To You Far from Here I Secretly Adore: I am Fine

Despite our ups and downs, I always really wish that I could be as strong as you are.

Read more...

Before Midnight

When I think of nothing, more often than not, there will always be a coincidence comes to attract my attention. It is like a balloon in a quiet room suddenly pops, shattering the stillness.

How often you can hear a song playing with some kind of lyrics that gives a shot in your mind unintentionally? It can be of anywhere; when I am on the platform waiting for the next train to come in, on the street trapped in a bus rushing with the traffic, or even in a car listening to the radio together with the significant other (to put it bluntly, I actually missed all these kind of things already!). I believe that there is no such a thing as containing no reason. Hurtful or pleasurable, tearful or giving another a tumble, we just need to look at these coincidences fully in the face.

It has been almost two years since I cut the fat. Yes, cut the fat and decided to withdraw from. There is no point to live in a place where your presence stimulates bad energy occurs in the others, that's it.

For two years as well, I worked with humble people, mainly for the pursuit of ideas. I worked in a place where some things that I had learned for four years that 'there is no such thing as free lunch' can be somewhat voidable. 

This "Empty Chair" video reminds me of them. 

Let's just raise a glass to the character of community who is out of sight but not out of mind. Guinness said that they remind us that: a true test of character is what you do when no one's looking.

Implicitly they tell us as well to not always trying to impress others or trying to look for the others' attention by telling every single details of what we do. Noted.

There is such a thing as free lunch there, literally free lunch. And that is not the only reason so that I could stay. Simply it was derived by my own anxiety; how does it can be truly appeared in the world full of flaws we live in? In the world that we ought to think confidently that human are naturally unemotional. There must be something that cannot be explained, which their so-called excellent system of a brain often assume it as irrationality.

"We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments." (Daniel Kahneman)

Sometimes I think; how can we define us have already made sense while others not when all the things that we did so far is actually that kind of nonsense thing? And that is a nonsense thing we have assumed before. This confusing behaviour of human making me realized that perhaps it may always myopically clearer to see the flaws in the others than it is to see the flaws in ourselves. Or it could be just an unintentional lie, like a manifestation of their unconscious state of mind. Really really really insensible.

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad."

To me that part is like reminiscing to some sort of a short story above by Salvador Dali called 'A Madman and Me'. However, at least hopefully I know I am mad.

Well anyway before midnight, greetings from somewhere!

Read more...

Amateur's Captures: Before Sunrise

Read more...

Talk Sense to a Fool and (S)he Calls You Foolish

"Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs."

--Roy Blount Jr.

Read more...

Secondly Published!

Months ago, got a call from Mbak Eny. She said that Mr Keith wants the article to be published again. And since I am no longer an intern so that my office email has been deactivated, he called to put my active email in the article.

This gratitude goes to a very honorable Mr Keith.

It's such a self-rewarding to see what was on mind stretching in four pages of a foremost institution's magazine. There's no other purpose unless self-satisfaction feeling that: at least the idea has been delivered. Anywhere and anytime.

After all the discussions and re-writings with him, my evocative and rubbish English, I'd come to a conclusion that writing is not that easy. Been realized that I do still have and want so much to learn.

Read more...

Everyone Does, Fairly

Some would say that it's easier for us to give such an advice or more of an encouragement to people when you can put yourself into that person and to feel the same. Apparently.

But there are times when I just don't get it and things are way too contradictive exactly for the same occasion, thrills, and needs that could lead to the limited words spoken.

It may because we are really that person. And need not trying to getting us into.

[Moses] said, "O my Lord, open for me my chest (with assurance), and ease for me my task, and untie the knot (the defect) from my tongue, that they may understand my speech. And appoint for me a helper from my family. Haroon, my brother. Increase through him my strength, and let him share my task of conveying Allah message and Propethood, that we may exalt You much, and remember You much. Indeed, You are of us ever Seeing." (Q.S. Ta-Ha: 20, Verse 25-35). 

Despite of all the backgrounds alleged to be the engine; this is not about Gary and Guity, nor me and the anxiety. This is all mainly about getting done of what I've started.

And maybe there are things that's just better be finished.

So still I hope nothing serious next week. *finger finger crossed*

- M

Read more...

To Know I've (v)-ed You Before You Do

Read more...

Art is Honest & Palm Has a Face

At age twelve, when I answered to my art and drawing teacher why drawing a picture of children with no face and a plant with human's face, he claimed on me:

"You're always good at the concept, but not at the execution."

