. Dia mengutip dari 2 Timotius 4:7 dan mengatakan, seperti Paulus, ibunya “have fought the good fight… finished the race… kept the faith.”

Bagian terakhir dari kesaksian dia itulah yang paling membekas dan memberi inspirasi dihati saya untuk minggu ini. Saya, dan mungkin teman-teman pembaca yang lain, pasti ingin jika kita meninggal nanti, anak kita boleh bangga dan berkata bahwa orang tua mereka sudah ,”mengakhiri pertandingan yang baik… mencapai garis akhir dan… telah memelihara iman.”

Begitulah sekilas kesan-kesan pertama saya tentang gereja di LA.

off to the west

I am in LA right now, in the lowest level, the History Section, of their Central Library. I was quite impressed with the space and the size of the library. Very Classical California, probably the opposite of the Seattle one. Well, that's it for now. I want to share two quotes hanging in my mind right now. One is from Braudel and the other one is from Mr. Moses.

"Simplicity - not simplicity that distorts the truth, produces a void, and is another name for mediocrity, but simplicity that is clarity, the light of intelligence." - Fernand Braudel 1900s AD (a translation from French).

perhaps, reach out for him

"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." Paul of Tarsus in Acts xvii, 25-26

God determine the exact times and places for all us, that's what Paul, the first century ex-“Jewish jihadist" told us in a passage in Acts 17. I believe it. The next question for us is: then what? The story above has more weight when we read the whole passage in Acts 17 and understand the context. He was talking in the city center of Athens and probably to a group of very proud and educated crowd. Athens, by then, was already a highly advanced city both culturally and economically. It was probably also the most liberal and religious, the most festive and hip, and many other contradictory attributes typical of a cosmopolitan city -- not unlike New York today or Paris a hundred years ago.

What Paul was really saying to the Athenians then was: it is not what they are doing or where they are living that would determine their purpose in life. They could live in a melting pot city like Ephesus, in a religious center like Jerusalem, or even in smaller villages of Galilee but only God could set a true purpose in life. God’s purpose for the Athenians, and all of us today, is still to seek Him and reach out to Him. A good plan, but will we do it?

That’s what I am reminded again lately as I am about to move to a new unknown place. I am so thankful for my life in the last ten years and for the church that God had placed me in. During those times and in that place, I accepted Christ and was able to seek God more in my life. More importantly, now, I can say that I know how to reach out to God in my personal life. If I haven’t achieved anything in the last ten years but just the revelation that we can each reach out to God personally in our life; that would be enough. Or like a friend at church likes to say, that's bloody cool!

afar

a sojourner's moment

Elizabeth Alexander was hot... I mean her inauguration poem! She made comas sounded so sexy. And Mr. O was just… ohh that guy (sambil mengeleng-gelengkan kepala gue)… he just spat great words like… ehm, searching in mind for a good analogy… ehm.. still searching… like what… like… yeah… like spitting, I guess. Well the day was here. The fossilization of a sliver of history begins. A day that will go and exist on the fifth dimension, a day that will be talked by generations to come. I congratulate my American neighbors, it is a privilege for a sojourner like me to share the same time & space in their historical day.

song of life

Check out this link to Desree's Life, one my favorite song. Beautiful song, pretty woman, nice video clip. She is like Michelle Obama that can sing... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQsOXnZsOTg

The MOD

Last week at MoMA I saw some of Giorgio de Chiricho paintings. Many art experts have studied and argued of his painting styles that border between surrealist and abstract arts. I have always liked his works because of their immediate emotional impact created by the exaggerated perspective, intense shadows, and a mood-draping color palette. One that I saw in New York is The Melancholy of Departure. That painting fits exactly into I was trying to say in the previous blog about the state of feeling in farewells.

The key feature in the painting is also the smallest element: two figures walking down a perspectively stretched road. You can barely hear the loud and noisy train in the back, but it is there. The structure of the station is elongated in all three directions. One item that perplexes everyone is the still-life banana in the foreground. It is a technique that de Chiricho used to further play the game of scale and contrast. Not everyone can comprehend the size of sky, a locomotive, or a station. But everyone knows more or less the size of a banana. With all these effects working together in the painting, it creates a sense of intense aural and emotional isolations of the two figures from the surroundings but at the same time exaggerates the closeness of them together. That is the state of feeling when you are saying goodbye to a good friend, that is … the melancholy of departure.

a perfect cold life

Today is January 16, 2008. The temperature in the morning when I came to work was around -4 Farenheit (-20 Celcius) It was one of the coldest temperature in a decade here. In cold temperature like this, the air particle is so thin and everything seems so crystal clear. In my morning walk to the office, skiddy and icy, I noticed the color of the sky was cool blue and white, almost colorless. The tree branches were amazingly still. So still unlike other days. I thought it was a perfect cold day, a perfect cold life.

notes from a lazy soul

Why learning is a pain? Why is it so painful when you are learning something new? I am trying to figure that out. It is a funny thing. I do but I still don't understand Mr. Confusius! So why then we still learn new things in our life? To grow? Maybe that's the motivation, the pain killer of learning is to imagine the possibilities, the rewards. Agh, I wish there is a better pain killer for learning.

car design

I am curious about car design recently. Can architects design cars?, ... What if. What if we treat it is an architectural problem and think about car as an ultra compact-portable house, the perfect machine for living. Ehm, isn't that what an RV does? No, not that kind of living. A normal size car. I wonder if we can produce something more critical but also visually interesting. Not just a preconceived cool form. And not necessarily a hyper-futuristic concept cars seen in many design students portfolios.

The most obvious similarity and at the same time the main contrast with architecture is in the balance between form and function. A good car design needs an intricate balance in extreme engineering and high aesthetic performance requirements. The depth of sophistication between form and function is probably beyond what we usually have to deal with. So this problem might be a good mental detour (slash) exploration. And I am sure it would be an interesting design exercise for any one.