Monochromatic Rainbows

The Past & cynix's 'Chocolate Quest'

2008-05-27T20:19:00.002+07:00

I haven't posted in decades, well, no not really. I'm hardly two decades old, but while I'd love to write inspiring or at least a tad bit original blog entry, my own laziness and the lack of inspiration has made me take the easy route.

Humiliating my dear DEAR cynix...
[no, it's not humiliating.. reallyyyy]
(I LOVE YOU BEST FRIEND.... Twinzah xD)

So without further ado, I present to you cynix's 'Chocolate Quest', written by his 6th grade self...

The Chocolate Quest

This story is about three brave knights who were sent on a quest to get the king's crown and a scepter stolen by an evil witch, but who knows what could happen that stops them from getting the crown and the scepter back.
Cocoa Country is the only country in the world where everything is chocolate, the people are chocolate, the plants are chocolate, and even the jewelry are chocolate. For thousands of years, all the people in the Cocoa Country have lived peacefully, and happily in harmony. Jake Rum Black Forest is one of the bravest knights in the Cocoa Country. He had dark brown hair, brown eyes, made out of dark chocolate, strong, handsome, romantic, funny, and kind too. Jake's best friend is John Fredrick Chocolate Moose, he has blonde hair, blue eyes, and is white chocolate. Jake and John live in Tiramisu City. One day, the Evil Chocolate Witch, Poison, came to the king's throne and took his chocolate crown and chocolate scepter. The king sent Jake along with his best friend, John on a quest and said, "Jake, you are my most trusted knight, so I'm asking you to get my scepter and crown back from Poison," and
Jake and John were getting ready for their quest, "Are all of the things ready John?" he asked. "Of course, I packed three hot chocolate swords, to melt things that get in our way, some firebombs, some ice rays, in case we melt, and some money," replied John. The money in the Cocoa country was called Chops. A chop is equal to two US Dollars each.
Jake and John were ready to start their quest, they were first going to go to Hershey City, and try to find clues of where the Evil Vanilla Witch, Poison lives in. At the exit of Tiramisu City, there's a monster, and the monsters name is a Harritheragth, Harringtheragths are slimy giant trolls. They are fire breathing, they only have one eye, like a Cyclops, and they can fly like a bird. Jake had never encountered a Harritheragth before, because they are very hard to find. At first Jake and John tried to slice its head using their hot chocolate swords, but it just grew back again. The Harritheragth attacked them back using its flamethrower, and incidentally, John's head was melted a little bit because of the flamethrower. Jake quickly shot John with the ice ray so that he wouldn't melt into chocolate syrup. Even though John didn't melt, his head looked like a bird's head, and somehow the ice ray malfunctioned a bit. When Jake and John finally figured out that there's no way to defeat the monster so John took a magic turkey and threw it to the Harritheragth's head, and suddenly, the Harritheragth became a turkey.
After they defeated the Harritheragth, they left Tiramisu City and started their trip to Hershey City. When they arrived at the main gate of Hershey City, they found one of Poison's pets, the Gollampagle, the Gollampagle was some kind of worm, its gigantic and is as 50 meters long. The Gollampagle was vanilla, and it was very hard to defeat. The temperature inside its body is -300'C, so if Jake or John melted it, it would immediately freeze again. "What do we do Jake?" John asked. "Well, usually when I find a Gollampagle, I just make it eat a firebomb or get a firebomb inside it, then it will explode," Jake replied. John took his sword, cut the Gollampagle's tail open, and put a firebomb in it. They waited for a few minutes, and then suddenly the Gollampagle exploded. Since the Gollampagle is Vanilla, there was also a vanilla rain when the Gollampagle exploded.
In Hershey City, John and Jake met their friends, who were brother and sister, James and Jamie. James is quite strong, and smart, he used to be the most trusted kid in his family, James is made out of white chocolate, he has jet-black hair, and black eyes. Jamie is a very quiet and kind vanilla girl, her dark brown hair was braided, and she has bluish green eyes. Jamie was a priest in the chocolate moose temple, and James worked in the ice company. Jamie and James met Poison once, and they said that Poison told them that she had a candy house at Wonka City. James decided to join the quest and said, "Hey guys, I was thinking, maybe I could help out getting the scepter and the crown back from Poison, so, I think I should come" "Ok," Jake said. James brought some ice bombs, ice pills, and some freezer swords from the ice company. And so, Jake and John, with James coming along, set off for their trip to Wonka City.
The three of them walked for a few days to Wonka City. When they arrived at the front gate of Wonka City, a sorcerer with red hair and scarlet eyes came with a Paggle-taddle with him. A Paggle-taddles are huge chocolate chip dogs, usually they are as large as an average townhouse. Paggle-taddles are usually quite shy, but they're also quite dangerous. The sorcerer said, "Good afternoon gentlemen, my name is Hades Baroque Espalier, so, you three want to get to my master Poison huh? If you want to see her, you'll have to get past me and my Paggle-taddle, Bruce!" James once owned a Paggle-taddle, Kip, James said that the only way to calm a Paggle-taddle down is by flipping its nose or biting its ear. Jake tried to climb up Bruce's back, but the sorcerer shot some flames towards Jake. James and John both destroyed the flames using their ice rays to help avoid Jake from melting. Jake got shot by the flames a few times, but James always shot Jake with an ice ray on time when he melts. Jake managed to climb unto the Paggle-taddle's back, and then he bit Bruce's ear. At the moment Bruce's ear got bitten, Bruce immediately fainted. The sorcerer was so angry, and said in a very grumpy voice, "You haven't seen the last of Hades Baroque Espalier, I'll be back, I'll be back!"
When Jake, John, and James arrived at Wonka City, they went to Prince Franklin Ice-cream and Princess Ellis Ice-cream. James asked, " Your majesty, our king's scepter and crown was stolen by Poison, do you by any chance, know where poison lives?" Prince Franklin said, "I once met Poison, she said she lives in a lair in the dark forest, she tried to invite me there, but I thought it wasn't safe, so I just stayed her."
The dark forest was only a few kilometers away from Wonka City. When they arrived at the entrance to Poison's lair, they met the dark Vanilla Prince, Lucas Job Compharus who was Poison's son. Lucas had a really evil look, he has fiery, red eyes, as if there was a fire in his eyes, he wore a long black robe, and there was a snake on him, grasping him slowly, and the snake itself is Lucas. Lucas said in a creepy voice, "So, who are you three Want to see my mother, want to get the scepter back, want the crown? It's your choice, if you want to die, fight my pets, Campatholl, Diggourous, and Rumomonster, if you want to live, leave! Well, it's up to you!" Lucas was holding the scepter and the crown when he snapped his fingers and disappeared. The Rumomonster is the largest monster in the whole planet, it's as large as the empire state building itself. John already had four encounters with a Rumomonster before, he said that the temperature inside the monsters body is over 1000'C, and the only way to defeat it is to freeze it. John said that he usually freezes the Rumomonster from its eye, but this time it won't work, because this Rumomonster's eye is steel. Jake thought about it and found out that there was only one way to freeze the Rumomonster. Jake took a freeze pill, and then he went inside the monster's body through its nostrils. He went into the monster's brain, then stabbed it with his freezer sword. He immediately got out of the monster's body and the Rumomonster died.
Jake once owned a Diggorous, a Diggorous is a blue dragon that likes to dig, it's not fire breathing, instead it's ice breathing. The Diggorous is the easiest monster to defeat, you just simply melt the whole entire monster's body. Jake, John, and James took their melting swords and threw it on three spots, the Diggorous' head, it's belly, and it's feet. The Diggosaurus then split into two parts, then the inside of it's body came out. Jake, John, and James were surprised to know that the inside of a Diggorous is only ice.
When the Campatholl saw that his two fellow friends died, it cried and went to Poison. Jake, John, and James walk through and finally found Poison's throne, when they saw Poison they collapsed, they found out that Poison was John, she had the exact same face, then she snapped her fingers and she turned into Jake. Poison clapped her hands and turned into herself. Poison's face was ugly, it looked like a wolf's face, only her face is a human's face to, they just found out that Poison is a werewolf. The Dark Prince and the Campatholl accompanied poison, they all screamed and recited a mysterious sentence, it was in some kind of evil language, "Daal dool chocolate duul del dol". Nobody knew what it meant, but when they were reciting it, their eyes were completely white. After they recited this, they disappeared and left the scepter, the crown, and a note, "Please give the crown and the scepter to the king, love, your mother." Jake was confused, her mother just died a month ago, this mystery continues to live forever and ever in Cocoa country, nobody knew what happened, it continued to be a mystery forever. "Jake, John! You're back! Thank you so much for getting my scepter and crown back, thank you, I now bestow upon you, Jake Rum Black Forest, and John Fredrick Chocolate Moose, princes of Cocoa Country," the King made Jake and John princes of Cocoa Country, and so, Jake and John together with the whole Country, lived happily ever after.

*disclaimer, this is written by cynix. Vitriolic plays no part whatsover in this composition and is now hiding under a rock indefinitely for fear of her life.

Chain-mailed and Unchanged

2008-05-24T12:39:00.001+07:00

Today I found another chain-letter in my inbox; and it irritated me to no end.

Chain-mail, for me, is a pet-peeve. It puts me in a foul mood for the rest of the day (and since I check my e-mail late at night, that's sort of okay...).

I was introduced to chain-mail right around the same time I started to really get into using e-mail. The entire prospect of international connection through the internet was magical and mysterious, and because you can catch criminals on the internet, I supposed there was some sort of secret, hidden camera watching my every click. So it should be no wonder that I freaked out and annoyed my elder sister to no end when I opened my first chain-mail to find that I was doomed to 7 years of haunting because I hadn't fulfilled the demands of the e-mail (I had yet to learn what "cut-and-paste" was).

Up to a few years ago I obediently catered to the wishes of whatever mysterious and demonic author had typed up the scary e-mail; about little girls that were abused and now hunted her missing head; about how the phone will ring and turn out to be the love of your life(and if you don't continue the chain mail you never will meet the love of your life). I feel slightly idiotic and heavily embarassed, remembering it now, but I have a point to make here.

Out of the myriads of chain-mail I received, I hated the ones that were mystical and warned of ghosts or promised lifelong spiritual rewards, but even more I was spitting with anger at the e-mails that told about the suffering of people; babies with brain cancer who benefited with a cent for every person the e-mail was forwarded to, children in some desolate part of the world who need monetary support...

...and all you have to do is put another name, another detached identity down on the bottom of that long, long list of people who care.

What's the point?

Your e-mail doesn't actually make much of a difference. It just ends up in a few hundred other inboxes along with the other two-hundred and twenty-three names on that same list that begs stop the genocide in Darfur! and nothing really changes.

Forwarding an e-mail is not going to stop MSN from charging you for using MSN Messenger. Copy and pasting a poem will not support the impoverished, tubercular author in Siberia. Who really takes the trouble of noting down your e-mail address? What person in Darfur is safe and comfortable and powerful enough to see that message and do something about the genocide? What person in Siberia is going to get back at that impoverished author who owns nothing but a paraffin stove (How did he get his poem on the internet in the first place?)

Sure, it's nice to see that so many people care about what's happening. But let's get real, shall we? Go sign and forward all the chain-mail you want; but if you believe in the cause and if you can do something about it, then instead of placing your signature on a petition you ought to be placing slogans on posters, putting the trash in the bin, sealing donation envelopes.

If we want a difference made then we better get off our butts and help it happen.

Shall we?

Because She Is Waiting

2008-05-11T23:39:00.005+07:00

How long do you wait until you stop waiting?

I've been waiting for five years, and still waiting. I'm about to stop, though. Because it hurts, because it's pointless, because I really think I should. Should I?

She's still waiting. She has been waiting for seventeen miserable years. I'm sure she has had thoughts of letting go and giving up, but she always come back strong. She and I, we, are both waiting for the same impossible thing. It is impossible because we both know we need a miracle to make it happen.

You know what? That's exactly what I'm waiting for right now; a miracle.

Andy Warhol said, "The idea of waiting for something makes it more interesting." Yes, Andy, I'm with you. Unfortunately, there is a thin line between interesting and infuriating; I'm just not sure if I want to cross the line.

You know that thing in the science museum? That thing where you have a roller coaster of wire and a loop, and the objective is to move the loop along the wire without having them touch? I don't know how I can explain this better, but that thing is interesting, right? You fail, yet you try again and again and again... until you realize the impossibility of the "game" and stop trying because failure annoys you. In my waiting, I try. But it has been five years and not once did I succeed. I am annoyed, big time.

I sometimes wonder if God is playing with me. Since what I'm waiting for is a miracle, interaction with Him is crucial. I talk to him every day, asking him for a miracle, the miracle, and other things unworthy of mention. I'm sure He is listening, because I talk to Him out loud. Where is my miracle, God? His answer: My time is not your time. To this, I cannot argue any further.

How long should you wait until you stop waiting?

During these five years, I have discovered love (and/or lack of it), revealed secrets, and cried more than I've ever cried in my life. I feel like I've been wasting my resources: time, tears, tissue. Except for the tissues, I know full well there are not a lot more where they came from.

I have made sacrifices, performed for the sake of pride, and lied for the good of one other. In my waiting, I almost died. And then I wonder if all this waiting is healthy... Is it? Waiting for this one miracle, I have risked my heart malfunctioning from beating too fast, eyes going blind from crying too much, lips glued from extended silence. In my waiting, I broke.

After five years, I don't cry anymore. I threw away the hope of a miracle after a surprise party was thrown for me. Probably the worst Sunday in my life, and ironically I bought a CD titled 'Happy Sunday' that day. The Guy Up There probably forgot to tell me it was opposite day.

Best surprise party ever.
I spent the next two nights crying. She was away, so she didn't know I know.

A miracle was what I was waiting for; instead I held a miraculous two-day tear fiesta. By that time, I've lost all hope. Maybe I kept a little bit of it, knowing that when she returns she's going to ask me about that flicker of hope. She is still waiting, remember? She said she has got nothing to lose since she's lost everything. Everything. We could be wasting our time, I said. That's why I collect watches, she replied.

So here I am. Waiting for a miracle. Waiting for something more impossible than... I don't know. If you're wondering why I'm still waiting for this, my answer would be her. I can't let her wait alone.

How long am I going to wait until I stop waiting?

As long as her clock keeps ticking.

Unbeautiful

2008-03-28T23:27:00.004+07:00

A 150-page magazine can write a hundred pages about how it's acceptable to be fat; but the other fifty pages are packed with at least ten pictures of the thin and beautiful on each, so that it amounts to a total of five hundred thousand words (which, according to IB-smarts equals two hundred and fifty pages?) of propaganda that strictly dictates THIN IS GOOD.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
-------------------------

You can parade around saying fat is beautiful and having the normal weight is the healthy thing to do. But the reason publications with skinny models sell so well is only because that's what the public that buys it wants. On the other hand it always looks so good when you're tolerant of every single variable that might crop up in a human being; so that if you had any opinions invested against *gasp* (Turn your eyes away! Taboo comment!) fat people, you instantly become sort of fat-bigoted monster.

-------------------------

Isn't it ironic that obesity is the disease of the affluent?

Oh, wait. Let's rephrase that; the disease of the people who can afford to buy the ~~tools of widespread social propaganda~~ magazines?

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So when you're fat, you're not beautiful because you're not thin--but no one with an inch of consideration will ever tell you it makes you ugly. So you're nonbeautiful. Nonugly.

Unbeautiful?

-------------------------

Let's face it, what most sane people want is for it to be understood that a healthy state of well-being is of the utmost importance. The problem now is that healthy has become synonymous with 'thin'; and these sane people do not agree with anorexia.

So it's kind of a situation of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Because it seems like you're either against being thin. Or against being fat.

Oh, the humanity.

Him and I

2008-03-15T08:43:00.002+07:00

[I am a girl]

Until that day, no one had even noticed his existence. He’d walk past corridors unseen and unfamiliar amidst a sea of faces. He’d sit there; there beneath the same shady maple tree out in the courtyard each morning in a blank invisibility, drowning his mind in the emotional soup of Sylvia Plath. But now things have changed. Now the image of him is imprinted into everyone’s minds – the dark shadows on his face that seemed to whisper a black horror; a requiem to the lifelessness of life.

“They can’t see,” he scribbled unto a worn-out moleskin notebook which he carried with him every day. Those three words caught my eye; those words that carried a frigidly cold essence with them. I sat down on the other side of the tree, fascinated by this new breed of human. On the corner of my eye I saw him digging for something in his rucksack – a black box. In it, a rustic old mirror which he took out. I saw a blank gaze into his own eyes, in those pupils a morbidly fascinating hate for life. Out of a sudden those grey pupils moved and looked straight into my eyes. The school bell rang and I left. I don’t know how, but I could feel his gaze turning into a sharp glare that was pointed at me. I wrote myself a note, “Talk to him.”

The next day I came to the same tree. As always, he was sitting there in solitude. I sat down – this time right next to him. An hour later I found myself conversing with him about life in general. His slurring voice presented an ethereally dark solitude. I don’t know why, but I find myself comforted by the presence of this soul in this world. I felt an inexplicable feeling – some sort of satisfaction in this discovery of someone truly untouched and isolated.

I found a deep solace in spending my time with him. I find there something to be very comforting about knowing that life doesn’t have to be lively. Sometimes a dying life is a good thing. There is a tranquility and peace in this non-energy. I was happy to find that I can have another self – a self without my usual exuberance; without that plastic fakeness of spirit – a self more like myself, who sees life as it is: cold and quiet.

Over time, our conversations would become less and less until they just ceased to exist. I’d stare into his eyes and his into mine, and from just that we could see what each other was thinking – all secrets unveiled; all emotions poured. We’d fall asleep together every night - me on his arms; his head against mine. There developed this close intimacy that I’ve never experienced with any of my past lovers.

One night I woke up in the middle of my slumber. When I looked to my right, I saw how he wasn't there. This isn't uncommon - I knew where he was, and walked to where I expected to find him, near the very same maple tree where we first met. This time it was different though. It was snowing and a thick haze blanketed my body and soul with shivering warmth. I walked slowly, step by step, and began to feel serenity unlike no other, which grew to a peak of thickness and depth when I saw him hanging on that tree. In his eyes I saw lifelessness; a satisfaction of not having any control over his body. I gazed into the beauty of that silence for hours until Gaea swallowed me whole.

The next morning they found me there beneath his swinging corpse, frozen solid, a frigid grin cracking my face. They now remember him as that whisper of black horror. I remember him as my eternal savior: the provider of this black harmony of death.

I'm thirsty

2008-02-16T11:59:00.002+07:00

I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But somehow fate manages to do it. It manages to dry this world of happiness. It manages to flood us with tears. It manages to make our parched souls hike around in an arid air of unrealized misery.

No. Shut up. Sorry. Misery’s not the word to describe it. Unfulfillment is.

There is something terribly wrong with life. It’s the fact that we are all thirsty and no matter how much water we drink, we remain insatiable. I’m not just talking about the literal H2O water – I’m talking about every single thing we are determined to get, only to find ourselves wanting more and having to work even harder once we actually do get it.

A year ago, while my new house was being constructed, I would think to myself how great my life would become upon its completion – how I can be finally proud and happy to live in a comfortable place. Fast forward a couple months. I’m all settled here, and it’s as usual to me as the old crypt I used to live in was. Now downgrading to the place I was fine growing up in would seem like an earthly hell, and I still find myself envying others for their ‘superior’ properties.

It’s not just that. A year and a half ago I told myself that I’d be satisfied with my academic life once I got the scores superior to a fellow colleague we like to call ‘sway.’ Ever since I did, I have only since found myself proven wrong again, as I still find myself in frustration and envy of that other girl’s one extra IB score, while stressing over how I am supposed to sustain my already high grades for the next terms.

I can only tell myself that I am already very privileged – that millions out there don’t even have the hope of getting into college; that people live under bridges – but that reassurance means nothing to me. I keep wanting more and more. I suppose it’s the same for everyone else - wealthy celebrities who have everything but are no less miserable than we are; popular jocks who secretly wish they were geeks.

You see, life is cancerously self-destructive. You are constantly told to put in insurmountable amounts of effort and determination into being somebody, blind-sighted and completely oblivious of this fatal flaw of human nature. For people like me – those caught up in this vile vortex of determination and thirst - the more you put into it, the harder it becomes, because you can’t ever give up, and you put in more and more of your energy into life until you eventually die an exhausted death. Success isn’t hard to find. There's a goldmine of it right next door. But no matter how deep you dig, you’d have to have all odds going for you to find a single drop of contentment.

To Get To My Heart

2008-02-11T00:31:00.000+07:00

I'm not saying there is someone who wants to get my heart, nor am I saying I want somebody to have it. But if anybody wants it, here are a few tips from the owner.

To get to my heart, you have to be funny.

I can't stand a dull conversation. I'd rather watch TV and be amused alone than be with someone who can't make me laugh. But I'm not selfish, no. When and if I like you, I'll start to want to make you laugh, too.

To get to my heart, you have to be yourself. I, for once, will never change just to get some guy's attention - so you shouldn't, too. I like people for who they are, I don't want you to change. If I don't like you just the way you are, maybe we're just not meant to be. So when you're over me, pray. You'll find her, the girl who will love you just the way you are.

Be funny and be yourself. So if you are not naturally funny, you probably won't stand a chance. But maybe he'll like you; maybe you should go to him.

To get to my heart, you have to get through Ray.

He's my brother, only a year older than I am. He used to be fat, but now he's freakishly big and buff. We used to be real close. It used to be 'I'm not going if he's not going', but we're both older now. We both have a life.

If you want my heart now, he's the toughest one to get through. But I guess you shouldn't worry, he's graduating soon. But if you want my heart now, be careful, he's scary. There have only been two guys, ever, whom he approves to have my heart. What's weird is that I didn't even ask him about those two; he suggested me to like them.

