Function, Not Fashion

My husband has been persuading me to buy a new handphone. He said that a young professional like me needs a better phone than what I am currently using (of course, he put that annoying teasing tone when pronouncing both “young” and “professional” parts, well, never mind). And I just shrugged my shoulder as a response to it. I don’t know why I need a new phone while the phone in my hand is now working perfectly for texting, telephoning and a little bit of internet to check the e-mails. That’s a handphone is all about, isn’t it? 

He insisted on taking me to BEC (the biggest electronic centre in Bandung) and offering extra cash from his saving if the price of my future phone exceeds my budget. For information, the handphone I am currently using was a handphone my husband initially bought for himself about a year ago, but he gave it to me right after he opened the package, because he realized that I needed that phone more than he did. He is sweet. Most of the time, anyway. 

What he doesn’t know is that I am not interested in buying a new phone because I am in love with this device from Amazon: Kindle 3. All ebook lovers must have been familiar with this device. It’s not quite a fancy gadget like the infamous blackberry or ipad, but this humble black and white device that its function is purely for reading and buying ebooks online is so apt for me! 

I have been dreaming of having this gadget, but because in its early years of production the price was still high and Amazon didn’t sell kindle to Indonesia, particularly the early generations of it, I had to hold my breath. That’s a disadvantage of living in a country where reading is not considered as a general habit, or culture, if you like. Till recently I browsed through eBay and found that the price of this gadget has reduced dramatically and some sellers can ship it to Indonesia. Oh, I sooo deserve this gadget, don’t I? don’t I? 

But there came the second problem, I have no paypal account, therefore cannot do internet transaction, unless I ask help from my best friend D who has one. When I asked him whether I can use his paypal account to buy this gadget, he raised his eyebrows and said something along the lines of ”What? Are you gonna buy that reader gadget? It’s so old-fashioned. You can ruin my reputation on e-Bay if using my account to buy that stuff” (jokingly, of course) and start lecturing that I better buy a sophisticated iPad or other tablet. Oh my, being surrounded by these gadget lovers makes my life seem so miserable. 

But with patience and endurance only a sales person of Amazon could possibly posses, I explained that kindle is not comparable to ipad as they both carry different purposes. Kindle is a device specifically designed for reading. It’s light, and and it’s eye friendly because the screen uses e-ink instead of LCD. I know that when I use this device in front of others, chances are, they will think that I cannot afford an ipad hence buy a cheaper version of it (which is true, actually). But why the hell should I care what other people think about it? I don’t see the advantage of reading an e-book in angkot (public transport), for example, through a tablet that can be used to smack a copet (pickpocket) because of its weight. I buy stuffs because of their function, not just for fashion! Well, most of the time, anyway. 

And after he browsed through internet himself, he finally agreed that buying kindle 3 at this time seems to be a right choice as kindle is about to release the tablet version, most possibly with LCD screen, so the black and white e-ink screen could be the latest version around. In a year from now I probably have to find it in museum if I want to buy one. Ha..ha.. I am sure that’s not what Amazon intended to do with kindle. But the important thing is he agreed that I can use his paypal account, and offered to handle the transaction himself till the device safely comes to his house. All I have to do is pay, wait and pray :)

So now I am impatiently waiting for my kindle to arrive. I know I have to anticipate a line or two comments muttered by my husband that I could’ve bought a more "sophisticated" gadget with the same budget, and again, I have to demonstrate what the sales person of Amazon does. But the bottom line is, sweetheart, you know that I've always been more of a kindle type than a blackberry type of girl. If you know what I mean. :)

Happy Birthday to The Old Lady

Indonesia is celebrating her 66th birthday on the coming 17th August. While she is supposed to be wiser and wealthier as she gets older, this country is suffering from serious diseases. Our beloved old lady is sick. The people of this country, or the cells that make up the flesh and muscles of her body, are aching. 

And if I were a doctor to examine her, I would probably come up with this diagnosis: 

• The central government, or the brain that control the organs of her body, suffers from Alzheimer. They have a severe memory loss, forgetting that the main purpose of their job is to serve the country, the people. Instead, they make the best out of their position to rich themselves. Greed takes over. Systemic corruption is getting prevalent.  

