9th Ward

We spent an entire day to visit the 9th ward, the residential area most affected by Hurricane Katrina, to volunteer in building a house. No cement or bricks were involved, everything was made of wood and nails. We spent 8 hours measuring, chain-sawing wood planks, and nailing them to the walls and the beams.

"I'm doing this like a retard," I said apologetically to a new acquaintance.

We had seen this guy the night before, at the Cottonmouth Kings' performance, tearing up the dance floor with his amazing swing dance. When we saw him that morning at the construction site, it was a "Hey, weren't you the one who...?" moment.

He was a school teacher, a semi-professional swing dancer, and in his pastime he liked to do voluntary work. He said, "Oh don't worry about feeling like a retard. I used to bring my students to help out here and they did things really slow. I talked to the site supervisor and said, 'sorry man, we're taking things too slow here', and he said, 'Please don't worry. It's not the speed that's important. It's the experience and goodwill that you take home with you that matters'".

As we labored on the house, local residents would drive by in their cars, rap music blasting out from their speakers that were set to maximum volume. At any other time and circumstance I would be avoiding these people because of the things I see in Hollywood gangsta movies. But as they drove by the honked their horns, waved at us and shouted, "Happy New Year y'all!"

Poetry

On our way to see the New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings, I found a man sitting in the middle of the cold street with a typewriter. The sign taped on the typewriter said, "Fresh Poems While You Wait". I stopped and asked if I could take his picture.

"Sure. Thanks for asking by the way. The other tourists just don't bother to ask and I have to bark at them because it's just impolite."
"Oh but do you mind?"
"Yeah no. I mean it'd be better if people just gave me the money, but you can take my picture."
"Oh I'd like your poetry. How does this work?"
"Right. So you give me a theme, and I'll make you a poem, and then you pay."
"Okay. Then make me a poem on.... 'impoliteness'"
"Oh that's a great one."

And the man made me this poem in two minutes flat:

"Polite-ness"

oversensitive america
we complain and whine

i am pissed off or sad.
and yet, what of
please and thank you..

used to death,
tools of five year olds.

i once taught a women

hello and please
and she became much
more popular on the farm

so polite and nice
but i prefer
new england brashness..

and a nice tone of voice
to retain
a spectacle of civility

M Hayden
Dec 28 2009
Frenchmen St.

Torch

We went to a glassworks workshop today in the hopes of discovering a hidden creative talent in making bowls and vases. Just in case being a lawyer doesn't work out. But when I got there and saw the big 2000 degree celcius ovens and the long poking sticks and the glass artworks on display, I got a little overexcited. We had only two hours to get things done.

"Okay," I said to the instructor, "I'm thinking of making at least two glasses that are about this size, and they have to be identical but I want them to have different colors, and also a salad bowl, maybe not the size of a superbig salad bowl but maybe more like a large cereal bowl, not a small one, and then I can't decide whether I want a vase or a cup depending on how much time we have left, what do you think? But if its a vase I don't want it to have those flappy ridges like flower petals because I like my vases just clean and sleek."

Our instructor was a young man who wore cool shades, a black singlet and tattoos on his bare muscled arms. He used to be a janitor at the workshop, and slowly worked his way up to become an artisan. He listened to my prattle patiently and said, "I tell you what. We're gonna make a big glass that can also be a vase. And then we can make a bowl that can also be a vase. And then we gonna make a cup that can also be a glass."

"I also want a paperweight," I said, pushing it.

"Okay. But that's gonna take a while. We make our paperweights seriously around here."

"Why?"

"We get hurricanes," he said with a big smirk.

Ersters

Perhaps a large part of my New Orleans trip was fueled by echoes of Billie Holiday's songs, one of the renditions of which went, "you say oysters, I say ersters, oh let's call the whole thing off."

So I went looking for ersters, and my friends went looking for cheese and wine, and so between us all we settled on Bacchanal. Beyond the doubtful kitchen we found a backyard garden littered with casual patio chairs and campfires and lit torches and the heavy chatter of conversation filling the night air. We chose a table and I went to patiently wait in line for my oysters. To my surprise, they were completely free, except for the big red plastic bucket on the counter that said, "Don't forget to tip the shucker." The shucker seemed to know everyone on the line except me, and he chatted to everyone while shucking the fresh oysters. His customers would come up to him and say, "Whassup Johnny?" The waiter took my order and asked for my name.
"Teez"
"Cheese?"
"Teez. T-E-E-Z."
"Okay, just wait out back at your table until we come out and mispronounce your name."