One day, on a car ride home, he spontaneously blurted two names. He said, "Dek (Sis), why don't you go with A? Or B, he's nice too. Don't go liking weird people, those two are just right for you. They are good Christians." Fortunately for me, I was sort of "in a relationship" with Boy A. Hearing that, I laughed in my heart. I was glad, relieved even, that I was with the "right guy". And then life happened. My "relationship" with Boy A ended. But right now, I'm very good friends with Boy A and B. (No, I don't think I should be with any of them in the near future)

Unfortunately for two other guys, who actually wanted to have my heart, Ray said, "No." In eighth grade, I had a boyfriend. We decided to have the relationship backstreet for a while, but Ray soon found out. And he objects. He objected badly. He made me break him up. He cornered me; I had no choice. I was psychologically unable to continue the relationship because of Ray. I don't exactly understand why Ray doesn't want him to be with me, but if he doesn't like you... then he doesn't like you. I doubt he will change his mind. For days, everyday, Ray would ask me, "Have you broken up with him?" To me, the question sounded more like an order. It sounded like, "Break up with him!" Imagine hearing that every day. I couldn't handle the pressure; I cracked and I broke up. Trust me, you don't want to be Boy C. Then again, you probably don't want to be Ninth-Grade-Karina's boyfriend. She didn't know much about relationships then.

We were swimming one night, and there was a Swim-In Movie at Hard Rock Hotel, Bali. The movie was Chicken Run. Ray gave me a piggy back ride under water. I watched the entire movie on his back. As we were watching, Ray mentioned Boy D. He updated his knowledge on my love life at the time. I had a crush on Boy D, but I never told Ray about it. I don't know, maybe he just knew. He told me nicely to not be with Boy D. "Dek, don't go with D, ya..." Why? I asked. And he just said Don't. So I didn't. Boy D is his friend, not mine, so I guess he knows him more than I do. It was kind of sweet, actually. The whole brother-sister moment. :)

To get through Ray, you have to be a good Christian. That, and a whole lot of other things on Ray's invisible My Sister's Ideal Boyfriend list. In the long run, Ray is the easiest to get through, because...

To get to my heart, you also have to get through Noel.

He's been hurt by girls a lot, but he never hurt them. He's always the victim in his relationships, and frankly, he doesn't want me to be one. He checks up on me, asks me who I like every now and then. He cares, a lot. I can tell.

One night, my eyes were red and puffy from crying over Boy E. He was my first real love, and up to this day, he is the only guy I ever loved. Don't worry, I will learn to love again. So Noel came in through the door without knocking and found me looking oh so miserable. I looked like I was dying; I looked like someone just died! Knowing who my heart belonged to, at the time, he asked, "What did E do to you?" I lied. "No, seriously. What did he do to you?" Nothing, I lied again. I was in no mood to tell him anything and Boy E didn't exactly do anything worth punching. But Noel had his guards up. "Just tell me if he's hurting you." He left the room.

A few minutes later, Ray came in. He looked at me and giggled. "Are you crying over a guy?" I laughed and I said no. So he left.

Noel is about two years older than me. One of his friends was interested in me, once. He only told me about it months after the incident. Knowing what kind of a guy his friend was, he told him, "Hell no."

So to get through Noel, you have to promise him you will never hurt me and keep that promise. Not hurting me means being loyal and true. Break my heart and Noel will break your face. So you think you can get my heart, now? Think again, because...

To get to my heart, you still have to get through Dio.

Dio is currently in Germany and he will stay there for six months, so if you want my heart right now, things will be easier. He's coming back; he better come back. Dio is my cousin, he is three years older than me. He's been living with me since he graduated from high school in America; it has been two years now and we've grown close. I would say I am closer to Dio than any of my brothers. This is due to the countless car rides he drove me in. We go everywhere together, and believe me, car rides bring people closer because close spaces force you to talk.

He gives me advice on guys. He gives me insight on life as he knows it. I trust him. He has never met any of my crushes and/or boyfriend, though. Well, of course, why would he feel the need to see any high school dorks? After listening to my stories, he often respond with words like As long as you're happy, Slow down - he's not going anywhere, and You're doing right. He treats me like an adult, he trusts me with my decisions. I guess you don't have to worry about him for now. I, myself don't know how evil he can be when it comes to guys loving me. But later in life, getting through him will come in handy, because...

To get to my heart, you finally have to get through my Daddy.

I actually call him Papa (I wrote Daddy just to rhyme hehe). Last time I checked, he doesn't allow me to date. But that's, like, five years ago. I was eleven, then. You see, I don't tell my parents when I have a boyfriend or whatever. I do it backstreet, and so far, everything's been fine.

I don't know about other girls, but me, I plan to have a husband. I want to get married and have kids. All I know, right now, Papa doesn't want me to have a smoker, like him, for a husband. If and when you plan to ask for my hand in marriage, there's no detour but to get through him. Yes, it's my life. I have the power to choose who I want to marry, but I respect my parents. They have lived life longer than I have; they understand life (and love) better than me.

You should watch Meet the Parents. Let's hope when my future husband gets to meet my parents, it will not end in a catastrophe like in the movie. My dad has his own way to detect lies; so to get through him, you have to be honest. He cannot stand lies. I have many stories of him and his employees (plus lies) with endings you don't want to hear.

Because I am not planning to settle down anytime soon, I think Papa is fine with anything (anyone?) as long as it (or he) does not interfere with my studies. Also, don't smoke and be honest. Impress him. Get a job or something. :)

I am surrounded by men. They guard me, they protect me, they want the best for me. I am somewhat grateful to have them, because, look.. If I don't have them, I will probably end up being with guys who are simply funny but untrue. Or with comedians who plan to break my heart. (Well, no... I don't fall that easy) This is the advantage of being the only girl and having three brothers in the family. When it comes to guys, I just have to like, sit back, and relax.

Unfortunately for you, if you want my heart, you have a long way to go before you reach this girl's heart. Phoebe once said (in a debate speech), people often gets confused with finding Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now. Well, until I find my Mr. Right, I guess I have to date a few wrong Mr. Right Now-s, right? I'm not looking for a husband, I'm not looking for a boyfriend. I'm not looking. I'm simply walking and waiting for Whatever I Can Get (facebook).

When people ask me what type of guy do I want to have as my boyfriend, I usually answer: I don't have a type. In a way, I don't.. but after this analysis, I suppose I can give you a list.

MY TYPE OF GUY
Funny
Good Christian
Ray Has To Like Him
Loyal
Won't Break My Heart
Respects Me
Not A Smoker
Honest

Hey you, if you want to have my heart, I hope you're not intimidated. ;)

Life Lessons

2008-01-13T00:10:00.000+07:00

I realize I have changed.

I'm still changing, even until this very moment. For good or bad, I do not know, but I welcome change with open arms simply because I can take a lesson in all that happens for a reason. I guess I'm still like water; I'm unable to retain my 'shape'. People have come and gone and left footprints, some big, some small, some shallow, some deeper than others. I have learned many things, both the hard and easy way for some things, along the way and would like to share some of what I learned.

I've learned not to be too open with people I have just met. But I do believe in the kindness of strangers. I have learned the hard way that 'love' has a different meaning for different people. And that some people are simply heartless no matter what I do. I learned that despite good intentions, you can never make someone change for their own good, so maybe you should save the effort. I learned to be careful where I put my trust in. I learned that those you perceive as good friends are often not all that good and that sometimes surface friends are more sincere and genuine.

I learned to pour all my heart into what I do; it gives better results. I learned that higher expectations equal bigger disappointments, so I try not to get my hopes too high because I do not like feeling disappointed. However, higher expectations push harder at motivation, so it depends on the circumstance. I learned to give up pride in certain things, because sometimes it just makes things worse. I learned that a little (emphasis on a little) jealousy is healthy, in relationships and in life. Like higher expectations, it pushes at motivation; makes me strive harder to be better and achieve bigger goals; and a little goes a long way to show that you care.

I learned that it is easier to forgive and forget; simply because this gets it off the mind quicker and no time is wasted on anger and needless dwellings on the matter. I have learned in many occasions that displayed anger from someone does not mean hatred. Often it means that they still care, enough to get mad at me and show me that I was wrong.

I learned that sweet words often equal to sweet nothings. They are fulfilling, satisfying at first but they really mean nothing. I learned to be careful with males with sweet words... Actually, scratch that. They are the ones who should be careful with their poetry. I learned how to detect which words are true, which lines are made up.

But most of all, I learned that hopes and dreams are often all that I have. I will not give up on them. So you shouldn't, too.

Twelve Strikes of Midnight; the modern fairytale.

2008-01-01T13:01:00.000+07:00

The clock strikes midnight and the world explodes in a show of flashing lights and incredible noise.

Happy New Year.

Fireworks dress the ~~night~~ early morning sky in spectacular blooms and ribbons of exploding colors. All the human mind perceives is the light burned across their vision, and not the smokescreen in the background. All we can think about is how beautiful it is to be standing here, on top of the world, gazing out at a heaven that celebrates another year of human existence. We don't think about how we've basically traded off our hard-earned money for a compound of ammonium perchlorate, sulfur, and potassium nitrate. And, surprise! we're more than happy to blow it up to pieces. The result is a thunderous clap of sound, plumes of smoke--transparent against the dark sky, and a shower of sparkling lights; inspiring a brief moment of kaleidoscopic joy.

We only think about how marvelous it is; this parade of lights. We don't think about how poor confused birds drop dead out of the sky and lose their way in this hellish forest of light exploding from inside the dangerous smog. We don't think about how their little hearts stutter and stop at the sound of explosions. We don't think about the widening malicious grin in the ozone layer or the smoke slowly settling on our clothes and hair, nesting in our lungs. That's for later; worries and horrors for the morning of January the first.

It's the second strike of midnight. Everyone is sharing a few last toasts of well-wishing for the new year, and a last batch of hugs goes around the room. A few people failed to make it to midnight, and are seated on the sofa and chairs with sticky eyes and slow, sleepy smiles. Just one more, everybody says. I can't, I really can't stay. I have to be up in the morning. Really, everybody else says. The spell strains, cracks.

With each consecutive strike of the clock that follows, people walk languidly out the door and climb into their cars. There is the muted revving of engines as they move away, to the sound of the last few fireworks still lighting the sky. Everywhere there is still the overbearing sight of Happy New Year set in bright decorative neon lights. Gold and metallic-paper trumpets bleat tiredly a few final times. The sound pierces the fog that settles. The only thing is; that's not fog. But at the moment it adds a dreamlike quality to the night, and we wave it away. We will complain of the smell of smoke in the morning.

Ha py New Yea .

The twelfth strike of midnight,and the New Year has already overstayed its welcome. In people's minds is the thought of going back to normal, routine life, and the horrors of this new and alien year. My brain takes a few brief seconds to remind me about an unfinished essay and the last few days I have remaining before I go back to school, and my enthusiasm takes a nosedive.

It is the twelfth strike of midnight and the spell has been broken.

White stallions revert to simple white mice and the carriage is a deflated orange pumpkin in the middle of the road. Cinderella has to run into the forest and hide. Has to go back to the dreaded stepmother's house.

She can always still hope, of course. We can remember the promise of good health and dreams to be achieved in this newly-begun future. We can hold to the hope, and the dream, and pray that in the future the glass shoes will fit again. There will be an occasion to dance to again, even it's only the promise of yet another year.

Happy New Year.

The Intrusion

2007-12-12T00:15:00.000+07:00

I tried to retire to somewhere quiet to listen to myself think. Just completely away from any people and any sound. I wanted to see if it was true that you'd hear your heartbeat, that you'd establish an ethereal and complete state of peace. What started out as an experiment born of curiosity evolved in a few brief minutes into full-blown chaos.

There were voices in my head.

They were retelling stories; recounting memories and reciting poems. One moment they were breathing warm whispers in my left ear; in the next moment they were buzzing about at my right, excited and inconsiderately loud. Somewhere in the back of my head was a shrill, falsetto (and decidedly male) little voice singing a song in slurred staccato. Yet another voice is demanding my attention, grumbling and complaining about something somewhere to my right. The oddest part of it is that I recognize these voices. I've heard them well and often--but to think they now existed in my head?

Even now, sitting here, I can hear vitriolic practicing her presentation to the rhythm of Sanjana's mellow scatting. Karina is screaming Pink!! and chasing something in circles in the left hemisphere of my brain, and the voice to my right is my sister complaining about the noise (I was tempted to respond; you think?!). There's cynix singing his "You're Ugly" tune and Kendal is desperately trying to convince me to do something ("Chel...!")--probably to stop the unbelievable mess ~~scattered~~ shipwrecked across my entire plane of thought.

The worst part was what came later.

I stopped concentrating on the silence, and I stopped blocking out the noise. The voices receded as the A.C.'s comforting humming poured like cool, refreshing mist into my head. That silence was nearly complete. The deafening white noise was like a veil that saved me from the pandemonium that had momentarily ruled my head.

"It's cold." What?

"No, it's not. You're such a sissy." No way...

"I didn't say anything." Go away.

"Not youuuuuu...!" Argh.

"Rach, you're stepping on my foot." I would have stepped on heads if they had been there.

Later on I would realize that I had been falling asleep as I was thinking these things. Or rather, as these things thought themselves out. It was heavily odd, of course. Anyone would be freaked out by the notion of voices in their head. Only this was more like an imaginary recap--courtesy of a tired and sugar-ridden brain--of the day's conversations. Presented in delightful jumbles with a shot of bizzare eerieness to top.

I really need a holiday.

"I know! Me too."

Indonesia’s Presidential Candidate, Another Pitfall In Our Democracy?

2007-12-11T21:17:00.001+07:00

Much buzz has surrounded Indonesia’s Presidential candidates. From the current president SBY, to former presidents Megawati Sukarnoputri and Gus Dur. Also ex-Governor of Jakarta Sutiyoso. But the question is, are they really the best options for corruption and problem ridden Indonesia?

SBY – is the first Indonesian president elected democratically by direct vote by the Indonesian people. He boasts a clean corruption free reputation and reputed good heart filled with well intentions. However, his indecisiveness has left few problems to be solved.

Fun Facts: He procured his own album, singing and playing his guitar quite delightfully in his album.

Megawati Sukarnoputri – Is the daughter of charismatic Sukarno, propelled to the spotlight sheerly by her lineage her brief Presidency has been mocked by many. Though feminists would be pleased by another female President, her crying over every natural disaster victim without initiating any solution has been made a mockery of several 11th Graders.

The overall tone is that, things won’t change. There is no candidate that spurs out hope, that is a fresh voice to our Democracy.

Sure, there are reasonable candidates but the same faces reappear and we once again stuck to pick which candidate would bring LESS Damage to Indonesia.

My personal pick: Pak Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Why? Because I believe in his intent to better Indonesia. Perhaps his indecision will be lessened if he won, he would not have too be wary so much of reelection and political consensus.

This is the Indonesian people’s second shot to putting a President in the Istana Negara. Will we take it? Will the candidates proof themselves?

On a side slightly geeky note, I'm actually excited for 2009!

It's going to be my first vote!

While I might be doing so in an Indonesian Embassy in a country I decide to go to University in I’m quite unabashedly giddy in the thought.

So I sincerely hope, along with me, Indonesians should realize the importance of our decision, and the press and the public should be aware of the gravity of the situation.

We actually have the power to put into Office our leader for the next 5 years.

We have an opportunity! (despite it accounting for practically nothing... [ our votes do count, they count 0.000000000000001% (not sure of the exact mathematics but the number of Indonesian population and do some mathematical thingo to it) ]

The biggest question is, will the next president be able to achieve change and progress?

Predictably, only time will tell.

Malaysia, MalingAsia?

2007-12-11T20:59:00.000+07:00

Disclaimer: I wrote this for Voice and added personal biases to it, so sorry Voice!

The diplomatic relationship between Malaysia and Indonesia has never been perfectly harmonious. Dating back to the Sukarno era, conflicts and disputes over land territory has been rife, this problem has yet been settled and a new type of conflict arises.

On Malaysia's recent tourism campaign the Malaysian government featured an ad with two dances actually BELONGING to Indonesia which immediately spurred critical anger from the Indonesian government and its citizens.

“"We want the Malaysian government to stop copying our cultural heritage," said Tritomo one of the many demonstrators in front of the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta.

The stealing of ‘cultural heritage’ is not only limited to dances. Last October another cultural rights dispute has circled a theme song for the Malaysian tourism promotion "Rasa Sayang" or "Feeling of Love". The Indonesian government is currently pondering whether to sue Malaysia for the breach of copyright. Upon that possible lawsuit Malaysia has defended that the song has a dual origin based on the many cultural customs similar between the two countries.

It seems like a recurring pattern to me, does Malaysia really have no culture of their own to the extent that they would steal ours just to make up for their own mediocre culture?

With not only songs and dances in question but also traditional handcrafted souvenir like shadow puppet theaters and batik fabrics the troubles that are being sold in Malaysia for traditional ‘Malaysian’ merchandise among many things. It would seem the troubles and worrisome relations between these two essentially similar yet polarized countries will not end quite so soon. (Nor should they)

Furthermore, Malaysia’s blatantly racist government has approved a militia to round up (read:Beat up) illegal Indonesian immigrants. There was even a case when a wife of an Indonesian diplomat got beaten up because of those sorry uneducated imbeciles of militia did not recognize a diplomat passport.

You see, forgive my imprudent assessment, but when my countrymen are beat up, and my culture is taken, I cannot help but feel antagonistic to those Malaysians, to the point that calling a friend of mine ‘Malaysian’ is the worse insult I can think off, to the point that I resent and decline to eat Penang food (though Teh Tarik is really delicious), and to the point that I’d never bring the Malaysian government revenue by going to their racist filled soil.

So yeah, Malaysia might be ‘Truly Asia’. But that is only attributable to the fact that their Asianess derives from Chinese, Indian and Indonesian cultures.

So to people looking forward to going to Malaysia, please DO feel the truly Asian-ness of Malaysia, because it is. Truly stolen.

Why Anime is Good for the (Troubled and Depressed Soul)

2007-12-11T20:43:00.000+07:00

(At least momentarily)

People often mock anime’s many flaws as something only dumb people watch.

Yet, these people often forget to some extent, we are all simply stupid.

We all have our own moronic guilty pleasures, they be it anime, food, celebrity gossip, pets.

But what make anime good for the soul is the sheer simplicity and often good faith that through hard work everything will be successful.

There is a general principle in every anime or manga, the hero or heroine will always break through despite their tragic flaws.

Through the help of devoted peers and kindness of elders, they prevail, and they prevail brilliantly and heart racingly so.

But then the CD stops playing, and we all see the brilliant blue sky in which everyday, people’s dreams,

their soul,

and their body break and so we are forced to see the true horrors of this world.

Aware of our mortality, I store my memories, aspirations on by desk neatly pilled. Glancing at it as a means to keep breathing, keep writing, keep living.

And so I toil, toil so furiously so despondently, so desperately. Toiling for a future I dream off, a future that I’m certain would probably never exist.

So why do I live?

Why do I strive, give my unwitting best?

Because I can’t stop.

Because I’m too much of a coward to simply let go.

Because if I let go, there will be nothing else to hold me up.

Confidence - Part two

2007-12-11T18:54:00.000+07:00

In life, I have been baffled by many mysteries. Among many of them, I am most puzzled by the dumb who teach to the smart; the un-liked who act as social queens and kings; the fat and ugly who flaunt their aesthetic distastefulness to everyone around them.

In this school of ours, it is not uncommon to find cases where a 3-student comes to a 7-student and begins to faultily endeavor to teach him about things he already understands, or when an inappropriately opiniated person attempts to equate himself to intellectuals while only making himself seem even more dumber.

One of the problem with people nowadays is that they are simply too kind. They are encouraging, heartening the inept by saying that they are in fact talented and simply need training, when the very reality is that these people are truly unintelligent. But shouldn’t people instead be honest while being gentle, admitting the existence of flawed human beings and the idea that some people are only gifted in particular areas, rather than planting inappropriate confidence in those who ought not to have it? It seems like a harsh stab in the gut, but to me, it’s much better to put people in their places rather than turning them into lunatics.

I, for one, believe that people ought to have their own places in society, realize what they are, and remain in their appropriate places. Intellectuals ought to be people with actual intellectual capacities; artists should know a thing or two about aesthetics; fashion editors shouldn’t look like drag queens.

It is when confidence is displaced - when those who are undeserving of it possess it - do we experience trouble. So where do we go from here – make the stupid think they are smart, or put them in their rightful places?

Confidence - part one

2007-12-11T17:58:00.000+07:00

Confidence. It’s a tricky thing. Too little of it and you find yourself an insecure, sad, pathetic little man who is completely withdrawn from the world for clearly wrong reasons. Too much of it and you look like a lunatic who is completely out of tune with reality.

It is only natural that when a man is well-endowed and consistently skilled in a particular area, he becomes accustomed to the idea that in some ways, he is actually superior to others. This sort of confidence, which we know as conceit, is universally frowned upon by any society. The Catholic Church calls it a deadly sin, and we all see it as a sure path to destruction of one’s social life.

I, however, believe that it is perfectly acceptable for someone who is indeed superior than others to realize the obvious truths than point out to that very fact. The idea that everyone is created equally – none better, none worse – is, after all, completely ignorant of the reality that some humans are born retarded and other, more fortunate ones, are gifted with extraordinary talents. The concept of equality is just icing to the bitterness of the harsh veracity, created to allow the less fortunate ones to feel better about their shortcomings.

There are, however, unfortunate occasions when those undeserving of confidence are mentally-handicapped to the extent that they have remarkable reserves of confidence – far beyond what is appropriate – laid in their minds. The unremarkable ones who act as remarkable ones are not only severely destructive to the well-being of society, but to themselves.