• The local government, or the heart that circulates blood to all cells in the body, suffers from coronary heart disease. It can no longer circulate blood fairly because of too many plaques hardening and narrowing the coronary arteries. More wealth is concentrated in some areas and some people, while the less fortunate ones only get less and less. 

• The judicial system, or the kidney that excretes waste and toxin from blood, suffers from kidney failure. It can no longer filter the bad from the good. In fact, the bad is continued to be circulated while the good goes to urination. Corruption and bribery go hand in hand. The court system is only for the poor who has no resource to bribe, while the wealthy criminals remain untouchable. 

• The education, or the bone that support the body, suffers from Osteoporosis. It can no longer support this country’s obesitized body. Education is there for people with money, by bribing all along the way from kindergarten to university. All these pampered kids have to do is laying their butts on the classroom’s chairs, do the exam if they can, or just wait for the answer from systemic cheating organized by the teacher for the sake of the school’s prestige. 

• The media, or the eyes of this country, suffer from Cataract. Political interests drive the media to air things for special purposes only. Certain corruptors being displayed over and over, while some others who are actually much dangerous crooks remain hidden. It’s laughable, considering that most corruption cases are systemic and almost impossible to be done by single person.

• As a response, some of the cells of her body turn to be malicious cancer. Some manifest in a form of rampant corruptions and bribery, some others in a form of radical Islamism, terrorism, killing of the so called religious deviants, etc. Scary.

These diseases are most possibly caused by unhealthy lifestyle, too much delicious intake and lack of exercise. Excessive external debt and the abundance of natural resources are pampering this country. Not too mention the endless development of malls, and endless luxurious imported products flooding Indonesian market on daily basis.

And this lady is lack of exercise. She rarely shakes her butts (unless there was an earthquake). She is too lazy to uphold the law and justice. Too lazy to take care of the poor and homeless children. Too lazy to protect the local products and small industries. Too lazy to conserve the environment. Too lazy to learn about technology. Although it doesn’t need a rocket science to process raw material to be end products, she’d rather exporting  the raw materials which creates small added value, while she could've done much better. 

Can she be healed? I hope so, though I don’t know where to begin. Maybe by improving the education? Let students pursue the true learning by doing projects that have distributions to other people’s life, and let them be satisfied and proud of doing it. If necessary, in-class examination and entrance tests should be abolished, because they incite cheating and bribery anyway.

Or by improving the media? Put more television programs about knowledge, science, discoveries, and less programs about corruption and infotainment. Less displays of pseudo wealth and luxury through sinetrons, and more shows about reality.

Or improving the judicial system? Since nobody can no longer be trusted and it’s hard to change an already established “culture” in judicial system, could it be possible that the judicial system is changed to computerization? More criminal detector devices, and more robocops, please. 

But one thing that I know for sure is I love this old lady as much as I love my late grandma. And although she’s currently not in her best condition, and this bitter rambling probably just infuriates her on so many levels, let me truly, sincerely say: Happy birthday, Nana. Get your kicks on Route 66 :)  May happiness, fairness, and righteousness be with you in years and years to come.

The Frauds Among Us

We’ve been thinking of selling the house and moving to somewhere closer to the workplace and the children’s school. Therefore, last week we tried our luck by putting a column advertisement on the most well known daily paper in West Java, with the hope that we can attract some prospective buyers of the house.

The ad was placed on the Saturday edition of the paper. We crossed our fingers and since early that day we’d been eagerly waiting for a call responding to it. The first response that we received in the morning was a text message, saying: 

Hallo, I am Ms. Fitri, I read your ad on the paper, and your house suits my preference. Would you please contact my husband to do negotiation about the price? His name is Mr. Hendarto and he can be contacted at this number 08XXXXXX. 

Okay, that message sounds fishy. How can people be interested in a house that they haven’t seen, let alone visited? And why should we make a call instead of them calling us? I’ve heard some news about phone scam, where the scammers, through a phone conversation lead the victims to transfer some money through ATM. I guessed this person was one of them. So we ignored that message.

It was not very long after the first message when we received the second text message from different sender number, saying:

Hallo, I am Ms. Emy, I read your ad on the paper, and your house suits my preference. Would you please contact my husband to do negotiation about the price? His name is Mr. Hartanto and he can be contacted at this number 08XXXXXX. 