I liked my ersters even before they came.

Theorems of emotion in motion

While studying today I discovered this note scribbled on the last page of my Corporations Law book, in my handwriting, undated:

" 2 aspects to an emotion:
- Love
- Compatibility

Love means = I know I would be willing to give certain things up for him. I would change for him.

Compatibility means = If I had to change, does that mean we are incompatible and therefore my love is misplaced?

The two prongs fight a battle to the death."

7 hours and 59 minutes

I never thought I'd say this, but exams were pretty exciting. At least I can say it was an entirely new experience for me. Let me draw some empirical comparisons and then you'll see why.

Back in undergrad, approaching exam period I would usually have vague memories of the class and what was taught. I would thus embark on a stressful marathon of the materials one or two days before the exam. I would prepare (i) a collared shirt, because for some reason it is required for exams, (ii) a white-out correction pen for when I write stuff and change my mind, and (iii) a full stomach. This got me through university satisfactorily.

So, I had my very first exam today at HLS. The morning of the exam I prepared (i) my most comfortable hoodie and jeans, and (ii) two packed sandwiches. The night before the exam I had (i) booked a private room in the library, (ii) bought a bottle of water and chocolate milk, and (iii) a big bar of plain dark chocolate. Two weeks before the exam I had (i) read all the materials again, and (ii) prepared a 20-page chart summarizing all the 50-something cases we covered in class.

I arrived on campus on a cold icy-wet morning at 8.15 am, went straight to the private room, laid out my laptop, books, sandwiches, drinks, and chocolate on my table, and waited nervously till 8.30 am. At precisely 8.30 am the exam question file popped up on my screen, indicating it was available to download.

It was an 8-hour exam; the questions were 19 pages long and took me two hours to read. I'm a clerk at the Supreme Court, and the Justice has to decide what to do with the court of appeals decision attached but was too lazy to write an opinion, so she asked me to do it. The case was interesting and seriously believable, and the whole drafting process, combined with the time constraint, was similar to a prolonged adrenaline rush. There were moments of brain blockage. There were moments of desperation when I was certain I was writing crap. There were bathroom trips to ease the tension. A timer window popped up warning me that I had one more hour to go. I swore. I rushed through the last half hour in a frenzy of creative madness. In short, I actually had fun.

So, 7 hours 59 minutes, two sandwiches, and an entire chocolate bar later, I clicked the "submit" button, and thus my draft opinion sped along the virtual road to meet the powers that be. God bless it.

High Rise

It was a beautiful day today. The sun was warm, the birds were twittering, the sky was a brilliant blue, the air was cool and the lulling breeze kept reminding us of that fact. We sat and enjoyed our sandwiches on the outdoor patio of our favorite bakery, basking in the weather. It is December in New England, and yesterday had been freezing.

So the talk turned to climate change. (Ironically, our bakery was called "Hi-Rise".) It started out lightly, with a friend joking that he wouldn't mind climate change if it made the weather warm like this. Another friend mentioned she hated how there are so many people who think that way and it really is not funny and will not be funny at all when the sky starts turning yellow. Another friend declared that he did not appreciate environmentalists enforcing their views upon him as if he was stupid and ignorant, and that such attitudes would backlash against their cause. The previous speaker became incensed, thinking that he was speaking to her personally. The whole conversation then escalated to new levels and a heated debate ensued.

Where did I stand in this conversation? I thought, in the words of Cass Sunstein (the co-author of 'Nudge') "markets markets markets, markets markets markets."

For example, I care about climate change. It is in fact the focus of my current studies. But do I use less water, less electricity, less plastic cups? Maybe not. And why is that?

There is a difference between care and action. Caring can be inherent in the person, can be a personal thing based on a personal experience, it cannot be imposed. You could tell a person to start caring, they may do it and they may not. They may become ashamed of themselves and start changing. Or they may get offended that you suggest they are not caring persons. A number of possibilities may arise.

