Meaningless Rants

Yet another disaster in China. After Myanmar’s cyclone, China got an earthquake that kills an estimated 15,000 so far. And then I started to see headlines like these: "Earth’s Anger!" "Nature’s Wrath!"

Well, actually, nature by itself probably doesn’t kill much in an earthquake. Think about it: the only way nature really kills in an earthquake is when a tree becomes uprooted and hits someone, or if someone’s standing on a cliff and he fell, or there’s a landslide burying people, or someone fall into a newly form chasm, or someone got shooked and fell on the river and drown. Actually, most of the casualties from an earthquake is from man-made buildings/architectures/roads/bridges that collapses and hit the person below it or mangled the person above it. I noticed this as I watched the news: people buried under rubbles from buildings, and yet another people buried under rubbles from buildings, and yet another people buried under rubbles from buildings, and yet…

It’s different from a cyclone/storm, where the tidal surge can drag people and drown people. Now THAT kills. But even so, there are probably many casualties from people dragged and hitting buildings, or plans with nails, and so on. It’s like the tsunami in Aceh. Maybe you thought, "hey, why don’t people just stay afloatride the wave until the farthest reach of the wave?" Well, not easy if you got a car slamming you from behind, and against a mangled bunch of planks and wires and what have you.

Just another meaningless rant. Myanmar’s government is a bitch.

And so there I was in the funeral parlor at midnight, waiting for my grandma’s body to be washed and dressed and pumped with formaldehyde. My cousin Dann was there too, breaking his nightly hunting trip in his MMORPG world. I couldn’t remember how it started, but we were just talking and he was watching grandma’s body intently and I joked: "are you thinking about your own mortality?"

He said, "I’m not going to die."

I laughed at him that time. We bantered some more about his immortality, and he said something to the effect that on his day, technology will catch up and be able to delay aging. Or something like that, I’m actually kindda skecthy to the details.

I remembered that banter again because yesterday, as I explored the sea of Wikipedia, I came upon an article entitled Indefinite Lifespan. [How did I *stumble* on that article>?:  Age of Empire II -> Age of Empire III -> Fountain of Youth -> The Fountain Movie -> Indefinite Lifespan. I didn't mention the other articles littering my taskbar below] They have a term called "Actuarial escape velocity" where there would a point (if ever) that we would be able to extend life expectancy by a year per year. That would make our lifespan indefinite by definition. Of course, bear in mind that it’s different from immortality, which is more fiction (unable to die even after you got hit by bullets, or never ever getting any sickness).

That looked awesome the first time I read it. But after 5 seconds, there are some nagging questions. Wouldn’t that make every death even MORE of a catastrophe? When everybody could live indefinitely, any accident will become such calamity. Suddenly, we would become much more risk-averse: we stopped playing dangerous sports like skiing, or diving, or gliding. Heck, would we then stopped playing contact sports? If even an injury is viewed as ending the possibility of extending life indefinitely, who would want to play soccer? Life threatening job like policemen and firemen will be valued with a premium. And we would have cars installed with airbags for each limbs everywhere, and imagine the insurance we have to pay for taking an airplane!

And the further I think about it, the more terrible the idea sounds. Indefinite lifespan would really lead to population explosion if we keep up the propagation rate. In advanced countries where this is realized, the people will consists of old people who probably would have less incentive to have kids anyway. That doesn’t consider the possibility of population control by the government. What a strain it would be to this planet.

Can we ever cure aging? Maybe. But you know, I’d be happy if I can live to become 100 years old, but I think that would be it. I wouldn’t want to live for much longer after that, and keep deluding myself that I can escape death because when it comes, it would be much more painful if I were led to believe that I wouldn’t die.

Now if they could make people forever young, maybe in our prime (30 years?), would that change my mind? I mean, for sure the quality of life between a 100 years old Adrian and a forever 30 years old Adrian would be different. But anyway, a forever 30 years old Adrian who’s afraid to ski and break his 30 years old body is probably not worth it. So yeah, I’ll stick with my mortality.

My grandmother died two weeks ago at the age of 84, on Friday night. After a couple of weeks of labored breathing, she went on a coma at noon and passed away at the night. Of course, we were all sad, especially her children. But there were a certain relief that she went away quite peacefully after weeks of deteriorating health.

And the relief is quite reflected in her funeral, which I observed with amusement. It seemed to me that the children weren’t so sad with her passing, perhaps reflecting to the fact that she lived for 84 long years without any major setbacks in her life, and she passed away without much pain. It’s like that Chinese story about a caligrapher who said that the best thing that could happen is for the natural progression of death - from father to son to grandson. It’s good if they understood that, so I thought.