Oh, my... If they are planning a scam, at least they should be more creative about it. Why do they think they can fool people by using different number and changing the names, but not altering the sentence even a little bit? They must be the stupidest scammers around. So, again, we ignored that message.

And we didn’t have to wait for long before that idiot sending another message:

Hallo, I am Mrs.Sri Mulyani, I read your ad on the paper, and your house suits my preference. Would you please contact my husband to do negotiation about the price? His name is Mr. Tony and he can be contacted at this number 08XXXXXX. 

At this point we couldn’t help but laughed our a*s off. Sri Mulyani? The former finance minister of Indonesia who is currently the Director of IMF? Oh, Mrs. Sri Mulyani, it’s an honour if you’re interested in buying our humble house. Thanks but no, thanks, we’re not that desperate.

Getting tired of receiving this rubbish, my husband answered to that text message :

Thank you Mrs. Sri Mulyani. If you’re interested in buying the house, please contact Komisaris Polisi XXXX for he is the owner of the house. I am only the intermediary.

Komisaris Polisi, or Police Commissioner is the mid rank officer of Indonesian National Police. And the answer message apparently worked. She/he/they stopped texting us. Good to know that police institution can finally come in handy  :) 

So that day we basically just laughed, cringed,  laughed again. There goes our 60 thousand rupiahs for putting the ad for nothing. The rest of the messages that we received that day is just a load of some other rubbish. Like this one:

I am a paranormal expert. If you want to have luck in selling the house, you can get my insight by contacting me at 08XXXXXX. The fee is only 100 thousand rupiahs.

Or the most recent one:

I am Preacher AsXX from Majalengka. I can help selling your house with the fee being only 200 thousand rupiahs. Guaranteed that your house can be sold within 3 hours.

Sold within three hours? Was he talking about selling a house? Or Justin Bieber concert tickets?

My, oh my…. what a fraudulent society we live in. Wasn’t there any sane person reading our ad at all? We had experience putting an ad some years ago when we sold the previous house, but we didn’t receive fraudulent messages back then as many as we do now. Their population is growing very fast apparently. Probably due to the conducive atmosphere created by the fraudulent political elites in this country. But I digress.

Maybe putting an ad on the paper is not a good idea to begin with, as that can expose us to the crooks that need full alertness to deal with. We’d better come to the professional property agent and let them suffer do the job. :)

License to Bribe

Photo credit: dailymail

Last Saturday I went to the police office to extend my driver's license. I headed off there with positive mind because from what I heard, there is no room for bribery in getting driver's license nowadays as police officers are in attempt to heal their image after a lot of humiliating cases involving police institution that give them bad names.

Soon as I got to the police office, I went straight to the counter where there is one police officer waiting. And below is the script of my conversation with this officer, with a little bit of modification as I can’t exactly remember word by word.

• Me (showed my old driver's license) : “Good morning. I’d like to extend my driver's license, please”

• Him (took the license and observed it) : “Morning, Mam. Where do you work?”

• Me (puzzled with his question. What does my work got to do with driver's license?) : “Oh, I work for XXXXX”

• Him : “And where does your husband work?”

• Me (puzzled even more. And what the hell has husband’s work got to do with my driver's license?) : “My husband works XXXXX”

• Him (Smile in relief) : “Okay, let me explain the procedure. We had two procedures in extending a driver's license here. One is the regular procedure. You have to take one of the forms on the desk outside and fill in it. After doing the paperwork, you have to have your health checked in the next building, and make a payment on the bank, then come back here to hand all the papers. Then you have to wait till you are asked to take a picture and finger print, and have another wait till your license is issued. The second one is the special procedure. All you have to do is giving me this old license and the copy of your ID card then wait. You’ll be asked to take a picture and finger print, then your license is done” 

• Me : “I see. So, there are two lines of procedures. And what is the difference between these two in term of the fee?” 

• Him: “For the regular procedure you only have to pay a hundred thousand rupiahs. For the special procedure you have to pay a hundred and fifty thousand rupiahs. But again you don’t have to take the special procedure if you are reluctant to pay the extra fee”

• Me (Starting to get the idea on why he asked me about work. The standard fee for extending driver's license is one hundred thousand rupiahs. So the extra fifty thousands is bribery to "smooth things down". Maybe he was afraid if I am a journalist or people who can report the bribery case) : “Can I go outside and have a thought for a while?”

