Mutants

Some of you would have figured that I just watched X-MEN simply from the title of this post. The more serious film watchers would scorned at my choice of movie to discuss on this post, but that movie is cool, entertaining and has good special effects. That's not the only reasons why I liked it a lot though. The main reason why I liked it so much is because for a movie so heavily ridden with sfx and the latest technological advances, it had a very humane element to it.

Mutants VS Humans. It's a century old concept which revolves around "the other". We are often scared of what we don't know, of people we've never seen before, of places we've never been. In many ways, gender or racial discriminations are very similar to the struggle of the mutants. We often judge those who are different from us, simply because we fail to understand them; or even worse because we don't want to take the time to understand them. We go to wars often blinded by our own ignorance. We, too struggle individually against the uniformity around us. The pressure to constantly 'fit in' with the rest of the world; where the media portrays girls who are stick thin and guys who are buffed and good looking. It is hard to acknowledge the mutant within ourselves. Just like Rogue left Xavier School for 'the cure', we also attempt to find our own magic formula.

Prof. X's battle is still very current in today's real world. A world united, regardless of race or gender or nations, where it is acceptable to be different and advisable to enrich each other through difference. It is a world where difference matters and indifference goes out the window.

Maybe I read too much into this world of mutants and super powers action heroes, but to me I see the relevance of it no matter how shallow in my world. At least it reminded me, that I am a mutant too -- fighting everyday for my own identity, constantly searching for my better self which in turn, I hope, will contribute for a better world. Darn! That's high and mighty!

Breaking a Routine

Anyone who never wonders about their mundane routine please raise their hand?

Yep. Don't think so. I'm sure that absolutely everyone bitches and moans about their routine and how it sucks because it's the same thing day in and day out. Work is a routine, even if our occupation sends us to a different place everyday, meeting different people, doing a variation of things -- getting up in the morning to start a day or work is a routine. Going home late at night and having to deal with making dinner, or making a decision to eat out can easily turn into a routine. Our daily existence is a routine. It is mainly a set of regulated activities despite our efforts to offset it.

As the word routine becomes the epitome of evil that needs to be shaken off the reality is that the hardest trick to get out of a routine is not to start a new routine. Someone who hates his job can find a new job, that's supposed to be more fulfilling and pays better but who is there to say that the new job won't put him in a similar position? Damn! I need to get out of my routine -- or simply need a break from it.

What do you do then?

A friend came up with this idea and I'd like to throw it out there to see if there are any takers... When we are gasping for air in the hecticness of our routine, we can't immediately move on and do something else. We need to take a deep breath and consume. Something. Anything. Good music. Good film. Good coffee. It is good to consume something that might inspire creativity; disrupt the all so known pattern of logical thinking and mechanistic actions. We need to offset our automated responses and reflexes in order for the imagination to run free and be open to more creative solutions. It is only when we are fresh; we can start producing something that is of value and maybe, maybe,... just maybe have a nice break from our routine.

So last night I ran home and put on my Desperate Housewives DVD again. Hey, I'm consuming clever writing. ;)

Itchy Feet

Unexpectedly my last schedule for the day is cancelled. The silly producer didn't realise that the material she was supposed to receive would be a finished one, and therefore she does not need our services at all. Sigh. And all the back and forth on such small amount of money. So here I am, at 6pm with nothing else to do. Well, that's not exactly true but something like that. All the other stuff can wait till tomorrow.

One of my housemate is away on business and the other is working the night away. What am I going to do alone at home? Another night with the desperate housewives? Or should I call a friend for coffee, or should I call my crush for a movie, or should I call another for a date? I've got itchy feet. Someone help me.

Anti Porn Bill

Yesterday a certain section of Jakarta was occupied by demonstrators -- speculated around 10,000 people marched to the Parliament House to support the much debated porn bill. Apparently there is a new revised version going around which is less offensive to a woman's individual rights.

I have not seen or read the latest bill but I personally think it's ridiculous for a country's moral standards to be determined by a set of regulations. And this is coming from a place that is still fighting corruption, human rights abuse, economic instability and now they're talking moral policing??

Turn my blue to crimson

I'm feeling crap today, maybe it's part of recovering from that stupid sickness and the lack of motivation I'm currently having at work and many other things that occupy my empty head. As I was looking at my recent post, the cool world map with places I've been, I read my own description of this blog -- surviving and seeing the world from Jakarta. I couldn't help but giving a wry smile to myself. Seeing the world from Jakarta... It sure feels like that now; like the rest of the world is so bloody far away and unreachable and all you can do is dream about it. It's not entirely true, I know. I've proven that. I traveled a little, and paying for it a lot.