Well I didn't mean to execute, I just meant to draw.

---

While today is sad but yet so fun, at least I could laugh all day long just to remember what me and my friend did during the series of presentation. I didn't know where exactly did the joke came from but it seemed amusing to pay attention on human's ambiguity.

It was just really nice to play at our own world as well as to imagine something silly among the room's atmosphere of seriousness. I hope nothing serious next week. *finger crossed*

- M

Read more...

Chronos and Kairos

Walking on Water

by Madeleine L'Engle

Kairos. Real time. God’s time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we’re constantly checking our watches for chronological time.

The saint in contemplation, lost to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside herself in the game, be it building a sand castle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos. In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings, co-creators with God, touching on the wonder of creation.

This calling should not be limited to artists, or saints, but it is a fearful calling. It is both Mana and taboo. It can destroy as well as bring into being.

In Our Town, after Emily has died in childbirth, Thornton Wilder has her ask the Stage Manager if she can return home to relive just one day. Reluctantly he allows her to do so. And she is torn by the beauty of the ordinary, and by our lack of awareness of it. She cries out to her mother, “Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me… it goes so fast we don’t have time to look at one another.”

And she goes back to the graveyard and the quiet company of the others lying there, and she asks the Stage Manager “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” And he sighs and says, “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”

Read more...

Could It Just Be A One War?

If I went all along against my mind (during that time), that means I'm now trying hard to be softened a bit and to let my pride was being trampled by my success against them. And there are things that should not be more beautiful than a big reason behind it all.

Read more...

She Caught the Last Bus Home

So this is what they called Jakarta at its nice (art-speaking).

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day."

(Vincent van Gogh)

Read more...

Amateur's Captures: Across the Picturesque Strait

Read more...

Does Solitude Mean Selfish?

What costs us to decide something? Somebody else's freedom, interest, happiness, and well-being?

In life, we are faced with several options: to make it or to take it all away. I believe that there's no single thing in this world that happens to be the first-best-option. That once we decide, it could be no zero cost of impact comes to pass the surface. We may harm the others as well as we may benefit them.

But it's also not about what's been decided, rather how we pay to the consequences that may occur once we decide. And it happens all the time. Like the government who needs to create a policy that may harm people while benefit the business(wo)men, the key is on the rent distribution. How they accommodate the loss received by the people using the value of benefit collected by the businessmen/women.

However I forgot that I'm not a kind of government-like since I only govern myself. And it's not a kind of a public choice analysis since it doesn't mean to be a public good. Or even if it has to be a public good, I prefer to use private choice analysis approach because for me it really is, a private one.

Read more...

Attaining Equilibrium: Of Any Given S & D

Source: Ramblings Of An Asshole

Read more...

Solution: Rule or Discretion?

(Di suatu kelas, dua orang mahasiswi sotoy sama istilah ngobrol ngalur-ngidul gara-gara lelah menunggu sesuatu yang tak pasti).

X: Ibunya punya kecenderungan buat dicap ngga kredibel nih, bilangnya mau masuk jam 2 tapi sekarang udah mau jam 4. Tadi aja sesi pertama baru masuk jam 12 padahal harusnya jam 11.

Y: Itu artinya ekspektasi muridnya ngga menggunakan adaptive expectation, ngga belajar dari kesalahan masa lalu.

X: Masalahnya adaptive expectation udah ngga cocok lagi buat dipake di kehidupan, udah ada rational expectation.

Y: Masalahnya muridnya udah rasional belum? Abisan ini ada problem assymmetric information. Kan kita ngga tau apakah pas ibunya ngomong itu sunggu-sungguh akan ditepati atau ngga.

...

Z: Maaf ya tadi saya bilang mau masuk jam 2, saya lagi banyak urusan ini, nanti aja saya ngajar sampai malam. Maaf ya, jadi ada time-inconsistency deh.

Read more...

Nothing’s 100% Fidelity, Mayang!

My friend told me about her quick experience,

Y: Cantik banget sihh

X: Apa sih lu

There was a guy (Y) who had a crush on her (X), perhaps not an exact crush but rather just a form of admiration, or even, having a space of interlude to flirt to, or to be more extreme, joking. Be it whatever.

