Not to be a slave, Not to be tortured

News about Indonesian manpower working overseas took my concern few days ago. It’s sad to see all that keeps happening again and again. We (our country, our people) do not seem to learn from the past about what’s happening, and they (our working people), what do they actually look for in foreign country? What do they expect?

Maybe their aim is simple that they want to earn a living for themselves, for their family. But the fact that happened to them is so miserable. The aim of nobility meets the act of cruelty. Going abroad, working as a housemaid with (they think) a sky-high salary may become a temptation, a promising temptation but the fact is it’s just a danger in disguise. Okay, fine! Maybe I never know how hard the lives they had been dealing with in this country; maybe I never know how it feels not to get a financial safety very often in lives whatsoever. Yet all I know is that risking yourself to be tortured abroad is not a justifiable justification to earn a better living after all. That, on the other hand, is just going to hurt you yourself, might as well family you are fighting for.



There are a lot of stories about those Indonesian housemaids going abroad making relatively a lot of money, being spoiled by their boss, coming home with the chance of making new life, a better one. But there are not a few of terrible ones to tell either; about being unpaid, being tortured, being treated like nothing of human, being raped, or even tortured to death. If you think that it is crazy, yes it is. It doesn’t make any sense, no it doesn’t. Certainly it’s still fresh in our memory story about an Indonesian woman climbed down a fourteenth storey room to escape from her boss’s apartment in Malaysia, a woman had to go to the jail in Emirate Arab Union for the thing she never did. Not to mention the recent story of Siti Hajar coming home from Malaysia with all bruises all over her body, burnt and bitten scars around her ear, and dozens of other sad stories I believe it’s not only hurting her (them) physically but also mentally. Our women are not supposed to (must not) be treated that way; no women in this world are. However, our women (most of them, as you know, coming from the side of which enduring financial issue) are blinded by the sky-high salary then risk all the things, their lives actually. So, see the fact! Think twice ladies!

Never said that we blame government for this entire things happened, but they had better provided a better security for their own people (women) working abroad, even can be said their assets. Even before those women decide to go wherever abroad to be a working labor specifically a housemaid, job field should be already provided in their own country. Even if they are determined to go, they should be supplied by those sufficient skills, knowledge, or even self defense skills if necessary (this one is silly I know, but seeing the fact, what would you do?). Eventually, our governments (we obviously) have to defend their (our) self-esteem, telling and proving the world that our country is prosperous enough not to let their own people to be treated as, I’m sorry, slaves in other countries, nor in their own.

Talking about Mood

Unstable mood, overwhelmed bunch of emotion, dissatisfaction, or feeling of losing gut! That sucks huh?! Yeah that really does! And that may highly and commonly happen to anybody. But what is that then if erupting so rapidly and morbidly? Well, let’s psychologically figure that out then. Yeah! We’re going to talk something scientific rather than emotional like I always do hehehe, but it’s still me talking.

I come to the thing that called bipolar disorder; they call it so, the psychologists actually. It has something to do with the presence of your abnormally (if I may say; disorderly) erupted mood state changing, and can be regarded as mood disorder and clinically called mania while for the one which comes to be milder as hypomania. In a severe case, it happens to be psychotic. Wow! then I begin to worry about what I had been experiencing lately. I almost think I could go crazy (yet sure I am not, nuts never call themselves crazy for God’s sake).

Well! In this case the sufferers are most likely to show the symptoms of period of depressive state defined by the persistent presence of anxiety, feeling of sadness, hopelessness, shyness, fatigue, loneliness, problem concentrating, anger, guilt, disturbance of sleeping, social withdrawal, isolation, losing interest, losing apatite and so on and so forth. Severely cause delusion and hallucination and can be regarded to be psychotic. Those symptoms can be also appeared different in each sufferer. And unluckily this heck of disorder can’t be diagnosed evidently through those tests like blood test whatsoever, and it’s hard for even a mental health pro. But scientists believe it’s caused by the imbalance state of the chemical substance in your brain. Environmental influence and genetic factor have things to do with this disorder.