But when they finally were going to close the casket, there were a certain sadness and grief, as each of the children took the last look at their mother. I don’t know what’s on their mind when they griefed. It was a contrast to the moments before this event….

Except for one of the children, my oldest aunt. I don’t know if anyone else observed it, but she was the most nonchalant of them all. She showed no emotion, and took no special care when placing a rose inside her casket. She showed no special care too, later in the crematorium, when she puts some flower petals into the bag of ash. She even mentioned that, if it were up to her, she’d only have one day funeral, with the cheapest casket available, no notification, and then just be done with it.

Is she heartless? I doubt it. She is some kind of extremist though. I can imagine why she refused to show grief: her religion is Jehovah Witness. I am guessing that they are not supposed to value the body, or the vessel of the soul, because that’s not the person that you knew. But I do think that she is correct and I agree with her. It WAS just a body. It’s not my grandmother anymore when she passed away. She went when she died, not when the casket were closed, or when it was taken to the crematorium, or when the ash were thrown to the open sea.

So does that make the other children some poor unenlightened sap, crying over a body that does not contain their mother anymore? I doubt that too. I am sure that they were all aware that it’s not their mother who were there, but her body (they weren’t believers in ancient Egyptian religion at least). But I have to understand that, of course, memories would run through their heads when they see that vessel that DID carry her soul. And when one of my aunt took care to apply lipstick on her frozen lips, I think she knew that it’s not her mom that she’s applying make up too, but the body that carried her for 84 years.

So in the end, I do think they were all right. Maybe it all boils down to how you view the body. You can see it as say that either "It was JUST the vessel of the soul," and so is not the person that was there, or you can see is and say that "It WAS the vessel of THE soul," meaning that we do pay respect to this thing that carried the person that we knew for many years.

Anyways, I wonder where she went. Well, in time I will find that out myself. . . .

We (me, Andrian, & Niki) have just made a new blog, entitled Change For Indonesia. The basic premise is that we want to make a blog that speaks more about Indonesian current affairs, which include news, opinion, analysis, and discussions. For this purpose, friendster blog is woefully limited, and that we need something where a group of contributors can post on the blog.

We will most probably talk about politics, news, economics, law, and various stuffs. Admittedly, the current crop of contributors (all three of us) are probably weak in several topics like Indonesian law and constitution and politics. So I’ve invited several more people who I think would be interested to contribute. If you feel that you want to join in, and knows a particular area that you can form an opinion on, then let us know!

Why, you ask, do I want to make a new blog like this? Well, in part, I’m inspired by American political blogs like DailyKos who can actually be influential in promoting progressive issues into the government by activism. They don’t just post opinions, they can ask readers to contribute by calling their senators, congresspersons, media; they contribute with money, time, and volunteerism; and they contribute by following elections, candidates, and so on, even the smallest of them!

And, I have to admit that for me, personally, I’m inspired by the US presidential candidate Barack Obama, a half-black man who can, from nowhere, become the frontrunner in US presidential election. I don’t know how empty his clarion call of "Yes We Can" chant be in the end, but hey, why can’t we?!? (Credit to Niki who came up with Change For Indonesia name, which was really lifted from Obama’s campaign slogan)

I will keep this friendster blog, of course, with my stupid, meaningless rants. The new blog is an experiment, but I believe it’s an experiment worth having.

You know, we are the only country who has twenty milion hypnotists. How do I know this? Not by any meaningful statistic, of course, but an ever growing and larger anecdotal stories and news about people being hypnotized and swindled, like yet another story in no less than Kompas newspaper today.

Of course, in other countries, they don’t call it being hypnotized. They called it being "bamboozled" or "hoodwinked" or "scammed" or "conned" or "tricked" or "ripped off" but not hypnotized. Of course, the difference between the first set of terms is that there is a realization that the victim is being fooled, and heaven forbid if these Indonesians are caught being called stupid. No. They have to say that they’re hypnotized, so they’re powerless to prevent themselves from being greedy and irrational and stupid.

The stories are always the same. A group of people scamming one person. There’s usually some unbelievably good offer which is implausible, and when the victim ever hesitates or if the person’s reason starts to kick in, there will be a scammer who wants to take the offer and so the victim has to shut the reason down and take the improbable offer, which will turn out into a scam. But somehow, Indonesians come up to tell the story and they say that "I’ve been hypnotized!" No you’re not. Stop saying that. You were being dumb.