A stroll along memory lane brings me across a particularly interesting case of such tragedy - a girl who believes in herself as a businesswoman and leader so much that the very questioning of her (clearly nonexistent) competence in such things would lead into utter pandemonium. This young lady, who (under nobody’s consent) made herself leader of a school newspaper, against everyone’s better judgments, insisted on using inkjet printers to mass-print a newspaper that I was sure no one would take interest in. Sure enough, my predictions were realized, as we lost ten million rupiah to ink cartridges, while gaining only one million of revenue. After all this, she still had the nerve to go to Unicef, donating the mere one million rupiah of revenue gained from selling the journalistic realization of her idiocies, and in smug confidence, saying, “Through my skills as a leader, and the cooperation of our team, we have raised one million rupiah for the better good of this world.” She now visits our school time to time, often meeting Mr. Eric and bragging about how skilled an economist she is, when it is obviously clear to all of us how ill-fated she is in areas involving money.

Think about it. Imagine if these creatures comprised for the leaders who rule over the world. After all, extreme confidence and charisma are traits of people who gain extravagant power, that we are surely bound for hell if these ridiculous displacements of confidence in the world continue. Like it or not, these things are beginning to happen – we have ourselves a dimwit monkey who thinks he can run the greatest political and economic entity in the world and is apparently attempting to do so. What if this girl, with her admirable confidence, and her legacy of losing nine million rupiah to ink for a damned school magazine, follows the same footsteps of the monkey who now runs America, and ends up being the second female president of Indonesia, or if that's too far, grows to become the minister of finance for this country? Oh hail, death to us all.

Hands

2007-12-11T06:21:00.000+07:00

It was not until today that I think about other people's hands.

How some hands are smooth, how some hands are rough.
How some hands are small, how some hands drown me.
And how each shake is unique; grips that show what's inside the heart.

Every once in a while I would look up and see a smile, and I could tell a lot of those hands were actually genuine. The sincere hands squeeze gently. It's their way of saying, "Congratulations!" To those hands, of course, I smiled back. Though there were big men with presumably calloused hands, all seemed soft to me thanks to the smiles.

The whole congregation only had one door to exit. Assuming none of them wants to, they were obligated to stand in line to shake hands with the pastor. After the pastor comes his helper… and seven other new brothers and sisters in Christ of mine. I was the last of the lot and one had to get to me before one leaves the building. I felt sorry for a lot of them. I know they have other things to do, places to go, trains to catch (the church was next to a railway station), but they were willing to sacrifice a few minutes to shake my hand and, more often than not, mutter ’congratulations’.

Of course there were obviously satiated hands that would rather be anywhere else in the world but there. Those hands still had to shake mine; only sometimes our hands barely touch. It was like, I don’t know, more of a tap than a shake. The thumb did not even bother bending. To my surprise, I still smile to those hands. Of course I did not really plan to, but I had been smiling for more or less fifteen minutes, so why not go on until the church is emptied? I had no time to relax my facial muscles anyway. Those hands were forced to meet mine just like I was forced, by myself, to smile. After everything was over and I got in the car, though, I realized I should be happy for whatever reason all the time I was there. It was my day, my moment, of renouncing my faith in Christ.

Some hands were bored. Mine, too, most definitely. I reckon the line of nine or so people was too long for them. But me, I've never shaken so many hands in a day. Get this, I had to shake every person's hand in a church as big as Gym 2. I had to stand for about twenty minutes on a pair of high heels, faking a few smiles. I was happy, but nonetheless tired! I had to wake up at 5 in the morning that Sunday.

Oh, those hands. Eager, weary, mondaine, merry.
I shook them all.

At the end of the day, I reflected on how my tiny hands must, at one point, have felt that way. I bet there was a time when I could not care less about shaking people's hands. Shaking hands is a symbol of appreciation, thanks, and often respect. I should be thankful; I should be pleased, that at someone (well, more than one) in this world would care to touch my hands.

I'd rather them hold my hands, though. But not just anyone, I want a certain someone to hold my hand.

Should I be doing this, assuming things? I am somewhat sensitive, I read people from their actions... and I could be wrong, of course. So until I receive my degree in Hand Psychology (is there such a thing?), I shall never judge a person from his or her hand shake ever again.

I told Mr. Eric about this the next day. He said I should care more about the millions and billions of germs and bacteria which got transferred to and fro my hands that day.

Nasty. Someone, anti bacterial wipes, please!

The Insidious Senior

2007-12-10T15:29:00.001+07:00

Disclaimer: My thoughts, as rash as they are, are my own thoughts and opinions.

Not those of Monochromatic Rainbows.

Note: Lots of insults ahead, some of which are not the original manifestation of my brain.

Raised in a traditional Chinese family with Chinese values, I'm not one usually susceptible to moronic and pointless dishonorment of seniors and those older than me. But neither am I a coward hiding under a blanket of cowardice (thought I would emphasize the point in case I wasn't clear enough just how much of a non-coward I am).

I'm sorry I cannot say the same for "The Insidious Senior" whose ONE single action has left me with a strong feeling of abhorrence and indignation.

Before I unfold the sequence of today's events I must before give you a disclaimer: I'm a healthy girl of 16 years of age; a hormonal girl who might very well be overreacting about this situation but I am quite aware that neither am I a creature with staggeringly retarded perspicacity.

The Tale:

My mother gave me a Bible several years back; it was a leather NIV version, which I soon took a liking to. I wrote my name on the title page and my mother's but soon after I got a blood red/burgundy NKJV Bible. I am ashamed to say I much preferred this new one from then on and so left that leather NIV on my shelf one day. Earlier this year, my homeroom teacher required of us a Bible to be put under our school desk and so I brought my pastel orange NIV to school and placed it under my desk, which, to my agitation, soon disappeared. Fast forward several months and come today, 10th of December 2007 - I found it. I found it in Pak Purba's room, but it wasn't how it was before. I cannot form into words the extent of the damage. My friend L kindly photoed the images. From what previously was a Bible of relatively good conditions, it had now become this piece of masquerading ... something

I'm not the most ardent of Christians, but neither am I bereft of a conscience and a sense of decency (both of which this particular senior appears to lack).

We often mistreat our Bible, scribble on it, pile things on top of it, and other forms of negligence I'm sure our adolescent minds can cook up from here to the beyond, but this! this is far from negligent. In fact, this senior took measures to destroy it. I don't care at all if he IS an atheist, or Buddhist, or Muslim, or SATANIC even, I am just at complete loss at how this could happen at a supposedly Christian school.

I'm not suggesting he be suspended or anything of the sort, (some divine retribution, some divine intervention which would eventually lead to some pains, in his life would be perfectly acceptable)

Yet, I'm not God, nor do I have any sort of authority to punish him, that's fine, but I can mock him, can't I? So here I am: fuming, scheming, typing.

Dear Senior, If you're reading this, I would advise you to close your sorry little four-eyed eyes and go play hentai games/kill helpless animals or anything equally pathetic.

The thing is, you lied, I asked you, confronted you earlier this day and you lied. I was at the time unaware that you out of what petty little brain you have decide to write you name and GRADE on the side cover. I never really did suspect that the other person named 'R' in MY grade would do such a thing because you know why? Frankly he's smarter, he would realize that

a.) it's a Bible.

b.) destroying the Bible would anger someone.

But more than that, I knew that person had a modicum of respect for people's beliefs. Unlike you. Because that's what it amounts to: blatant disregard of people's property. And that property, IS A FREAKING BIBLE.

I do not care if you thought it was amusing, because if that what it was, amusement, a way to settle your boredom than you really are scum, fit to wiggle away the rest of your life among the lowest of the lowest.

Denial of your actions or even trivializing the matter just adds up to laughable cowardice.

And if you decide to mock me or ask the help of your friends, that's just horribly pathetic, I the lone short junior girl who have been scared refused backup from friends. (Because your pettiness did not deserve their attention despite their equally enraged emotions hearing your lack of ... numerous moral/ethical/human qualities.)

And no, I want nothing, nothing you do will appease me. An apology? Sure.

A replacement for my Bible, no, that's the only thing I do not want as a result. Verbal sparing, disagreements, bring it on. But I beg everyone not to stupidly appease me by giving me another Bible, because this isn't what it's all about at all.

It's about how someone could be so idiotic....., no I take that back, calling you an idiot would be horrible insult to actual idiots. I'm not simply enraged because of his contemptible conduct. It's about him damaging an item that people have died for, and tortured because.

An item, a symbol far grander, more purposeful, and more important than ANY of his DREAMS could ever be (let alone accomplish).

So there, I'm apologize that I took so many words to convey the extent of his imbecility.

Because honestly, I do not have any desire to make him seem like a fool.

Why should I take all that credit.

PLAYING WITH FIRE, or [how human hearts hurt]

2007-12-06T22:24:00.000+07:00

Sunburn is a good example of a first-degree burn.

You don’t really feel anything when the sun is scorching your skin. It’s only a few hours later that the realization sets in, and you just know that that patch of skin is going to hurt tomorrow.

First-degree burns are red and very sensitive to touch...These burns affect the outer-layer of skin, causing pain, redness and swelling.

You walk around for the next few days with one eye kept open just in case anything is out to get that tender piece of red skin. All you have to do is hover one hand over it and you can feel the heat seething out of it. That’s one angry stretch of skin, and you know you better not upset it any further. Some (marginally smarter) people put gauze over the burn. The rest of us keep our arms sticking away from our sides and our hair from our faces.

Protect the burn from friction and pressure.

Let’s not go into detail about what to do when your backside (am I allowed to say Bee-yoU-Tee-Tee?) gets sunburnt. Let’s just say that that’s the kind of problem you really don’t want to be faced with (but what were you doing baring your bottom in the sun anyway? Skinny dipping? Pretending to be a hotdog?). But that’s just the first few days.

The next part is scary. It can even be messy. But it is also agreed that this part can be fun. The skin darkens, goes slightly grey, then begins to peel. You go crazy and rub it off, piece by tiny piece, to reveal the raw, red skin underneath. You might’ve expected this new skin to look like baby skin; pale and smooth. Instead, it’s red and shiny and—dum dum dum—numb.

Relax. You’re going to be okay. That red and shiny skin will heal further (but not before becoming tender and painful all over again) an in a little while you’ll be all better.

Second degree burns are a different thing altogether. There’s blistering and singed flesh. The skin oozes clear liquid and is a bright, (very) angry shade of red. Beneath the skin surface, hair follicles die and sweat glands shrivel up. As time passes, blood vessels are damaged—blood flow is cut off and the burn escalates to the third degree.

Second degree burns hurt; a lot. Sometimes it’s enough to send a person into shock, and shock in turn is sometimes enough to kill people. So you could die just from the pain. That’s how bad it is. I’d try to illustrate it, but some things are best left to the imagination—on the other hand, let’s imagine your arm is on fire (even if it may no longer be on fire); your heart is pumping erratically and your brain can only garner enough sense to scream or groan in pain. Besides the pain and the scream, your brain also happens to have enough sense left to smell the awful stench of burning hair and skin. It smells like death. Even if you’re not dead yet.

Burns of the third degree are very curious things. According to the BSRC (Burn Survivor Resource Center), unlike the first two burn degrees, third-degree burns are white. They’re blanched like that because there is no blood in that part of the body. The flesh is not only damaged, it’s practically cooked. And the weirdest part is that third-degree burns, apparently, do not hurt. Sure, third-degree burn victims get shock too; but that’s from the messed up blood flow.

All you get to feel is a tingly sort of numbness. All you get to gain is a lifelong scar.

First Degree Burn

Second Degree Burn

Third Degree Burns

All of this is interesting enough. But I didn’t put it up just to warn people of the dangers and consequences of playing with fire. I did all that because as I was reading about these things I thought about the way that the heart hurts. I thought about how we hurt similarly whether physically or emotionally. How different things affect us to different extents. How sometimes we end up scarred. How some people end up dead.

There are a lot of simple enough problems in life that place us under heat; but the more complicated ones burn. The simplest of these complicated things are like first-degree burns. The symptoms may start off as subtle disturbances in our otherwise happy lives. Eventually we realize something is wrong, and the heart knows it’s in for a rough ride. You know you’ve already gotten hurt; it just takes time for you to start mincing the pain. When it does come, we’re careful not to aggravate the problem further. We nurse our wounds and eventually, we harden. We become tough and insensitive to similar problems and we assume it’s over. It takes time for that stone-heart to flake away, and when it does we get hurt a little bit by this vulnerability, but we get better. Don’t play with fire, is the lesson of this wound.

There may be more difficult situations than that.

With second-degree burns you’re singed and you’re terrified. It takes more than just you to solve this problem, and even with help you’re bound to come out of it with a few broken things—broken hearts, broken spirits. Important things. Sometimes you don’t come out of it at all. It’s when everything’s rushing at you all at once and you run out of ways to deal with it. The body runs out of blood or breath, the heart runs out of hope.

Third-degree burns are a different kind of dying. It’s parts of you losing blood, losing hope. Losing color and function and feeling. The fire consumes cell by scorched cell and you’re awake and conscious to experience it. The worst part is hurting and not feeling any pain. Losing and feeling no regret. You don’t have to die to hurt this badly. It doesn’t have to hurt at all to be wounded this deeply. The lesson here is that there most certainly is a deeper death than dying. This is the kind of death present in the hollow eyes of people who lose everything. This is the kind of death that clamps its teeth on their skin and their flesh and their hearts, and sets it on fire.

This is why they say tears burn on your cheeks.

This is how the human heart hurts.

the world is my SECRET-KEEPER

2007-11-19T21:55:00.001+07:00

Okay. This post is long, long, long overdue. So when I started writing this post I promised myself I wouldn't redo it anymore, and that I'd stick with it, and write it out. So that's what I'm doing. (We will ignore the fact that I already erased and rewrote it twice).

"There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and the ones we hide from ourselves." --Frank

PostSecret is (by now) a well-known blog on which 'Frank' posts up secrets that people mail to him on postcards. Crudely decorated or intricately designed; with messages scrawled on in natural handwriting or sneakily typed up and pasted, the secrets and confessions flip over to show a different side to the people we know. The postcards up there could have come from someone two houses away and we wouldn't know it.

What I find incredible about PostSecrets is the honesty with which these people speak. There are, of course, the heated postcards that have devil-horns drawn on the heads of anonymous people who 'broke my heart' and 'never came back'. And then there are secrets you'd really rather never know about. But the most powerful messages are the ones on which people have penned in their feelings; slowly forming the 'l's and dotting the 'i's on their heartfelt confessions and bolt-locked secrets that the world will understand but never know.

Why though?

Even as I write this I am contemplating the possibility of any one of my friends sending a secret to Frank, it amuses/surprises/interests/confuses/..... me to think any of them would. It gives me the same mixed emotions to think one of these secrets could reflect their feelings. In addition to that--it makes me want to laugh or shut up completely when I think about how some of them (secretly) are confessions I would make. And I wonder to myself how many of these secrets you could claim for yourselves.

I wonder what you would think; what you would say to yourselves at the sight of your own secret and confession available for the world to see, and I wonder if it would make you feel better to know someone else could think and feel the same way. I wonder if it really does make you feel relieved to shout out your secret for the entire world to see and realize that no one will ever really know.

One of the cards I once saw (which I tried but couldn't find anywhere on the net anymore) said that "I don't trust my friends. The world is my secret-keeper," and for me it summed up everything there was about PostSecret--it explained why people became dependent on it; continued to send secrets to it and confided in the thousands of nicknames and identities that they will never connect to individual faces. It explained why it was so much easier to confide in the world than in your friends.

Because the world will judge but it cannot see; it will condemn but it cannot sentence; it will tell but it cannot betray; it will understand but it can never, never know.

Don't Blink

2007-11-19T18:49:00.000+07:00

Disclaimer: This piece of literature was written, inspired by the book Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. I mean to offend no one, and I really do hope no one will get offended. Honestly, I am desperate. I owe my blog mates and my English teacher about 4 blog entries, not including this one.
Hey Miss Jess, I've never written a fictional story as a blog entry before, so don't kill me for this one.

The picture in the catalogue had lied. This could not be Ivanka.
          So we’ve been away from each other for three pathetic years and now here she is, looking at me with her sultry smile.
          On paper.
          On paper and all over the pavement; stepped on, spat on, rained on. It’s Ivanka, alright, and suddenly my stomach churned at a thought. I will marry her.

***

          ”Why do you need my black Amex, Sam?”
          ”Because I can’t afford her,” I confessed.
          ”Isn’t she supposed to be in Antarctica or something?” he lit a cigarette. “She must be freezing in clothes like that.”
          He laughed. I couldn’t, and I didn’t even bother correcting. The smoke from his menthol stick irritated me. I looked at Darrel in the eye, begging him with a stare. He knew.
          ”Just give it back to me before Christmas. Ya’ know I gotta do some shopping.”
          ”I’ll marry her by then, Bro’.”
          I left his duplex and whistled for a yellow cab. It’s the only cab I trust around here. In a neighborhood like this, not much can be trusted. Sometimes I wonder why a rich man like him even picked this area in the first place.
          I closed the door and texted my employer for my night shift.
          ”The Waldorf-Astoria,” I instructed.
          And the engine continued roaring.

***

          I started planning on the purchase the moment my shift was over. Should I go pay for it on-line or should I just march in there right now? The process would take forever and it’s way too cold to walk this late.
          I stretched my tired legs.
          I thought of Darrell and of how lucky I am to have a brother like him.
          And of how after three messy years, I am finally going to have my dream come true.
Mom would be extremely disappointed and dad would turn fast and furious, but she is my dream and I will do just anything to have her with me. I cried myself to sleep that night and hated myself for being so sensitive.

          I skimmed through the catalogue, hoping for a miracle. A discount. A coupon. Anything. Because when this card hits the machine, I would begin my life-long loyal service to D. But Ivanka’s worth it. She’s worth every penny.

***

          I braced myself for what I was about to do. I knocked on the door and waited. And waited. And waited.
          The door’s creaking sound made me cringe. And there she was, beautiful as ever.
          “Will you marry me?” I rushed.
          “You know I can’t.”
          ”But I love you.”
          ”But my husband’s job is very demanding. I’m moving to LA soon, Sam,” she explained.           “You know we can’t be together.”
          ”How much? I’ll pay however much you want me to.”
          ”I’m no longer for sale.”
          And then I just went right up and kissed her. Strangely, Mom came into my mind. She would die if she finds out. It’s not that Ivanka’s married, it’s not that she is Russian; it’s not even the fact that she was once a prostitute. It’s that my mom’s a Christian.
          And Ivanka’s a woman.
          And I’m a woman.

m a k e UP

2007-11-19T18:37:00.000+07:00

My Appalingly Retarded (exactly) 100 Word Drabble.
Note: I felt like being dramatic, in actuality I kind of like playing with make up. This post however, is more than just about make up, its how we trick ourselves into believing things that would make our lives, easier.

.

Make up, and all forms of beauty enhancers and concealment never cease to go out of style. Decades and centuries left this mechanism unchanged.

Forms and advancement to manipulate ones beauty get even more deceiving, but it’s not because of purely capitalistic attempts to increase revenue, but it’s because of us, our desire to fool others only augments.

Cream, pink, green and black are meticulously crafted onto our faces.

We continue our tireless tirade to trick. Painting layer after layer onto our faces.

Whitewashing any unpleasant blemishes.

Deluded enough to think that with enough make up, we can be, perfect.

Politics, Why I Care.

2007-11-12T16:19:00.000+07:00

Note: You'd probably notice lots of grammar errors and structural flaws, for that I apologize in advance, but other than Ms. Jess, DO Ignore it.

Twas a sad day for me, the holidays were to end in several day and I just popped in the last DVD of the last season of my favorite TV show. The saga to which I have repeatedly counted on in order to find some amusement and inspiration, was about to end.

It was a long journey. I watched its first episode with skepticism, only to find myself soon engrossed and thoroughly became a fanatic of the series.

Hundreds of episodes and months later, I finally watched every single episode of The West Wing.

I remembered the tears that rolled down my cheek, the heart beat levels raised due to a particularly great speech, the grins and laughter ensued after a particularly witty line.

The West Wing.

Wasn't that type of show that leaves people unchanged, it was a show you either loved, or was thoroughly bored by.

(All West Wing fans would note however that only Seasons 1-4 were the ones good enough to be watched over and over again, the rest is as frustratingly annoying as Sorkin's cocaine addiction)

The West Wing, was the show that propelled me to political awareness, a show that taught me things, things I will not bother to list.
But most of all, The West Wing showed me one fundamental thing that I taught I never had within me.

Optimism.

The sheer glowing hope that not all governments and politicians will succumb to bribes and self interest.

A profound realization hit me when President Josiah Bartlett from The West Wing declared, “Decisions are made by those who show up.”
Decisions and improvements in our government can only be done and implemented if we implement it ourselves. We (by this I mean me and 90% of Indo Chinese Youngsters) hide behind this mask of ‘We’re of Chinese decent, politics is not something we can be involved in.’

Perhaps there is an undeniable truth to that, the time will never be ripe for a Chinese Indonesian President. But as less prominent yet powerful posts as Ministers and influential advisers has been achieved.

Yes we may be skeptical about the present, but why be so morose about the future, a future that you can change. A future where those corrupt imbeciles are already dead and haven’t produced equally corrupt underlings.

Indonesia’s New Generation often forgets they have something going on for them, time & youth. The same youth that is often enjoyed but not utilized. I could cry out defiantly for my peers and countrymen to cling to hope and stick to idealism but as I have a less than enchanting oratory skills and still a high schooler, that would probably just result in me being thrown to a mental institution.
Nevertheless I’m still optimistic that not all of Indonesia’s Youngsters are duds.

Perhaps this haphazard and pathetic rally for hope can less insane if you note the fact that I and most of my peers are growing up in a country and a community where we cheer and are thoroughly pleased at suddenly being on the Top 50 Most Corrupt Country List rather than the Top 10, I have been unconsciously presuppose the worst in government, and to think that the best it could do is get less-worse.

Us, always picking a political candidate of a Known-Evil and a Lesser-Evil.
(*cough Fauzi Bowo vs. Adang Dani*)

Perhaps this topic is over exemplified and dramatized, but I’m exhausted by this apathetic, ignorantt and this oh-so-cynical who-cares-about-politics-it's-never-going-to-change point of view, that is often said in a pseudo-intellectual manner. Don’t we realize that through this we audaciously declare our defeat.