• Him: “Sure, Mam”

So I went outside and had a thought. If I took the regular or “do it yourself” procedure, I would have to do all the hassle in filling in the form, having a health check and lining up to pay to the bank. It would certainly take a long time. If I took the special or “leave it to me” procedure, all I had to do was sit and wait. It would be fast and hassle free. 

For a second I thought to take the regular procedure. Bribing will mean betrayal to my value. I condemn bribery, no matter how minuscule the amount of money involved is. Say no to bribery! 

But then I remembered my kids who were waiting sweaty in the car. There flashed before my eyes their school projects that needed my help to do, some clothes for work that needed ironing, some new DVDs that I was dying to watch, some works from the office that I took home with me… oh, my. I didn’t have the luxury to do all that hassle in getting the driver's license while I had many more important things to do, including writing for this blog :)

So, pathetically, I put a hundred and fifty thousand rupiahs in the folder and handed it to the officer. It took no longer than ten minutes till my new license was issued, while I could see that some people who came way before me and went through the regular procedure still stayed in line waiting.

I bribed, and it was humiliating. But what’s more humiliating is the way these officers open rooms for bribery by taking advantage of people who have no time luxury like me. They give options of the slow lane and the fast lane, which inevitably encourage people to bribe. Who on earth would want to do things slowly if they could do it fast? (unless we're talking about making love, of course). If these officers really intend to uplift their image, why don’t they set one regular procedure and cut the inefficiency to make things faster? If paying an extra fifty thousand rupiahs can make me skip some steps in making the license, then maybe these particular steps were not meant to be in the procedure to begin with. 

There goes my dream to have a clean country where no people bribe and corrupt. And I, for one, maintain this practice of bribery by choosing to bribe myself. Damn!

A Weapon Against Bullying

Photo credit : Livebullyfree

My daughter was a victim of bullying. When she was in the first grade of elementary school, in almost every afternoon when I came home from work, she would tell me about how her friend bullied her. It was not physical bullying, like my kid was beaten or something, but was enough to drive me crazy. This little girl friend of her, just call her Little Miss Meany, often asked for my daughter’s money, asked my daughter to buy her food, or asked her to give an answer during the tests. And what really got my nerve was when this girl did a "conspiracy" with another student, just call her Little Miss ‘D’, to frame my girl. They hid one of their friend’s shoes then told the teacher that my girl did it. Were they little criminals or what?

I spoke to the teacher about this, and it was responded by the promise like “Oh, all right, we’re gonna pay more attention to them”. But did anything happen? No. I then intended to talk to this girl or her parents, but after taking some time pondering, it occurred to me that the problem of bullying cannot always be solved by parents but rather by the kids themselves. If I can solve the problem by talking to Little Miss Meany or her parents, there is no guarantee that no other kids will bully my daughter again, and again. Do I have to talk to each of them? It would be like a never ending job.

So, this is what I eventually decided to do: I equipped my children with a weapon, the LOVE weapon. I spoke to my daughter as much as I could, that “We love you very much. You are very precious, too precious to be bullied. We will do anything to protect you, but sometimes you have to stand up and speak out for yourself. Nobody can hurt you if you don’t let them”. I repeated this thing over and over like some magic spells. It is not that we never showed our love and affection before, but I wanted to make sure that she knew how worthwhile she was.

And it apparently worked. Slowly, Little Miss Meany stopped bullying my daughter. Everyday I talked with my daughter to make some kind of evaluation, and she told me that anytime that girl threatened her by saying something like “If you don’t give me money, I will tell other friends not to play with you” or “If you don’t give me the answer I will tell D’s mother to arrest you. She is a police officer”, or other threats that can actually send me laughter in a good mood, my daughter just walked away and ignored her completely. Or if this Little Miss Meany was so persistent with what she wanted, my daughter would speak up and confront her cause she realized that she was too precious to be bullied. Her self esteem was apparently boosted by my magic spells. :)

Now they are in the third grade and I am happy for them becoming good friends. When my kid was sick and absent from school, this Little Miss Meany (who is not so mean anymore) even called her to ask if she was okay and let her know about the homework from the teacher. Good girl.

