There were times in our lives where despair seem to take the toll to our normality. Today is one such time. Back in high school, a teacher taught me how to make a resume. She asked one simple question, but in a typical elusive but straightforward American euphemism "those job interviewers would want to know one thing: what makes you 'you'". The answer's a tricky, precisely because of how the question was phrased. If what makes me 'me' is a trick, then what is 'me' or more to the point, who is 'me'? I just feel that as of today, the list of criteria that goes with answering that question has gotten longer. There was no typical academic achievements, grades, recommendation letters, medals, ribbons of valors, and certificates to refer to. 'Me' is not defined in numbers, arbitrary labels of bad, good, excellent, or daily accounts of personal diaries. The term 'me' is concerned with the today and the present. Nothing pre-existing or pre-adjusted condition must be taken into account, because after all, if we were born yesterday, it's just a matter how we interpret yesterday today.

For a long time, i had issues with people who are so verbose with their claim to be smart, knowledgeable, and sharp. There are people in my country who use this advantages as a way to promote their self. Should the word self-promotional be use to define them, i think it would be a great injustice. Everywhere you go in any academic hall in my country, you hear people applauding thunderously as a speaker made their speech with vehemence and solid rhetoric. Little did they realize it was just cheap politics. It was a stunt. It was meant to impress but not to propose. It seek to rally emotion but not to muster strength and courage. it oblige to protest but not to provide solution. I had my stint back in University of Indonesia for a semester in the Psychology Department in 2005. I saw how the debate chamber became more and more invigorated as one of the debater gesticulated his torso synchronizing his upper body movement as it rhymes with the tone and inflection of the speech. My oh my, nothing sicks me more to death. I like debate, the jousting of ideas expressed in the most ostentatious terms, mediated by the fairest rule. But not when it is used to promote your own personal interest. Personally, i believe its not the debate that sickens me, its the crowd.

On this fateful Thursday the 28th, i had an unusual flurry of anger, mixed with frustration. Mostly, it was about the normal usual complaint that i threw to the internet company over the slow connection that had been puncturing my patience. The issue had been around for several weeks. The technician suggested that i changed the internet connection to another phone line as the current line seems to be not in a fully working order. Anyway, if i were to insist on keeping the current phone line associated with the internet, i would have to recommend overhauling the wires that went deep into the wall structure. Surely, it was out of the question. What succeeded the technician visit then is to approach the alternative for switching the other phone line connection which was currently in use as a fax number. I did all that i could contacting the phone company center and have all the necessary arrangement to a full working order. While the God could laugh at our efforts and thwart our goodwill, it was obviously no longer hilarious. The internet is still slower, even slower that it was before.

There are times in our life where we are so clueless in direction. No future to ponder, no vision to strive, no goal to achieve, not even the slightest desire to invoke a sense of purpose in ourselves. Just a constant attempt of gratification for short term benefit. It would go without saying that time would catch us up. Either by getting old, being sick, or an unforeseen incident. Things would change before one could even begin to prep up. For example, what if an earthquake were to happen tomorrow and it just so happen that we are in an elevator at the particular moment the building begin to shake? Sure thing, one can't escape a bad luck anymore than one can chase a sleazy dream. This is not a question about choice, and certainly not one about an ability to predict the future. Since when and where can't be guessed, how about making sure that things were well before or maybe after the incident like earthquake occur? Buy an insurance policy, for example, that would cover material damages incurred from any natural disaster. Even so, that so many things are covered by indemnity, where do we begin to value that life perhaps needed a course? Say we have an insurance for our health, our property, our employment, and our investment, when do you start feel that maybe it is not 'enough'? Well, given the relative adequacy to define what is enough or not enough, perhaps we should begin by asking when do we feel that money simply doesn't pay? That our health doesn't measure up to the two hundred thousand usd dollars the insurance company would compensate in the event that we are diagnosed with cancer. That our house is not valued at five hundred thousand usd dollars when so many laughter, tears, and toils were shed during the cultivation of those priceless memory. That our future, while assured now by the reimbursement from the loss of dissipating stock market, does not assure itself from the next catastrophe. I always thought that the frame of mind is predicated from the notion of safety. Again, given the relative form of the meaning safety and security, we are once again blessed with 'MONEY' to mediate our inadequacy. Simply put, why worry about your pain today if you can buy happiness tomorrow? But if everything is negotiable in terms of time, dollars, and the assurance that things are not only going to stop worsening but invariably getting much better, then doesn't it speak loud enough that our feelings, our emotions, incurred by losses, pain, and sufferings, can be paid for, reasoned with, or traded with products and services that potentially amounted to happiness arbitrated by money?