A few minutes ago I received a digital photo album from my ex-housemate in Melbourne who currently lives in Chester, UK. Photos from their holidays in Malta and Cinque Terre. I fet nothing but envy. I traveled first, I started the bug, but she gets further. And she's going to get further and further and her world would soon be the colour of red. When she doesn't even think about colouring the world red!!

That's when it strikes me that I'm actually a pretty darn realistic soul. I knew when I started this blog that I'd be living the impossible dream; of traveling the world and experiencing life through various cultures and places. Who am I kidding? I'm stuck here in Jakarta. Even seeing the world can be hard to do. Keeping the dream alive is even harder to do. So somebody help me. Slap me out from feeling blue and show me the crimson red I always long for.

I want to colour the world with Red

I get this from Cal and oh it's so cool. The places I've traveled to is coloured in red and maaaaan, I need to go places.



create your own visited country map

Random Pieces

Today is about little bits and pieces of things that got my attention recently.

1. 3 Grown Men and Dragonfly
Dragonfly is a nice posh bar in Jakarta that is the hottest if one is looking for a mid-week night out. Plenty of girls all decked out looking their best, with combo retro music of the 90s. The crowd is of a mature kind, which makes spending money on alcohol easy to come by. Somebody told me that it's the best place to check out Jakarta's divorcees. My best boogey-ing episode a few weeks ago happened in this place. Anyways, last night one of my engineer from KL went there, again. And as he was recounting last night's event he told me that he saw the same 3 boys.. or men rather, in Dragonfly. That means these men were in Dragonfly every Wednesday for the last 4 weeks!! Here's to the power of Jakarta's divorcees!!!

2. Past Loves
A mate of mine had a surprise encounter with her beau from 10 years ago; somebody she dated for 3 months. Thinking everyone has moved on (... she obviously has), they hung out and stuff and she ended up spending a whole weekend together. After that weekend, suddenly she received a text message saying that he still holds the flame for her, all the while. She was like, whaaaat??? What the hell was he thinking? And how was she supposed to react to that? That's rather unfair, I think.

3. Foreign
If I were to list down all the people I hang out with; the ones I care to spend time with one thing stands out. About 80% are foreigners: a series of Malaysians, Singaporeans, Aussies, Germans. Not many Indonesians at all. Hmm... I wonder what does that say about me?

4 x 10

Here's to long lasting friendship, Cal!

Four jobs I've had:
1. Producer
2. Dishwasher
3. Shop assistant
4. Casting girl

Four movies I can watch over and over again:
1. Pretty Woman (... never thought THAT about me eh?)
2. Cinema Paradiso
3. Three Colours: White
4. Coffee and Cigarettes

Four places I've lived:
1. Jakarta
2. Melbourne
3. Toronto ???
4. ... In my dreams -- Salzburg???

Four TV shows I watch:
1. Grey's Anatomy (the cable reruns on Sunday if I remember)
2. 24 (I know I'm a real loser)
3. Sex in the City (I'm still a girl after all)
4. Millenium (On DVD)

Four places I've vacationed and absolutely love:
1. Granada, Spain
2. Edinburgh, Scotland
3. Salzburg, Austria
4. Bali, Indonesia

Four foods I love:
1. Sushi
2. Generally Indonesian
3. Satay
4. Indomie

Four sites I visit daily:
1. BBC News
2. faetryn
3. yahoo
4. ... I don't surf that much

Four places I'd rather be right now:
1. In someone else's arm (yes, I do have a person in mind..)
2. Home (it's Friday midnight and I'm still in the bloody studios)
3. Chile
4. Melbourne

Four random items in my bag
1. In My shoes DVD
2. iPod
3. The list of classes from a gym I have not joined
4. Patrick Symmes "Chasing Che"

Four things most people don't know about me
1. I'm a hopeless romantic
2. I can't sleep for more than 8 hours
3. I love girlie stuff (even if I don't wear too much of them)
4. I love coffee and great conversations more than anything...

On Ernesto's Travel

There is a perpetual desire burning inside me to constantly go places. As if the ground I stand on is never good enough to hold me, its soil not ripe enough for my tree of life to grow its roots. My latest calling is South America - to travel the dirt roads of Patagonia, deep into the Amazonian jungle, experiencing the richness of the Incan ruins, to eat the bloodiest Argentinian steak.