For a second she was actually having a blushed-cheek yet feeling so embarrassed. But then it wouldn't mean anything though, based on the fact that he didn't really mean it or because she couldn't imagine how hurt it is to be a girlfriend of a guy who, roughly speaking, was doing some kind of flirting with (an)other god's creature, one of the illustrations, herself.

Yes, he already got a girl.

(Case closed).

Couple of days ago I had an afternoon conversation with a friend named Lia. And as the other typical girls living on earth, it's always nice to talk about relationships, feelings, or sensibility. Everything that are practically not about your story, but you just experience that you can adjust that into yours. We always find it interesting on things brilliantly touch the smallest part of our own huh?

In a nutshell she said that's normal if sometimes we simply feel bored with our partner and decide to have an interlude. So when the day comes, jusat have an interlude too for us.

For a while I couldn't agree since she was talking while driving, when all the things she said was worth of half-trusted because the rest of her 50% were left on the street. But who would place a tendency of impossible outcome on the multi-tasking probability of a girl?

H₀: μ < 0.05 (Lia does not really mean of what she said)

H₁: μ >= 0.05 (Lia does really mean of what she said)

What to test?

I was questioning her a lot, few times all those rebuffs in my head seeking to get out through a number of why(s).

But then I couldn't find what to reject, since the rejection region was not clearly defined, or in the other words, failed to plan a test, which means, brought thinking to an halt. That's a pre-assumption of life's choice before a destiny happens to come (t), we'll fail when we decide to stop trying (thinking). Otherwise a failure may be called as a destiny when we talk about it after what would have happened to life (t+1).

Flashing back to the topic; and then I thought maybe I was just too naive hence I couldn't accept what she said immediately. Too much drowned by hundreds of pages of Nicholas Sparks's books. Imagining that Landon Carter, Alex Wheatley, and Paul Flanner are the real human beings and not only as characters. Dreaming of a true allegiance between Noah and Allie does really exist.

Oh Mr. Sparks, why were you so damn trustworthy? Or maybe I have to turn the question; why I was so dumb and so easy to be fooled by your lovely paraphrases?

Read more...

To Draw What's On

Street Scene in Montmartre: Le Moulin de Poivre (van Gogh, 1887)

"They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects."

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 58.

Read more...

That Would Be A Good Title

Celine:

Memory is a wonderful thing, if you don't have to, uh, deal with the past.

Jesse:

"Memory is a wonderful thing, if you don't have to deal with the past." Can I put that on a bumper sticker?

(Before Sunset, 2004)

Read more...

A Glimpse of Holding Constant Our Own Value Judgement

So the World Development Report 2012 is out! We can download it for free here.

Despite its holding issue and I know that changes remain possible in every part of our life, I'm just thrilled as it lends a hand on me to keep in faith at least. Coincidence? Pretty much. Every so often a coincidence comes up when we play around only to that vicinity, right? So it may be not that "real coincidence". But further question is, is that wrong? To jump over only to the freshwater rather than the saltwater lake in finding a trout. Though we aimed not to find a huge seatrout after all.

And I have to put aside all my previous judgements on this required completion of study. So please guide me to play in a positive check, not a normative one. For months or years ahead.

Last night, I just had a talk with a friend. We agreed to be disagreed and we didn't insist to joint when it just didn't have to because actually it was mutual in sharing and that went without saying. It was all about tolerance and we chatted about that as well.

Tolerance. How do we handle with that? Is this the thing that we need or is this a normative side of our behavior? At times I think, is there any impact of one's behavior to another one's behavior? I mean (to give a context), do surroundings widely determine on how we act?

Genuinely I am fascinated by the work of permisiveness; how could a smoker befriend with the one who don't smoke at all? How a drinker may sit and sip a glass of white Russian in front of the one who drink a mock of cocktail. How about the drug users, do they leave a friend who doesn't do any drugs behind? Do they stop talking with a friend who refuses their invitation to go clubbing at places somewhere over the city lights? Do we start to avoid an atheist? Do we laugh at people's faces when we hear they simply want to do a pray of any given religion that they keep in heart? Do we leave a space to people who (un)decide a marriage or an affair?

Do we provoke others to dislike people who don't walk in the same pathway of mind or people who don't stand in the same circle with us?

Yes, it is all about tolerance. Empathy, acceptance, understanding, or any sensible term we want to include. And again, it's in different context if we wish for locating our own value judgement inside.

