It’s a different kind of heartache, one that’s difficult to navigate. My circle of friends has never been big, and over time, it has only gotten smaller. In some ways, that makes things a little more awkward, a little quieter. But at the same time, it also feels more effortless, more low-maintenance. There’s a comfort in knowing that the friendships that remain don’t require constant upkeep.
They’re my way of showing up, something that still feels unfamiliar in social situations, where I’m used to my own space and no longer needing to prove anything. We simply are.
1. “Running Grave” by Robert Galbraith. October kicked off with a literary escape amidst the chaos of work event preparations. The book instantly became my favorite among the previous 6 books in the series, which I thought would be difficult to surpass Troubled Blood’s position.
2. Inpepsa. The dreaded acid reflux, a reminder to take a breath. I found myself laughing in the face of acidity, realizing that self-care can be as simple as a morning walking routine. D’oh.
3. Black Holes – The Edge of All We Know. Oh, watching those theoretical physicists decode the black holes was a real riot. Crunching numbers like it’s child’s play, naturally, it had me questioning my own IQ. Watching them work was almost as entertaining as imagining myself doing the same… in an alternate universe, of course.
4. Extensive Google Search on aluminium window frames. Picture this: me, frantically clicking away, attempting to decipher the secrets of window frames like my life depends on it. Yeah, maybe I dream of having a house, but the whole fuss about furnishings, decorating, or interior design? Noooooo…. (turns out I don’t really care anyway).
5. Niyom. A colleague’s visit to Jakarta introduced me to this Thai jeans brand. The cutting looked super nice on her, also leaving me wondering why such quality is not readily available in local Indonesian brands. Can’t wait for my package to arrive.
6. Jakarta Fashion Week. Thanks to Sare – Andam, it was my first time attending such event. Oh, I was so smitten by the Douche show. Given my old obsession with Madonna’s Ray of Light era (I have vivid memories of my elementary friend Claudia memorizing the Frozen’s lyric for our singing exam, lol), I was totally mesmerized when I heard Shanti/Ashtangi playing after ages. And I think I need a couple of pieces from the collection ASAP. *smile* That day also gave me a chance to have some real talk with my art school buddies, diving into deep topics like the quality of sleep among art grads. *eye-rolling*
7. Shori’s Beef Sukiyaki. Indulging the simple joys of savoring delicious food (and a hot date!).
8. Pilates Re Bar. Trying out a new pilates studio within walking distance from my home marked the beginning of appreciating local facilities. Still trying to make all of these feel homey though. It’s still a bit challenging.
9. A normal broom. After a detour into the world of marketing hype, I returned to the simplicity of a normal broom stick. Sweep away both dust and unnecessary complications yes please.
10. My Staccato ballet flats got a second life with a quick tweak. And I’ve been enjoying the abundance of adorable visuals of sweet bows on social– they’re all the rage now.
It’s been quite a gloomy month, to be honest, with all the madness happening in the world. But hey, I turned 38, and hey, when the right moment hits, I’m gonna write about my love for Chandler Muriel Bing, one of my all-time favorite friends.
In the spirit of some lighthearted journaling, and with a newfound enthusiasm for getting back into the swing of things, I thought I’d share some class notes from a philosophy course I took last year titled “War: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches.” Now, I understand that topics like language classes or data analytics might not make for the most exciting blog posts, but hey, let’s give it a shot anyway!
WAR
As a matter of fact, we all know what war is. But when it comes to discussing it, it turns out to be quite perplexing and complex. Most definitions of war center around the involvement of nation-states, but it can also be an inner battle, a conflict within oneself, as it were.
At an infrahuman level, humans indeed had to engage in warfare to survive, much like animals hunting for their prey. This is something that used to be commonplace.
Nanjing! Nanjing! (City of Life and Death) – Japanese ceremony
Frequency
There have been 248 wars following World War II (you’d think there would be some trauma after WWII, but apparently not).
Out of these 248 wars, 201 were initiated by the United States, and most of them ended in failure.
Scale
In the past: wars were local or national affairs. Today: wars can be local, national, or global in scope.
Simultaneously, there can also be internal conflicts within a nation.
Trends
Access to weapons is becoming increasingly easier (is this the democratization of war?).
Wars are becoming deadlier with the advent of nuclear weapons, autonomous/AI-driven weaponry (unmanned and devoid of ethical principles).
War strategies have grown more complex and intricate, involving elements like cyber attacks and deep fakes.
Moments of waiting for “Is this going to turn into a war?” can evolve into conflicts themselves. Remember the Cold War?
Some philosophical perspectives:
Plato: War arises from the difficulty humans face in controlling their instincts.