That our abject pessimism and this, I don't care about my government, I'll just make myself RICH way of thinking that is hindering this country's future.

Any interests in renewing and rejuvenating the country is irrevocably seen as naively disillusioned. (by that i meant me and Rach’s interest).

Anyone genuinely interested and aware of politics is seen as abnormal, weird, and an odd overachiever.

Has this attributed to this hell hole of infectious skepticism, apathy and political and social stupor?

In this day and age where being lazy but achieving good grades is seen as admirable and 'cool', I often wonder, who's at fault? Is our ignorance a fanciful way to protect our self from the gnawing reality that is our future, a way of adapting to this indefinite and often unchangeable ineptitude that is Indonesia's government?

Is our ignorance simply our immunity shot?

It may be. But I refuse to succumb to such deplorable simplicity.

Stephanie owes three blogs.

2007-11-12T16:17:00.000+07:00

Stephanie owes three blogs.

Stephanie T********* owes three blogs.

Stephanie is appalled that this stupid Microsoft Word spell checker does not recognize her last name. She vows to herself that ONE DAY, all Microsoft spell checkers will recognize her last name, due to maybe her actions or her..one of her cousins actions.

Stephanie has a middle name, it is Andini. This makes Stephanie’s initials interesting, S.A.T.

Stephanie has no idea what she is writing; she is rather apologetic about this particular stroke of insanity.

Stephanie is poking Alice.

This is Stephanie’s next blog post.

Stephanie is sad Alice had just insulted her blog post.

She pokes her again, Alice is annoyed. Dot dot dot.

Stephanie is about to poke Jessica.

But she more like elbowed her rather than poking.

Dot dot dot 

Jessica poked Stephanie’s stomach instead while sighing and rolling her eyes in annoyance.

Stephanie is sitting rather sluggishly in her double Economic class.

Alice said it ‘Ran Out’ rather randomly and to no one it particular then continued writing her Econ notes.

Stephanie is succinctly said, VERY BORED. She hears some comments uttered by a classmate.

Stephanie thinks what that classmate said is very stupid, she thinks this classmate is an ignorant moron who makes her think that free speech is not a really good idea.

Stephanie has more mean thoughts that she cannot mention here. Regardless, she thinks that he is still an idiot.

Stephanie still has an urge to poke Alice but fears her reaction to Stephanie will be... violent....

Alice said Stephanie should publish this on her blog. Stephanie shakes her head, this entry is rather dumb.

She’s embarrassed by the lack of intelligence this thingie is currently showing.
Up to this point, there are only two hundred ninety eight words.

It really is, well, was anyway.

Stephanie is still bored.

Stephanie is rather afraid of her blogmates response to this particular blog, it probably just made Monochromatic Rainbow seem really retarded.

Stephanie has just insulted that person out loud. At least she’s not a two faced hypocrite.

Stephanie is very proud to insult this classmates lack of intelligence.

This classmate deserved it. That person beat Alice? Sure he/she will, his/her weight will…

Stephanie grinned.

Stephanie is not mean, she’s truthful, she really cannot stand idiots being obnoxious, pretentious and belittling to her.

Stephanie yawns, her moronic entry stops here.

Igkh, China

2007-11-04T22:17:00.000+07:00

Many predict that in twenty to thirty years, China will overtake America’s economy and become the world’s greatest economy. To the Chinese – in and out of China, - this serves as a shining beacon of hope. These people hope that in the supposed future-bound victory of the oriental dragon, they will be finally viewed equal to the Caucasians and Japanese – the crème de la crème of international society.

The tragedy is that despite my obviously Chinese appearance – with the characteristic one-line eyes, pear-shaped nose, and pale yellow skin – I am not one of those people. Rather than basking in the joys of this hope, I drown in lamentations of the possibility that in its increasing momentum, Chinese culture, mainly its language of ugly complexities will overtake American culture and the language of which I am currently writing with.

These nightmarish speculations are, however, merely speculations – as nightmarish as they may be. English is already deeply rooted in world society – from England’s colonial dominance – to America’s twentieth century cultural dominance, that a gigantic shift between two languages of completely different characteristics is highly unlikely. The likelihood of the world being forced into dumbly memorizing three thousand characters is outlandish – simply because most of us aren’t willing or sharp enough to do so.

It is, of course, moronic to believe that an economy reliant on inferiorly copying and manufacturing American/Japanese/European products will overtake the economies responsible for the original innovation and artistic developments. After all, the land is known as a land of unoriginality and aesthetic distaste, that for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they consulted with Caucasians for its architectural and systematic development. Sure, these people invented the compass, gunpowder, paper, whatever. But that was ancient – many centuries ago. It has since devolved and only recently did that devolution halt to a positive outlook for the nation.

It doesn’t stop there. Chinese music has never been viewed as one of high sophistication – contrary to the great music produced by Europeans. Their opera singers sound like drunken idiots shrieking, and while Western music have left boybands and their effeminate crud behind in the nineties, the people of the orient are still caught up in the inferior Eastern renditions of melodramatic vomit – F4, rain, Jay Chou, that lot.

The exponential growth China is currently experiencing is like the growth Europe and America experienced in their industrial revolutions. Today, while America, Europe, and Japan are already moving from the information era to the biotech era, China – still predominantly a land of primitive peasantry – is only moving from its agricultural era to its industrial era – leagues behind its Western and Nippon counterparts.

Economic dominance does not always result in the same occurring for cultural realms. Take a look at the USSR, whose political and economic dominance spanning for over half a century did not result in the global popularization of Soviet culture and language.

Why I rant about things that are decades ahead of our time is – in truth – due to this overwhelming fear of the things everyone predicts – and a secret fear that for once, my foolish father may actually be right.

On Communism. (Yes, again. Blame my History EE)

2007-11-03T20:29:00.000+07:00

Disclaimer: I'm not a communist. I'm not even a socialist. To me, Communism is (for lack of a better word) retarded.
This blog post is written without any evidence, and yes it is filled with hasty and broad generalizations. But as a friend said to me, "but opinionated articles are much more fun, so who cares"

I am annoyed, I promised myself and several friends that I would be for once positive this week..

Write a happy piece: complementing the world, complementing people and their ideology.

But no, far from the happy-go-lucky smiling me during the daytime, I can't write that way. It seems that all the joy in me cannot possibly be transferred to blogs in general.

So, please just bear with me as I, once again, am the whiny idiot ranting about other people's idiocy. (Ironic, no?)

It all started this bright and sunny afternoon, I just returned from my dentist with a delightful progress report , instead of just idly watching Heroes on DVD, I for once was sparked with a need to be productive, and so.. turned on my Internet and proceeded to research the G30S or Gerakan 30 September (My Extended Essay topic).

Alright, yes, I wasn't being entirely diligent. I Facebooked and YouTubed whilst researching, but the YouTube-ing was rather rewarding, I found this great (yet terribly sad) video of the 1965 Coup and the ensuing Anti-Communist purge.

I watched all 20 minutes of the video and soon happily commented; but what started as a grateful and filled with august comment turned, not so .. positive ..

You see, my outrage and most of my blog entries start with something – or to be more specific (suggestion: add 'to help those with limited brain capacity to process data' in brackets), imbeciles. I must once again apologize, for always (and somewhat conveniently) bashing random Internet people, but seriously...

Westaquil wrote:

"If there are people killed who are not Communists, I feel sympathy. If there are people killed who are Communists, there's nothing to be sad about. The Communists in Indonesia terrorized the rural areas in the lead up to 1965. Of course, this part is always conveniently forgotten."

To be less petty, this sort of sordid mentality is shared by millions of Indonesians. Years of hopeless indoctrination by the state and society has left us Indonesians irrevocably brainwashed and susceptible moronic rants filled ignorance.

But seriously, what is it with this country and its unfathomable hatred of all things related to Communism? Oh yes, they were at fault, oh yes, they have attempted a coup, oh yes they were scheming people all too happy to seize everyone's money and lands. Yes, they were godless people. But they were, and still are, not the direct spawn of Satan nor were they planning to kill everyone within sight.

After all, Communism is merely an ideology, an ideology, that in the hands of dictators and overly-zealous individual advocates, have troubled the life of many. But in the end, that is the works of a Communist, not communism itself. It's always those people in power that corrupts and destroys everything, whether they be a communist or a fascist.

So I'm so terribly distraught over the callous and idiotic fear that resounds every time the word COMMUNIST is uttered.

I questioned my cousin earlier today with a grin of what they taught when I said the word, communist. With a wince she quickly but somewhat hesitantly replied, "Evil, cruel". I just nodded and passed her a plate of Xiao Long Pao to eat, but inside, I can't help but be horribly dismayed at how even the most modern of teenagers today are still stuck in the *oh-my-God-there's-EVIL-Communists* mindset. It's not her fault, I know it is not; there is no one I can't direct all my anger too. But I can't help but be be aggravated by the fact that a single word can invoke such frantic and incomprehensible disgust.

Why are we so boggled up in our misconstrued conceptions? It was not until I choose to do my Extended Essay on Indonesian History that I was finally awaken of the numerous indoctrinations taught to me in my elementary IPS lessons.

An indoctrination still in motion, still unawakened in the mind of my peers, my cousins, my fellow countrymen.

Honor Your Parents

2007-10-29T18:43:00.000+07:00

One of the Ten Commandments listed in the bible is – infuriatingly – to unconditionally honor your parents. God expects that for the sake of virtue, as unworthy of honor a parent can be, his son will manage to delude himself and emulate artificial respect for that sordid creature.

I’ve never had a great relationship with my father. From the pits of my memory, I can recall having always favored my mother greatly over that man. But I also recall ancient days when I still had remote bits of love for him - like I actually enjoyed his presence. Now that love has been replaced by a nauseating feeling of disgust for my kin, and a bitter longing for that man to disappear from my life.

Over the past years, I have grown to feel underappreciated. My overall great academic life, talents in music, and indisputable practicalities for this household has been left unheeded for him. Instead, he criticizes me for what he considers to be fatal imperfections.

You see, I am the complete opposite of him. Unlike him, who is social, aesthetically distasteful, sickeningly inartistic, ancient, mathematically adept, and stingy, I am socially inept, aesthetically tasteful, musical, well-informed, mathematically average, and capable of enjoying luxuries. Somehow, the man expects his son to be a reincarnation of him – for his choleric personality requires everything to agree with him. And so, with my being the complete opposite of his wishes for a son, he expresses his disappointment with endless, unjustified, moronic denigration.

Worse of all, he blatantly displays his severe incompetence as a parent by comparing me with my sister – who he worships as if she is godsend, despite her clearly obvious faults. It’s probably because she’s more like him – musically inept, mathematically-inclined, and interested in sports – than I am. Ironically, even she, who fortunately spends most of her time away from him, can’t stand him.

When treated with endless belittlement, a person would either be saddened or annoyed. The latter applies to me, because among many things, the only trait I share with him is stubbornness. Over the years, he has become more and more of a nuisance – probably because over the years, he sees more and more that I am unlike him. So now, I avoid seeing his gorilla-like face in dread of the itching irritation I experience whenever I argue with him. And whenever I am stuck in an argument with him in the car, I deafen myself with my iPod and my earphones – my lifesavers – and allow him to express his parental ineptitude to himself.

I suppose, like Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the man deserves some sympathy. His son never turned out to be the way he quite wanted him to be, and the daughter he is so proud of doesn’t share mutual feelings for him. But I am not sympathetic for that incubus of familial calamity. Desensitized, I have been, by the ceaseless infuriation that man had caused me.

I know he loves me, but like my sister, those feelings aren’t mutual. Oh, the horror.

If only I was witless enough to be tolerant of lunacy, then we could be one happy, harmonious family. How unfortunate it is that I am not; that my honor for him is nonexistent; that I am stuck in this spiraling deathtrap of familial discord.

renascens fruori: To Reawaken Joy

2007-10-21T20:37:00.000+07:00

This is going to sound overdramatic. The feelings behind it, though, aren't characterized by 'anguish', 'disappointment', or 'rage'. More like 'lethargy' and 'ennui'. Born out of a general listlessness and expressed with a deadpan look and a half-hearted yawn.

The things I used to enjoy and the things I was interested and enthusiastic about; the things I found myself willing to give time and effort for--they have become irrelevant and, well, petty. Almost hollow, even. It's not the kind of thing that would plunge you into the deep dark pits of depression, but it's the kind of thing that makes you think what now? (Yes, I say that a lot, don't I?)

After all, it's important to have something to love and enjoy and aspire to, and when you don't have that, it's hard to keep a grip on other things; like your enthusiasm and outlook on life in general. Maybe I'm not the only one thinking this way? I got off the phone with a friend a ~~few minutes~~ half hour ago, who shared my sentiments. Even then, we only discussed it in passing. That's just how little it matters now.

I think I used to be passionate about this. I used to love stringing the words together into phrases, phrases into sentences; sentences into entire narratives and articles that reflected my thoughts and opinions. My contribution to the world.

Now when I run my eyes down the page of a book I acknowledge the presence of something missing. Perhaps it was the way I used to revel in the words and the phrases; how I would find myself smiling as I turned it over in my head. Maybe it was the giddy rush I used to feel when I turned the next page. Maybe the unbelievably real anguish I used to feel for the mishaps of the fictitious characters. Now when I run my eyes down the page of a book I register the story word for word inside my head, and it sits there, piled up and undigested; experienced but not enjoyed.

What do you do in a situation like this? Even books like my all-time favourites--Smoke and Mirrors, Water Babies, Joy Luck Club--are difficult to enjoy. Even the beautifully strung poetry of Sapardi Djoko Damono only manages to float feebly about in my head, and even then, only in passing.

It's also difficult for me to write (apparently this is also an alarming problem for other people I know). There are increasingly longer pauses where my hands twitch above the keyboard; where the pen floats a hair's breadth away from the page; where inspiration lingers just out of reach. Like right now.

What's happened to us? (Us this time, and not just me.)

A possible reason someone proposed to me just today is that our heads are full of a lot of other things that are "more important". Due dates, projects, essays, tests; the rigid lines of routine that had never mattered before as much as it does now. I'm not proposing to throw all that by the wayside and do what I love regardless of anything else. Especially because if I'm being honest, I have a lot more time on my hands than I'm willing to admit.

In my defense, that handful of time flows past unnaturally. It feels like there is some gigantic, gaping mouth into which huge chunks of that time are tossed. But this insatiable black-hole of a mouth is a messy eater, and leaves us with small grains of hourglass sand that tick by torturously slow; five minutes that are too brief for us to use for anything meaningful--too long for us to ignore and let slip.

One of these days I'll learn how to appreciate these crumbs of time. One of these days I'll finally find it in me to place them on my tongue (the way you do a snowflake or a drop of rain) and taste the fragile, fleeting sweetness of stolen time. Isn't that the kind of life you would love to live? The kind of life lived from moment to moment; loved for the mere experience of it and treasured for the memory of it.

That's the way I hope to restore my love of words and poetry and prose; suddenly, unexpectedly, with the kind of infant joy that awakens itself at the sight of falling snow or the whisper of long-awaited raindrops.

Sutiyoso's "Brilliance"

2007-10-20T14:49:00.000+07:00

You, the reader, would most probably view me as someone of most ardent cynicism and hatred. You’re probably right. Disappointingly, I remain in this state of abhorrent lunacy – more so after the recent reduction of roads in West Jakarta and the resultant gridlock of this dung-hole.

A quick google search of Sutiyoso – governor of this great labyrinthine maze of urban garbage we call Jakarta – reveals admirably positive publicity. The man is blindly regarded by the press as a great pioneer for Jakarta’s infrastructure.

The busway, they say, is our city’s “brilliant” answer to public transportation. True, the provision public transportation has been improved over these past seven years. But something meant to ease the congestion here has, in fact, done the exact opposite.
Sutiyoso’s brainchild has taken up about one of three lanes of virtually every major thoroughfare of Jakarta. Roads, already underprovided, are taken up to give room for a bus lane that is barely functional. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the fastest growing market in the world for motorcycles, and what is left of Jakarta’s roads are infested by these ridiculously reckless two-wheelers. Tragedy befalls us - the growth of the market for cars here is no less substantial.

It would help if the busway was, at the very least functional. At peak hours, one must queue for fifteen minutes before being able to enter the overcrowded busses of claustrophobic suffocation. So while commuting on the busway itself is fast, the queue counterbalances this. While these underprovided busses can only carry about forty people at a time, the bus lane is virtually empty with no only one or two busses in sign, with the remaining lanes in gridlock. Even at full capacity, the amount of people traveling per hour in the busway is considerably lesser than a lane’s potential capacity if cars were allowed to make use of it.

Sutiyoso plans to expand his busway network by adding about seven more lines. Meanwhile, it’s taking us ten years to finish only a twelve kilometer part of the Jakarta outer ring road. Jakarta further decays to excrement each year and they call it progress.

Yes, the poor are somewhat advantaged by this testament of blind idiocy, but at what expense? Our commute times are doubled; we waste petrol on road-queuing while the fuel market climbs upwards as Indonesia faces double digit inflation.

True that the busway is much cheaper than say, a subway, or some other actually effective mean of public transport. But why resort to a cheap failure? Wouldn’t the finances be put to better use if an effective subway line – one that actually reduces congestion – was built, as opposed to five busway lines which only makes things worse?

Even more ridiculous is the corruption that obviously reeks in these “one billion rupiah busses.” Reading the promotion of these “advanced busses” costing over “one billion rupiah” in our newspapers numbs me with constipation.

What will our metropolis be reduced to when Sutioyoso’s dreams are realized? Ineptitude and immorality plagues our bureaucracy, that “progress” is negative that despite Indonesia’s rapid economic growth, unemployment and poverty figures are higher than ever.

I hope that the people whom we entrust our tax money in will someday, God knows how, actually be capable of advancing this rancid nation. But I’ve come to realize that it has been ten years since the 1997 monetary crises and still we remain lamentably pathetic. Prospect is faint; who do we turn to?

On Fear

2007-10-18T17:41:00.000+07:00

Some people walk with shadows wrapped around their ankles. These are the people who keep throwing looks over their shoulder at the teeth and claws only they can see, reaching out of the shadows. They walk with small, scared steps that make no sound on the floor but echo like earthquakes inside their own heads. They will give you a quick, (self-)reassuring smile as they pass; trailing shadows and imaginary monsters.

They walk either with backs painfully straight or hunched, because fear can choose either to drag a slimy, cold finger down your spine or shove its clammy fist right into your gut. It whips out a handkerchief and binds your jaw to your skull so you can't say help me; and the only sounds you can produce are a pathetic little whimper and an apocalyptic shriek. Fear laughs in your face as you scream your heart out when no one hears.

Fear makes mocking gestures as you sit stoned in your chair, when the timer begins to tick dangerously close to zero. It marches its cold, smoke fingers across your test page and makes it hard to read the words. Fear holds a magnifying glass right against your eye so all you can see is the first three words of that question and nothing else. Fear wriggles its fingers around your heart and (just for fun) drags it down into your bowels to see how far down it can plummet.

Fear tells you that that hallway to your left was not there before. It says that you failed your exam--you know, that one; the one that ultimately decides your future? No, even more, your life and death?

Fear takes the strands on the edges of your imaginative tapestry and spins it just a little further. It laughs in delight as it forces you into dark corners and pushes tears out of your eyes--even tweaking embarrassing squeaks and sobs at the occasional freaky moment.

Fear waves goodbye and slips out the door. And just when you sigh in relief, it whispers boo from behind your shoulder and sends you shaking and trembling down the same roller-coaster ride.

Enamoured, Infatuated

2007-10-14T23:41:00.000+07:00

To: Pillow
From: Pink
Subject: Sing It If You Can

I'm usually very good with words, but I found a better way to tell you how I feel. I borrowed some lyrics from a few songs. They're not just great; they're perfect. Sing it if you can.

I don't know what it is that you've done to me,
but it caused me to act in such a crazy way.
You're the kind of guy, whose hand in mine
sends shivers up and down my spine.
Something's telling me it might be you.

Watchin' lovers walkin'
hand in hand they pass me by.
Wish I was one of them.
Wish I had somebody.
I wanna feel how it feels to be
Somebody's somebody,
Someone's someone,
Some sweet lover's lover.

Nothing to lose,
your love to win.
Hoping so bad that you'll let me in...
I'm at your feet waiting for you.
I've got time and nothing to lose.
There are times when I believe in you,
these moments when I feel close to you.
There are times I think that I am yours,
though many times I feel unsure.

I'm going through hell, thinking about you with somebody else...
Always thought someday you would notice me.
I wish you'd look at me that way,
your beautiful eyes looking deep into mine.
Telling me more than any words could say,
but you don't even know I'm alive.

Can I trust the way I feel?
'Cause my heart's been fooled before..
Am I just seeing what I want to see,
or is it true, could you really be
Someone to have and hold
With all my heart and soul?
I need to know, before I fall in love.
Someone who'll stay around,
through all my ups and downs.
Please tell me now, before I fall in love.

Somebody wants you,
Somebody needs you.
Somebody hopes that one day you will see that somebody's me.
I still feel the warming glow
shining somewhere in the future
shining not so far away.

Hey, I'm hopeless, I know. At least you know how I feel. But that's not exactly true either. You don't know how I feel. You'll never know unless I tell you. And I won't. There is the tiniest flicker of hope in my heart. Ignite it.

