Pride, prejudice, zombies & judgmental me

I NEED to make a confession before continuing writing this. Okay, here it goes: Dear Lord and readers, I must confess that I am one judgmental bitch. Please forgive me.

My heart jumped when I saw three novels in Kinokuniya bookstore yesterday: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies & Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters & Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.

Written by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith & Jane Austen and Ben H Winters & Jane Austen and Steve Hockensmith.

Elizabeth Bennet with a zombie smile

THEY THRILLED ME, really. I was so HAPPY to see them! I know it’s late talking about these zombies and sea monsters now — a friend of mine has finished reading the Zombies some times ago — but what can I say? I just saw them yesterday. And overheard my heart whispered: “Anita, finally someone fixed them!”

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House lawmakers, what are you making?

Another piece on respective House lawmakers I wrote yesterday. Yeah, they are unbelievable, what can I say? They haven’t passed any bills for almost EIGHT months! Will probably write something, my own P.O.V, on this.

ANITA RACHMAN

Pledge of 70 New Laws for Indonesia Slashed to 17

Having passed no legislation since being inaugurated in October, the House of Representatives has scaled back its ambitious goal of passing 70 laws this year, according to the panel that sets the legislative calendar for the House.

The national legislature may have to make do with just 17 priority bills for 2010, said Ignatius Mulyono, the chairman of the House Legislation Body.

“We are going to concentrate on those 17 bills this year, I guess,” he said. “It is pretty hard to tell lawmakers to do their job of legislating these days.”

Ignatius, a Democratic Party lawmaker, said on Thursday that through the end of May, the House had forwarded just six bills to plenary screening sessions, including a long-awaited protocol bill. By the middle of June, he promised, 17 draft bills would have been pushed through initial plenary screening — meaning that the draft would be completed — before being moved to commissions for deliberation.

Ignatius also confirmed that the House had so far passed no legislation this year, although he said he was hopeful that the remaining 53 bills on the to-do list would at least get a plenary screening by July.

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Around Paris in a day!

I WENT to Paris!

I previously wrote this post in Indonesian language — based on my dear spoiled brother Ayos Purwoaji’s request. But here, you’re going to read the English version. You can find the Indonesian version on his blog here.

PHOTOS BY: Anton Muhajir, Edy Can, and Imung Yuniardi.

Click on the photos to view larger images

Paris, yes, you are such a beauty!

If someday there’s a man comes to and tells you that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, all you have to do is simply this: TRUST him!

Although I have never been to London, or Brasilia, or New York, or… places in Egypt, but I am pretty sure that he is not lying when he says Paris is one gorgeous city.

Three weeks ago, seven friends of mine and I went to Paris. We headed to Paris from Amsterdam — we spent some three weeks (April – May) in Hilversum, the Netherlands, to study new media.

We did not have much money to travel nicely to Paris; we only relied on our scholarship’s funding from Nufic – Nesso. But, bet ya, we have this spirit of “hell yeah, we should be kicking Paris!” that finally brought us to the city!

There are several options to travel to Paris from Amsterdam. You have airplanes, trains, and buses. We chose the last option, Eurolines buses service, because that was the cheapest and the most reasonable option for us. Each of us only needed to pay 85 euro for the trip, yes, two ways. It was a good deal compared to Thalys – express train – that would have cost us 130 euro for merely one way.

We did not check planes because we did not want to deal with those immigration stuff and a long queue for international flights. Especially for us: some dark non-western people. Bus was the best option, despite the sad fact that we should spend some six to seven hours on it.

A Eurolines Service — the bus!

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Is buying a book = shopping?

*smirking*

SOME FRIENDS of mine began to ask, “Anita, what did you buy this week? How’s the 365 Days Without Shopping going?”

Friends, proudly telling, Anita did NOT buy anything this (past) week the last stuff she bought was a Swatch (for her daddy) at the Schipol airport — it was on Sunday before she waved the Netherlands goodbye (yep, duty free ).

I did NOT buy anything this week, for real! Well, or almost for real. I bought two comic books on Thursday, tho.

And that, leads me to my very important question: is buying [comic] books shopping?

My editor advised me to firstly define: shopping. She said it is better to not go so harsh toward myself, I should still appreciate myself and the works I’ve done. I am still allowed to reward myself with something fancy (as long as not a weekly reward!).

“Also, make some plans on how many times you could go to cinema or having pricey dinner-outs with friends, things like that,” she added.

Hum, undecided, YET.

I want to go very very strict with this resolution, really. But well, of course I cannot skip movies, concerts, CDs, books, DVDs, good food. Well, okay, I better set some definitions and shopping-diet lists by now.

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Ethnic minorities hardly visible in the Dutch media

Anita Rachman, Anta Kusuma & Jackson Simanjuntak

*A training assignment for RNTC

Place where Van Gogh was killed/Photo from Wikipedia

WHEN a Moslem extremist gunned down the Dutch film director, Theo van Gogh, in November 2004, media in the Netherlands then turned to look for knowledge and perspective about Islam, Sharmila Badloe, coordinator of the Media Prof Network with Mira Media, said.

“Most of the media [here] only have the ‘white’ perspective, they don’t know about Islam. But then they think [to write a comprehensive story on the murder] they need to know about it,” she said.

To promote the importance of involving professionals from various ethnic backgrounds in the mainstream media is the core work and objective of Mira Media established since 1986.

Mira media has committed to bring diversity and pluralism in the media organizations in the Netherlands. Because even in a modern country like the Netherlands, pushing media companies to employ qualified ethnic media professionals is not easy.

“Intelligence does not have something to do with discrimination. You can have a high IQ, but you can be still very narrow-minded. Discrimination, it’s something you cannot totally get rid of”

Sharmila estimated the number of media professionals from non-western background in the Netherlands media is very tiny, “less than five percents,” she cited.

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