Heraclitus: He boldly claims, “War is the father of all, and king of all.” It places some beings as gods and others as men, making some slaves and others free.
Hobbes: According to him, humans, by nature, are in a state of hostility towards each other.
Rousseau: On the contrary, Rousseau believed that humans are creatures of peace by their very nature.
Christianity: Humans are created in the image of God, imperfect yet free. They are meant to be free from war.
Behaviorism: War is a consequence of behavior conditioned by the environment and culture.
Biology: War emerges from the instinct of self-preservation (the reptilian brain), especially when threatened.
Psychology: Freud’s concept of “Death drives” suggests that war can result from humans’ self-sacrificial and self-destructive instincts. It can be driven by sympathy, cooperation, or pure aggression.
In the natural order of things, humans are paradoxical creatures: indeterminate yet determinate, free yet determined, driven by self-preservation yet capable of self-sacrifice. It all depends on one’s beliefs. War, it seems, shares this paradox.
War may not be an inherent part of human nature but rather a product of human culture. It’s a disaster celebrated in its own way.
Reflection and Interesting Tidbits
I stumbled upon an article by Jean Baudrillard titled “La Guerre du Golfe n’a pas eu lieu” (The Gulf War did not take place), published in 1991. Baudrillard’s take on this subject is mind-boggling:
He argues that this doesn’t mean the war didn’t happen, but they lose their significance as historical events.
History, much like other spheres such as sexuality, aesthetics, politics, and economics, has transformed into something “trans-” – “transsexuality,” “transaesthetics,” “transpolitics,” and “transeconomics.” It’s like a realm of simulation, a ghostly presence, an undead institution that neither fully lives nor properly dies. (Now, that’s intriguing!)
The Gulf War, according to Baudrillard, was “a degenerate form of war” where the enemy wasn’t encountered but made “invisible.” (This resonates with the idea of mediatic killings, akin to what we see in political years in Indonesia).
War reveals contrasting facets of good and evil, hero and villain – a juxtaposition that adds a unique dimension to it. Such stark contrasts often make for a more captivating composition, much like one of the principles of aesthetics – the allure of the contrast, the beauty in the starkness.
So there you have it.
(Suddenly, I’m reminded of that iconic scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” where “Ride of the Valkyries” plays in the background.)
Ray: A lot of the time we feel that our lives the worst, but I think that if you looked in anybody else’s closet, you wouldn’t trade your shit for their shit. So let’s go.
I know questioning of who is entitled to feel depressed right now (surely not me, with my clear lungs and sufficient Gopay balance) is unproductive. But I’ve concluded is that denying our emotions only underlines them.
I’m telling you, to plan a curriculum can be mentally, emotionally and physically draining. Teaching and doing the management at the same time from home in the past two months was barbaric.
It is definitely not a job for everyone, or a career that you start ‘because you didn’t know what else to do’, as many uninformed people tend to say. Like myself 12 years ago.
If you want to be rich, stop right there. Private school teachers do get paid an ok salary. No high, not low, just ok. I think it’s pretty similar to lecturers who teach at long established private university. But if you look at public school teachers, it’s a whole different cringe-game.
If you want a work-life balance shit, nu uh. It’s very possible for a teacher to get a nasty combination of burnout, loneliness and broke-ness.
I wish you – over-involved boomers – are more civil and appreciative.
Jamie: Do you think you’re happy? Dorothea Fields: Seriously? Look, wondering if you’re happy it’s a great shortcut to just being depressed.
Abbie Porter: Whatever you think your life is going to be like, just know, it’s not going be anything like that.
Jamie: Stop. Dorothea Fields: What? Jamie: Thinking that you know everything that’s going on. Dorothea Fields: No, I don’t. I just think that, you know, having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world.
Now it’s been more than two months since we were reminded to ensure physical distancing as a measure to prevent the spread of Covid-19 which has restricted our movements and created new challenges.
“Excuse me, I’ve been practising social distancing my entire life, these aren’t challenges.” I said to Rob, like an idiot.
I’ve been thinking about a particular effort of physical distancing of mine lately. Coming from a Javanese family (or any Indonesian family?), we often let our parents dictate our life decisions. They wanted us to get a degree in economics, climb the corporate ladder, an expensive wedding and eventually have children waaay before we could afford them.
Moving out of my family’s house wasn’t initially an attempt to be independent of my parents, although it was obvious that I wanted some freedom.
I’ve always wanted to go to art school for a degree so when I found out that I wasn’t fond of the one in Jakarta, I know there’ll be a good chance for me to spend my young adult life outside the capital. I was so excited.
