new post!

This is something I read in Google Reader while waiting for my story being edited.. Amma put it here coz this blog had been left empty for long :P *blowing away dust and cobwebs*

Taken from here, the title went as such: '10 Questions to Test Your Consciousness' - I thought it had to be taken when u want to know how drunk u r but I was wrong, it went a bit deeper than that :p

So, dear readers,

Do you:

1. Satisfy your basic needs without diminishing other people's chances of satisfying theirs?

2. Pursue your own happiness with due regard for the similar pursuit of others?

3. Respect the right to economic development for all people, wherever they live and whatever their ethnic origin or belief system?

4. Live in a way that respects the integrity of nature around you?

5. Work with like-minded people to safeguard and restore your local environment?

6. Require your government to relate to other nations peacefully and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing the legitimate aspirations of all the members of the international community?

7. Buy from companies that accept responsibility for stakeholders at all levels of the supply chain?

8. Consume media that provides unbiased information relevant to you and your community?

9. Do something to help at least one other person escape the hopeless struggles and abject humiliations of extreme poverty?

10. Believe all young people are entitled to the education they need to be productive members of their community?

if you said yes to all 10, and ure an Indonesian, congratulations! ure very very rare!

how to write a tragedy..

April 13, 2010

Arientha Primanita

After a day of protests against public order officers trying to oust villagers in Lebak Sari, Tangerang city officials temporarily postponed the eviction. (Antara Photo/Ismar Patrizki)

Chinese Indonesian Community Clashes With City Officers in Tangerang Eviction Melee

At least 14 people were hurt when a protest against government evictions in Tangerang turned violent, with public order officers hitting and dragging demonstrators trying to prevent some 1,000 people in the village of Lebak Sari from being moved out of an area the community has occupied for many generations.

The residents are descended from Chinese laborers brought to the area by Dutch colonists in the 18th and 19th centuries. But the local administration claims the land, and has been trying to evict the community since last year.

The eviction plan affects 350 families, totaling 1,007 people. Residents received formal notification from the administration that the eviction was slated for Tuesday, and had been standing guard in front of their homes since 6 a.m.

“The city administration said they want to use the area for green spaces. The same families have been here for centuries,” said Edy Halomoan Gurning, an advocate from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta).

Though families of the residents have lived at Lebak Sari in Neglasari for centuries, many still do not posses government-issued identification cards.

“They have to undergo complicated administration procedures to have ID cards or any other documents, including birth certificates or marriage certificates,” Edy said. 

I'm going there later today n am supposed to write a follow-up, more human/dramatic side of the story. I really have no idea what to expect.

I want to be angry / cry / stand with them at the barricade! but thats not why i was there on the first place.. *sigh*

I've seen news of people getting evicted. The city is over its limit and starts to shove out its weakest: the poor, the uneducated, the marginalized..
Why so many evictions? i'd like to blame those environmentalist who keeps on demanding for more open green spaces.
or those city planners who would like to solve the traffic jams and replace crowded shanties with pillars for MRT and monorail..

1,007 people is not a small figure. it's not something u can easily ignore.

what am i going to ask? are you sad the city does not want to acknowledge you as its inhabitant?

what am i going to say to the governor next time i see him? "hey, great job with the evictions!"?

article taken from here

Birthday Reflection: Welcoming 25

My 25th birthday, was pretty normal. The night before I had dinner with my dad, mum, my sisters, my bro (minus Bil) and Iko. Nothing fancy, it's really near my office, one of the perks of having your office in a mall I guess. So we went to the 10th floor where the sky dining is, food was not bad, and the view was quite pretty.

Went to sleep by 10, Iko woke me up at 12, gave a birthday hug, and we're back to sleep.

Got hundreds of birthday wishes, which was the highlight of the day actually. Went to work as usual, Iko went home late.. as usual.

As the hours rolled by, my happines started to crumble. When I went home it was raining quite hard, my taxi driver was clueless of which road to take to avoid traffic jam (either that or he's just trying to rip me off), and there's this headache that came out of nowhere.. I arrived at our place crying -_-

And of course Iko was still in a meeting, so as I forced myself to sleep (tears still rolling), I started to recount all the nice things that happened to me this year.
I does suck to know that there's one day that reminds you that you're getting old, but it kinda sucks more for me when that day was spent just like that.

So call me immature or childish but I've decided that I refused to have a horrible birthday in the future!! xD

ahum, so...my point is..i'm pretty grateful of where I am right now. it's one of those moments when u think that some parts of your life starts to make sense. Could be an ugly trick that life's playing on me but..i've decided to savour the moment anyway.

so..i am truly convinced now that you really CAN get anything you want. i belive that happiness is really in your hands, to control, to achieve.. to borrow from coelho: "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

so, cheesiness aside. i'd still have to thank this guy:


even if he's so annoying most of the time :)

the fifth respectable short story club weekly meeting minutes

January 17, 2010

Attendance list
Elvin Priyadi
Laurentia Dhanio (Riri)
Ulma Nurriva Haryanto

On this fifth meeting, the club had to read a short story by Nathan Nolan, Memento Mori. The story inspired the movie Memento, directed by the author's brother, Christopher Nolan. For those who haven't seen the movie, you should!! (yes yes i've been relentingly promoting the movie to the girls.. i just cant help it :p)

The meeting actually started off with us discussing the culture of bribing and corrupt police system in Indonesia, this was following a recent inspection by a judicial taskforce in Jakarta which found luxurious cells in a penitentiary in East Jakarta.