Action may derive from care, may not arise at all even if you cared, or may be triggered by other, less noble but more practical human characteristics. Such as desire for efficiency, thrift, convenience, or a desire not to be an anomalous part of society. I believe there are a number of noble selfless people in this world, but there are even more people who are just looking out for themselves, because life is a battle. These people need more than just awareness, more than just a lecture on "caring" to really take action.

If solar panels were available, affordable, and reliable in Indonesia, I would have them installed, because it cuts my electricity costs in the long run. If I owned a palm oil plantation, I would have turned it back into dense forests that would retain carbon, and sell carbon credits to make my fortune, if a market for that was robust. If my tumbler didn't make my coffee taste slightly like metal, I would have continued using it instead of the paper cups I use everyday. If no paper cups were made available at all, I would have to buy another tumbler and I wouldn't mind spending more money on a good quality tumbler.

One might argue that markets respond to consumer preferences. But more often than not, it is markets that shape consumer behavior. We just don't realize it. I'm not saying it is useless to spread the message at a grassroots level and getting people to care. But my thoughts are how to get to action.

Full circle.

It's Harvard, and it's exciting, because everybody is determined to be excited. All the Professors and the staff like to say inspirational things like, "Obama sat in this very class", or amusingly competitive things like, "the entire Yale could fit into our new north building", or downright touching things like, "I hope you can someday find a global solution to this crisis, because it will probably not happen in my time".

And then you go to the cafeteria and find yourself casually holding the door open for Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen on your way out. You dream of greatness, of future Nobel prizes, of change because Yes We Can, as we all know. You meet people who say "I want to be President" and you check yourself just right before you laugh because, waitta minute, he might be serious and he might really become one. You speak of your ridiculous dreams and ideas to people and they take you seriously, they say "you will be great", they give you a million more ideas.

You fit in as comfortably as a missing jigsaw piece and therefore you think you could fit in comfortably anywhere in the world, and the boundaries become limitless, with perseverance the only pre-requisite. Contrary to how it sounds... this is a humbling experience. Especially so due to the following thought.

Despite these "great" excitements one particular terrifying and unanswerable question lingers in my head. With whom will I spend the rest of my life with and when will that happen?

Haha. There. I've said it.

I will take no questions.

"Everything!!"

Staff: What would you like today young lady?

Me: Hi! I think I'll have rye bread today
Staff: Would that be marble rye or dark rye?
Me: Oh just normal rye.
Staff: We don't got normal rye ma'am, it's either marble rye or dark rye
Me: Haha okay. Dark rye then.
Staff: And what's going in it?
Me: Everything!!!
Staff: You gotta be a little specific here. Spread?
Me: Okay. Olive kalamata spread on one side, and mayo on the other side.
Staff: Roast beef, roast chicken, roast turkey?
Me: Turkey.
Staff: Lettuce and tomatoes?
Me: Definitely. Oh and sauteed mushrooms too.
Staff: Cheese? Cheddar, pepper-jack, swiss...?
Me: Mmm.... Buffalo mozzarella.
Staff: Mmhh.. mmhhh... how does that look huh?
Me: Looks awesome.
Staff: Thank you. Anything else? You want pickle with that?
Me: No thanks. Can you lightly grill it please?
Staff: Sure can. Just stand aside and wait for a bit, we gotta grill it down to perfection.

My love affair with sandwiches are always taken to a whole new level when I visit America. Granted a British Earl invented the lovely thing, but American decadence and casualness has truly elevated its rank to dazzling levels, whilst maintaining its comforting simplicity. Merely ordering it is an excitement for me.

Luckily the cafeteria makes sandwiches, and as you can see really makes it to order, personalized just for you. The best thing is, the price stays the same no matter how many items you choose to have in it. This makes me a little greedy.

Fall.

Summer dies quickly, leaving skeletal branches against the sky.

At times like this "I could wile away the hours... conferring with the flowers, consulting with the rain..." as Harry Connick Jr. would sing. Because something else died too, and it is not as visible as the brown leaves that I crush underfoot, nor is it as visible as the meaning between these words. The only witness is myself, and this vast world that I find myself in, blowing dead leaves at my feet.

When something dies, you say goodbye. And so I did... a little invisible goodbye, which left me feeling torn, and a little lonelier. But there was nothing else I could do.

Superclass

Professor Subramanian today started the class with a video. In all seriousness he informed us that the short clip would be helpful in understanding the concept of freeze-out mergers by controlling shareholders.