This is an apology of having too much questions. Sorry for being a bit neurotic at this time, unless that there's always time-inconsistency (when we put a matter of time in such variable) but it's been so often for me to throw many question marks and become a little bit annoying to ask for longer when I can't meet the expense of any statement. Hence never stop asking, there's no such a sure thing and I just thought that we're living in an indefinite world, aren't we?

Read more...

Most Conflicts We Have Actually Based On Its Substances

Weird is, he who creates it he who blames on it. Many would deem it's stupid, but defining words requires more efforts to feel and to go beyond into chords.

We're too often trapped in a conflict with fewer solutions and it has lessened its chance to be solved. Like a moderator failing to pull the final wrap-ups, the debate is based on an equivalent context that doesn't exist. Some insist from the word of "d" and "e", some try to identify "fi" and "nit", and some how to unlock the suffix of "ion". How could the conflict's solution fail when the debate is so beautifully orchestrated from each perspective?

It may because they have gone too far from an endeavor to define the "definition" itself.

Somehow there's innocence within a stupidity, and there's political aspect inside a weirdness. We can't afford to pay attention on these both and to compare them each other since they are derived from a different context. We can actually, but it's just better not.

Read more...

Story of A Naïve Utopian

Safe Haven, Scott Everingham

She once imagined this world actually consists of good people, that all those issues in such headlines are just a somerset play-like so that they get plenty of things to do and to cope those life's strange phenomenons and bizarre creatures--keeping them busy all day long whilst avoiding them being paid in an idleness. Dreams that are noteworthy.

Read more...

Yes, Sir. I Do Still Have So Much To Learn

An article from my professor. Never been taught by him but really would like to.

Read more...

Mona Lisa Smirk

Last month, The Economist put a forlorn issue on its headline. After a concern on previous rating downgrade, they stopped for a while to such trend in the eastern part of the world before they continued the journey to a matter of current job plan today. A sec stop in an issue of love despair among Asians vis-a-vis the falling of marriage rates.

Something reacted in my face was nothing but a smile when I read the article.

You could imagine a Cruella in me, of looking at her innocent Dalmatians skin, being peeled off softly, or in the other head, how this anti-marriage activist, staring at something going on the earth, which most of them, working properly as her plan, particularly related to what she have campaigned for.

But don't always get so hard to the dark side. (Lemme have a moment for an excuse) I smiled simply because of the issue, it's nice to see how the world pays attention to your mind, an appearance of chemistry between these both that leads you to the perplexity, either what's been discussed here derived from the truth happens in the world or vice versa. It's the time that decides but the shorter thing is they are harmonized.

However there are some parts of the article, notwithstanding its fundamental argument, but essentially left disharmonized, probably regarding their suggestion on how to revive marriage in Asia:

Relaxing divorce laws might, paradoxically, boost marriage. Women who now steer clear of wedlock might be more willing to tie the knot if they know it can be untied—not just because they can get out of the marriage if it doesn’t work, but also because their freedom to leave might keep their husbands on their toes.

One thing seems a little bit nonsense or maybe two. Is it true that an ease to divorce might boost marriage, so it equals to, women reject marriage because of the tight procedures that divorce has? Sadly no, such an exhausted form of bureaucracy is not a big deal for women.

The second one is what about the reversion effect of women's freedom to leave? It is said that the freedom might keep their husband at home, no? A thousand times yes if the husband covered by a fear of women's freedom, but a million times no if it makes the husband blissfully freer from home. I have so much to learn.

Further recommendation: Why is divorce in Indonesia increasing?

Read more...

Katherine Ann Watson

Since Pretty Woman had brought her name high, how I love her character most here.

---Wellesley College, 1950s---

Katherine Watson: Since your wedding, you've missed six classes, a paper and your midterm.
Betty Warren: I was on my honeymoon and then I had to set up house. What does she expect?
Katherine Watson: Attendance.
Connie Baker: [timidly] Most of the faculty turn their heads when the married students miss a class or two.
Katherine Watson: Well then why not get married as freshman? That way you could graduate without actually ever stepping foot on campus.
Betty Warren: Don't disregard our traditions just because you're subversive.
Katherine Watson: Don't disrespect this class just because you're married.
Betty Warren: Don't disrespect me just because you're not.
Katherine Watson: Come to class, do the work, or I'll fail you.
Betty Warren: If you fail me, there will be consequences.
Katherine Watson: Are you threatening me?
Betty Warren: I'm educating you.
Katherine Watson: That's *my* job.

(Mona Lisa Smile, 2003).

Read more...