Pink

METROPOLIS: The Masterpiece

2007-10-11T17:12:00.000+07:00

SPOILERS AHEAD (marked in red)

The days have slugged past, and I, without realizing it, have slowed down along with it. I haven't gotten much done over the past few days of the holiday (and as I am writing this I owe monochromaticRAINBOWS two posts) but I've been sitting back and taking my time with everything, which, in hindsight, is probably not a very good thing. That was my revelation late last night, so this morning I woke up early and made myself useful--I even plucked up the willpower and the inspiration to write this post. :)

Only this is going to be a little different from the stuff I've been doing. Today I present to you a review of a movie I recently got a hold of. Sounds boring? I hope not. I honestly hope I'll be able to do the movie justice through this review. The movie is an animated piece, and in the past has won over the favor of various movie critics for the art as well as the storyline involved. It is the brainchild of a Japanese genius of animation by the name of Osamu Tezuka (known for the widely popular Astroboy) which ranks up there along with Howl's Moving Castle (ranked #13 by IMDb), and Spirited Away (ranked #1 by IMDb).

Some people may consider animated pieces of work not worth their time; especially since the aforementioned works all fall under the category of 'old-school' 2D animation. Further yet, these masterpieces of fine art are seriously stereotyped for falling under the category of Japanese anime--along with the likes of Sailor Moon and other 'ridiculous' pieces of 'rubbish' (I say these in quotation marks because opinions differ, and I will personally suspend judgment in the matter). These issues came to mind because I myself was at first disinterested. One, because I assumed Japanese anime could only go so far so well as a movie, despite the wildly positive reviews. Secondly because I am finicky when it comes to how things look, and I didn't like Osamu Tezuka's knack for putting gigantic lashes on his characters.

Just a few days ago I set aside my ridiculous 'prejudices' and watched Spirited Away. I thought that I would just grin and bear it; and if it turned out to be lackluster, so be it--I was just trying to spend time.
Perhaps it was because I expected so little that I ended up being so impressed. I wasn't exactly willing to admit I was wrong, so I thought to myself that it wasn't so bad. I personally cannot believe it took me so long to discover something this great.

I went on ahead and tried to find what other all-time animated movies ranked high up the list (Spirited Away is ranked #1 by IMDb!), and came across Metropolis through another ranking list. Watching Metropolis, I discovered a newfound respect for Japanese directors, animators and writers. There are times when I would watch a movie after reading a review on it and I would think that it fell short of the expectations the review had set me up for; but METROPOLIS is nothing like that. Even after reading reviews by movie critics on the movie, I still found more things to appreciate in the movie; details that suggested a certain sense of intricate dedication in the making of the film.

So what, exactly, is the movie like? Why is it so good? One of the reasons (which I myself actually hadn't noticed at all) is that the movie has been hailed as a great achievement in animation for smooth transitions between slides, as well as the quality of production and attention to detail in the character, building, and background designs. The other reason (which I thought could make it good materials for an English blog post), is that METROPOLIS is truly a literary treasure, presented in the silver screen, meaning that instead of proceeding as a mindless transition from opening-to-problem-to-solution, the plot and characters have backgrounds and political, spiritual and cultural settings that attach a unique kind of value to them.

METROPOLIS tells the story of a fictional metropolis (duh?), which is dystopian and also plutocratic--stereotypically indicational of good literature in my ears :). A plutocracy is where the power and the benefits of a good life are contained only within the affluent and high social class; the rest of the population is left to flounder, and more often than not is made to support the cushy lives of the high and powerful. This is also true of Metropolis, where there is social laddering not only in humans; but it is further complicated by the presence of robots, which humans insist do not have the right to have human names (trespassing on the territory of exclusively human rights), among other things.

The story begins with the announcement of the completion of the Ziggurat--a reference to the biblical Tower of Babel that eventually fell to ruin and caused the scattering of peoples to all corners of the earth--and the supposed coming of a new dawn for the city as a leading force in technology and a powerhouse of all might and wealth. Involved in the upcoming application of the Ziggurat is a recently completed ~~robot~~ superbeing by the name of Tima, who is rescued by an unknowing Kenichi from the ruins of the lab after her creator is killed. Over a few quick hours Tima develops a deep attachment to Kenichi, especially after being manhandled, carried, dragged, and driven in a rickshaw by him to get away from Rock, a member of the Marduk party (Marduk is the head honcho in the Babylonian gods' hierarchy) who serves Duke Red and is jealous of the attention Duke Red (as a father-figure to him) is pouring on Tima (who was modelled after his deceased daughter).

Eventually Tima is captured; Kenichi tortured and reduced to a limp puppet, and having discovered she isn't human like her beloved Kenichi, Tima proceeds to take her assigned place at the top of the Ziggurat on a 'throne' from which she will control the whole world for Duke Red (or so he assumes).

Things, however, don't go according to plan. Tima's 'unstable energy' (the way Duke Red explained her emotions to her) led her to decide she had no need for humans. Using the Ziggurat she takes control over the world's technological weapons and aims them at human population hotspots around the globe, and also arranges for the creation of a biological weapon to annihilate all mankind. Kenichi snaps to; just in time, and follows Tima into the darkness of the Ziggurat's heart. He wrenches her from the throne, but the Ziggurat has 'completed' her programming and she doesn't remember him anymore. At the end, the entire Ziggurat falls apart as a result of the overwhelming data provided by Tima, killing Duke Red and Rock (who meant well when he pressed the button of the superweapon used to destroy robots, but it resulted in the destruction of the entire monolithic monument).

Even through that ~~not so~~ brief synopsis it is not difficult for us to perceive just how much detail goes into METROPOLIS as a literary piece. Osamu Tezuka indeed even drew his inspiration from other works that helped shape his wondrous fantasy universe, including, among all else, the silent movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang, which also involved a female robot and is said to have given birth to the idea of Tima. There is also great detail in its art--for me especially, the architectural designs of the city of Metropolis and the Ziggurat are eye-candy and demand some sort of recognition from its viewers.

Of course the movie is not perfect, and indeed has its shortcomings. Most prominently is the way the entire story ended. Kenichi looks through the debris to try and find Tima, but has to face the fact that she is gone, as robots (who have returned to their senses) crowd around him, each cradling a part of Tima, most notably a robot named Fifi who helped them earlier in their escape from Rock, holding Tima's heart (a human heart, as she is made out of both human and non-human parts). Kenichi walks away with the robots, and the screen changes to a shot of Tima's treasured radio, which she obtained around the beginning of the story. The radio crackles and asks "Who am I?" the first words Tima said, and the movie ends. The problem with this ending is that Tima, who seemed to have been slowly developing an identity of her own, is apparently incapable of defeating the greatest stumbling block; her human/robot nature, and apparently falls into oblivion never having resolved the issue. It doesn't do her as a main character much justice, and it further complicates the tangle of loose ends that the story leaves off with.

In the original Japanese version, the movie ends with a photograph of Kenichi in front of a store named "Kenichi and Tima Robot Company", while a figure that is heavily reminiscent of Tima stands in the display.
It isn't clear if Kenichi put her back together, or if the figure indeed is just a figurine. This doesn't do the story much good, plot-wise.

Despite the disappointing ending (it leaves off enough loose ends for us to be able to expect some sort of sequel, I suppose?), METROPOLIS overall is a marvellous piece of work as a movie, and in that, as a highly interesting and well-composed literary piece. I'd recommend this movie for anyone willing to put their brains into gear and explore the many open-ended questions you'll be faced with throughout the entire movie. My synopsis doesn't explain it as well as I hoped it would, so you have more to expect from METROPOLIS than any review can ever tell you; that is, if you're ready to chew it over yourself.

Jaundiced Pigs Spitting

2007-09-30T10:57:00.000+07:00

In May 1998, a series of riots took Jakarta by storm. Our eyes, flooded by tears, witnessed the violent abuse of the pribumi towards the ethnic Chinese, as Suharto’s regime came to its ultimate demise. In our metropolis, solace was nowhere to be found, as the rancid stench of grim suffering and odium poisoned the arid minds of the victimized. Our great Jakarta, past its façade of glass and steel, was reduced to social debris, as discord between the ethnic Chinese and the native Indonesians disjointed our people in an infinite void of grudge.

My people, yellow-skinned public spitters of horrid artistic tastes, pride ourselves for our cunning wit, perseverance, and willingness to do anything to achieve success. This is who we are, and for being who we are, we have achieved much in this archipelago of seemingly endless opportunities.

In our short time of living here, we, who constitute for just about two percent of the Indonesian population, have grown to dominate the Indonesian aristocracy, with over eighty percent of Indonesia’s wealthiest being of Chinese race.

Funny how the minority comprises for the majority of the privileged. They hate us, but it’s certainly understandable. Envy, after all, is among the most effective catalysts for strife. Throw in obese Italians and you have yourself an opera.

We whine about how we are not given equal rights – how Indonesia will never have a Chinese president; how we are viewed as treasure houses for which we are to be exploited with bribery and corruption. Taxation is targeted at Chinese people and we complain. Sure, it’s irritating, but it is only logical that they tax the people who actually have money to be taxed for.

The reason the Chinese people are so wealthy in this country is that we are selfish and devious enough to exploit the naïve pribumi. Our industriousness doesn’t purely owe to our natural intelligence and determination – it’s more about how fortunate we are that these people are gullible enough to tolerate THEIR underpayment; THEIR mistreatment; the harvesting of THEIR natural resources for our capitalist mindsets. Take a look at America, the capitalist haven where WE are the used ones – mere chefs, butchers, maids, and takeout boys confined to ghetto Chinatowns.

A chauvinistic Chinese idiot keeps on saying how we are the superior race; how CHINESE people are better at designing AMERICAN furniture than AMERICANS are; how sleazy and faulty every non-Chinese person is; how we strive while others fail. True, such is the case in Indonesia, where the natives are not fully acquainted with capitalist evil. But if his bigoted remarks are so true, then why does he continue admitting that he would not be able to do business in Australia – a land of capitalist Caucasians?

Our successes are based on their failures. We took hold of Singapore – Malayan land – and converted it into a thriving Chinese metropolis while its neighbors, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, remain overshadowed by the merlion. Worst of all, they didn’t even realize that we stole their land, and they remain kind and naïve enough to supply Singapore with water.

We ought to stop complaining that they’re not giving us enough rights or that they treat us as the filthy exploiters that we are. We ought to stop viewing ourselves as the finer people and realize that our cousins in Western Chinatowns aren’t doing as well as we are. We ought to realize that though we dwarf the Indonesians here, we remain overshadowed by Caucasians in their lands. We ought to end our parade of social superiority, sympathize, and help, rather than shrilly whining about the poverty and hunger that we – jaundiced, ravenous, conceited, spitting gluttons – have brought unto them.

The Best Title For This Entry Would Be: PINK

2007-09-29T23:26:00.000+07:00

This is how I see the world.
The majority of you should not be surprised. To everyone else, welcome to my life. If there is a more intense word than 'love', I would use it. But for now, I will just use 'love'.

I love pink.

This is how I see the world.

I think everything looks better in pink. I'm very patient when it comes to purchasing electronic goods, because deep in my heart, I know, everything eventually comes in pink.

That is my camera. I personalized it with three rows of bling (not shown). It's 1.30 am and I can't sleep. This entry is simply the result of my boredom + randomosity.

I'm so pink, people raise their eyebrow when I wear some other color. They would ask why I bring a blue bag or why I don't dye my hair pink. I want to! But I would violate the school's rule.

I can't exactly explain why I love pink.

You know how when a baby girl is born, the nurses just assume the baby will like pink so they wrap them with a pink blanket? Those baby girls eventually grew out of it; I didn't.

I'm sorry. I'm just really, really bored.

My life was complete the day I bought my pink laptop. Up to then, the only thing in my room which was not pink was my laptop. But I'm content now. Seriously, my life is complete with the presence of my pink VAIO.

You will never find anyone who loves pink more than me. I promise.

I'll end this entry with a list.

The Things-Which-People-Usually-Have-in-Another-Color-But-I-Have-in-Pink List

Laptop
Mouse
Phone
Cell Phone
Camera
Refrigerator
Ukulele
Toilet
Sink
Trash Bin
Toaster
Baseball Bat
Baseball
Basketball
Volleyball
Soccer ball
Tennis ball
Lint Remover
Tweezer
Post-It
Shaving Cream
Speakers

I suggest you assume everything else I have are pink, too. Normal things like my wallet, backpack, pens, pencils, erasers, notebooks, shoes, walls (my room), curtains, sheets, sofa, picture frames, and everything else one can come up with.

From Monks to China, a relfection on my ever swinging cultural crisis

2007-09-28T21:43:00.001+07:00

Monks versus the Myanmar Military Junta

A reflection of my ever swerving condemnation…

I hate China.

In a post relating to the monks versus the military Junta of Myanmar, you would probably not expect that I, a Chinese adolescent girl firstly condemn China.

Well I must assure you, I myself am not quite sure of where that hatred spawned from or how long it will last, but I implore you to stay with my jumbled train of thoughts.

It all started this afternoon, I had nothing to do and well, was somewhat leisurely skimming the New York Times (albeit the fact that I do have homework). Noting an article by SETH MYDANS (se article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/world/asia/27myanmar.html?em&ex=1191038400&en=44b7d786792f3376&ei=5087%0A)

I recalled some rather vague facts about the protests. My initial reaction was somewhat mild, I was amused. I, Stephanie Andini Tangkilisan was amused by this news.

Instead of being, ‘awwhh, that’s too bad, poor monks! Go monks!’ I was more like, ‘Hah! Those moronic junta’s can’t act brutally against those monks’, and started to think of circumstances and in a way was sort of naïve to think that the protesters being predominantly monks could stop a dictatorship eventually.

I was optimistic, I for once was optimistic, and my thoughts just drabbled away to my schoolwork and rested the thoughts based on my still slightly rose colored glasses, denying that I was just a vitriolic cynic.

Well, today, that glasses were even more smashed, even more trampled, but much more significant to the loss in my faith of humanity was the loss complete depravation of my faith in my own race, in my own supposed motherland, China.

“In response to the violence, the United Nations Security Council called an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the crisis, but China blocked a Council resolution, backed by the United States and European nations, to condemn the government crackdown.” – Seth Mydans

I know, I know I haven’t done what proper methods there are to journalism, but from what I can comprehend, my China, the land from which about 90% of my heritage comes from are acting against monks, defending another dictatorial regime!

And with that paragraph, the hate fluttered and then, SOARED. I am ashamed of being Chinese, why in the name of all things wonderful would they block this resolution?

Why is the government, such a bloody (literally and not literally) religion-less and cold hearted nation?

Where were they when Chinese people living in Indonesia was massacred and purged in the anti-Communist purge of 1965 (which by the way had the death toll at a vague number of 500.000-1.000.000.

Where were they when the anti-Chinese riots of 1998 happened?

I heard, they even denied entry and denied asylum! It’s not like they are Singapore, their land could actually, I don’t know fit a lot of refugee’s! I don’t know, maybe, just maybe, they really don’t count as Chinese citizens, and even worse, maybe they don’t even care if we are Chinese and if we are dying.

What I wouldn’t pay to have a nation that respects my heritage, that respects the fact that I exist, and want to exist!

By now, I have strayed far away from the topic of Monks and Myanmar, I beg your apology, but at this present moment, I am simply GLAD that I am not 100% Chinese, despite the fact my friends have called me less than kind words of my other 10% Indonesian blood. (YES I AM STILL INDIGNANT OVER YOU RACIST INDIVIDUALS…)

Perhaps I am merely vengeful, perhaps, I’m simply odd.

But pray tell, when the nation I supposedly belong to simply alienates me, perhaps, I must say I’m glad to be Indonesian. (Yes, the Chinese were also harmed yet again in 1998, but I'm ignoring that at the present moment (I'm illogical that way))

Perhaps instead of the Great Land of China, the supposedly next Super Power of the World, I can be contented and proud with the fact that I am a citizen of Indonesia, who despite not being the best of nations, still grant me civil liberties, still give me the land, food and daily necessities that I all to often am less than thankful for.

So my most sincere (albeit unashamed) apologies if I do not share the same affinities towards China as you do. As most Chinese do?

Why should I?

Yes, I'm soar over certain recent events, yes, I'm acting completely illogical and as seen by this post, I've totally shredded every ounce of what was left of my reputation as a logical and reasonable person, I stand by my opinion of being less than loving of the government that China is now. (A particular purely scathing and ultimately EVIL communistic and (now capitalistic bastards).

You see, when my great grandfathers fled from China and into this Indonesian archipelago, they left their motherland but gained a new one, Indonesia, in which, my ancestors finally found the contentment we so desired.

So yes, when Chinese New Year rolls around, you can bet I will still say those endearing (and somewhat magical) four words, but I’ll promise to you now, those words are not a symbol of my respect or affinty with all that is Chinese, but merely my longing for those sweet red money filled envelopes.

Catholics and Christians

2007-09-26T19:30:00.001+07:00

Note: I’m blabbering, I’m a blabbering moron. This post is seriously rambling and blabbering! See! I am blabbering! Wohoo! *promotes self down to A2 SL*

***

being edited*

*vitriolic/ Steph

Riding, Chasing The Moon

2007-09-26T17:34:00.000+07:00

I would like to try something new. Something that does not involve "love" and everything that is attached to it. Thing is, I'm poetic and I can't help not to be. I have the tendency to describe things with my heart. My heart, filled with romantic thoughts. I am very emotional, but not in the I'm-angry-all-the-time kind of way. I'm poetic, and i find it very hard to separate exaggeration from poetry. So forgive me.

I want to try something new. Please bear with me. I will try my best not to think of romantic thoughts for this entry. But just you know, I am currently in love. I am in love with a smile; a smile I constantly and patiently wait for everyday in school.

You can start here.

I love ojek rides. I love the wind, the freedom, even the dirt which sporadically gets into my eyes. I have not rode on the ojek for a while now, and frankly, I miss it. I don't know why I stopped riding. I'm guessing it's the accidents; my mom never approves of motor cycle rides.

Once when he was young, my dad fell off a motor bike and broke a bone. The scar? Permanent. His wife, being the protective mother that she is, forbid her kids to even try riding. She won't let history repeat itself, so she had my brothers and I tucked safely behind a seat belt as often as she can. She loves us, I know, but I had to break the rule.

I was in the second grade when I first rode. I felt safe, I felt covered; I sat between two adults. Not once did I think of falling. Windy. Each and every ojek ride I took eversince are always windy.

Incase you never notice, Indonesian women have this special way of sitting on a motor cycle. Both legs put to one side and hands ever so firmly hold the rider for safety. Helmets are, of course, required. But I was, am, and always will be an improper passenger. I never rode the ojek the conventional way and I refuse to protect my brain from scattering if ever I fall off the bike.

I love the wind. I love the way it pushes all my hair back so I can see everything in full scope.

And then people started dying.

Accidents happened all over Lippo. So many, that my mom hired another driver just to get me to my lessons. I accepted the gift and got my self adjusted to sleeping in the car.

My last ojek ride? Probably to school when my driver was sick in fifth grade.

I began to forget the feeling. The sensation. All of it. I abandoned my close friend, The Wind. But yesterday, we were reunited.

My brothers were busy and my driver was at somewhere-I-don't-know; I was at Vania's house, starting this blog entry actually. But of course I had to go home. How? I had no car or driver. We have a motorcycle, I thought. I never use it, I'm pretty sure my mom bought it for my mbak-s so they can get around. But I had to go home, my weekly fellowship was about to start!

I called. She came, helmet and all. But none for me; I wouldn't wear it even if she brought one. I held my laptop tight and she drove away. Everything came back to me. The feeling, the sensation, all of it. I was about to meet The Wind.

The moon was beautiful that night. Full, bright, but fairly small. I have seen a bigger and brighter moon that that, but nonetheless, it was beautiful. It just hung there because it didn't feel like doing anything. It shone; it just shone. The moon moved and began leading the way as my mbak turned the steer. She sped up and the ride began. The moon teased me and asked me to chase it.

The feeling, the sensation.
I loved the way every particle of wind kissed my face. My hair, now short, surrendered and let the wind took action. The moment simply took my breath away, when I looked up and saw the moon smiling at me; close, but completely unreachable. No stars came out to play. She drove without hesitation. I hugged my laptop tighter. Cars said hi to each other, honking. I smiled. The moon was still there.

I felt a slight heat from the asphalt road, mixed with the mild night breeze. Soon, I had to fight with the trees to get a glimpse of the moon ray. I won. Then I realized the ride was going to end, I was getting closer to home.

The Wind said goodbye as the engine died. I sighed. I will ride again. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Maybe next time, it's sunshine I will find. The moon stepped right when I stepped out of the vehicle, and it smiled it one last smile to me that night. I looked straight up and saw a few stars vaguely twinkling. I didn't see them earlier because I was too focused on the moon. I locked the door and took a shower.

I sang a few songs to seize the night. It was my first ride after a very long time and I'm glad the moon was there to greet me and the Wind was there to kiss me. I will ride again.

On Ambitions

2007-09-20T23:21:00.001+07:00

Sometime ago, at a church event, one part of the schedule was writing notes to people and putting them in bottles with names on them, so that at the end of the event you would get to take the bottle home and see what people thought of you; especially people who you'd gotten to know during the course of the event. One of the messages I received said things about how nice I was--the kind of things you write about people you don't really know that well--but then the end of the message surprised me.

"You come across to me as a very determined and ambitious person. Of course, this is just my own opinion, so don't get upset... Just don't let your ambitions consume you."

Ambitious? Really?

In my head I told myself, No way, this guy has never met some of my friends. Now that's ambition. Among other things that I could say about myself, or remember other people saying about me; overambitious, no, ambitious was just not one of them. What in the world could have inspired this anonymous writer to get that impression from me?

It took me a whole lot of thinking before I began to make sense of it.

I suppose without me realizing it, I had developed into someone inherently different from the person people expect. In primary school I achieved fluctuating grades ranging from fours to sixes on a one-to-ten scale--even now when I see people from my old school they're always tentative when asking about how I'm doing at school. I guess they're slightly worried that I've failed a few times and had to repeat the entire grade curriculum (I can assure you as of now I'm not at much of a risk of failing), so they always try not to bring it up.

Eventually, after we talk, they tell me I'm very different from the person they remember.

