Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

Greece is recovering from yet another national strike. Like the previous strike I posted before, but in a much greater scale. Last Thursday was the big day when the Greek parliament, despite all the strike, decided to pass the new law which will make a great negative effect on the Greek workers’ retirement fund scheme.

Here, in Thessaloniki, I also experienced the effects of the strike. The garbage collectors stopped working at least for two weeks. Garbage litter-ally (pun intended) piled up everywhere, making me remember about the garbage problem Bandung had last year. Also, we had several blackouts, allegedly connected with the strike. I don’t often use bus, but my friends said that buses were scarce, even one of them had to walk to campus for the first time. The students’ cafeteria closed one day and the other day they are serving the food while they were having electricity blackout. We had an unplanned semi-buffet for that day. Usually, we were given a tray with all the food in it over a window, like a (parking) ticket booth. But then, they arranged the food in an empty space of the cafeteria and we were given an empty tray so that we can take the dishes we want.

After the parliament still decided to pass the law, it seems that the workers started to work again. Yesterday, most of the piling garbage were collected, and since Friday we haven’t had any electricity blackout. I hope that everything will return back to normal. It’s my final week in Thessaloniki and it’s also my exam week. Wish me luck!

Not too long ago, more than a few of prominent Indonesian bloggers posted about issues regarding Indonesian former president, Soeharto, who was very ill. A prominent (dated way back, August 16, 1994) writing by Seno Gumira Ajidarma titled Waiting for the death of Uncle Scrooge (in Indonesian only, the title is translated literally from “Menunggu Kematian Paman Gober”) is also spread across mailing lists.
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I have not been writing for a couple of years (go and see the date of the previous entry) and I am planning to yet start again. In the midst of searching a decent topic to write and finding the right time, I came across the movie “Man of The Year” starred by Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, and Laura Linney among others. Tina Fey, apparently a famous comedian in the US, also appeared as herself co-hosting the Saturday Night Live show while in Indonesia I only get to see her during the commercial of a comedy series, 30 Rock, on the cable (nope, I don’t have cable, my office does, and this interference is starting to get a little annoying; straight to the point please, I hear you say).

Okay, on to the main points: while I can’t really pinpoint what genre the movie “Man of The Year” was in, I thought it was a little bit conspiracy-thriller than the usual satirical-political-comedy (Wikipedia’s entry also agrees) (main point please, I hear you shout, sorry, can’t help it), the movie quite succinctly showed the political condition of the United States and to my surprise, it can also be about Indonesia. Robin Williams played Tom Dobbs, an American comedian whose show was typical with the Jay Leno show or the Conan O’Brien show. He was consistently mocking the political condition of his own country, making it laughable for his viewers while spontaneously gave insights to what the politicians should be doing. In one act he jokingly while literally attacking a US senator for his inconsistent speech about energy efficiency while the senator was campaigning for presidency backed up by major oil companies. Continue reading →