I have a close relationship with my dad in my teenage years. He was still in his early 30s when I graduated high school. He had a cool job as a photographer even though his major was in physics and famous among my friends (he has long hair and a face that resembles bits of a few local celebrities). He kinda knew I would thrive later in life if I could make up my own mind. So he would pick up a fight with mom whenever she questioned my own choice including my school’s major.
So off I went to an art school in Bandung. Living from one rented room to another by myself. Had the freedom I wanted. All this while my parents paid for a roof over my head and the additional living costs of course and I’m grateful for that.
Then there was graduate school. Then the first jobs. Then the boyfriends. Then the proposal. Then any reasons really for me to stretch my stay in Bandung, for my freedom (the one that doesn’t involve being a well-funded failure on so-called academic career pathway in a state university).
It wasn’t about my parents until it was.
Fast forward to 2013, I went back to my family’s house after almost 10 years living by myself. It was pure hell, even more for my parents. I had to listen to my mom’s rant about everything I did/wear/said, even the way I seat on a chair? About her generation was the best and ours were weak, spoilt and entitled (you know the usual talk). We would fight over dinner, screaming or not talking for a week over silly things like the way I made the bed or I got the wrong towel for Rob when he spends a weekend. Even my dad was a different person, he becoming bapak-bapak it made me angry.
While there are certain advantages of living together with them, it is also pretty clear how this can hold me back. At their home, my parents had power over me. I felt pressure to conform to their sometimes outdated thinking. I usually spent the next hours or the rest of the day in a bad mood- making me extremely unproductive.
So when I got this teaching job in a newly-established university– with help from my highschool friend who works there– I found my way to finally move out again. The room was so small that to open and close the cupboard door I had to move a chair that had no other space. It was hella expensive compared to my last pavilion room in Bandung but street food vendors were just around the corner. My commute time was short I could practically went to a theatre, had dinner somewhere else, run errands or laundry and all finished before 9.30 PM. Life is good again.
It made me realise the only way to escape the need for my parents’ approval and a piece of sanity is to create a distance. A physical one. Something I maintain to this day.
Physical distance improved my relationship with my parents. Now, I made the conscious effort to spend quality time with them. It made me crave of their present. One of the best things about moving out? Much more headspace. Headspace is my oxygen!
Apart from my effortful physical distance from my parents in years, I am more accustomed to – and comfortable with – spending my time alone. I’m not shy but I’m socially anxious. I actively avoid get-togethers activities. I enjoyed going to the theatre alone. I reject invitations to have an after office coffee from coworkers. Because that just not relaxing to me.
The morning I officially went into self-quarantine I feel relaxed and kind of hopeful because I’m safe, my employer made the right decision and took good care of me and my colleagues. I stay energized for days. I sat in front of my laptop wrapping things up until noon. I cooked three times a day including my very first attempt of sambel terasi which was da boom.
The first week of quarantine was easy. So many of the conversations I had with colleagues have circled around how productive we were, as academic worker, working from home. Teaching using Classroom was cool. We were laughing at the messy laundry background or at the noise from our student’s kitchen/mom/chickens in our Meet sessions.
Reeled into the second week, Rob had a panic attack along with a severe GERD condition and we were forced to spend an evening at the ER in this Covid-19 referral hospital. This was our second ER. The first ER we visited rejected us as they were in a complete shut down following some Covid-19 positive cases in their hospital which were resulted in the tragic death of a nurse there.
It’s been daunting to try to getting my head around what happened that night. And for some time, I was so anxious by the prospect that we might have contracted the virus from our hospital trips. This stay-at-home order was a peril to Rob’s regime and he’s struggling under the weight of remote work (he had been working since he was 22 in the same industry, same working environtment). I guess he felt horrible and ashamed for feeling horrible.
Dissolve the image of me relaxing in my bed-office after a week of dilly-dally, replace it with the image of me hugging my pillow every night like a lost child, watching Rob who slept next to me to make sure he was breathing.
This virus hurt proportion of our incomes, I contemplated the risk of unemployment and frantically forecasting how we could stretch our savings. I’m so grateful we can afford to cover our rent, food and other luxuries such as proper neighborhood for our morning walk routine and to get our food supplies while avoiding crowd. Three weeks in quarantine actually felt marginally better (I think it had something to do with our newfound house rules including attending Sunday mass online). We also managed to create a little nook in our bedroom as a work station it’s so cozy.
On a final note, people with kids or more responsibilities than me, I bow down in respect. This physical-social distancing made me realise that I clearly wasn’t as independent as I thought I was. I want my mom.
x
Photos were taken during my morning walk routine around the neighbourhood. I never had any interest in naturesque visual compositions but hell it was therapeutic.