I don’t think I’m being to harsh on these people. I mean, you HAVE to realize that you were being dumb to not repeat the same mistake again. Kudos to this one Singaporean dude who told a story that he was being scammed (by that Nigerian scam, no less!), and has the temerity to call himself greedy AND stupid. His reason should have told him that the deal is impossible. He should have researched it. But his greed got into him, and he did not at one time deny his stupidity as he told the story in publictaion (Reader’s Digest, that snore fest).

I mean, hypnoticism is probably real, but I don’t think it’s as prevalent as they make it out to be. If it is, why do we bother to study any other endeavour but hypnoticism, if it’s easy to hypnotize people to rip them off?

Last night, my wife got a hold of a "Feng Shui" calendar. In her defense, she needs it for her work (organizing weddings). Well of course, there are still a bazillion people who believes in that turd. But, me being curious and anal and all that stuff, I just had to open the calendar and read what’s inside the calendar. In retrospect, I regretted reading that. It killed millions of my brain cells.

Well, I have to apologize first to those who still believe in Feng Shui and… wait a minute, why do I have to apologize for bullshit like this? Well, if you take offense in what I’m saying, then too bad I guess. Feng Shui sucks.

Oh, did I tell you how Feng Shui sucks?

Dig this: for each month, they have some pseudo-scientific-babble on how to avoid bad luck and embrace good luck or something like that. It mostly talks about the alignment of giant balls of gas millions of kilometers away, how it will affect you, and how to avoid getting the bad vibe of the said ball of gas. I dunno, I don’t have the calendar in front of me now, but it went like "Jupiter is a nasty bitch this year, so if your zodiac sign is a tiger/cat/dodo bird, and your *kua* number is 5 or 7 or whatever, you have to put the statue of a three headed lion facing south west to balance it all." Blargh, there goes another million of my brain cells.

I can’t believe it. Here we are in the 21st century and people still believe this kind of bullshit. Oh I am freaking sure that Warren Buffet doesn’t have the statue of the golden monkey with golden asses facing north to fend of the vibe of Saturn, and somehow he still ends up with, what, fifty billion dollars? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of Feng Shui? To get bazillion amount of money?

What’s also cute is that for each day of the calendar, there are certain days that I’m not supposed to do something. They divide it into 5 activities: moving house, marriage, opening business, travel, and picking your nose. Today, 27th February 2008, is a good day for marriage. I’m going to point it out to my wife and hope I’m going to get lucky tonight. Well, I’m not sure that you can say that in Northeastern United States right now. They’re having some snowstorm right now, and I’m not sure if that’s any good for wedding. See how silly the whole notion is if you actually use 0.001% of your brain to THINK?!?!?

OK maybe moving house and opening a business and marriage is not something you do everyday. But travel? I mean, come on. Everyday in the world, there are millions and millions of people who travels by plane, ships, trains, and cars and what have you. Is the Feng Shui calendar saying that on a particular day, those millions of people couldn’t sleep on the plane, and on another particular day, those millions of people get to flirt with the cute stewardess? Isn’t that just about the dumbest thing you could hear?

Aside from days, they also have the guidline to auspicious and inauspicious HOURS. That’s right! Don’t go out of your house before exactly 17.00 pronto! Or you’re going to hit a cat or a truck. Well, I have a few questions about this auspicious and inauspicious hours thing: what happens if I’m in the daylight-saving zone? I mean, do I follow the change, or do I follow the original? And also, what happens if I’m in the border of a different time zone? Say I live in the border between Portugal and Spain, which many do by the way. So if it’s inauspicous for me to have a date now, can I just cross border and it’s going to be suddenly auspicious for me? Or will I be caught by border police? Or it doesn’t matter because they’re EU now and it’s free to travel between borders?

"But Adrian, you have to respect cultures!" Sure, like I have to respect people who believe that eating Tiger’s penis will make theirs super strong and durable (I quote Blade of the Immortal: "Do you think by eating maggots you can grow wings and fly?"), or the culture of keeping slaves in your cotton plantation, or the culture of human sacrifice for the sun God, or the culture of corruption of Indonesian bureautards? This is the same culture that tells gullible people that their child have to be in the womb for 11 months?

After all these rants, let me just wrap it up by saying that, according to my wife, there are two other Feng Shui calendars that she saw. ALL THREE of the calendars have DIFFERENT designation on auspicious and inauspicious days and hours.

Seriously, aren’t you worried for the dumbing of the people?