So, according to what I read too, the disorder is divided into four types which are bipolar I with manic state, bipolar II with hypo-manic one, and cyclothymia, and bipolar NOS (not otherwise specified). Those four basically show almost the same symptoms but in different level in each occurrence. For example, in bipolar I, the sufferer may experience manic state with or without major depressive state. Unlike it, in bipolar II, the sufferer may experience at least one major depressive state and hypo-manic span which sometimes, unlike manic state, simply presents the period of having highly work productivity or success, which makes it harder to diagnose. While in cyclothymia appears to be the state of unstable mood changing which interferes the functioning of the sufferer. And the last, bipolar NOS happen not to show those mentioned symptoms but one suffers from what so called bipolar disorder.

Wow, what the heck is that? I mean it’s undeniably horrible, the disease. It drives human being crazy. To tell you the truth, writing it is depressing. And maybe you find it boring to read such thing, but I guess you better not to because it’s knowledge people. At least it’s better to write (and read) this rather than my lousy feeling expression. Correct me if I’m wrong!
So, talking about your emotional state (if you’re having one), do you find yourself having those symptoms???

-- Being Lively by Being Lonely-- The Art of Enjoying Loneliness

It just took me by surprise as I told my friend I was having dinner at one evening in a restaurant all by myself that she said “What are you doing? Enjoying loneliness? That sucks!” In the other day another friend felt sorry for I was spending my evening with a cup of coffee in my favorite coffee corner all by myself. Then I would say I am enjoying every phase of my life and my time and being all alone while I can be (most of the time I say so more to myself). Yet it begins to occur to me that “hey…is it that bad?” Or maybe is it one of the biggest fears of most of people being ending up alone or lonesome? Or is it just mine, which I don’t even realize?


Being all alone doesn’t mean being a solitude alien that doesn’t socialize. Well, I am not one of those guys who do not have any friends or do not socialize, which I believe that there aren’t any. I make friends and I socialize, and now and then I practically hang out with them; having some laughs, some talks, some fun with them. But when they’re gone, I begin to feel like I don’t know, they gone quite non-literally. I believe I (we) can deal with that. But sometimes I need my friends and family, we need our friends and family, but some other times we need ourselves more. Believe me it feels good to be all alone some time; enjoying, for example, the quiet evening walk by yourself after some coffee, enjoying peaceful moment by yourself, just enjoying you yourself. It feels nice but if you find it not, all you have to do is to try to see it through the other sides. Then I can assure you and me myself that being all alone is not that bad, it ain’t a disaster. And the most important thing is that if you’ve been thinking it’s pathetic, well I guess you’ve been thinking less correctly, the truth is it’s not.


So, there are two things I keep in mind to be sure of it. First, I believe that it’s my need to be lonely after being fed up with all the things happened or just to feel how it feels. Second, I believe that the moment of having loneliness defines how great I sense the feeling of having liveliness in turn, which I believe will be more meaningful in the other day, will be felt more beautiful. You can taste liveliness much better once you felt loneliness in the first place. So enjoy those two inseparable sides of the process of the nature, enjoy every step of our lives.


Celebrate loneliness…
See for how long I can survive…

Lampung, Lampung, Lampung….Debating, Debating, Debating

I’ve been thinking that my debating career is already over the moment I decided to resign from ALSA UI months ago. It was until one of my debate fellows invited me to join e-Fest in Lampung University at May 30th -31st. I was not sure, I just said hell let’s go there. I mean I never before put debate as my main consideration of joining the competition. I just thought about going across the sea to Lampung; yeah…TRAVELING (one of my big dreams); one of those things I couldn’t resist.

It was my first trip to go outside the island (Java). And I was as excited and worried as hell over my first fairly long trip. It takes practically 10 hours or so (just like when you go to Yogyakarta by bus) since we made our trip as cheap as we could. Thus we have to take two different buses and one ferryboat to bridge us there. And as the reward for that, we had to duel with three rounds of the debate the morning we arrived. Okay no problem, our excitement conquered all.

One impression I got was that whoa whoa…why people are shouting at each other, they’re gonna be like swallowing each other. But then it’s not that of I saw my friend told me, it’s how people communicate, yeah kinda chatting. Well, apparently we have different ways of showing our manner of, okay, talking and our bond relationship. And Lampung is also as hot as my place, I kept sweating like a pig (it doesn’t mean that I keep sweating like a pig in my place, but I keep sweating here…like a pig, but I don’t sweat like that in my place, though I sweat, whatever) yet I could help it.