The scene opened with a picture of the Professor, his face serious behind his round spectacles and receding hairline, wearing a superman costume. Yes, red and blue with a big "S" on his chest. As the unmistakable superman soundtrack accompanied the picture, the scene changed into the title of the video in superman fonts: SUBRAMANIANMAN.

Scene I: The Professor is reading in his study, a student bursts in suddenly in panic.

Student: Professor, quick!
Prof: What's the matter?!!
Student: A minority shareholder is being freezed-out by a controlling shareholder! You have to stop him!
Prof: That's unacceptable! This calls for .... Subramanianman!!

Scene II: The Professor rushes out of his study and confronts his secretary

Prof : [With charisma] Cancel all my appointments for today!
Secretary : [Looks up in boredom] You don't have any meetings.
Prof : Oh. [Professor looks dejected for a milisecond, and then rips open his shirt to transform into Subramanianman (leaves the glasses on)]

Scene III: Some garden at HLS

Student 1: Look! It's a bird!
Student 2: No, it's a plane!
Student 3: No, it's Subramanianman !!!

Scene IV: The "majority shareholder" is spotted, in the middle of literally punching the "minority shareholder"

Student "majority": Oh no, it's Subramanianman!
Prof: Stop! Let this never happen again!
Student "minority": Thank you Subramanianman!

The End.

After the laughter and applause had died down, the Professor then turned to the class and said:

"All I can say is that I was young, and I needed the money."

Americans are funny

Monday

Professor: "Ms. Tyler? Did Justice Scalia agree with the notion that canons of construction which tend to be purposivist are to be prioritized above strictly textualist statutory interpretations?"

Student: "Umm... yes."

Professor: "Excellent. Now, can you give me a shorter answer than 'yes' that is more correct?"

Tuesday

Yoga teacher: "Sort of clear your mind and breathe. Let your smile radiate sort of like the warm rays of the sun on the world. It is time to store your database in the hard disk of your mind."

I have never studied so hard in my entire life.

A title is all I can manage right now.

Eternal while it lasts.

What will I learn today? Who will I meet today?

If only I could wake up each morning in life and have the excitement of thinking these thoughts. If only I could step out my door every single day with a tune in my head and walk with the sun in my face and the breeze in my hair and the trees rustling above and a spring in my step. If only I could always approach any person in the world with the certainty that this person will have something interesting to say. If only I could take my current attitude home to Indonesia.

Munch.

I’m very grateful to have excellent parents who taught me most of the things necessary to survive in life. One of which is eating skills. And there is nothing like encountering a Person with a severe lack of eating skills to enhance my gratitude.

The only background fact that I would disclose about said Person, which I deem necessary only to provide proper context to this story, is that I am required to dine frequently with this Person. I have never in my life felt particularly finicky about table manners, until I met him. Person would eat by holding his fork and spoon in his fist instead of his fingers. This causes his elbows to stick out on either side of him, such that a dinner companion would have to stay clear in order not to be elbowed in the middle of main course. He then proceeds to munch noisily, the noise of which is formed by the failure of the mouth to close during the act of munching, and therefore sounds exactly like teeth scraping spoon and tongue touching roof of mouth repetitively. Said Person also has the tendency to be beset by sudden inspiration during eating, in which case he would commence in stating said inspiration regardless of the food still being processed in his mouth. I was unfortunate enough to have been looking precisely at him when one of these occasions suddenly occurred, and inevitably caught a glimpse of different colored half-processed bits sticking to the front of his teeth. “Dear God, please make him drink”, I prayed silently (with eyes closed) when I saw this, and sure enough moments later, in the middle of munching, he picked up his glass and drank with a loud slurp which made me wince in my seat.

Now the dilemma comes when I think of what actions are within my powers to save myself from this uncomfortable situation. Practically, none that I can think of. He is a grown man, and I simply cannot tell a grown man how to eat. So I have resorted to fully concentrating on my plate while eating, and spilling my beans to you.

Skin.

What a sight to see!

It’s summer, and everyone here is baring skin. My friend calls it “an excessive reaction to the sun, wrought by winter oppressiveness”.  I’d like to hear him tell that to those girls over there, strewn across the grassy city parks like monsoon mushrooms in their bikinis, dreaming of sand on their cheeks and salty sea smells.  I’d like to hear him tell that to those other girls over there, bouncing around the city in skin-tight skimpy jogging wear.  They’re having so much fun they wouldn’t care less.  I must admit I started feeling rather stuffy in my jeans.