Around 3-4 years ago, I was reading this comic/manga titled "Eagle." It’s about an insurgent presidential candidacy of a senator from New York, Kenneth Yamaoka, who trails from behind in the primaries, and then proceeded to swipe the apparent nominee to win the nomination, and won by biggest prurality in the election. In the manga, the guy is a charming 3rd generation Japanese, an eloquent speaker, and highly idealistic. He has to marry to a New England banking family to get the money for his ‘maverick’ campaign. In other words: Bullshit, or so I thought. Here’s a minority guy, doing 10% in national polls, trailing in the delegate count but manages to trounce the opponent (VP) by double digit margins. How unlikely is that?

Fast forward to today. I just learnt that Obama won Hawaii by more than 50 points. Wisconsin, which is 96% white, was won by 17 points. He trounces Hillary Clinton by double digits, even to the 20s, in the last 10 primaries/caucuses. He got his campaign money from small time donors, approximately 480,000 of them by today. I mean, Hillary Clinton probably got into this race expecting a coronation. Instead, she got swiped by this skinny half-black dude with a funny name.

As I’ve been following this primary (religiously, since I’m addicted to this opium), I couldn’t help but notice that the Eagle comic I read is a far cry from reality in weirdness and excitement. You don’t have the grassroots campaigning, the volunteers, and the small donors in the internet. The attacks are more vicious here in reality, there are so many questions asked that are missed in the comic, and somehow the comic misses imagining the fierce and rabid debate just about the Super delegates. And what’s even better: Obama makes better speeches than a dreamt up Yamaoka.

But really, what a refreshing change it would be from a preznit Bush to president Obama? From the English mangler to a gifted orator? No more will I cringe every time the leader of the most powerful nation speaks. And I couldn’t imagine what it will be like when a president Obama lands here in Indonesia. It should almost reverse 50% of the bad vibe 8 years of Bush gave.

However, I’m jumping the gun here. Texas and Ohio is up, and then if, IF Obama wins the nomination, he’s up against the slime machine of the Republican party, who brought you the swiftboaters (look up wikipedia for this term). Let’s see how teflon this guy is, or will he stumble in the end?

Dang, 2008 is a great year so far.

I am a little embarassed to say that I probably know more about US politics than Indonesian politics. But I have a very good excuse. Really, what is there to know about Indonesian politics? Next year we’re going to choose from an excellent choice of SBY, Jusuf Kalla, Megawati, Sutiyoso, Akbar Tandjung, and Blarggh, of which I am happy to cast my vote for Blarggh.

2008 US Election is a totally different story. Well, admitedly they have a crappy system that enabled someone like George W. Bush to become president. But in case you are in the dark of the process, let me just rehash it for you. Basically, both Democratic and Republican parties choose their candidate, and other fringe parties and 3rd candidates will wail for attention to no avail. They use primaries to choose their candidates, basically voting in each states so each nominee will get assigned delegates from each state, where the Democratic side will get proportional delegates from the states, depending on the delegates assigned to each county, while the Republican will award total delegates in each state to whomever wins the state. Only in the voting, it’s sometimes an open primary where anyone who bothers could vote, a closed primary where only party members and kooks get to vote, or a caucus where they use a rule of 15% viability to weed out the weak link and use dice to determine who gets the vote or something. This is all due to different rules set forth by each state’s congress or senate or sages or Ouija board and Blarggh.

And what’s interesting is that they pick a backwater state where it doesn’t matter to start the race, thinking that smaller state will allow the candidates a chance to kiss all babies at sight and take a photo-op with the farm’s cows. It also allows candidates without much money to try to shine. And whomever is declared the winner by the media will be awarded a mojo called "momentum" by the media. This mojo is important to get campaign contribution and a validation to the citizen that the candidate has the possibility to win the race, because people loves to root for the winners.

Come August, they calculated the total delegates from each states, and in the Democratic side, they have what is called a super-delegates. They’re like the Justice League whose votes are worth 100,000 more than the average citizen because they have superpowers. Anyway, they need to get the majority of delegates on their parties to win the candidacy of the presidency, and then they are off to first Tuesday of November where the people will choose the son/spouse/brother/grandson/friend/protege of an ex-president as the new president, and Blarggh.

Joking aside, this year is a very interesting election year because both the Republican and Democratic nomination is open, meaning that they still couldn’t amend the constitution to nominate Ah-nuld, who would’ve won 80% of the popular vote. What’s more interesting is that in the Democratic side, they are going to nominate either a woman, a black dude, or both. The Republicans? The only interesting fact is that out of the 10 original nominees, 3 believes that the earth is 6,000 years old. It’s like they’re running to become president in 1696 AD.