I don’t know how other parents handle the bullying issue when it happens to their kids. But so far in my case, I find that boosting the self esteem of our kids by showing them that they are dearly loved can be an absolute weapon against bullying of any kind.

Religion Subject

Photo credit : Kevin Spear

My children are having a mid-semester test. And as usual, last night I helped them studying. The first subject to be tested is Religion. Okay, let's see the reading materials.... What? My forehead started to frown. Most of the lessons taught to these elementary school students contain subjects that need to be painstakingly memorized and only a small proportion of it touches the moral lesson.

Wait a moment, honey, Ibu needs a little time to sit back and think. Religion is supposed to be a moral compass for human’s life. If in a religion subject students only have to blindly memorize some Arabic scripts without really comprehending the implication of the religious values in their real life it will be somewhat useless.

That probably partly explains why corruption is prevalent in Indonesia, even though the majority of its citizens have religions. Religion is never properly taught. It is only presented in a form of dogmatic theory, and lack of logical interpretation. I think what the country needs at the moment is a moral education that enables students to grasp and apply the concept of honesty, dignity and integrity.

I know that the primary responsibility to educate children lies with the parents, but it would be much helpful if teachers can create a system to make students understand, using their language of course, that bribery is immoral, corruption is a big crime, cheating is disgraceful, and most importantly, greed is harmful both to yourself and to other human beings. If they decide to take religious route, those values are all there to dig up in the holy books, whatever holy book it is that they use as a reference, if the teachers are not trapped by the rigid way of teaching religions.

Forgive me if I only have a little knowledge about Indonesian curriculum, but I think giving the young generation moral education is a good foundation to reconstruct the broken system as a whole.

All right, kids, let's continue studying. Don't push yourself too hard, though. I won’t blame you if tomorrow you  get low grade in religion test. With ridiculously abundant things to memorize, who will not?

Driving Tips in Indonesia

Driving in the middle of Indonesian traffic is quite a challenge because the traffic, particularly in big cities, is extremely chaotic. You may take it as a tongue-in-cheek sort of guide, but here I list some tips for driving in Indonesia, particularly in Bandung, my beloved city:

• Indonesia drives on the left. But this cannot always be the case when a lot of roads are damaged, having holes here and there, and no pave way for pedestrian. So this rule commonly becomes: people drive on the middle of the road, unless there is another car approaching from the opposite direction, you can slightly move your car to the left.

• All vehicles are on the same lane. Whether it is private car, truck, angkot (angkutan kota, public car), motorcycle, or bicycle, in some areas you also have delman (horse driven cart) and becak (human driven cart) on the same lane. To move along with them, you really need a skill to move the gear stick at the right moment and control the speed of your car to suit the speed of becak or delman in front of your car.

• Motorcycle can pass your car on whatever side. It can pass on the right or on the left of your car all the time. It can even be zigzagging across the road. So, beware! Keep the wheel straight all the time.

• Angkot has a privilege to stop anywhere. Don’t be surprised if an angkot passes on the right of your car, then suddenly makes a left cut in front of you and pull over to pick up some passengers on the left side of the road. Angkot is also granted a privilage to enter the road whenever they want without considering other cars’ right of way.

• Pedestrians can cross the street whenever and wherever they want, only by waving their hands. Since their wish is your command, your foot has to be ready to step on the brake whenever they suddenly cross in front of your car. Zebra cross is just a waste of paint and pedestrian crossing bridge is just a waste of construction material.

• People really love to use horn. Even if it’s in the middle of a severe traffic jam and people know that there is no possibility for the cars to move even for an inch, you can join them in blaring the horn, just to cheer up the situation.

• When there is an accident, it doesn’t matter who makes a mistake, the car will be given an honour to bear the responsibility. This is the rule of thumb: accident between car and motorcycle: the car is to blame, accident between car and pedestrian: the car is to blame, accident between car and angkot: the car is to blame, accident between car and becak: the car is to blame. To blame. To blame. So you must really, really proceed with caution.

• The last tip, if you feel like screaming, cursing or yelling at people that piss you off on the road, feel free to do so. Just yell it out from the window, or make a fist or any sign with your fingers. Nobody will be mad at you. People on the road are very understanding.

One thing I can guarantee about driving in Indonesia: if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Enjoy! :D