Of course, I didn’t bring my beach-wear. As the same friend confirms when the first thing he asked me was, “have you brought your switer?” (that’s how Indonesians pronounce sweater), we pack to prepare for the unfamiliar, that being cold and unpredictable weather.  We could well call our actions an excessive reaction to the future cold because I sure as hell packed a lot of switers.  Which aren’t much use at this time of the year.

So I embarked on what I would call “reactionary shopping”, which is the sort a girl does when a girl attempts to Go With The Trend.  But since I’m no longer a teenage trend-hopper and I was brought up to be a politely-dressed girl, my choices turned out to be conservative after all.  But just because I can, I went jogging bra-less the other day.  Obviously no one noticed, but shocking isn’t it.  I might fancy calling it an excessive reaction to liberation. =D

The flight of the escapist.

Finally, on this 20 hour flight, some peace and quiet. 

Well, unless you count the germans, who seem to enjoy speaking across the aisle to one another. Fortunately, I don't understand a word they're saying, so it's like white noise.  I'm taking the Lufthansa, so we're making a stop at Frankfurt. On the plane the announcer's very german voice burst through the speakers, saying "We are about to land in 15 minutes, so please return to your seats NOW."

A smattering of laughter broke out among the passengers at the last word.  I immediately imagined Arnold Schwarzenegger (10 dollars says I got that spelling right) sitting back there behind the microphone, saying "Get back to your seats NOW, or I'LL BE BACK."

At the airport in Frankfurt I had to stay for 7 hours, so when we landed my primal senses instinctively turned themselves on and began sniffing out my primary means of survival:  free internet. Found said internet.  Found that it wasn't free.   Grudgingly, I pulled out my credit card, swiped, and opted for the 15 minute session.  Enough to send a few emails, or so I thought. 

As I logged in to my email, I miss-typed my login name.  It said "Teey".

Feeling daft, I re-typed it, and there it was again saying "Teey". 

Looking down at the chunky keyboard, I discovered in horror that the germans had all their keyboard keys jumbled up.  The letters were all over the place!  Where there should be a "Z", there was instead a "Y".  And then I spent the next 10 minutes looking for the "@" symbol, which was shyly hiding beneath the letter "Q".  After swiping my credit card again, I commenced in writing my very short email, which was excruciating because I was typing like a two-year old, or like my mother. 

By the time I clicked "send", my minutes had run out again.  I'm thinking the whole keyboard business is a nasty tactic to get foreigners to spend their Euros on typing. 

It was a lonely flight, which was the beauty of it.  In Boston, my friend called out my name really loud at the arrival gate, which was a lovely welcome too. 

Shine.

I was never a very patriotic person. I had teenage dreams of living abroad where there are civilized pavements and subways and teachers who admire you for having an opinion. I was also slightly disappointed that we only have two seasons and everybody has the same hair colour. We also have poverty, illiteracy, corruption, societal gaps, and dreadful, dreadful sinetrons.

But these past few years have been a bit different, although I didn’t notice it at first. People work hard and are generally happy. There’s been more good news about Indonesia in the media than I have ever remembered. Even without government facilities, the Indonesian art world, movie industry, and music industry is blossoming with new talents of international marketability. You hear people annoyed that ignorant western media coin jargons like “The Rise of Asia” but upon further reading they only mean China and India. We become like hungry scavengers clinging on to every shiny object we can find, only to find that there are many, and many more to create. And then we start creating our own shiny objects. Every team I coach, every transactional advice I give is tinged with a desire to prove our professional savvy. In conversations with foreigners, I find myself slipping casual anecdotes on the liberal, intellectual, tolerant, and colorful people that we are. Just in case they hadn’t noticed. And there are so many others working hard to establish our place in the world. And then we start to gain pride and momentum, as a nation and as an individual.

And that is what the terrorists destroy.

