My generation : Choose.

This is one of those notes where I let everybody know what I have in mind about things that happened recently, things I observed, and a message I want to convey to everyone who reads this.

For every young people out there.

Tempat tinggal yang kita tinggali sekarang membutuhkan kita.

Indonesia.

To avoid being so overly nationalistic -if those two sentence haven't made it already- I''m going to try and make it less.... emotional.

As we all know, Steve Jobs passed away about 2 weeks ago. I never know the guy, I never owned an Apple product, but I do know how Steve changed the world, with his company AND his philosophy.

I linked a video about his Stanford Commencement speech in my wall, I really suggest you check it out.

The thing I never know about him, was that he really was a "crazier" man than I learned.

Tidak mudah memutuskan untuk mengikuti kata hati dan melakukan hal-hal yang tidak lazim dilakukan, seperti ikut kelas kaligrafi disaat kita tahu bahwa hasil ekonomi yang didapat dari kelas tersebut mungkin tidak ada.

He did that because he followed his heart. Tetapi karena kelas kaligrafi tersebut, Apple memiliki font Sans Serif yang pertamakali muncul di sebuah PC.

The rest of the story, check out the full speech.

I've always had this naive idea that one person can change the world.. and like Steve, there are a few people who I believed has changed the world.

For the obvious examples; Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, David when he fought Goliath.

For the more "modern" examples.. Steve Jobs, and try and google "Stanislav Petrov".

All these are prime examples of how one person can change -or NOT change- the world.

Now, this is the part where I say something about my life.

Banyak dari kalian udah tau kemana akan gw lanjut setelah kuliah. It's not a decision of logic and reasoning, but one of passion and heart. I HATE CORRUPTION. I think it brings more harm than just financial loss.

It truly is corrupting every aspect of our lives in this country, that we unknowingly take part in it.

I see it everywhere. Temen2 yang nyontek, motor2 yang ga bisa nunggu 2 detik sampe lampu ijo, bus bus yang berhenti sembarangan dan bikin macet -- and to that part, PENUMPANG-PENUMPANG BIS YANG NGGA NUNGGU DI HALTE BUS DAN BERHENTIIN BUS SEMBARANGAN, yeah, sadarlah, kalian secara ga langsung bikin macet.

Oknum polisi yang memberi opsi "damai", anggota DPR dari partai yang sangat mengusung semangat agama yang nonton film porno di iPad yang dia beli dari gajinya yang berasal dari pajak 10% Pepsi kaleng gw.

Corrupted.

Mental "selama gak ada yang liat, gapapah" ini bener2 ngga banget buat gw. Pernah gw marahin nyokap karena dia gak pake seatbelt, trus stlah gw ingetin malah ngejawab "ah, ga da polisi". Ketok2 meja yah, suatu hari nyokap gw ga pake seatbelt karena polisi lagi demo, and something bad happen to her, I lose someone loh mum. (I know she'll read this note)

It's all small action, but try and see the big picture of the consequences it bring.

Yakin gw banyak dari kita yang udah pernah nyogok pak polisi.. I did it 5 times. Nyontek ? SMA, Mandarin, uh, satu kelas buka buku XD

Even I did it.. Tapi ketika makin lama makin ga damai di dalem ati gw, I stopped doing that.

I could go on and on and on about corruption but I think you got the point.

Next, this country.

Indonesia.

Who wants to move out from this awful country ? I know I do.

Jujurlah, kalo bisa milih mau dilahirin dimana or tinggal dimana, Indonesia could be the 100th choice.

Kalo bisa milih gw mau tinggal di Jepang.

Macet di Jakarta, panas dimanadimana, tsunami-prone, gempa bumi when I was watching The Hangover in the cinema. Masalah hukum KUHP (kasiuanghabisperkara), pokoe sgalanya lbih mudah dengan duit disini, which means if you are poor, you're screwed.

Ngurus surat2 aja dipuyengin. Dari loket 1, ke loket 2, abis itu ke loket 1 lagi, abis itu ke loket 3, abis itu.... bingung.

Yang ngaku2 wakil rakyat, yang ngaku2 wakilin gw di Senayan SAAT INI lebih doyan ngomongin Pemilu taun 2014 daripada ngurus situasi di Papua, Presiden kerjanya nyanyi prihatin.

That's what makes us very special.

My friends, we are given the chance to change all that.

Think about it.

6 billion people in the world, 200 states, and God -or something like God, for you nonbelievers- puts us to be born right HERE. Indonesia.

God --or Somebody- believes us enough to make something good out of this country.

Chance- or destiny, or fate- puts us here, to matter.

I joked with my sister, yang sekarang lagi kerja di Singapura, bahwa suatu saat nanti gw akan buat Indonesia jadi mirip Singapura, or maybe even better. Joked, but I kinda make it my mission now, however stupid and unreal it is.

It's unreal as a person who lead a nation to eventually drive out a colony, as unreal as a woman who has nothing but still gave everything to every person she could care for, it's stupid as one man erasing a racial law.

It's unreal as ONE man stopping the third world war, and stupid as one man, quitting school and taking caligraphy classes and end up selling computers that changed the world.

Wait. It all really happened.

I pray to God that one day, I will be able to eradicate corruption, in every sense.

If you think I'm a selfless man, you're dead wrong.

My motivations are as selfish as any other selfish human being.

GUE gak mau lagi liat ada anak jalanan tidur DIATAS semak-semak di trotoar PasBar. (Try to wake up and go jogging on Gunung Sahari at 4.30 in the morning if you don't believe me) yang sebenernya dengan dana 100T something itu yang katanya di korupsi taun ini MUNGKIN bisa tidur di bangunan singgah dari dana tersebut.

