residuous activities inducing zealous actions meaning nothing

Cheer on Losties!
‘Nuff said!

It’s been a while since I wrote something a little bit serious. Let me try to do just that now.

I spent two weekends watching two concerts and went to a museum in Madrid. The concerts were held by Escuela Municipal de Música Pablo Casals, a municipal music school in Leganés, while the museum is one of the biggest and most important museum in Spain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The first concert was a percussion concert, the second was a flute concert, and in the museum, there was an exposition of Pablo Picasso which showed joint collection of Museo Reina Sofía and Museé National Picasso, Paris. I didn’t have to pay anything to enjoy the concerts and Picasso’s artworks, they are “gratis” (Ha! A Spanish and Indonesian word at the same time).

Being concerts from a local school mean that most of the spectators were also locals, families of the performing students or teachers. When I came to the concerts, the hall of the school and a public municipal hall were full of people, they were “sold-out” concerts. The performances were also great, they held the percussion concert to give honor to a percussion teacher who just recently passed away, while the flute concert was held in collaboration with another public musical school of another city.

The admission to a museum in Spain mostly is free on weekends (for Museo Reina Sofía, it’s free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday), and tourists and locals do make use of this policy. There were lots and lots of people: young and old, boys and girls, men and women, families and singles, international tourists and locals, all of them visit the museum. I almost felt overwhelmed by the number of people visited the Picasso’s exposition.

At the back of the programme sheets given to spectators in the concerts, there was a logo of Ayuntamiento de Leganés, Delegación de Cultura, while on the museum’s brochures there was a logo of Gobierno de España, Ministerio de Cultura. What does this tell us? At least for me, it shows that Spanish have access to public spaces where they can meet their fellow Spanish and, at the same time, enjoy art and culture. It also shows that Spanish government do something that ensure people in their area have access to cultural events.

Can we make this in Indonesia? As a country rich with different cultures, I think the government should do something like this as well. They should provide us with a “public room” to held cultural events, and make sure that most of us (if not all), have access to experience that.

One of the main hurdles for a “Unit Kegiatan Mahasiswa Kesenian” (Art and Cultural Students’ Activities Unit) in ITB, to do a cultural event, is the fund. They have to raise the money themselves to do a show. They have to seek for themselves a place to do rehearsals. They sell tickets for their show because they needed the money, there’s no (or very little) fund from the campus. I’m not ignoring the assistance of ITB (if any is given), but I think the campus can do more. ITB, as a public university, is changing to “privatised-public university”, a step that is hated by many but also defended by others. Hey, if you are a member of these students’ activities units, tell us your story (and probably correct me if I’m wrong) in the comment.

I went to college and worked in Bandung, a prominent Sundanese city in West Java. I lived there for almost 6 years and I have never visited the Bandung Geological Museum, one of the most important museums in the city. This is mainly because I have the impression that local museums in Indonesia are old and forgotten buildings with unmaintained collections. And generally, that is the case. Only recently, there have been some interests by locals to visit museums and it probably forced the government to renovate several of these museums.

Am I the only one who is hoping that I can also enjoy free cultural weekends in Indonesia?

*) Image for Picasso’s painting is shamelessly taken from Musée National Picasso, Paris’ site.

Hola a todos!

I arrived at Madrid, Spain, safely yesterday, and currently I’m staying at Luthfi Darmawan’s place. He was my senior in my undergrad years.

Today, I’m going to Leganés, to see my campus, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and to search for a room nearby. Hopefully I can have a room today. If not, I’ll still stay in Luthfi’s place.

Adios!

Three months passed by so quickly, and it’s time for me to, yet again, move. It has been a very busy three months for me, but it’s definitely unique compared to Reading, UK. All the problems with language, food, assignments have all passed now. Several issues are still with me:

• I haven’t submitted one assignment (from Reading!) yet
• I still haven’t secured any accommodation in Madrid, Spain, yet
• Probably I will experience excess baggage for the first time, ie: I think my luggage is overweight!

But before I go to Madrid, Spain, to continue this journey, my next stop will be Rome, Italy. I will spend several days there to relax (and to finish my assignment!)

So, see you when I see you.
Yia sas!

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!

As you may aware, there has been some news that the Vatican is adding more mortal sins to Christianity. According to Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, this is done to prevent people from losing the notion of sin, and to stress that If people do not confess regularly, they risk slowing their spiritual rhythm. The new more-modernised and more-social sins include:

• Environmental pollution
• Genetic manipulation
• Accumulating excessive wealth
• Inflicting poverty
• Drug trafficking and consumption
• Morally debatable experiments
• Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

The original seven deadly sins are:

• Pride
• Envy
• Gluttony
• Lust
• Anger
• Greed
• Sloth

It can be seen that the new list try to target more specifically on what human can do only recently, where technology and money drive most of the human life.

Recently, a BBC report also mentioned about “progressive” muslim women in America. The report certainly put emphasises on how Muslim women in the states try to do more active role in practising Islam in their daily lives. But it also described the practises of putting the five prayers as secondary priority (while “remembering” God everyday gets higher priority), translating Quran (Islam’s Holy Book) in an unusual way, and allowing women to lead prayers, as “progressive Islam.” I certainly don’t have any problem with Muslim women to have a bigger and more active roles in the society, but the tendency of the news that somehow called, what I think, more observant Muslims as “traditionalists” make me a little bit uncomfortable.