-In memory of Garth McEvoy, may he rest in peace-

The Ruthless Dictator of My Weekends

Again stepping on rather a lot of toes here, but one must do what one must do to ensure the delicate balance of sanity prevails. My own personal balance of sanity hangs delicately by a thread titled “Please Do Not Take Away My Weekends”. I once had a lengthy debate about how we should define “MY weekends”. Is that a day where you only do things by yourself? Or is that a day where you can drop the veto on all other plans but your own? Or is that a day where you impose a prohibitive ban on all things “work-related” but keep your plans open for everything else outside and in-between? It is by no means definitive. It thus comes down to personal preference.

In my perfect world, I would be the grand designer and ruthless dictator of my weekends. But alas, we are gregarious creatures, and one must make room for dissent, democracy, compromise and relationships. Which leads us to weddings.

Weddings??

Yes well, the shocking truth is that I dislike weddings. Shocking because, in a world where wedding invitations arrive at your doorstep for every weekend within the foreseeable semester (via post, e-mail, sms, or lately via facebook), and local tailors build impressive empires out of sewing wedding-party outfits, and wedding parties create traffic jams within a 1 km radius of the venue, it is shocking indeed that I am not enthusiastic about weddings.

If I had my way, I would attend only the weddings of my close friends and relatives, where I could genuinely rejoice in their joyful moments. I would happily get a new dress tailored, put my hair up at the hairdressers, battle through the weekend traffic, and walk from my faraway parking lot to the venue in my stilettos to achieve this. But for the 70% of other wedding invitations from people not classified as “close friends and relatives” which I attend due to the commonly accepted norm that invitations must be fulfilled unless there is Force Majeure, I feel cheated out of My Weekends by society.

My personal preference is not that I could reject invitations at ease, because invitations are a goodwill gesture which one must appreciate. Rather, it is that people should not feel obliged to invite as many people as they can and hold the biggest weddings they can afford. This idea may not gel well with prevailing cultures, but at least consider how the traffic and limited parking space challenges one’s delicate balance of sanity.

See you at the mall.

The managing partner at my office bade everyone a good holiday yesterday via email which said, “For those of you celebrating, Happy Ascension Day! For the rest, see you at the mall!” This was both funny and wickedly accurate with a touch of sarcasm, because if you are a Jakarta resident wondering where to go (e.g. where to eat, where to watch movies, where to get groceries, where to get your nails done or where to rendezvous) you will most likely end up at the mall.

Lacking creativity, I took my mom to the mall. We queued and circled around for parking space for over 15 minutes, and finally waited on a family that were walking back to their car. As we waited, another car pulled up right beside us with its nose blocking our path, vulgarly laying claim to the parking space. Fighting ensued, during the course of which my mom, a very sweet and mild-mannered person, made angry racist comments to the other party. And then deciding that parking space was too superficial to be fought over, we haughtily drove away and abandoned the mall. I’ve often thought that going to the mall on holidays and weekends is a pretty bad idea. Now I’m pretty certain it’s a pretty bad idea.

I also have a particular aversion with certain types of people you meet at the mall, which I’ve categorized as follows (please excuse me if I step on a few toes here):

- Ladies with Branded Monogram Bags. I see so many Louis Vuitton’s I can barely appreciate it anymore (not that I ever did). It is neither exclusive nor sophisticated. Especially when they come with gaudy cherry prints. Multiple-printed logos look rather like gift-wrapping too, don’t they.

- Ladies Who Lunch with Big Hair. Middle-aged ladies who lunch with about 10 girlfriends during work-hours because they probably do not need to have a job, and they are dressed to the nines at a mall, and their tresses of hair look fresh out of the hairdresser, puffed out and stiff with hairspray. They look like people who are suffering hair-loss and trying to camouflage it.

- Ladies in a Veil with their Hotpanted / Tanktopped Teenage Daughter. Nothing wrong with either, but the two paired together is a sight that is just awkwardly lopsided.

- Ladies who Can’t Walk. Because their heels are too high. Therefore they do not swing their legs like normal people, but sort of walk with awkward determined knee-lifting strides. It looks painful.

- Ladies who are Blinged-Out. Too much accesory is overkill. Some ladies wear big earrings, necklace, bracelets, and rings all in one because heck, they love all their bling and can’t decide which one to leave at home.

- Ladies with Two Toddlers and Two Nannies. The lady sits, eating her salad, staring pensively into open space. Her toddlers, of enough age to eat by themselves, are being spoon-fed, mouth-wiped, and fussed over by their respective nannies. Once in a while she looks at her children with unconvincing concern, tosses her well-permed curls with her well-manicured hands and resumes eating in silence.