That's because the person they remember is the girl in the back row who still hasn't finished copying down that sentence from the board; you know, the one who still doesn't get how mathematical roots work? Uh huh, the one who multiplies by adding them. Yeap. That one.

The person they can see is the person who really outdid what she expected of herself in the first place. Who has her mother to thank for the change in mind that came about as a result of threats (which, by the way, is perfectly acceptable way to get your kid to do stuff), and a whole lot of other people to thank for helping her get so far.

When I look back at how much I've changed from the mute idiot in the back row to the person who takes chances, I begin to think; Yeah, maybe I can be a little ambitious.

Just that when you see a dream come true, and you witness a difference, you begin to believe that it's not complete folly to believe in absurd hopes, and to reach farther than you can grasp. When you look at how far you've gone and how much you've changed, you begin to have more faith in humanity, and you place hope in its dim but existing glimmer of kindness and morality.

You begin to ignore the darker side of the coin (even if it's not the best idea) and you risk looking like an entirely different kind of idiot by wishing for the unrealistic. You begin to find people call you naive simply for having faith in the possibility of a change. You begin to notice that the world you build around you is full of unrealistic hopes that you're more than happy to harbor for the rest of your life. You begin to speak out in defense of what you know to be true; and you're secure in the knowledge of being right without the need to rationalize it to bits.

You begin to think it's normal to actually have some conviction in what you're saying. You begin to melt outside of the norm and determine that you'll lead instead of follow. You begin to close your ears to the incessant snide criticism and your eyes to the 'truth' shoved in front of you, and you lead with hope and the belief that things will work out anyway.

So I guess maybe I have a slight tendency to be ambitious. I guess this is the point where you begin to realize that even though it's expected of you to be normal, you know you're more than capable of doing more.

Call me ambitious; but I think it's just faith when I say I have hope that in the future global warming will cease, that in the future Indonesia will truly get back on its feet and establish itself as a significant power in Asia. I think it's hope when I say 'we'll get through this'. Ambition is taking your chances because you know you can't fall far enough to break. :)

Indonesia, not a Democracy?

2007-09-20T20:19:00.000+07:00

"The Attorney General Office’s banning of some history books.

On 5th March, the Attorney General’s Office banned the further printing and distribution of thirteen history books from the 2004 junior and senior high school curriculums because they play down the role of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in the 1948 uprising in Madiun, East Java, and the 1965 coup attempt in Jakarta.

According to the AGO the books not only failed to state the facts about the PKI’s role in the events but went further and challenged some “accepted truths”, which could create public disorder. The AGO has the authority to monitor the circulation of written materials and has in the past banned a number of books deemed capable of disrupting political stability since the Soeharto era."

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1172/book-banning/

Disclaimer: This is a piece I wrote for History, one that I sort of rewrote, and one that all history students are familiar off! Sorry people and Ms. Jess, (IT IS A CURRENT EVENTS PIECE) if it’s a just a temporary entry, all the homework and tests pilling up forbid me from making a coherent nice piece..

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

August 1950, Harry Truman sent this message to Congress; that despite all the problems that the Communist Soviet Union has caused America, Congress does not have the right to silence communist ideas and teachings. Ignoring dissents made and insults hurled at him, he stayed true to the fundamentals of democracy; liberty and equality.

To him, democracy meant that the government could not control what its citizen’s listens, reads or says, to him, democracy meant that the government had no right to declare and demand submission from its people and be treated as if they were subjects instead of citizens. Truman is correct; the idea of banning thoughts is the very betrayal of all that is democracy.

Americans are so fortunate; they also have presidents with backbones. *cough* SBY *cough*

Today's government has by and large ignored the fundamental freedom promised by democracy, FREE SPEECH. Even today the fear of saying what we truly want still looms in our head. In my head.

Friends advise me not to be too vocal, sadly they are right.

It has been 9 years since the fall of Soeharto, a fall that would have supposedly lead us to a true democracy. A democracy that entails free speech, a freedom that for so many years have been suppressed and caged tightly by Soeharto.

Now the ban and the propaganda against Communists is still alive and healthy. In public schools, and even National Plus schools, the young and even the old still mostly fear Communism although not knowing what it means; all they know is that Communists had killed the heroic generals back in 1965.

Book burning and book banning is still alive, still active. The Attorney General’s Office censor history books, and in doing so aren't they hailing themselves supreme in intelligence? Are they not proclaiming that those bureaucrats in the Attorney General's Office are superior to ordinary civilians, superior to us?

The truth is that the government is still supreme, and a true Indonesian Democracy has not been accomplished. You would argue that it’s better now, it’s free now. But they have and still are successful in indoctrinating Indonesians their warped account for their past.

North Korea claims that they are democratic, a claim that is absurd. Sadly, there is a similar danger with Indonesia.

We can claim we are democratic, but if our actions and our government actions totally rebuke the foundations of democracy we too, could fall back to Soeharto’s era, banning and freedom of speech is a slippery slope.

One that hopefully Indonesia will not slip once more.

Note: I'm not proposing that we are not a Democratic country, only that in this aspect we're defying all that is democratic, and the dangers to it.

Why, Girl?

2007-09-20T19:08:00.000+07:00

Love, I'm simply asking you to appreciate him.

He mustered every ounce of confidence he has to ask your father's permission to take you away, to fly you to cloud nine. He cares about you. He notices every time you curl your hair, he thinks you look pretty, and you know that. His heart dances when you walk beside him; he wishes every step would take two minutes because he wants as much time with you as he can get. Everything else looks blurry when it's you he sees. You're his focus, his aim. Is it so hard for you to see?

Why, Girl?

Have you ever noticed the glitter in his eyes? It only lights up when you're around, you can't miss it. He smiles all the time, to the extent where it seems humanly impossible. I don't understand how he can be so... full of bliss. I think it's because of you, and because of Him, too. There is never a hint of lachrymose in his days. The Word of God really is his sword. He's strong, I'm sure that you know. His music instrument is huge, but there's always enough strength to carry your things, too. Isn't he lovely? Don't you want to reply his smile?

He loves you.

I'm simply asking you to look at him with an open heart.

:(

No thanks to you, the glitter in his eyes are now nonexistent. His smiles are no longer vibrant. His laughter sounds fake to my ears. You blighted his hopeful heart, Girl. He gave you his all, and you put it all to waste. He's a great athlete, an admirable musician, a creditable pupil, and a committed Christian. He, is in a lot of ways, very much like you. His hand would only be still if you fill in the gaps. He's every girl's dream, but why not yours? Hundreds would kill to walk with him, but he'd kill to have a stroll down the corridor with you. You are one lucky dame, do you really need me to tell you that? I'm a stranger, but I can see everything. These days, his smile hides misery and weakness. You stopped everything altogether. He is Samson and you're his Delilah.

Why, Girl?

I have no right to tell you what to do, but would you please just listen to the world. They want you to be with him. They think you two are a match made in heaven. If you search deep enough inside your heart, I know you'll find it. Your conscious which says, "Oh, why did I turn away?" Trust the world. You are the only girl for him.

His soul is plummeting. Please do raise him up. Someway. Somehow.

I can practically hear him crying everytime I see him smile.

No other person in this world can do what you can do to him. Make his heart billow with joy once more.

Love him.

Please, I beg you.

Oh why, Dear Girl? I would take your place anytime now.

[to those who understand who and what I am talking about - *tears*]

I Fell Apart

2007-09-18T16:13:00.000+07:00

Please, excuse this clichéd melancholy. I am extremely downhearted and unable of writing about anything else of more significance.

I recall a distant past where my life was continuously filled with a sweet scent of the early spring bloom. Now all that’s left is a void of asthmatic suffocation.

My life hasn’t always been so sour. I once had joy – back in the day when my smiles weren’t so artificial. Yet I don’t know why, but it feels like I haven’t tasted anything sweet in decades. Memories that are in fact not so far away from this present day all seems so distant - faded and shrouded in a lightless mist of desolate gloom. These memories of friends, love, and spirit are only mere remembrances of a person I once was.

Just a year ago I was on top of the world. Among my peers, I was of the highest caliber. I had the skill; the commitment; the persistence to make myself really mean something, and nothing could stop me from becoming someone – someone whose existence in this world won’t be left unnoticed.

Things fall apart. Nobody knows why, but they just do. You fight for good intentions; you build yourself a lavish life based on those intentions; and for several years – decades, if you’re lucky – you believe that you may actually have a shot in life. Then a minute detail – a tiny crack on the foundations of rapture – leads your life into becoming less than what it should be.

Not so long ago, I had two intimate friends with whom I confided in. I remember our many small moments – coffee in the local Starbucks, their forcing me out of bed to go to Bogor, and the laughter we shared that continues to echo through my mind. With them I felt as though I could really be myself and feel accepted, as though I was liberated from all the confusion of this harsh labyrinth.

After a series of unfortunate events, misery took hold. These two now treat me as though I am a stranger. They view me as though I am a nuisance who divests them of the joys of their youth.

I avoid seeing them because doing so reminds me of what I’ve lost. The hollowness within me is palpable, because losing a friend – someone who, over the years has become a part of you – is like losing an integral part of yourself.

I have no one to turn to. My best friend doesn’t care because she’s unaffected. The other person I can confide in is thousands of miles away. My fears of becoming a shadow have, in actuality, been realized. I am only someone they used to hang out with; a former acquaintance.

Things fall apart, yes. But that’s just how it is. When your life is shattered into pieces, you rebuild those pieces. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Those who find happiness are those who are persistent on their pursuit of happiness. Friends leave, tears are cried, happiness is lost, but even in the remnants of rubble there is still light.

I once had a horrible fear of leaving high school, in anticipation of how I’d have to leave these wonderful people. But things don’t look so bad now, since these wonderful people have become much less wonderful to me.

College – a new world; a chance for a new beginning. High school and this ensuing melancholy will all disappear into the dusty photo albums of my unvisited attic. At least there’s some hope that that will happen.

Should I remain in this state of depression, then I’ll soup myself up in Prozac and die of an overdose. Who cares, right?

LAST NOTE: to 'Nicholas', to everyone

2007-09-16T22:14:00.000+07:00

To 'Nicholas',

I have never felt so upset about a person I do not know. I haven't even been directly involved in this issue and I cannot believe how angry I am right now. You have driven me to boiling point.

"As for my bashing of homosexuals and others, haven't you ever felt like pissing people off?

Hey, apparently you people are pissed off. I'm glad to see that my efforts have not been futile."

You just admitted that you're simply out to annoy us. Not only are you a pathetic person who corrects other people and doesn't look over his own writing; you're doing it because you have nothing better to do.

We're here to learn and practice our writing and we would love constructive comments. If you think cynix is "rash" then why do you comment and criticize in the same tone? You're no better than us, 'Nick'. You're so much more pathetic. And as a side-note; some part of me is beginning to think that you're even targeting certain people as victims to your poorly written bouts of verbal abuse. I have reserved judgment in the past, but honestly, no wonder you don't have a blog of your own. How embarrassing would that be?

'Nicholas', this is a last warning. You are seriously getting on my nerves. I don't think I'm alone when I say that I think you're from SPH. Perhaps from our own grade, or the 12th (in which case you are a socially retarded person with no other purpose in life but to make others' lives living hell) If you are then you had better stop and not cross the line. Worst case scenario; don't think that having an anonymous profile makes you invisible. We can trace your IP.

If you're not from SPH, I will ask to close our blog to the public and make it exclusive. I don't need to be subject to a pathetic, pompous scholar's pointless, poisonous commenting.

Last warning; back off and criticize your own aimless and otherwise negative existence. The rest of us have better things to do with people who are worth our time.

To English bloggers,

I'm also addressing my team members here; let's stop wasting our time on this person. Just recently, epitath of twilight posted a comment that was unnecessarily rude. This chicken of a man who calls himself 'Nicholas' is seriously interfering in the whole point of the blog here. We're here to practice and develop our writing skills. It is our hope that we will constructively criticize each other and mature together in our education. We don't need--and now that things are this way, we must not have--a pathetic, cowardly something-or-other with too much time in his hands making us unreasonably upset and disturbing the whole process.

I'm aware that some people think it's exciting that this whole comment-war is happening. I disagree. I find it, in the least, heavily annoying, and now it is beginning to border on verbal abuse. I've only been watching the ensuing battle between you guys and this 'Nick', and it's tiring me out. In the beginning I was so happy with the idea of a blog; I wanted to see what other people's writing styles were like and what kinds of things they'd talk about when given the chance.

I don't want to see people spitting fire and using up space on our blogs at an anonymous user who is, honestly, not worth our time. This 'Nicholas' is being given more attention than he deserves (which is to say, none). He's giggling with undisguised glee (see above comment excerpt) at our attempts to bash him. This guy doesn't care--he has no good name to uphold anyway. With his hidden identity, he assumes that he's not accountable for the things he says. But we are; you are responsible for what you say in your comments, just like I'm responsible for what I say here. We can hide under nicknames and aliases, but we know who we are. Sooner or later things are going to get worse and maybe then you'll agree when I say I don't really see how this is exciting.

It annoys me when I see tons of comments on the posts made on 'Nicholas' and so very little on topics you guys have written that I think deserve feedback. On the other hand it angers me when I see this aliased twit making snide and hurtful comments on blogs that I think deserve to be paid attention to in other areas.

I think we should stop this; and this time I'm doing what I can to help it stop. From now on, any more scathing and pointless comments by 'Nicholas' in Monochromatic Rainbows will be immediately deleted. Comments that attempt to egg this retard on will also be deleted. That includes any comments to follow this post.

Please take this seriously. I'm sick of hearing 'Nicholas this,' and 'Nicholas that,' when you could do something else with the breath you're wasting on a guy who's not even brave enough to be held accountable for his own words. Personally, I would rather back off. Worse comes to worst; no more blogging. It's not worth the grief.

-Rachel, English A1 HL, 11 IB.

P.S.: Twilight, I deleted your comment. Please mind your language. 'Nicholas' is not the only person who needs to learn to be civil.

On The Incessant Downgrading of our Blog Layout

2007-09-16T18:01:00.000+07:00

Dear whi. DO NOT CHANGE THE LAYOUT OF THIS BLOG AGAIN!!! The London layout is horrible-looking and although this one may be a tad bit unintuitive, it certainly is more aesthetically pleasing. Please, end your incessant downgrading of our blog template.

Sorry for the obnoxiousness. I'm ticked off.

After The Basketball Game

2007-09-14T07:27:00.000+07:00

September 13, 2007

I was sitting with a friend, a boy, conversing. I do not remember what we talked about, because he came. He casually said goodbye to my friend then he said goodbye to me. Bye, Kar. He packed his bags: a yellow backpack, a black Nike sports bag, some noisy plastic bags, and a basketball, ready to go home. Half of the basketball team came running down the stairs like a pack of wolves. All smiles, all laughter. Amazing, I thought, they just lost a game. He lifted them up, not struggling at all. Strong and capable like he has always been. He said goodbye to my friend one more time and walked between dirty lunch tables. I exhaled. At that very moment, I knew, I am not his anything anymore. He didn't say goodbye to me.

His basketball.

A few months ago, when he's not around, his guy friends would deliberately adhere dirt and lint all over his basketball; playing, shooting, dribbling on the red and green concrete court. After they are done playing, they would hand the ball over to me as if I owned it. This came into my mind when I saw him effortlessly picked up that same rubber ball this afternoon. I remember how I used to watch and cheer for him during lunch times. I would wait for him to change and pack up, only those days his hands were always full and I had to come to the rescue, carrying the only thing light enough for me to hold: his basketball.

He never asked me to wait for him, he never asked me to watch. It was all me. I wanted to wait and I wanted to watch. It only occurred to me now how he must have liked me being there back then. I'm sure he waited for me to come and sit down on the side lines just like I waited for the bell to ring so we could walk together to class. He never needed my assistance, he let me carry the ball for him. This I know, because I saw he did not need anyone's help to pack up. I did not see signs of weakness or helplessness; I saw a boy who could lift anything up not hindered by injury. He lifted my heart once, and God knows how heavy that is.

I observed him closely and absorbed a picture of him in my mind today. He was wearing his favorite shirt, not the shirt I gave him. I have never bought him any shirt, actually. The shirt I bought has a different story, holds a different memory, and it doesn't belong to him.

He still walks the way he usually walks; shoulders back, feet silently thumping the ground. He still grins the way he usually grins; mouth open showing a unique set of teeth. He still opens the door for me; he is a true gentleman and he will always be. He has not changed a bit and I like that about him. He still smiles the way he usually smiles; only now, those smiles are not meant for me.

His smile is simple with a meaning only I can interpret. Most of the time, it means 'I'm glad you're here with me today.' Often he would continue with holding my hand or simply letting me rest my head on his manly shoulders. His smile never said 'I love you', it said 'I missed you all through the weekend' and sometimes it also says 'Sorry' on his behalf. He was not a man with words. He acts and he smiles, and I always smile back even when I don't feel like it. I feel selfish and I feel low. At least he meant everything he did... He didn't smile when he was angry, and by the time we grew apart, he stayed out of my side completely. It ended without a smile and with the absence of words.

It's a new day today. A lot happened but only one moment stayed in my heart. One voice recorded in my mind. It was a picture of him leaving and the sound of his voice not saying goodbye. Everything has changed. It changed with the color of the court, now blue, and monotone. As flat and as boring as my feelings for him: Nothing.

To Inherit Fire

2007-09-13T22:29:00.000+07:00

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. –Things Fall Apart

Earlier in English class we were discussing Part Two of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and we got around to talking about whether or not Okonkwo deserved any of our sympathy when his own son turned against him. Most of the class were against Okonkwo, and I suppose their dislike of him is justified. But despite his hotheaded temperament and condescending attitude towards other people, I think Okonkwo is still entitled to a little bit of pity, or, in my personal opinion, a substantial degree of sympathy.

I could never imagine walking in his shoes. If I had been in Okonkwo’s place, how would I have felt? I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, but I suppose it has a lot to do with placing your hopes on someone else’s shoulders; expecting them to carry it onwards into the future that you can’t be a part of.

Wouldn’t it be heartbreaking, then, if the very person you trusted with your everything shrugged your cherished dreams off his shoulders and let them hit the ground?

Maybe my friends are right, to some extent. Okonkwo has to take some responsibility in causing Nwoye to run away to the Christians. He should never have pressured Nwoye so much. He should never have assumed that Nwoye wanted the same things as he had as a young man. Maybe despite knowing Nwoye wanted different things, Okonkwo was doing all he could to give Nwoye the best out of the life he knew. Okonkwo is a father, after all, and perhaps—even if we’re not willing to acknowledge it—he, like our parents, knows what it’s like to not want to follow your father’s footsteps; your mother’s footsteps. Perhaps when our parents were like us they had decided never to follow someone else’s decisions, and ended up making choices they never thought they’d agree to; walking down paths they’d hoped to avoid while still dreaming that they would end up somewhere different.

I think we sympathize with Nwoye more easily because most of us know what it’s like to fall under the pressure of someone else’s expectations. We readily back him in his decision to tear away from his father’s ways because some part of us has already known what it’s like to want the same thing. If I had been in his position I would have done the same—I suppose I would have at least contemplated running away.

Let’s imagine it this way; Okonkwo’s modern day equivalent would be a prominent bussinessman with influence left and right in a sprawling metropolis—a highly successful public figure whose life is characterized by outstanding achievements in an Ivy League university and an offer to join a prestigious company upon finishing his second year. It is hard enough to imagine being a daughter to such a man—but to be a son who is expected to continue the legacy? In my head I imagine Atlas with the world on his shoulders, passing it on to a nervous, slippery-fingered, scrawny teen who knows the world will tumble and crash out of his hold.

Then again, isn’t that just what we are expected to do?

In an episode of Heroes, Peter Petrelli comments that “...we’re just cheap knockoffs of our fathers.” For me personally, it feels like a punch to the gut. It hurts more than a little to know that no matter what we do we’ll still be compared to our parents. That we won’t have any trace of things that people thought would still be imprinted in us. That we’ll probably never be good enough to satisfy what people expect. In this sense, I sympathize with Nwoye.

Is it any wonder then that we want to break away from the paths our parents have set out for us? Isn’t it plausible to think that we attempt to build paths other than someone else’s because we’re scared of being less than what they were? I don’t ever want to be known as ash remaining from someone else’s fire.

I don’t want to grow up chasing my father’s shadows and pursuing my mother’s victories and mistakes. I don’t want to destroy what they worked so hard to build. I don’t want to be the one responsible for the look in their faces when they find their life-long struggles are for naught.

Do you still think Okonkwo deserves no sympathy?

A part of me wants to exclaim that I could never forgive Nwoye for tearing down what Okonkwo had given his all to build. I could never forgive Nwoye for taking the dreams Okonkwo had carried with him from childhood to fatherhood—the dreams he had kept alive by pouring out his sweat, blood, and tears for—and allowing them crash and burn. I could never forgive Nwoye for insinuating that Okonkwo’s lifelong struggles held no importance, by walking out on everything his father worked for.

If Okonkwo held true to the hotheaded and violent nature we have associated him with, I would have expected him to take his machete and separate Nwoye’s head from his body. Doesn’t that sound like something he would do?

But people like me who have no idea what it’s like to be a father or a mother will never understand what it is that makes them love their children so much. I may never understand why Okonkwo still allowed Nwoye to pursue his own choices; why Okonkwo would allow Nwoye to build a new life and support dreams of his own when Okonkwo’s hopes had been sullied and broken beyond repair by his son’s betrayal.

I may never understand how Okonkwo can retain love for a traitor. But at least I can imagine him thinking about Nwoye and sighing at the fire. Perhaps at that moment some semblance of weakness crossed his features. Perhaps at that moment we would be able to see the face of a broken old man, mourning the death of his wasted, uncontinued dreams; still harboring an amazing, undying love for the boy who blew out the fire and left behind only ash.

A Gay Darkness

2007-09-12T20:17:00.000+07:00

This is a response to a dear peer's post which I just can't stop getting out of my head.