I came across "Chasing Che" -- a book by Patrick Symmes, who traced back the travels of Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna and Alberto Granado; a journey that was immortalised by Hollywood's Motorcycle Diaries. There is a paragraph in the beginning of the book that I absolutely love because it sums up what I love about traveling.

In December of that year Guevara laid plans for a motorcycle trip across the hemisphere; it was a trip from which he would never come home, even when he returned. One journey leads necessarily to another, and the moped of 1951 gave way inevitably to the motorcycle of 1952... Guevara would return to argentina after eight months, a changed man- a man, as he himself put it, "in transition of some other conception of life." He was a traveler now; the act of discovery is not merely the basis of travel but is also the quintessential revolutionary act. Every long journey overturns the established order of one's own life and all revolutionaries must begin by transforming themselves. ("Chasing Che"; Patrick Symmes, p.10).

Once you start, you can never go back. The revolution is internal; an act of constant transformation through seeing the world, feeling other people and realising that one is nothing in relation to the universe.

ALONE

As a foreigner in another country life has its advantages and disadvantages. If you're a guy in a city like Jakarta, life is good -- you'd never run out of attention from local girls, either because of the assumption that a foreigner is filthy rich or simply because a foreigner is 'foreign'... You can't be eating the same food every day. However, regardless of your sex, living abroad sucks when you're sick. Especially when you have to be hospitalised.

Most of my time last weekend was spent in a hospital, taking care of a mate who's working here -- alone and sick in a foreign land. He was not only in pain, but he was also lost in translation even if with his good command of Indonesian. He was in an emergency ward at midnight, transferred into a room within an hour and 8 hours later into the next day, he was on an operating table for kidney stone removal.

When he woke up and still slightly drugged out, I told him off for letting the pain and the disease go that far without seeing a doctor. He later confessed that a few days back, his urine was the colour of tea. I was like, WHAT????!! And yet, work seemed more pressing and he ignored it until that fatal night when the pain weakened his knees forcing him to the ground. He said that he didn't want to be a bother to people. And yet, he spoke about being alonge without a girlfriend -- generally feeling sorry for himself. At about the same time, I kept on getting inquiries from the nurses, the doctors about his relative and friends; or rather the lack of it.

It is one thing to be alone in a distant land. It is a choice. It is his choice to be sick, alone. He wasn't lonely. He has friends.
My phone wouldn't stop ringing. There are numerous offers from his friends to take care of him. A place to stay while he recovers. Regular meals which will help the wound to heal. My friend chose to be alone. He wanted to get well in solitude. I tried. Believe me, I did. Then again, it his life, his sickness.

So I stood as a good friend should. By his side. Just in case he forgets, that he is not alone.

Boogie Wonderland

Forget the labour rallies that jammed up Jakarta traffic on Monday and Wednesday. Even if yesterday's crowd rummaged through the Parliament House fence and created mayhem. That's Jakarta for you.

Maybe I was simply hormonal but yesterday I was bored out of my brains. After two hours worth of ping pong (I'm not even a good player) drenching in sweat, I took action by sending half a dozen messages to people -- Doin anything tonight? Let's do something. I'M BORED!! That resulted in an event that puts a smile on my face until this very morning. We met for drinks at some bar before going to a different bar for more serious boogeying. I'm not sure if it was the copious amount of alcohol, the music, the company or a combination of everything.. but I had an absolute ball. Nothing a good boogie can't fixed!! Wohooo!!

About Nothing

I took a sickie yesterday because I wasn't feeling that flash and I could -- no clients, no specific job. It was really nice. Well, after the few feverish hours I spent under the blanket obviously. The night was spent in watching some DVDs and generally being very lazy. This morning I contempleted laziness again and managed to show up in the office. Still a little under the weather, but fine.

Somehow the clock was ticking very very slowly. I was anxious to get home quickly and here I am, 6.30 pm still in the office typing my blog. About nothing. The last time I remember the time moving very slowly is when I was in Magelang, my dad's hometown where nothing happens and you can't wait for the day to end. Today is a little like that.

And oh, I just finished reading Pico Iyer's Cuba and The Night. That's a bloody marvellous book!! A highly recommended read for those who enjoy good story telling and a little insight of human relationships. Pico Iyer was known to me as being a travel writer. His interests lie in the clashing of cultures, identities; generally stuff I'm really interested in too. I picked up this book without paying too much attention and it turned out to be a work of fiction. Again, it's bloody good. Not only I want to go to Cuba (the way he sets his stories are so detailed that one can feel the textures of the place, the vibe that it gives out and the various flavours it has), but he made me fall in love with the characters.

Excuse the lack of substance -- today is like that. Currently life is like that...