Then we talked a bit about the situation in Asia's prison.. Elvin referred to a show on National Geographic called 'Locked Up Abroad', which had an episode with Indonesian prisons in Malang and Bali.

We moved on to this video in YouTube in which Riri expressed a very evident dislike :p the video was the one showing a canadian (?) tourist riding a motorbike, without proper license, was stopped by a police, then the police asked for a payment in order to let him pass.. Sure, as an Indonesian u'd b ashamed of the police's behaviour.. and concerened about the world's opinion of our beloved country after seeing that video. It's not a way of educating the people, that video, but the guy who made it never meant to educate anyway.. It was made to flaunt the country's embarassing reality to youtube viewers..

so...we believe that the problem might lie on the institution that spawns these policemen. it's an open secret that to enter the academy you're gonna need money, and/or related or know someone important. there's the need for total reform.. of mindset, of the institution itself.. we also sometimes enable the behavior because we are impatient, we want things to be instant, or a misplaced sympathy.. "Poor low-paid policeman/civil servants, here.. have some extra"

Before we could finally focus on the story, elvin pointed out that those in Holland had to be more careful when downloading movies with copyrighted content. things hv gone more strict.

So, the short story..

riri loved the theme, since it resonates with the thing she feared the most: memory-loss. The character was told to have a malfunctioned brain, he suffered from backwards amnesia or anterograde amnesia. his memory only spans for 10 minutes, before it goes blank and he had to start all-over again.

he filled his room, his body with instructions. a bell was inside his backpocket all the time. Two dates were engraved, one was his birth date, and one he eventually forgot (we suspect its either his wedding/the death of his wife, which he repeatedly include in his notes to make sure he would not forget).

so in every 10-minutes earl (the guy) read the instructions he made before, try to remember, n then in 'moments of clarity' write instructions of what he's supposed to do next before his medial temporal lobe refreshed itself again.

So what is this 'moments of clarity'? Quoting from the story:

...for a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. Moments of clarity, insight, whatever you want to call them...everything becomes obvious...For a few moments, the secrets of the universe are opened to us.

But the problem is, we are not always that 'smart'.

But then the genius, the savant, has to hand over the controls to the next guy down the pike, most likely the guy who just wants to eat potato chips, and insight and brilliance and salvation are all entrusted to a moron or a hedonist or a narcoleptic.

And so, the only way out of this mess, according to the story, "is to take steps to ensure that you control the idiots that you become. To take your chain gang, hand in hand, and lead them. The best way to do this is with a list."

of course! how genius!

The other things in our lives made us failed to graps these moments of clarity: other priorities/constrains, moodswings. moments of clarity can take many forms, one of it is desperation..
elvin believed that desperation can be a way to solve a problem, especially when it involves whining. Because by whining you wish for someone to come and rescue the day :p

and so.. the meeting was concluded with blocking creeps and weirdos from our contact list :)))

Until the next meeting.. adieu!

p.s. for previous meeting minutes do click here and here . oh and Riri, don't be surprised by the precision of this minute, coz there is this feature in Yahoo! Messenger called 'Message Archive' ;))

so this is the new year...

this morning i received an email from a good friend, that her boyfriend proposed to her in a most romantic way.. just like in those movies.. n then i read elvin's blog, so i was thinking to write something about last year's resolution..

but then bad news struck n left me disoriented.

the newspaper has laid off some people.. one's a friend of mine.. ive just known her for a while.. less than 3 months.. feel terribly sorry for her and other people who got laid off.. as far as i know some has taken it well, im not doubting either that my friend is already running n sending out her CVs by now..

now i'm wondering if i should watch for my head too.. too bad.. maybe my old office would take me back :D *start updating CV*

the non-bookclub meeting minutes that is 3 days late..well make it one week AND 3 days

Jakarta, 27 December 2009

Attendance list:
Elvin Priyadi
Laurentia Dhanio (Riri)
Ulma Nurriva Haryanto

This week's short story was 'In The South' by Salman Rushdie.

Summary:
It's about two elderly Indian men understanding death and life. Senior and Junior, two 81-year-old neighbors, spent their days bickering and going at each other. It's quite lengthy. 5494 words, approximately 6 pages. Senior was portrayed to be the one with ambition during his younger years. But as he outlived most of his relatives and felt more and more confined by his old age, he became the bitter one. While Junior, unmarried, retired as a 'respected' clerk, had never had any ambitions in his life, and so, the easygoing one.