Honestly speaking, I’m kindda hoping that the black dude will win. I mean, he went to Indonesia for, like, 4 years? And his name rhymes with Osama, and his middle name is Hussein. And did I mention he’s black? And what impresses me is that he delivers speeches that are, frankly, better than Kenneth Yamaoka from Eagle comics or West Wing writers & Martin Sheen (or is it Charlie? I keep mixing their names). Not sure if it’s all bullshit and come 2009 he’s going to be just another lackey, but it would’ve been a very nice change to have an eloquent US president from the language mangling smirky president that makes me cringe and hope that there isn’t any other extraterrestrial intelligent being laughing at our planet.

So, in less than 48 hours, we will know the result of the Super Tuesday, where 22 states are up for grabs. Will Clinton win? Will Obama swipe Clinton? Will McCain wins everything? Will anyone else drop out? One thing is sure though.

I’m a freaking US political junkie addict.

Because we have the "Eastern Culture," where we do not engage in name-calling, debates, and rational thoughts, let me just politely say, accordingly to the Confucian values, that our ex-president Megawati really has severe limitations in the functioning of her brain.

Ah, what the heck. She’s an idiot.

Prove: Yesterday (3rd Feb) I read an article about Megawati’s "political safari" around the country. Of course, it’s still the year 2008 so campaigning shouldn’t even start, so some people accuse her of doing "hidden campaign." So in the article, she responded. She responded that she is not doing any "hidden campaign." She said that she’s doing "open campaign."

Really, at this point, after you read that last paragraph, do you still think that she is fit to manage your local RT/RW, let alone a country?

I love the actual Indonesian words she said. I paraphrase loosely: "Ya, kita ngak terselubung ya. Terbuka aja."

I mean, as dumb George W. Bush is, he still had a very tiny decorum of trying to hide his imbecillity and illegal doings. And you know what’s frustrating? I doubt that her supporters really cared or understand what she actually said. I doubt that she will be banned from the ballot for violating campaign rules. I doubt that she will realize that she’s just being used as other people’s lackeys.

And another thing that irks me is that, somehow, many well-informed or well-educated or both Chinese Indonesians will still support her no matter what because she supports the Chinese/Business/Christians bla bla bla. I don’t understand where they’re getting that from. It doesn’t matter what she supports: she’s not going to do a good job running the country, and that will hurt everyone. She got virtually 0 officials indicted for corruption. I checked wikipedia to see what her achievements were and couldn’t find a single one, except that she left all government activities to be run by her ministers.

Isn’t there any other new politicians that actually inspires and can do something, aside from the old tired faces? I mean, I don’t think I’m going to vote for SBY again, seeing that it’s clear what his priorities are in the last week. Feh…

Suharto’s death makes me sad. My heart is truly wrenched. Why? Well, it’s because everyone suddenly treats him like a deity. Kompas newspaper gives the whole first section to Suharto. And not satisfied with that, Kompas still talks about the reaction in other regions of Indonesia of Suharto’s death. Suddenly, everybody talks about forgiving him, praising him for his economic management. Even Amien Rais said that we should forgive him, that snake! And to show the government’s priority, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono decided to visit his funeral instead of United Nations’ Corruption Fight Conference or something in Bali. On top of that, he declared seven days of mourning for a Suharto! Seven days! Seven minutes is more like it!

OK, so maybe I’m being a little too harsh. I mean, the man does deserve some praise, right? I mean, despite the 30 billion dollars that he swindled for his family and fostering the corruption culture in the country, he oversaw Indonesia’s greatest economic expansion, right?

I mean, despite the 500,000 casualties of anti-communist pogrom, jailing critics, and killing protestors from Tanjung Priok to Aceh to Papua, which in the end leads to even bigger secessionist movements, he increased Indonesia’s GDP for 31 consecutive years, right?

Despite striking down Chinese names from history books about independence and nationalism, and parading Chinese names for corruption charges, and therefore fomenting a deep hatred for the Chinese, which leads to 1998, he lifted the wealth of many people, though mostly his cronies, right?

I sure hope we will not subcontract justice to God. I hate it when people say "Oh he will be judged by God anyways." Then why don’t we dismantle our justice system? After all, those murderers will be judged by God in the end anyways, right? They better start chasing down the children. I mean, come on! Why am I still paying for Tutut everytime I use the toll road?