So if you don’t go to the mall where do you go? That’s a good question. After exiting the mall parking lots, I took mom for late lunch at Hong Kong Café (which was very parking-friendly by the way), and we ate hot dimsums in the late afternoon sun. Much better.

(Speaking of malls, check this out it's wild:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdD0j6wmMNc&feature=fvst

Prepping for August

I will be leaving my cactus to the care of my bf, who seemed profoundly touched that I trusted him with my plants. I told him I trusted him with my life … (obviously drama queening, because it’s a no-brainer that the plants are probably better off with him anyways?) As for the gym membership, that’s a bit tricky, because who would want to take over a fitness membership for one year only? Well if you’re interested, give me a call.
I need to get:

1. a brand new spanking silver Macbook that will never contract a virus no matter what I plug into it and with a built-in camera for conference calls with the bf, to replace my perfectly functioning but boring HP Compaq;
2. a shiny new blackberry, for unlimited virtual chats with all my friends in Jakarta who all have blackberries already and think I’m a dinosaur because I don’t see the point in getting one yet;
3. a kick-ass SLR camera to artfully immortalize the land abroad in the spring, summer, autumn and winter; and
4. a velvet black designer trench coat because where else will I have a reason to dress like Audrey Hepburn?

Unfortunately, I am not privileged enough to have legally blonde ambitions. I must painfully snap out of my fanciful fantasies and face the ugly truth about the straight-edge, gray-skirted, primal things I must prepare for the real world. And that would be:

1. knowledge to survive random discussions with classmates (“Oh I think the stimulus bill may or may not turn out to be a success depending on …”);
2. documents and plane-tickets and rents and no one to cook your food for you and how to read a map and how to fix your laptop by yourself without the help of mas-mas Ratu Plaza; and
3. saving up for an array of books that I will not be able to pirate the way I pirated all my undergrad books.

Now if someone would just lend me their Hepburn-inspired velvet-black designer trench coat or take over my gym membership for a year so that I don’t have to waste 20% of annual membership fees just to keep my membership waiting for me when I get back, that would be really really helpful. :)

Alhamdulillah

I might as well say how profoundly grateful I am most of the time.

Clean Breaks.

There’s a part of last year that I miss. I won’t pinpoint specific things, but as a hint last year I was younger than this year. It is so tempting to yield according to wherever the wind blows. Being “twenty-something”, this would mean yielding to uncertainties and emotion, insecurities and ego, dreams and doubt. Being afraid of staying young and afraid of growing up. Being happy with achievements but afraid people will expect too much from you. Being happy with future plans but afraid they won’t come true. Being more eager to think about others, but afraid you haven’t sorted out your own self yet. Being in a transition from being cared for by parents to having to care for your parents. Being happy with comfort zones but knowing you have to get out of it sooner or later. There just isn’t enough room to accommodate all the conflicting emotions, let alone comprehend.

I wonder if there are clean breaks from the way I was last year.

I’m hoping the answer lies dormant like an expressionist painting, a tangle of meaningless brush-strokes when viewed up close, but crystal clear when you look from a distance. I’m hoping that if viewers take a step back and look at the big picture, they’ll find that there’s no need for me to worry and I’m already doing all the right things and I will get there eventually if I put my heart to it. Get where? Get to a place where I will prioritize the right things, the right people, and be of use to others in need. And that would mean learning not to yield.

a healthy dose of optimism

Went to the Modernisator’s seminar yesterday about the new global economy post-G20 Summit, and were enlightened by the speakers of that forum as to the following facts:

1. Indonesia is no longer a 3rd world country. We are acknowledged as one of the 20 most significant economies of the world. So if someone says Indonesia is a 3rd world country, you can say “Haha. What age do you live in?”
2. Indonesia’s rise from the ‘97-‘98 monetary crisis is a globally acknowledged success story which today’s crisis-ridden economies would like to learn from.
3. Whereas traditionally Asian countries have been exporters and the west has been the consumer, we could be experiencing a shift where the west will be the exporters and we will be the consumers.

Went out of the seminar feeling a little jolly and optimistic, and thought a little celebration would be appropriate to close off the evening. So we headed off to the aptly named Social House, which on a Tuesday night was busy and packed with an unpretentious crowd and felt very 1st world.