I’ll admit and really stress that I’m not that religious, but this journey made me feel that I have to hold on to something in order not to lose my identity. I found that one of the things to hold on to, is my religion.

I don’t want to put my religious practise at the centre stage. What I want to do is ask these questions:

• Do you think religions need to be “modernised”?
• Don’t they have some general values that always be relevant?
• Should we behave in such a way to be not considered as old-fashioned/fundamentalists/traditionalists including changing the way we practise our religions?

To end this post I’m going to tell you that in the last several weeks, my door was knocked several times by young Greek man and woman. My conversations with them, which lasted around 15 minutes, are probably the longest ones I have with any Greek. They gave me pamphlets about their believes. They are Jehovah Witness’ Christians, and we’re discussing about religions at the footstep of my door. The guy invited me to have a coffee with him tomorrow at noon.

Meet Shrek and, ehm, his girlfriend.

The carnival week has just started here in Greece. People wear masks or costumes and celebrate. On Thursday afternoon, they have what is called Tsiknopempti (Τσικνοπέμπτης, literally Burnt Thursday, it is Greek equivalent of Fat Tuesday) where people had massive barbecue to prepare for the carnival. Unfortunately, I don’t have any picture for the barbecue. The word Carnival itself has Latin origin which means saying good bye to meat (carni = meat, vale = good bye; remember carnivore?).

The origin of Greek carnival tradition can also be traced back to Ancient Greek tradition. They said that it was for honouring the God of Wine, Dionysus. That’s why the Greek Orthodox church, the majority, seemed not too happy with the celebration. Nonetheless, old and young people were celebrating on Thursday night. The carnival is also related to Easter and one of my professors said that for forty days before Easter the Greek (at least the religious ones) fast by not eating meat or drinking alcohol. Continue reading →

Just want to let you all know that if01 aggregator has been updated with the new Feedwordpress plugin. One of the most important bug that now has been fixed is “The ‘A’-only entries from wordpress-based syndicated site”.

So, starting from now, we can enjoy posts from:

• Ahmad Fikri Adriansyah - Al-Fikr’s Heart Expression - Having trades with God : no loss, no bankruptcy, no tricks, no manipulation, but only the true joy…
• I Nyoman Winardi Ribeka - My Thoughts - My Daily Life and Random Thought About My Beloved Bali
• Imam Prakoso - blue moon

And, last but definitely not least, warm welcome to: Ridho “Akihiro” Akhiro - steps of an akihiro, who has just arrived at Melbourne, Australia, to start his master degree at the University of Melbourne.

TODO:

• Update Wordpress, I’m now too lazy to update to newest Wordpress 2.3.3.
• New heads for new authors. While I’m at it, use the (currently empty) head page.
• Fill in that empty bubble in the title of the site (any suggestion?). That is, decide on the title of the site to replace the generic “if01 aggregator).

Keep on posting guys (and girls)!

PS: If you are a member of if01 and would like to be part of this site, please contact raizamn[at]gmail·com

Yes this is another rant about me delaying things. Definitely unhealthy. I’m a little bit jealous about someone who managed to finish things. While we are in similar conditions, I am already on my second semester and haven’t improved much.

I even made my own personal record. I made a 3-paged paper in only around 8 hours! I had two weeks to finish that assignment and I did it on the last day. This semester, I have two group assignments so far and I became the bottleneck in both. Another group assignment is due in the middle of next month. My individual assignment will due in next week. I will have another class (and most likely another assignment) next week. I still have to think about what to do for dissertation (6-month-project master thesis), and where I will actually do it. Reading or Madrid are more interesting than Thessaloniki. But for Reading, it’s quite hard to find a professor to become a supervisor since most of their expertise are network (due to the name of the course) and I’m quite new in this network thingy.

And I’m now watching the new series Knight Rider. So far it’s cool enough even it’s quite bland. I can almost taste the smell of Smallville (in the season four or five, where everything feels like it is repeated over and over again). The acting is mediocre, but the familiar revamped bum-bada-bada-bum theme sound is nostalgic and refreshing at the same time. The new series predominantly feature more candy eye in terms of special effect to show-off the new KITT (rebranded as Knight Industries Three Thousand). The bullet-proof feature and the ability to switch appearance (color and model morphing plus the famous license plate switch–now morph) boasted by the car now look more realistic and the car itself does look cool and modern (it’s a new Ford Mustang).

There are subtleties that the show is more directed at a liberal-minded audience. Firstly, the main protagonist (the son of the original Michael Knight) is first depicted as losing faith in monogamous relationship (and shown to prefer threesome) although he had deep connection with the daughter of KITT’s creator. Second, the main female FBI agent is hinted to be a homosexual (or is it just me?). And lastly, the show had a premiere on the Playboy mansion. But worry not, no vulgar or explicit scenes shown on the 80 minutes pilot episode. Moreover, I believe that these sexual hints are not to be emphasised more on the next episodes. If you are going to watch this episode, watch out for a very special cameo near the end!

Now Boost me!

Today, (Wednesday, 13/02/2008), Greece is on general strike. The strike will last for the whole day, crippling the whole nation, as buses, trains, and airplanes were shut down. Schools are closed and hospitals are only dealing with emergency cases. Almost all public services, even news agencies join the strike. From the news, I know that the workers are demanding a better pension in their retirement system.
Continue reading →