i feel so different today. I had been dreaming to have a girlfriend but i might be a step closer today. Sadly, any enterprise that begins with me making the first step would only ends in my hall of shame. This time its going to be different. Iwill be still, unmoved, stationary, static, you name it. Bottom line, i am not moving. Well, to be honest, this is the posture that i'd been very comfortable with anyway. Dynamism in pursuit especially in a relationship always turns in my utter demise. A girl, a new member in the gym, unfamiliar face. She looked at me profusely, refusing to detach her sight from me. In Indonesia or mostly in Asian culture, my admission is hugely self promotional. I would be conjured as somebody who went too far with his imagination. Yes, may that be the case, i took great relish in her uninterrupted sight. Of course, even this ends catastrophically. My lips tight as a closed gate, my eyes penetrated with such appeal constantly seek distraction but my heart, my oh my, naked as if the sword had dismantled my outfit. God, this is true. This is not love, this is an obsession indulged by instrumental beauty. I dont know what that means, but surely i need to do some soul searching before i can even blink to explain that.

I realized that for the past few days my blog is filled with various comments, remarks, and opinions about books or movies. I'd like to stray a bit from that habit and perhaps begin with relating to the larger picture of the themes from the books that i had been reading and try to relate that to common understanding. You see. Regardless of the genre of the books that i read, all of it has to do with one vital theme: mistakes. Either as a blunder, a mea culpa, a malignant intent to create failure, or an inadvertent attempt to produce kindness or rectify fault that eventually further the vicious cycle, mistakes harm. They are pernicious, scurillous, and frustrating. In the end, most of us react with temper, or stood in silence, or wait until the storm settles to let our stoicism and forbearance demand the succumbing to its pain. I guess i won't be discussing the emotional baggage that comes with mistakes being made. Rather, the emphasis should be how and why mistakes happen in the first place. Most of my books are about war where people with decision making authority reach a certain conclusion where certain acts has to be decided in order to create change, or preserve the status quo. I realized that in many accounts in the books, these brilliant and experienced fellows are apt to produce mistakes themselves. Out of loyalty, fear to disappoint, facts that got mended within the haphazard bureaucratic red tape, or an obstinate ideology that is persistent without considering the due regard of circumstances. Let's talk about an example. The recent financial crisis that stormed the developed world two years ago. As i raced the book by Mike Lewis The Big Short, it appear that countless warnings had been sounded a couple of years before the hurricane hit New York. It's not just the unsoundness of the subprime market, but the succession of falling dominoes that represent big institutions which stood in solidarity as it march to fight the inevitables. They were too stubborn, blinded to see the truth, they create lies or deceptions to guard against major collapse. They had billions at stake and to retreat from the battle is to not to simply to surrender victory, but to destroy their own army as well.

Speedreading is one of my hobby these days, especially if i am reading the same book twice. The purpose simply is to better understand the content, the hidden meanings of certain substances that was not readily apparent at first encounter. But, it all depends on the kind of book; whether it is informative (one that i seek to have a permanent imprint on my memory), or a read-for-fun. The book is Lewis Sorley's A Better War about the unexamined victory that could have happen in Vietnam had the political upheaval in the US itself were not too pernicious at the time. The things i learnt most from this book can be summed up as the politicization of warfare. When a war was being conducted both at the field and on a negotiating table, you'll know that some appeasement is necessary to reach a feasible truce. In other words, whoever wants to the war stopped most will have to have some upper hand on the field. Like in the Korean War. The other most significant lesson that went unexamined on all of the other books about Vietnam War is the possibility of the South Vienamese Government themselve to defend their homeland without the help from the US military. For the first time, the stark reflection that came upon me is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan; wars that had been scourging for several years without perceptible positive outcome. Iraq fared much better now, owing from the lessons in Vietnam. But Afghanistan is not one to embody as an apple next to Vietnam. Most of the country is illiterate and to win a war there means building the nation from scratch. Educating its people, financing its government, and align their neighbors to support their cause. One can't achieve this is in a very short time. It took decades for country to grow mature. A grandfather would have to farm the land so hard today so that his grandchildren could finally expand its size without the obstacles on security and heavy reliance on government subsidies. In short, generations need to pass by before any result is foreseeable.