“To the 1st world”, said the bf, raising his glass.
“To consumerism”, said I, raising mine.

And then we had a good laugh at how silly we were. In my heart though, I felt a growing passion to become a part of the energy driving Indonesia forward.

tomorrow morning.

For the third time in a week, I dreamt I was shampooing my hair.

There is no need to procure in-depth Freudian psycho-analysis to glean what this could possibly mean. I am supposed to get out of bed and shower, and my body resolutely refuses to do so. Perhaps trying to be funny, my body instead cheats my brain into thinking that I am already in the shower. I eventually wake up drowsily feeling for my hair and discovering with a shock that it is still dry, tangled, and on the pillow. The message my body is sending is profoundly simple: “Sleep, bitch.”

With all my heart and soul I wish I could comply with nature’s call. But for some reason everything always needs to be done by tomorrow morning. Why must everything always be done by tomorrow morning? Tomorrow morning became an ominous large looming shadow over my head which compelled me to bring documents everywhere I went on the weekend (not that I actually read them). Tomorrow morning gave me unforgiving shampoo dreams. Tomorrow morning is relentless and cruel to humanity.

As a pre-emptive strike, if I may borrow battle-zone terminologies to emphasize the nature of the situation, yesterday I took the initiative to propose my own timing to The Powers That Be. All brisk and business-like, I put on a confident tone and said “Great! I’ll have this done before noon tomorrow!” In reply The Powers That Be said, “How about 10 in the morning?”

Teez the great defiant warrior princess replied:

“Um, okay.”

Thriller.

“My job isn’t interesting!!” I said, while the bf looked taken aback and rather hurt by my statement.

“Don’t say that.” he said earnestly. He said it with the air of someone who has had a love and hate relationship with his job for a long time. He said it with the air of someone who was afraid that if innermost thoughts were spoken out loud and audibly those innermost thoughts would become too real for comfort.

Whether my assumptions were correct or not, there really was no need for him to worry.

“All I’m saying” I said, “is that there’s no story to tell. I love my job, I just can’t explain my fascination for it to other people in time to finish before they fall asleep.”

“John Grisham” he said, “told exciting thriller stories.”

“Of scandals in big firms. What if there are no scandals? What if people don’t get any more evil beyond just plain annoying?”

We fell silent for a while and started thinking of possible scandals to fabricate.

“Once upon a time…” I said slowly, “there lived a corporate lawyer who … found that her client’s maturity date had been unilaterally shifted by the creditor in violation of the facility terms.”

The bf dropped his head and snored.

The Plant Who (Apparently) Lives.

Do you see those little green perky nipples sprouting out of my cactus? They were not there before. The only possible explanation for these little funky tumors is that my cactus is growing. It's growing, people. Super yay!

And do you hear that? That was a big simultaneous sigh of relief from the 5 people who chipped in on the cactus.

The Plant Who Lived.

Once upon a time there lived a girl
Who made even the bravest men curl
with fear, for she had tendency to be cruel
And this was most decidedly un-cool
The saddest part about this tale
Is that she wasn’t always such a fail
In fact she was quite good inside
If only she had sense to hide
The fact that she did not possess
Any talent in the “caring” process
Because, you see, she fancied plants
(although she didn’t really fancy the ants)
But they always died under her care
The poor victims driven to despair
So she changed her tact, for she was cunning
Nobody ever saw this coming
She bought plants she need not cater
The amazing cactus! which needs no water!
The spiky things were very tricky
Their cute little bodies were quite prickly
She had them very prettily potted
But before very long they… sadly rotted
Her friends looked on and sympathized
They shook their heads and empathized
They said “enough!, this murder shall cease!”
“We can’t afford to handle more decease!”
So, they thought and thought and thought
And finally decided an item must be bought
To give her plants another lobby
(For she refused to give up her hobby)
So when she reached the age of twenty five
They bought her a cactus, green and alive
And underneath the cactus pot, oh look!
They bought her a how-to-care-for-your-cactus book!
Alas, this story has no ending yet, dear reader
For we know not whether it will be a survivor
But let’s just say that she fully believes
Cactus will be known as The Plant Who Lives.

The End (we hope).

?

In the end, is a person more often judged by what they consciously try to do, or what they unconsciously neglect to do?

Consider this a survey.