Discussion points (non-story related):
- Elvin's almost-frozen fingers. She had lost her gloves and hadn't found the time to buy new ones
- Riri just finished an acrylic painting and now it's being displayed in fedi's work room.
- Ulma just had dinner with her whole family celebrating her mum's birthday
- Elvin pointed out that we tend to pick stories that carry the theme of loneliness and bitterness.

Discussing the story.
Ulma thinks that googling is necessary for this story in order to really "get" certain vibes and impressions. Riri also said that she has to google a couple of words.

And so, everybody's favourite parts from the story was when Junior and Senior cashed up their pension slips, in which readers were given another twist on both characters. As Junior had always been depicted as the easy going one, he, in fact was quite bitter when it comes to the idea of retirement. My favourite part was when Senior talked about his relatives, especially the part: "The babies-in-law rattled their rattles and giggled their giggles and screamed their baby scream".

Riri's favourite part was when Senior said, “...The south is a fiction, existing only because men have agreed to call it that...The universe does not understand up and down...In this regard, the points of the compass are like money, which has value only because men say that it does."
Riri also pointed out that the same goes to the concept of time: hours, minutes, seconds, year - there is no such thing as how old you are, your body is just wearing out.

The story also made us think, as we get old, would we be the bitter one? or the satisfied mediocre one? are we going to ask God for death everyday? It also tells us about how sometimes achievement and satisfaction does not relate to each other. How many achievemnt one's had, does not correlate to one's satisfaction. When Junior died (sorry, spoiler alert -- Junior died at the end of the story), Senior asked, "Why not me?", but Riri pointed out, even if Senior died, he would had asked, "Why me?"

And Salman, like other middle-eastern/west-asian authors has a 'rich' story-telling style, very descriptive, very warm, perhaps their cultural background contributed to their writing style.

Respectable Book-Worming Club (and some updates)

Amsterdam, December 13th, 2009.

Welcome to the Book-Worming club. We are here to bitch about life and discussing short story.

A short introduction to the committee (alphabetically ordered),
Ms. Elvin Priyadi (geek by day, cook by night)
Ms. Laurentia Dhanio (temporary housewife)
Mrs. Ulma Nurriva Haryanto-Putera (high-flying journalist-slash-wife)

With today’s short story: Grace Paley’s A Man Told Me the Story of His Life. A very short story, as Mrs. Ulma pointed out. Counting around 300 words, I have to agree with her (:p). The theme centers on talents and wishes. With a message of, as Ms.Laurentia pointed out, “talents will never be wasted”.

At the first glance, it seems like the division of a beginning, climax and resolution in Grace Paley’s story is clearly defined (although got me confused in the climax part)
As we are reading and discussing it, we suddenly see there is a connecting string at the end to the beginning of the story. A loop.

mmm. interesting, in’it?

But what is more interesting, is what you can find in the committee bags :D Take Mrs. Ulma, she has 3 cellphones. Three, people. Why? One for the messenger, one for making phone calls, and one for sms-ing. Ms. Laurentia, in the other hand, has one of those rare moments to have a tissue in her bag.

And me? I have toilet paper in my bag (long story)

Thus, The Respectable Book-Worming Club bid you all farewell for now. We will be back with a new short story.

temporary archiver,

.e

P.S. Book-Worming Club, the name is temporary. The committee shall discuss the official name during next meeting (including the weekly meeting thing :p)

from elvnprya

Now.. I just realized she wrote my name with a 'Mrs.' .. my my, i'm a married woman..
As 2009 is drawing to a close, and i'm enjoying the 1st day as a lazy bum since after being employed, elvin had this idea to start a well.. not really a book club, but rather, a short-story club.. we busy women have no time for reading books lately xD
well it's an exercise.. so we start with short stories

today will mark my 2nd month of working at the jakarta globe. i have to say.. it's tough :p
there were times that i hv to write 3 stories a day... there were times that i've got nothing to write, read most of new items on my google reader feed, and it's 6 p.m.

the working schedule is quite un-ordinary. sometimes i hv to work on sundays, sometimes i hv another day off on one of the work days.. so i hv to leave iko at home on sundays.. and vice versa.. well i used to come to my old office, still got some work left there. but a couple of weeks ago i stopped going there cause it costed time+money to travel :p plus it's hot out there.. so i just stayed at home n do my thing..

annd there's also the matter of writing journalism technique that I, as a communication management student with NGO background have to work more on -_-

anyways, the job certainly has its perks. The goody-bags, the freebies :D the free buffet.. I went to places, I met people.. people that I usually only see on TV.. some whom I had never thought I would even speak to.. bearing the title 'news reporter/journalist' gave me the privilege to ask about anything to anyone, to those who respect that right anyway.. but this also comes with me the responsibility of having whatever I write to be the subject of people's opinion.. plus the newspaper's credibility is also on my shoulder..

hum. anyways.

looking forward to spend the long weekend with family. ah ya i'm off from wed-sun :p myb gonna write one / two more posts during the weekend.. maybe......

ta-ta for now. xoxo.