There were not so many places to visit in Bandar Lampung, I just went around the downtown at night; seeing some monuments; visiting a boulevard near to Lampung Museum (the place where most of young people of Lampung hang out) and; having dinner at wayside, which reminded me to Yogyakarta, really. Oh yeah, another place I visited was the centre manufacturer of banana chips, it is more like home industries near the downtown at the day I left the city. The banana chips are good.

Well, okay let’s talk about the debate. Damn! I never thought we could go this far. We practically passed through those first three preliminary rounds just fine. Then we put ourselves to the semifinal, then final. And we made it. For the first time in my (maybe our) debating career I (we obviously) stood up on the stage holding our first winner trophy, God! You must be kidding me. We came home with our head held high, hahahahahaha.

OK then I begin to reconsider about ending up my debating career, for I think I saw a few bunch of hope in it since then hehehehehe.

Angles and Demons, Science or Religion? the Novel or the Movie?

It turns out to be a common comment (even a criticism) addressed toward the novel-adapted movie, which is that movie can't beat the novel. Well, I certainly have to get the same idea about giving such comment particularly about Angels and Demons. There are at least two things I consider as the fact which make the movie less interesting than its novel.

To start the idea, I begin to mention about the story. I can really say that the story is rather different between the two versions. Okay, fine! It leads to the same ending but still there’s certain part that felt like different, maybe “not matched” is the exact point. I mean the sense of having the story of the novel version and the movie one. I am not sure what this deviant part is all about, but this really bugged me when I watched the movie.

Then, the idea comes about having different realization of imagination between the readers and the movie creator. I practically have different imaginary figures of Vittoria Vetra and Robert Langdon (whom I consider will be suitably played by Pierce Brosnan rather than by Tom Hanks, well, no offense, that’s what I think), of different experience of having every suspense described, every action and intimacy of Langdon and Vetra have, and the detail of time and place as well. Maybe the point is that they found it hard to visualize the detail of what happen in those hundreds pages of story into less than two hours movie duration, thus they have to change or even reduce some parts of the detail which I consider as the completing touch of making this story stronger and more remarkable. And maybe that’s the reason why most of the novel-adapted movies fail to win its readers’ hearts.
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Yet, after all I give three out of five for the movie for appreciating its explosion visualization of the antimatter, and four for the novel which keep making me turn the pages and guess where the story will end up till the very end of the book.

Emotional Issue

Emotional issue has been following me all along this time. I don’t know how that this kind of stuff can possibly (keep) happen (-ing) to me. You know I have been telling you about all these things I’ve been dwelling, maybe you are so done with this, but don’t be! We (I) can’t avoid it (the emotional side of us). I have been trying so hard to deal with this for sure, yet it still keeps hunting me like I don’t know, trapped in me. Not to mention such moment I was supposed to have badly years ago yet I didn’t feel this much (I WASN’T a sort of feeler). Yet now I feel like there’s a hole in my heart, remorse, sadness, feeling of being unfulfilled, damn it! here I go again!

Ok, I suck at this stuff! I have to admit, I have issue of dealing with feeling or emotion or whatever. I don’t know, maybe this is it, the age it comes to me that I have to figure something out; where I am, where I am not supposed to be, and where I am heading to. I know I’m probably in a mess that I hardly can clean that up. Damn it!

Now I begin not to be sure for how long this stuff will last. It seems that this effort I have been doing means nothing when the time of this matter comes up as I am all alone, and maybe when I’m thinking about that; thing I suppose to leave behind. I don’t know.

All I know certainly is I can’t stop finding the way; hopefully after all I can come to the thing that I begin to realize that this severe condition will make my next precious happy moment more meaningful. I believe that happiness will have its true meaning once you have passed through (felt) the sadness in the very first beginning. Yeah, happiness means nothing without sadness at the first place, good will never be “good” without evil that can define it. Maybe this is what I have to get through first before I have my turn of happiness much more meaningful. Damn it how many times I have been saying this!!!!!