GUE males menjawab godaan pak polisi untuk berdamai, I really wish he'd just do his job, give me a ticket for my own stupidity and be over with it.

Last, but not least, I really don't want Nico, Vian, River and Rain my little brothers and sister to finally grow up and be troubled with corruption. This thing is been going on too f'n long. Sayang banget kalo mereka harus mengerjakan apa yang gw kerjakan sekarang di masa depan. I mean, they should have other things to deal with, like making this country her first space shuttle, or inventing a time machine or creating the world's best.... something.

Curhat sedikit, orang-orang yg tau gw mau kemana mayoritas terpana akan keputusan gw, they basically said "we need more people like you." Gw hanya terdiam dan berkata dalam pikiran gw, "well, I need you."

One man can change the world, but I really think it'd be easier if there were two.... or more.

Really, you don't have to jump in into the anti-corruption thing, JUST DO WHAT YOU DO, AND DO IT YOUR ABSOLUTE BEST, FOR THIS COUNTRY, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, FOR YOURSELF.If you're an insurance agent, be the best Indonesian-made insurance agent in the world. If you're a lawyer, be the best lawyer in the universe, make criminals pay for the crimes they did by making them pay your US$500/an hour bill. Hell, if you're a just going to be a simple housewife, be the best, the most loved mother of all time !

I've been drafting this note for a couple weeks now, I'm trying to post it on Sumpah Pemuda, I failed by 3 hours.. Still, I did it because this post is my absolute best.

So, friends, colleagues.. there are more important things to take care of than your BlackBerry, your Prada bags, or your future Maserati. I for one will not enjoy those things if I know that 10 years from now, a beggar will ask me for chump change while I'm driving my Lamborghini. I think I'd sell my Lambo for sneakers to jog. It really opened my eyes to see the actual condition of the place I live in.

Hari ini, para penguasa dan orang-orang Senayan hanya berfokus kepada kekuasaan dan citra, tanpa pernah mereka ngeliat apa yang gw liat saat gw jogging pagi buta.

They say the future is on our hands, it's true.

It all came down to what you choose.

I need your help. Sombong banget gw mikir bisa memperbaiki negara ini sendirian.

That kid, sleeping on top of a bush, needs our help.

Listen to your heart.

Choose well.

(De)generation Y

I've been pushed to think about juvenile delinquency this this past week. Starting with my visit to my elementary and junior high. With all the nostalgic thoughts I went and chat with some of my old teachers, and particularly with my 6th grade teacher. It's been awhile since my last visit, about two years ago. Things have more or so changed. The building is now better painted, better equipped. The teachers too, are faithful staying in the school, one of them is the teacher.

On and on we talked about the past and the present, to the point that we compared them. She told me that the best class she taught is ours -- It was her first class when she started teaching in St.Caroline. She also told me that our juniors are getting more and more uninterested in studying. There are many which caused this, and one of the main thing is the internet, particularly online games. She frowns upon hearing her students talking more about Warcraft DoTA, Seal, and many other game titles than about their falling grades.

Okay, maybe it is a bit "nerdy", if you say so, but I thought about it, and I agree. Of course, in my younger days we don't always talk about grades and school subjects, but we talked about other things too, say cartoon for instance. In my days, Sunday televisions still show A LOT of cartoons and kids show. I could get up at 5 in the morning and watch Ultraman believing in hope and kicking an alien's ass, and continue watching Doraemon teaching Nobita about life, until just before midday to see Power Rangers team-working to beat a terror in a form of gigantic monster. Nowadays, I got up at 10 once, and see gossip shows on a national television.

Whether you agree or not, it MADE us.

I used to make a bet with my best buddy when we were at 5-6th grade, Rp.500 for whoever gets the higher score in a test. I doubt kids do that nowadays. Yeah, maybe it's a just a chump-change, but even then we were competing for something more than the Rp.500, it was a competition to BE BETTER.
Our parents used to think it's bad to play video games at a friend's house so often, but when I think of the future, I'd prefer my children to do the same, rather than going to an internet cafe playing online games, they could be a subject of MANYMANYMANY bad influences there.

Guess what ? Our generation's degenerating also. The Merriam-Webster Online defines it as "to sink into a low intellectual or moral state". Yesterday I attended Law Faculty's Students Representative meeting. What was going on there only made me like Captain Picard up there.

Honestly, the meet wasn't well prepared, there were many things that had to be questioned. It wasn't just the comittee, the participants were also "morally low". Yes, they got some good points about what they object, but half the time it'd be someone commenting and objecting on something pointless.

I always believe that a part of exposing a problem is also to try and provide the solution. I honestly don't know their motive when they did that yesterday, was it to look smart, or did it really bother them that much.

I'm reading a book by Eric Fromm, The Heart of Man. It's about human capacity to hate, to destroy, basically, to do everything that is opposite of love. It was in the 1964 when he finished the book, but one statement caught my eye. In the foreword, he stated that "...the present-day mood of violence which is manifested in juvenile delinquency...", I thought for a while, and a bit amazed that the same problem is still around, even maybe getting worse.

In my mind, juvenile delinquency is not only when a child is disobedient to his/her parents advice or when it is only criminal law violation, but when a kid rides a motorcycle without a riding license (most times with no helmet too), when students got in a fight, when a minor smokes, when there's bullying, when a minor smokes in a non-smoking area (duh..).

I had classmates from my elementary who you could say is a bully. You know those cliché stories about bullies being unsuccesful later in their life ? Guess what, they are true. One of the bully gets jail time. He ended up being a drug courier. The other one, went away from home because he lost in a bet (I heard he had to pay Rp.13 million).

Cliché stuff become a cliché because they happen very often.

In the end, I just wanna say, look out for our friends, younger siblings and juniors.

Give them a hand when they nearly slip off the edge.

We could be heroes.

-Bee