This post is how I tricked myself into writing/posting on this blog again soon. Like, tomorrow-morning soon. It would be odd to see a post titled “Quarantine Day 44” in a blog that went to radio silence for almost two years then that’s it, right? They said we are witnessing a critical time in history and we should keep a journal. I’m sold and it’s a long weekend (whatever that means in this uncertain WFH time) but it’s 6.29 PM and I have Kiki’s Delivery Service on pause.
I realized recently that while I do share a good amount of myself on Instagram (stories), on my blog I tend to write random posts that don’t have any focus. What I really feel would be more interesting, and as a self-affirmation exercise, is sharing things in my life currently. My new pair of shoes, a trip I’ve taken, a single outfit, my family. Maybe the shops that I’m loving, things I’ve got going on in my day-to-day, or even new project I’m working on.
Kalimera new logo that I made earlier today. Been thinking to update the website and upload things I’ve collected for several months. Hm.
My family had never understood what I want to be when I grow up. In fact, they’re still trying to figure it out for me until now. They sound more and more like those newsletter emails you got every week from LinkedIn.
The other day I took Uber analytic test as the second stage of application to become their city operational manager. I even tried to mastering pivot tables in two nights. Yeah, me, a woman who started to learn how to use =SUM formula in Microsoft Excel in the year of 2015.
Not long before that, in 2014 together with Rob, we founded our teeny tiny kitsch shop online. I have to understand how to set up an e-commerce website, front end, back end and a host administrative skills. However, ‘understand’ is the operative word. While possessing a working knowledge of e-commerce outside my design skills is helpful, I don’t need to be—and shouldn’t try to be—spectacular at everything.
Tips: when you chat with the 24/7 Dewaweb online support, my best ever recommendation for you is to pretend the whole time to be Jen Barber from IT Crowd.
This has been my experience my whole life. I’m too easily bored with anything. I don’t dedicated my time to a particular type of work. I can’t know just about one thing. I keep thinking of things with any connections, with any perspectives, and always leads to work that often personal.
Well, I guess I agree with Buzzfeed just this one time (gah!), that knowing a little of everything is often better than having one expert skill.
I’ll mow your lawn, clean the leaves out your drain
I’ll mend your roof to keep out the rain
I’ll hammer the nails, and I’ll set the stone
I’ll harvest your crops when they’re ripe and grown
I’ll pull that engine apart and patch her up ’til she’s running right
I’ll take the work that God provides
I have found myself thinking too much about death, not that I want to end my life or anything. It’s just what I believe has gotten me to this point is the fact that I’ve realized how easy we can leave this world.
I often experienced death of strangers that I saw on the article or social media from a curious perspective. While I accepted it as an inevitable part of life, I also thinking it can generate a great deal of terror of the unknown future is. Their death motivated me to explore deadly diseases, cause of most accidents, drugs, war or what environment challenges which may impact on our lives. I would read up and learn about them for weeks. On and on again, just to imagine if my time on earth will still be long.
Black Mirror’s San Junipero is truly-wonderfully bad dream for me. They said movies we cherish the most are not those that feel the farthest from our experience. They are the ones that—in the darkness and stillness of a room —reanimate the wonder and mystery of tiny chunk of the world we know.
Even the series have been a constant reminder that everything could be flicked off with the switch of a button, San Junipero kinda made me hopeful on the concept of life and death.
It’s convenient.
A haunting reminder to live every moment to the fullest.
p.s. I knew I wanted to post this since I first watched the series, but couldn’t shake the melancholy mood, lol
Never mind that your fellow woman friend is more a posted image or video than a person. You know she is a person, even what’s presented is a carefully constructed. It’s narrative, a story, a talking fantasy novel for a woman like you. Rest assured that its all made for the purpose perpetuating itself, just like how you love your make up every morning. Leaving you still hungry and nauseated.
But that’s OK.
Making a conscious effort in expressing anything true or beautiful or good or painful or joyous in any form, should have never been some sort of jokes for anyone who doesn’t walk in your shoes.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22)
You know when you have a dream about someone random and the next day, all day, you feel weird romantic feelings for them? You’ve had this experience, and thus you already know that the brain, life, consciousness, and existence are composed of way more than we are aware of. And while you may not buy into metaphysical, new-age woo-woo (like astrology) (but hey, you’re still reading), it might be time to get down with some woo. The next time you come across a new-age cure, healer, potentiality, or magick, I want you to act as if it’s true. It’s time for a lil adventure.