'They (homosexuals) say, "But we love each other!" What's loving about medically dangerous behavior? Love seeks the ultimate good of the loved one.' - Kendal Metcalfe quoting Frank Turek

HEED THE IGNORANT CLANGS OF BIGOTRY AS WE IRRATIONALLY DENY THE EXISTENCE OF LOVE THAT IS OBVIOUSLY GENUINE AND SINCERE!

Although you may perhaps consider me to be one of them, religious and conservative people often confuse me.

Bewilderment strikes me each time Christians openly profess their disdain towards homosexuals, bashing them unsympathetically for their so-called divergence from God's plan.

Homosexuality is, after all, involuntary. What man or woman would want to marry a person who would not be able to bring upon them any offspring? Why would a woman want to have a sexual relationship that is almost entirely dependent on prosthetics - where the mutual coalesce of flesh is virtually impossible? Surely people who take preference on such irregularities have something that is wrong with them to a psychological, even spiritual level.

Plenty research suggests that sexual preference is decided on that basis of a person's upbringing. Parental relationships, among the many things that shape a person's psyche, are prevalent in most cases of homosexuality. Traumatic experiences, and sexual abuse, are among the numerous things that contribute to deviations of sexual preference. Most importantly, after a certain age of maturity, sexual preference becomes of permanence.

Heartbreaking, isn’t it, how an unfortunate childhood can trail a person to their death? Sin is fused into the very core of a human soul that escape from it is impossible. Christianity condemns homosexuals who supposedly refuse to give up their fleshly sin. But how can Christians be so sure that homosexuality is escapable by mere devotion to Christ, when people who profess these things don’t even know how hard being gay is?

The subject of sexual rebirth is tricky. It’s a bit like sex change procedures; no matter how “female” a transgender man can become, a part of him – a part that is untouchable by medicine or therapy – will forever remain a man.

Ex-homosexuality is a myth. Those who profess to have been sexually converted are simply denying their sexual desires for the sake of sanctity. Complete liberation from sin is nonexistent - we are humans, after all. As normal and "heterosexual" as homosexuals can become, a the will always want what they have left – that hollowness and dissatisfaction in them that will never be contented by a normal sexual relationship.

Besides, after years of research and attempts to de-homosexualize gay men, psychologists have said that there are no "cures" for homosexuality.

This isn’t to say that I don’t believe homosexuality is a sin – I do. It is one that is so deep-seeded that it can never be completely removed, rather simply denied and suppressed. The legalization of gay marriage equates to the incubation of habitual sin.

Am I a biased hypocrite for sympathizing over homosexuals – which the bible deems as among the most immoral and perverse people to walk the face of this earth – while condemning the practitioners of pre-marital sex, something supposedly less perverse than homosexuality?

Homosexual people are generalized as effeminate, narcissitic, lustful, and perverted. True, many of them are, but aren't we all - heterosexuals and homosexuals - imperfect?

When you think about it, homosexuality is not voluntary, while fornication is. Homosexuals fornicate because marriage is impossible for them, while heterosexuals fornicate because they are unwilling to wait just a few years for marriage. Needless to say, both are sinful and ultimately result in death - what I view as wrong is how people approach these issues.

Why is it that the selfish, impatient, lustful animals are tolerated while those handicapped in sin - even celibate ones - are unloved and exiled?

The dreadful irony is that many of these gay bashers aren't even practitioners of abstinence.

Nobody is doing the right thing.

Homophobes and conservative Christians make life a living hell for gay people. Homosexuals are inculcated with fear and hopelessness as narrow-minded protesters declare the unfortunate fates of these people. A peer of mine posted a jaundiced remark on how immoral gay people are, without any viable solutions other than the complete rejection of these people.

Gay rights activists encourage this immorality, as nude men shamelessly parade in gay pride as they profess pride over the illness that plagues their people. Liberal churches admit their own defeat as they encourage gay marriage under the false idea that all love is sacred. - Gay love is very much real, true, but not so sanctified by God.

Lives are hard enough as it already is for gay people; don’t make it worse. The reality is that most of them are walking towards hell, with the world encouraging this. Compassionate truth has been eradicated! All that’s left is a violent reality or empathic lies. Can homosexual celibacy – the only way these people will ever find truth – be practiced when support and encouragement is nonexistent? In this lightless war against pitch-black darkness, where do you stand?

To the delightful Nicholas Vosalalalblah. Person, thing.

2007-09-12T18:21:00.000+07:00

Disclaimer: This post is solely the intellectually deficient opinion of Steph/Tank.S, and in no way reflects on her A1 blog buddies, class and or teacher.

My post today bears little or no importance to the world or our lives in general. However since I have very little to write on (due to my less than exhilarating life), and I MUST post an entry by tomorrow, I suppose I shall have to make do with the topic or a person that per say, antagonizes (almost) all current A1/2 bloggers.

Nicholas Vosanovic.

Nicholas Vosanovic, for those who have not been paying attention to this blog's, WWJD, etc.'s comments, he is a person, an anonymous person with no blog under his belt, who blocks his profile and who needlessly complains and criticizes everyone’s blog entry.

I’ll give you all several excerpts. (Trust me, there are a lot to choose from)

Nicholas Vosanovic said... (on Dante’s recent blog entry)

…
Considering the fact that your style is meager, your writing feels forced and suffocating to read, your words are not even contextually correct, and your grammar is like that of a child, I am quite sure that you picked these words from a thesaurus and will probably forget what they mean in a couple of hours or days.

I mean, just take a look at what you're writing. Your style is very casual and unstylish yet you use such uncasual words. It makes me feels constipated.
…
Using your thesaurus, you are attempting to glorify yourself and cover up your insecurities about how bad a writer you are. Since NONE of these words in your first paragraph are even used correctly, it makes it look even more obvious that you are using a thesaurus and that you are doing so very ineptly.

Thus you are making a complete fool out of yourself.

September 9, 2007 10:58 PM

(Still on Dante’s blog)

… So if you insist on practicing your english and using these words that you don't deserve to use, write in a diary or something. Don't embarrass yourself.

September 10, 2007 8:00 PM

Nicholas Vosanovic said... (on Cynix’s blog entry)

you are repeating the same ending as the one you had for your previous post.

don't you have any new ideas?

by the way I don't think its true that technology is causing people to become socially incapable.

maybe you're just socially retarded and you're blaming it on technology because you have noone else to blame.

September 11, 2007 7:54 PM

Nich V. again on Cynix's gay blog entry.

Nicholas Vosanovic said...

why are you so self-righteous and acting like you know everything about morality?

who are you to say that homosexuals don't choose to be gay? they're so perverted that for sure, they had to make decisions to become so sick.

and you are very passionate in this writing. are you homosexual?"

Alright, honestly, while our dear Nicholas is not always wrong, is it really necessary for him to stalk A1/2 blogs 24/7 for grammar mistakes and errors?

Granted, cynix is often times overly self righteous, and all of us don't have the perfect English he insinuates he has, still, Nicholas honey, whoever you are, you must be a very, very, VERY sad person. Do you honestly find pleasure in criticizing others? This is an ENGLISH CLASS blog, which is meant to be an outlet for people to improve their, wait for it, WRITING SKILLS. Sure, correct our grammar if you so desire, but those malicious comments?

Don’t get me wrong, I adore web fights, it is fun, but you are doing so anonymously and without having a blog yourself. You mock us so indiscriminately whilst shrouding yourself under the anonymity that is the World Wide Web.

If you are so grand, please DO enlighten us of your writing prowess, Nicholas Vosanovic! Do you really have enough gravitas to claim superiority over us all in content, style and grammar?

I know, my blog entry is at the moment sub-par, but unlike Nicholas I actually have tests to study for, essays to write! Why are you so intent on shattering our already brittle shards of self-confidence?

Do you (and in certain cases I) derive instant self glorification from it? A smug sense of superiority? Just as you said to Dante, “Using your thesaurus, you are attempting to glorify yourself and cover up your insecurities about how bad a writer you are.”

Aren’t you doing the exact same thing? You said it yourself; you are using your superior grammar knowledge to glorify yourself!

Yes, we may indeed suck, but what are we, 16, 17? We have more essays to write, grammar mistakes to pen, horrid sentences to articulate, but unlike you we don’t hide behind the system of anonymous commenting.

We type our pieces, hoping that our effort will be rewarded by a kind comment, but what do we get? You, Nicholas dear, stamping whatever satisfaction we had five minutes prior. (Yes, 5 minutes people, Cynix posted at around 7 PM then Nicholas posted at around 7 PM)

You see Nicholas, whoever you are; I commend your love of English and your particularity on word usage. But when that love of English turns to hate and that once beautiful love turns to glaringly spiteful comments, (which probably made someone cry *cough* cynix *cough*)I really think you should take another leisurely pursuit.

Like making your own blog. Enlighten from of our dreary simpleton-esque mistakes; enlighten us all to what blogging is really like. And you know, use that obviously superior talent of yours to actually, I don’t know, WRITE?

What is it with people and their ‘smug sense of superiority’ anyhow? Why do we try endlessly and ridiculously hard to hail ourselves superior to another person verbally and mentally? (Or is that just me and dear Nick?)

Is it because we try to compensate our short comings by scoff at another’s even shorter short comings?

Is it because we simply don't want to become ordinary and therefore boring. The thing is, if everyone is superior in someway, and if everyone is special in their own way, then isn't everyone basically and drearily bland and un-special?

Why are we all so terribly afraid of being ordinary, at being seen inferior, of being seen useless, weak and pathetic to the extent that highlight other’s weakness solely to hide our own from others and even unconsciously from ourselves as well?

Succinctly said, I have no idea.

Maybe, Nicholas does.

Van Wyck Brooks once said, "People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding."

Is that true for you Nick?

Much love, Steph.

P.S. : Please DO engage me in a comment fight Nicholas V.!

I pinky promise you that I shall copy paste your comment onto this post! :)

No more anonymous postings!

2007-09-11T20:02:00.000+07:00

Due to some rather offensive and overly discourteous comments by many anonymous people, the anonymous commenting will now be blocked.

Sorry all, it just gets to the point where it becomes this retarded melodrama that goes around in a continuous and ultimately annoying cycle. (the cycle, I shall say succintly is cynix writes something insulting, he gets insulted back by anonymous's and then more insults are hurled, and whee and tank gets all annoyed and gangs up on poor cynix.

Why, oh why has blogging become such drama?

Seriously though, people do write constructive comments!

Much love, S (Tank.S) &R (Whee) & G (Cynix)

note: Tank.S is very sorry for not posting this Monday, or Tuesday, or yet. I WILL POST.
(Not that anyone cares T___T)

A Digital Apocalypse

2007-09-11T19:21:00.000+07:00

Note: This is not to be graded. This post is so horrid that I am considering deleting it. If you grade it you will cause extreme strain to my highly vulnerable ego.

In an eccentric movie being shown in TOK, I realized that humans have an innate need to make everything complex that even when they try to make things simpler, they unconsciously complicate it in the process.

Its human nature, after all.

Technology is paramount to our development. It serves as a backbone to the functions of our world. Conglomerates such as Intel, IBM, and the Japanese giants shape who we are today. True, the extent to which we are capable of innovating is admirable, and what we've come up with over these past years are in fact joys that I delight in – for heaven’s sake, I’m writing in the offspring of human innovation right now.

But past a certain extent, our indulgence on these good things might as well be our self-imprisonment. Because after all, as we find ourselves further and further taking advantage of the technologies we have at our expense, we are involuntarily making ourselves reliant on these things. In fact, technology has become so crucial to our lives that a relatively skilled hacker could take down an entire country from the comfort of his personal computer. In our pursuit of making life easier, we have instead chained ourselves unto this digital web of binary codes and iThings that our world has been morphed into a gigantic maze of circuitry.

What can I say? We are naturally self-damaging.

Cellular messaging, online messenger clients, and social sites such as friendster and facebook have been deemed great inventions that bridge communication gaps. Miraculous isn’t it, how people on separate ends of the world can be connected by a simple click of a button? Clicking and typing have now become comparable to making friends. Lovely.

Yes sure, communication on a superficial level has become as easy as getting a drink or taking a piss. But in reality, have we become more social creatures through the aid of these so-called social “tools?” Are we so much more social than our parents, or our grandparents – old folks who have no remote clue of what the world-wide-web is? Or have some of us instead become overly dependent on this system that without it, we are rendered socially dysfunctional?

Because nowadays, in our pursuit of taking advantage what is there for us, there’s a long, gradual, unnecessary process involved in socializing. First, meeting randomly through friendster or facebook. Next, when things become more comfortable, chatting. After that comes SMSing. This is then followed by calling. Only then can people become comfortable enough to meet in person.

Long gone are the days when socializing is the way it’s supposed to be – frank, straightforward, simple. In fact, for some, it’s impossible to go back to the way it was. They are so adapted to having a digital social life – an artificial social life – to the extent that face-to-face communication becomes a nervous chore that is impossible to do without that dreadful awkwardness and an unforgiving urge to urinate. It truly is ironic how something that was designed to help people socialize have instead caused social retardation to some unfortunate ones. Marvelous, isn't it?

In the domestic household, communication has become so easy that the use of a phone or a pager is parallelized to staying in touch. Members of a family feel free to come home late and not meet their siblings or parents as long as they’ve made contact during that day. Familial union is slowly becoming nonexistent as parent-children interaction is based on radio frequencies.

In this digital era, our digitalization is inescapable. As we reinvent, we reform our world into a prison of encryption plague-ridden by the fear of malicious codes. As we restructure society, we make human interaction artificial. As we try to connect, we instead disconnect. As we play into this symphony of irony, our intentions backfire, our control is lost, and our self-sufficiency becomes just a mere shadow of our "primitive" past.

Karina's Deep and Meaningful One-Liners

2007-09-10T00:21:00.000+07:00

I've been on hiatus from writing poetry for quite some time now. That is mainly due to the existence of Facebook. But a few days ago, Facebook Administrators disabled my account and I fortunately had no homework. So I opened Microsoft Word and began writing. My inspiration: Butter.

Butter is but a code name. I can't say his name here; the whole world can see. I am much too smart to do that.

Anyhow, I gave the poem the title High School Amore. You can ask me for it if you're interested. But today, I am interested in giving you a list of my precious one-liners which, most of the times, really stands out from the rest of the lines in the poem. My regular readers told me so.

So here are the one-liners which some people love from my selection of poems. Tell me what you think.

Love is a seed; it grows, it dies.

Love is selfless, sincere, and sacrificial.

Life without you is like dancing with no partner.

Sincere is my middle name.

I want us to be. I want you and me.

He flew me to the moon and left me there.

I want my heart to beat faster; I want you to hear it.

I wait for impossible moments.

That is all so far.
Don't forget to quote me if you want to use it. :)

My Restraint is my Own Suicide

2007-09-08T07:04:00.000+07:00

*Not to be graded, unless I don’t post anything next week*

Disclaimer: This post was written at a time when the writer was in an extremely emotionally unstable mood. Therefore what is said here should not in any way be taken seriously.

Happiness to me is among the rarest things on earth. Yet happiness is knocking on my door, only to be rejected by my idiot self.

Christians claim that Christ is the only way to true happiness, and that worldly and iniquitous pleasures only brings out a temporary joviality within ourselves - the rest is supposed to be a hollow, lightless emptiness.

Not so, I have come to learn. The happiest people I know are the most dissolute - those who are wise enough to indulge in everything the world has to offer. The emotional train wrecks are the uptight, prissy, unrealistic nuns who drown in this pool of heinousness.

If God really is just, then where is he? Why is it that morality is punished by exclusion and loneliness, while evil is rewarded with popularity and a sense of social significance?

On the night of my birthday, I was greeted by a deeply unwelcome sense of emptiness and rejection. My bestfriend, angered by my chauvinistic idiocy, told me that she wouldn't be coming on time for my birthday party because she has a date, and I am now sure that the people I care about won't be there for me as I "celebrate" my coming of age. Imagine that, being left out from your own birthday party. Here, on the day that was meant to be the day I bask in the joys of friendship and hope, I instead mourn the loss of my hope – the deathlike feeling of seclusion.

In truth, perhaps I do deserve to be excluded from everyone else. I am a chauvinistic, intolerant, uptight, two-faced bastard, and inconsiderate of other people’s privacy. In my fruitless endeavors to please God, I have instead angered everyone around me.

Why then should I continue my one-legged dance of unfound hope and light? No good can come from it – my peers will be infuriated by my fanaticism, social tension will arise between those who judge and those who are judged, and I will of course be devoid of any sense of belonging as I witness the crumbling of my social life.

I look back to the old me – a rebellious person on the verge of expulsion from school, a person with a 13GB porn collection, a person everyone sees as fun, a person with an actual “life” – and realize that life was so much better for me back then than it is now.

Why then, should I continue committing this social suicide, when no one benefits from my irrationality? Shouldn’t I just conform so that I am accepted?

Christ is an illusion. Persistence for the truth is nonsense – merely a byproduct of Christian denial of God’s non-existence. Spiritual euphoria is resultant of the insanity associated with Christianity. I will never find light in Christ. Heaven is already here – this heaven of sex and drugs – yet I am too stupid to accept it. These thoughts continue to resonate in my mind like an echoing scream of despair.

I’ve always told myself that what everyone around me does doesn’t affect me. Peer pressure is very much real, my friend. I struggle to juggle my spiritual and social lives as I enviously witness others who manage to completely segregate their spiritual lives from their social lives. But my passion, unlike theirs, is uncontrollable. My raging fury is beastlike, and my own integrity is self-destructive. My soul is on the verge of its own demise. And my words turn into my own poison, as my restraint becomes my own suicide.

It's Not You, It's Me

2007-09-04T11:13:00.001+07:00

You should know it is a huge lie when a person says that line to you. Whether or not it be in a romantic relationship or a brotherly one; it is You. It is Your fault. You ruined it. At least that is what they feel.

That other person is just trying to be nice. They are rejecting You, but they don't want to hurt Your feelings. But their attempt is useless; You're already hurt. They are blaming You, but they are smart enough to rearrange the words instead of just blurting their heart out. To make it sound less accusative. You know better; it is Your fault.

Take a pair of young lovers as an example.

It didn't take long for him to realize she's the one he's been looking for. Her hair more beautiful than Snow White's, the princess he's been measuring every girl against. She, too, was attracted to him. The chemistry was obvious.

It lasted a little more over a year.

"Who is it?" she asked.
"No one, it's not about that," he told the truth.
"Do you not love me anymore?" her eyes filled with waves of tears.
"It's not that I don't love you anymore, Baby. It's..."
"What did I do wrong, Alex?" the wave crashes.
"It's not you, it's me."
"I don't understand."
"You're too good for me, Case."

Liars.

You're not good enough is really what he meant, and she knows it, she's just being oblivious. He thought she was perfect, but perfection can get weary over time. Discontentment. He now wants something better. He now wants a Cinderella, because he knows Cinderella has always been the leader of the whole Princess Clan. He now feels Snow White is not as popular or pretty as the other princesses. But that's okay, right? It's only high school.

What about marriage. You can't say it's only marriage in a marriage like it's of no importance. It's your life and you can't leave it at that; you have to delve the problem. You learn from experience so you know what to say the next time someone says those fake words.

Husband: It's not working.
Wife: Try to tell your kids that.
Husband: My kids? They're your kids, too.
Wife: You're the one who said it's not working.
Husband: Well, who's fault is it?
Wife: Oh, so now you're blaming me?!
Husband: I never said that.
Wife: But you might as well shout it out. I'm sorry I ruined our marriage.
Husband: It's not you, it's me.
Wife: Yeah, it is you.

I have no idea whose side I am taking here. The Say-er or the Say-ee. But anyhow, I want you readers to learn something: It is you, not me. Or you can just save time and agree with this preposterous line.

I've no idea why I'm discussing this so-not-important topic. It's nothing personal. I'm just... I
don't get why people lie when they can tell the truth. I, for the record, am brutal. I would never use this line to break up with someone. I would just say, "I don't like you anymore."

:)

All conversation is purely fictional.

[late post due to BAD internet connection. I'm sorry.]

finespun; a vignette.

2007-09-03T19:09:00.000+07:00

Above us is the sky; beneath us, the earth. Between us is fire; beside us, a mountain and a churning drop into the valley. Within me is the blowing of a hollow wind.

There are strains of song curling around the frayed edges of my senses, but I am fully aware of the sober stillness constructed like an arc over the fire. It licks at the fading skylight, spitting firefly embers that flit like comets moving against gravity, shooting and fluttering wildly as the flame and the life leaves their darkening cores. They fade from this temporary glamour into ash; and the half-lived possibilities and half-true thoughts in my head go with them.

I wonder how your mind works. I imagine words; colored in pastel and rogue and cyan or pearl; marching in cursive or undecorated blocks across your head. And then I imagine your brain whirring and clicking; like machines producing 3D and 4D; and your heart, perhaps, supplies it with a fifth dimension.

I wonder what it feels like to be upwind; watching the smoke and ash get into my eyes and make it harder not to cry, while you look at me through it as through a silken veil. I imagine tendrils and little broken fingers reaching out from the back of my head to part it aside. But they die, and they fade like smoke itself; just a distance away from you, and you make no effort to help, so that we remain separated; cold and more than a little frozen in our sweating skins.

I am fully aware of your lips bending around the words; your voice curling around the melodies and your heart twisting around the hidden meanings of this song. I am only vaguely interested in what the words mean. I decide instead to listen to your keening voice and the breath that carries the notes to my ears. I imagine a wail or a scream rolling off your tongue; or a laugh, since it’s not that I want you to hurt.

Did you know? I have Polaroids of you taped to the walls of my heart; like stills from a movie scene, split-second differences in light and motion and meaning. You are standing still, and the wind whips your hair round and here and away, and your eyes blink and glow and flutter shut. In my mind I picture you that way; standing silent and perfectly still.

In my dreams I picture you laughing, or weeping, or screaming or maybe smiling. In my head I hunt down every memory I have of you and I search for the semblance of some distant emotion. I find myself filing away the subtle accidents; like your hand brushing against mine, or our gazes catching. I collect the pale confessions pencilled in the days passed in a shared routine. I cradle the heartfelt wish and possibility of falling in love with you.

But we linger here, fenced apart by fire with the precipice at our side. Now and then we gaze over the lip of the deathly drop, and we see the preparations of a war; a catastrophe just waiting to begin. And it is here, at the beginning of everything’s end, that we pause, watching, waiting for the stage to be set. My wish and fragile possibility is clutched in my hand. It strains; spiderweb lines tracing the blueprint of its destruction.

We are moments away from the end of all things, and we say nothing. Half of me is still trying to imagine the pictures and words etched and scrawled over your neurons, and I wonder what you are feeling. The other half of me watches my hand slip, not unintentionally, and let go.

I watch my dream crack as the Polaroids take on a sudden harshness, and a lusterless cold rests in your face.

(It falls and hits the ground, but I will not break.)

A short piece from some time ago. :) To make up for the terribly pointless post of last week, I'm posting quality and posting early this week! Plus I won't be here for my column (Friday) because me and Tank, as well as some other people, are flying to Bangkok on Wednesday! We'll be back by ten-ish Sunday night...and then we'll have loads to tell you! In the meantime, enjoy~.

OKONKWO!

2007-09-02T20:39:00.000+07:00

My jaws dropped just as I was finishing Part One of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Yes, I know, I will find out the reason why later in the book, BUT...

WHY OKONKWO?! WHY??!!!

I am shocked by Okonkwo's superb idiocy. His so-called strength and authority has gone too far. What's his problem?

I feel like pulling my hair. Pulling his hair, maybe, if he has hair. This is so absurd. The fact that Okonkwo just killed someone in the middle of a funeral, and the fact that I am this emotionally involved with the story. Okonkwo needs to see a shrink. NOW. In his book-world, wherever it is. Seriously, I am perturbed by his total-extreme-DUMBNESS. I have no better word. Let's hope he has a reason, and it better be a good one. I won't accept: Whoops! My fingers slipped. I will personally murder Okonkwo if that is the reason.

Okonkwo is a FREAK. I'm sorry, but I hope he dies in the story.

So much drama. Ekh.

Please don't tell me what happens next if you already finish reading. Thank you.

Our Liberty is Our Suicide

2007-09-02T17:48:00.000+07:00

Change is for good. Liberalism liberates. Boundaries bind. - Ideas that deceptively promise to make the world a better place.

Collective surveys say that nine out of ten Americans have had premarital sex. In fact, there, fornication is so casual that people pride themselves on how many sex partners they've had. To my dismay, some people I know have begun to make sex a routine parts of their lives. Parents begin to teach their kids on how to wear condoms, reinforcing the decadent idea that "premarital sex is fine," as long as it is done "safely". Why not? After all, Western society – the “idyllic” society – believes in freedom to do anything with our libido-driven flesh.

I - someone of more conservative character - is detested by everyone for trying to do something about the gradual suicides of my peers. They call me disrespectful of their so-called “rights". I lay in grief and despair as I witness the loss of innocence – the embitterment of my cherry-topped youth.

We Asians look up to Westerners like they are gods. Escorts prance around malls with bule in their arms and radiate a nauseating aura of self-worship, as if their social status is raised for sleeping with a Caucasian. We all fail to see that every culture is equal, as we abandon our heritage in search of becoming more like them. And in our pursuit of becoming American, we seek to morph Asia into an American Asia – an orgasmic “utopia” advocating the "freedom" to sin.

Western countries perceive the ideal living haven as a place where equality, human rights, and liberty are commonplace. Their societies are structured upon this philosophy where the sky is the limit. The problem is, the human body and mind is naturally stupid. It desires to get drunk, die of liver failure, fornicate, get pregnant, rot of AIDS, and self-destruct. Yet asinine freedom is encouraged – freedom to allow our natural defects to take hold of ourselves.

Needless to say, Western ideologies also base life on independence, productivity, fulfillment based on achievement, and pushing yourselves to the limit – commendable ideals that I applaud. And for them, freedom allows for success to be achieved to the maximum. Yet here, we find many of the most Americanized teenagers to be daughters and sons of privileged entrepreneurs who superficially base their lives on who has the most expensive bags and cars – bags and cars bought by inherited wealth. So here we find Indonesian youth plague-ridden by a class of the idle rich – Paris Hiltons and Nicole Richies – purposeless, spoiled, deflowered, promiscuous, Americanized brats.

America's rubbish we glutonously devour. Its gold we heedlessly throw away.

Friends, America is here! Iniquity poses as liberty, and we gladly take it. We eradicate our sense of value, our tradition, our dignity. Globalization is the new colonialism! No longer are we united by corpulent kings and queens engraved to the back of coins, but united by garmentless people on magazines. Unity by the queen is so over; a new form of unity is here – Unity by promiscuity!

Here we stand in the “height of modern civilization.” Here we lay in schizophrenic fallacy. Here we witness the stupid; exalted, the wise; mocked. Here, as moral ground corrodes, we deny, we conform, and we blithely march towards hell under the iniquitous mask of heaven.

Hindered by Heritage (alright that is by far the tackiest tittle I've Made COMPOSED)

2007-09-02T16:59:00.000+07:00

You know what sucks about being Chinese Indonesian?

No matter how much we love our country, Indonesia, no matter how much we fight for it, and no matter how much we sacrifice for it (be it blood, sweat or tears) most Indonesians, still wont view us as true Indonesians anyway.

The paradoxical irony is that we often herald our Chinese blood and customs, but we are patriotically to Indonesia, which for the most part unacknowledged our citizenship. (It was just recently that a law was enacted that Chinese Indonesian can be president. (the irony lies in the fact that such a law was NEEDED)

With our narrow eyes, light yellow-ish skin tone, hard working mentality and gauche culture we have inherently given up the right to be 'truly' Indonesian.

Maybe it's just me, but don't you think it's true, despite being born, and raised here, we're not really INDONESIANS are we? We, despite not speaking Chinese are so obviously and often painfully confused by who we are, and to whom our loyalties lies to.

I suppose, we are not alone in this matter, Mexicans who have lived in America for years still suffers being called illegal 'aliens' though they are technically Americans. (I despise how Americans insist on bad mouthing them despite Latin American's contribution to their economy, and how they pompously complain that the Mexicans will 'ruin their 'native' American culture' (WHAT CULTURE, THEY WERE ALL EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS!!! will maybe write a blog entry on that in the future))

Even in our own soil, not only the Chinese are suffering from this, Bule's who love Bali and Indonesia are still called Bule's and will forever be called so. (No matter that they have learned the language and lived here for decades)

This pattern is uniquely and sadly universal, occurring everywhere and in many different degree's.

Why are humans so obsessed and eternally entrapped with distinguishing people firstly and fore mostly by their skin colors and physical characteristics?

And despite you inwardly disagreeing these blatant accusations, there is no denying that we all, are innately shallow! (well not ALL, several blind people and humanists can be exceptions , but how many are there really?)

What do you think?

Love, Steph

*not graded please, unless I don't post for like, the rest of this week*

WHEE! Bangkok, Thailand HMCA!

What to do, what to do...

2007-09-01T10:34:00.000+07:00

I will get murdered for posting so late, but I have a good reason. :) Anyhow.

Let it be known I spent the better part of an hour scanning the net for a good topic and the remaining part of that hour sitting in front of the computer, looking like I was heavily contemplating the meaning of life.

I mean, how hard can it be to find something to talk about? In my hunt for a good topic, I stumbled across interesting finds like what happens to spiders on coffee, decided that my eyes are impish little beasts out to get me after seeing my world laid out on the streets, and that my ears are secretly planning to betray me, later in in my life (and that teenagers like us are determined little buggers who use inventions made against us to our own advantage...).

And if the above are still not interesting enough, I found a machine that illustrates the human digestive system and um, also produces the end result. And it's available for sale. Yecch. (Please view at your own discretion!)

They were interesting topics to be sure. Just not things I'd use up an entire blog entry on. So, in conclusion, even after an hour of deep pondering and intensive searching, I still haven't found a topic worthy of a post in Monochromatic Rainbows. That can be owed to either my picky nature or the lack of interesting things in the world, or the fact that my head is being forced to work even as it is hammered by the sound of, well, hammers, and drills outside the window. (My ears are going to age even faster now!)

You'll have to excuse me for the brief entry. After all, I still haven't found a good topic, so I was hoping the links would keep you busy (and perhaps slightly freaked out) instead. I promise I'll bring you something more substantial next time. :)

Heresy and My Ensuing Wrath

2007-08-31T17:48:00.000+07:00

Disclaimer: The writer of this post is by no means a perfect measure of Godliness. His opinions do not in any way reflect the other writers of this blog.

A few days ago, I wrote two posts on this blog which I have now deleted for being contradictory and irrationally bashful. This, my dear friends, is the expression of my infuriation, with nearly all of that crude dementia filtered out.

Charismatic denominations of Christian faith place emphasis on its belief that Christianity does not have to be an ancient practice where worship is limited to hymns and the temptation to fall asleep in services is rampart. Instead, modern congregations such as Hillsongs have gained much attention for delivering modern worship music - something that appeals much more to the increasingly pop-culture-obsessed youth of today.

Stephen Tong, a noted Indonesian reformist preacher is extremely frank about his disapproval of this unorthodoxy found in such churches. I, being a member of his congregation, am one of these people who are not particularly happy of this fusion of rock concerts and services. We have been criticized for being culturally uptight and chauvinistic in our views against these more modern denominations.

Personally, I don’t necessarily mind listening and singing to these rock Christian songs. It’s the purpose of these songs that bother me. Followers of charismatic denominations argue that these songs allow people to have fun in church, to make church a place where everyone wants to be. But one must question, does devotion have to be fun? Is surrendering your own soul to a greater power supposed to be something easy? And more importantly, is this added fun to the whole Christian experience serving for a greater purpose?

As the line between rock concerts and church services become less apparent, what is to differentiate church from actual concerts? What is to keep people from attending church for the sake of mere ecstasy? I know I used to attend a charismatic church for this reason, like many of my peers who look forward to church as a fun place to jump around to ear-deafening music. Motivations and intentions are distorted to a vortex of self-gratification as we abuse “worship.” And while hymns composed by the likes of Bach and Handel are much less fun and enjoyable to sing to, they surely allow for more sincere devotion and is less prone to such decadent misuse.

And though this deformation of church into a concert hall is bad enough in itself, words don’t even begin to describe how tragic the pretension found in our school chapels is. During this week’s chapel, the twelfth-grade chapel band, performed “The Time Has Come,” a song from the Hillsongs United We Stand album. To my dismay, the song was accompanied by a two-minute-long intro that was completely unnecessary. It occurred to me that though the solo had not been necessary, its inclusion allowed plenty room for guitarists to show off their talents in plucking metal strings. It is ridiculous how chapel is taken advantage by non-Christian musicians as a showcase for their talent, to the extent that chapel is no longer a place for glorifying God, but a place for self-glorification. Chapel has now become a talent show that is involuntarily attended where students are forced to watch conceited displays of arrogance under the illusion of worship. Oh, the tragedy.

Music happens to be a significant source of revenue for the Hillsongs church. Their albums have consistently gained top positions in the Australian charts, as they are designed to do so. My friend rashly blamed Hillsongs for these "necessary" intros, ignoring the previously stated fact. The inclusion of two-minute-long solos in their albums is obvious in cause - to make their albums more appealing to the general public - to make their albums sell more so that their church can expand (which is by all means appropriate for a growing congregation), and to make the concerts (where these albums are recorded) more appealing to all who pay to watch it (including those non-Christian watchers who watch for the mere sake of fun).

One must thereby question whether or not the inclusion of these show-off sessions in our chapels serves for a good purpose. After all, are our chapels meant to please the mainstream public? Aren't the circumstances of Hillsongs United, - where songs are written to appeal to the public - completely unparallel with the circumstances of chapel worship? Aren’t we then abusive hypocrites who would be stoned to death by the Catholic Church for heresy if we lived in ancient times?

To abuse Christianity to the point that church becomes comparable to rock concerts and talent shows is beyond wrong. It is horrifying, appalling, petrifying, mortifying, disgusting, and worthy of vomit. And what is worse is that everyone is too ignorant to see and do anything about it.

So please, excuse us “chauvinists” for being “uptight” in our religious views. After all, aren’t we entitled the right to be angered by the blatant abuse of His benevolence? Tolerance for such senselessness is no virtue – it is merely a tool used to circumvent people from doing the right thing.

It is clearly obvious that the abolishment of charismatic denominations would be nonsensical and inconsiderate of those who are truly sincere about their faiths. Replacing rock with hymns in our school would lull most people to slumber and anger those die-hard rockers. So at the very least, dear rockers, take your vile condescension somewhere else - a club, a bar, a concert, just anywhere other than our chapels. To those who come to church for fun, look elsewhere for your bliss - a club, a bar, a concert, a place where those guitarists go to showcase their talent. Do so and we will all finally be pleased - guitarists will freely venerate themselves, jumpers will jump to the guitarists' self-veneration, devotion will no longer be abused, and you hypocrites will no longer feed my bitter soul with this raging wrath.

Deal?

Love Me Money

2007-08-31T03:49:00.000+07:00

"I'm not an actor, I'm not a star.
I don't even have my own car.
But I'm hoping so much you'll stay;
that you would love me anyway."
- Michael Learns To Rock

Can you believe this? Michael Learns To Rock dares to write such absurd lyrics. Darling... YOU DON'T HAVE A CAR, why in the world would I want to be with YOU??? We live on earth, sweetheart. I have no time for broke-ass guys like you. Boy, PLEASE!

I'm just kidding! Don't get me wrong, but men these days should be ready to offer the ladies something more than just love. Love is not enough, and I'm not being materialistic.

Is LOVE relevant when you can't even buy your baby milk?
Is LOVE useful when your wife has to go to the neighbor for sugar?

Go ahead and love, but don't forget to live.

Love is an overused term. Get a diamond ring, and it better not cost 25 cents.

Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future

2007-08-30T20:17:00.001+07:00

Note: Somehow, this post (Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future) written and posted on Wednesday was deleted accidentally. So I'm reposting it regretfully.

Disclaimer: I wrote this on caffeine high and this post contains broad generalizations and does not carry the opinions of other A1 HL-ers in my group.

As an Indonesian teenager who is more proficient in writing in English than in her own native language, I often feel ashamed of my incompetence in Indonesian.

I love writing in English, I hate writing in Indonesian.

I love English Literature; I often have problems reading Indonesian Literature.

It is a sad irony and predicament for many young International educated youths today.

I don’t know from where exactly this inadequacy comes from, nor when will it end.

What is the draw of the English language anyway? Is it naturally more beautiful, most audiophilically pleasing? Is it simply a matter of taste?

Are we, young Indonesians ashamed of our country, and thus our native language? Are we just too sick and tired in the reality of this country?

A gloriously corrupt nation whose ex-president (and probably our favorite) stole $35 billion from our country and despite all his crimes still lounges at his Cendana home?

Or is it something shallower, more sinister?

Maybe we decide, hey, English makes us special, makes us more exclusive. SUPERIOR even in comparison to the national school kids.

I think so.

Amidst globalization and the supremacy of American culture, us young people, gradually and not so gradually see our Chinese, Malay, Javanese, Balinese and our hundreds of cultures as boring, ridiculous, retarded and un-awesome.

We adore bule actors while we mock and laugh at Indonesian ones.

Seeing bule’s down the street we stare, we look, we fancy.

Who cares if they really are just average folks with different pigments? They are Caucasians and thus are cooler and awesome than we are.

Secretly we all want to be Americans and or Europeans, what’s so exotic in being Asian? Most of the countries in our continent are a third world country!

We aren’t Asian Americans, but as someone put it, we’re Americanized Asians.

Well, I am. I, sadly and shamefully am.

It a distressing and often irrevocable trait, I have been raised this way; all of my friends are this way. Apparently my love of English Literature is ironical. I may have read dozens and in a few years, hundreds of English Literature, but how many Indonesian books have I read? Probably less than a dozen!

I can name great writers whom I love and adore. How many Indonesian writers do I like? One.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Even his work I first read in English, and then properly switched to the Indonesian version.

Even Pram, the Nobel Prize candidate whom I so revere, is mostly unknown and ignored by most of us.

Who cares? We say, he’s dead, and he’s irrelevant! He’s sooo boring.

But that’s not the point is it? He was someone who loved this nation, this country and the people of the Indies. He who spent so many years suffering and toiling for freedom, and wrote, just wrote for our country.

I called several bookstores searching for his most famous and prominent books today. It took me calling more than four stores to finally find it.

One of the person who answered my call and heard the title of the novels, asked me the author of this book! PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER! I almost screamed at her.

In Gramedia, Indonesia’s biggest chain bookstore, there are probably only two racks for Indonesian literature; half of it is used up for translated classics and modern works.

But there is dozens of racks for Japanese comic books, and mindlessly moronic Americanized chick-lits.

It has been sixty over years since our independence, almost ten years since the fall of Suharto.

No one cares about the future of this nation.

We all say, someone is going to come along and change all that. Someone is going to take care of it.

Time will fix our nation. Time will make this nation great!

I know sound like a rambling visionary screaming for a change in a world and society deaf and contentedly ignorant on such matters.

Nietzsche said Visionaries lie to themselves, and liars lie to other people only. Though he is right in certain ways, he’s still incorrect and the insane Nietzsche we all love.

We are already lying to ourselves anyhow. We’re ignoring who we are (genetically), and happily too!

So, to the foreigners I say with a dyed blonde hair, blue contact lenses, black tank top, jeans and a perky smile, “Hi welcome to Indonesia, we are the new generation of Indonesians, oh don’t worry we speak English, we live the American way! We don’t give crap about Indonesia!”

The Key To My Heart

2007-08-30T20:01:00.000+07:00

by: Karina Negara

Pass it on.
They key to my heart.
You have it in your hands,
But you don’t deserve it anymore.
You never did.

You have the whole package.
My heart,
And everything in it.
I want it back, Love.
I want it back full.
Because you stole it.
My heart,
And everything inside.

Loving you silently used to be fine.
You look at me,
I look at you…
Now your eyes are stuck
To the diamond of your heart.
She.

Loving you silently wasn’t much of a mess.
I could be here
And you right there.
I loved you endlessly,
But you never care.
That’s where it hurts.
That’s where I’m muddled.

So, pass it on.
The Key to My Heart.
It doesn’t belong to you,
I won’t let you unlock this soul.

With all my heart.
That’s how much I loved you.
But the pain has gone too deep,
‘Cos I cried too much in sleep.
I’m losing it.
I’m throwing it away.

Slowly we drift apart,
I grow out of love soon enough.
Give it back, Dear.
Give me back my most prized possession.

Pass it on.
The key to my heart.
Let someone else have it.
Let someone else love me,
With all of his heart.
For who I am,
And for who I am not.
I’m sorry I loved you.

*not to be graded, but you can comment :)

The Pianist

2007-08-30T08:34:00.000+07:00

My brother asked me to write a lyric for his musical composition a few days ago. I did not nod, nor did I refuse.

The tune was somewhat familiar. I can’t recall to what song it was similar to though, but he told me his girlfriend said the same thing. I do believe there are at least three songs in this music world that sounds identical. Look at Maroon 5, all their songs sound exactly the same!

We’ve always known Dio was talented in music. He was about to apply to a music university in California, when my mother said, "No, music is not going to be your career. It's good that you have the talent, but a music career will not last." I somehow agree with her, but she makes it sound so harsh.

Noel, my oldest brother, had trouble saying 'Dio' when he was learning to talk, so my parents gave up and just let him say ‘Do’.

Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do…

It was the beginning of his highly appreciated musical journey.

My parents love music. I mean, who doesn't? My mom especially. If you have the chance to see my house, you'll understand. My balcony fence is decorated with a G-clef and a few notes. My stairs hold the intro to Für Elise; my dining table is engraved with the whole score. G-clef shaped lights are everywhere, and the Baby Grand piano has the right to be called brand new. I even have musical towels! Peculiarly, neither one of my parents know how to play a tune. They said they never had the privilege to learn. Lucky me.

As a result to their musical incapability, they decided they want all their kids to at least be able to play the piano. "Just in case," they said. Just incase what? Just incase my job does not make enough money? Well, they never finished that sentence. I was left hanging. Just incase...

I learned how to play the piano when I was three. I loved those cute little stickers the teacher stuck on my page every time I finished learning a song. I wonder what Dio's motivation was, because when I became too old for a stamps and stickers, I despised piano lessons. I abhor the hour, excited for it to end. Unfortunately, she will never let me quit. I want to, I still do. The way I see it, I am only wasting my parents' money. Why continue?

We have Dio to serenade us by tickling the ivories at home.

I was amazed when I saw his old room... It was filled with golden G-clef shaped trophies I never knew about, some almost as tall as I am. Now that is talent. He is doing what he does best. He is the pianist, I should back off. I have my hands reserved for something my heart superlatively prefers. Just incase. Dio and I can still work together. We can be a team. I will make use of my microscopic hands.

I shall paint his melody with amorous poetry.

So may I quit, Mom?

The Beginning

2007-08-28T21:50:00.000+07:00

Hello dear children. If you are reading this then you are either a fellow student of Ms. Wilkins', a peer of ours, or a mere curious stranger who stumbled upon this humble life journal on the internet. Whoever you are, we greet you to this virgin blog of ours.

I, Gary Kong, boy-extraordinaire (I'm just kidding with you there), along with fellow bloggers Rachel Gunawan, Karina Negara, and Stephanie Tangkilisan promise you that we will endeavor to deliver you witty writing in our soon-to-be literary home.

We all have things to say - brilliant things, I hope (or at the very least humorous, in the case of the occasional suckers), and we cordially share with you our thoughts and opinions here.

Till then, au revoir.