A Nobel Peace Prize for the Indonesian President

Nobel Peace Prize Medal. Image is from here.

LENNON DESCRIBED HIMSELF and I perfectly right in his Imagine: we are dreamers.

My dreams are — oh you’re getting sick of reading this again and again — being a war correspondent and win a Nobel Peace Prize. I know those two seem somewhat contradictory, and they might not sound practical and realistic to many of you. But what can I say? I am a dreamer.

Even so, don’t worry, I’ve got a plan. You know, a dream without a plan is merely a wish, right. So this plan goes specifically for the Nobel Peace Prize ambition.

I’ve screened all Nobel Peace Prize winners from time to time to get a clearer picture of what these incredible people had done to deserve receiving one. Except for the 2009 winner, who was Barack Obama, and few others, I think all receivers had done tremendous works in bringing about peace, equality, and justice for the people at across the universe.

Look at the 14th Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Al Gore, Nelson Mandela, Jose Ramos-Horta, Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat, Mother Teresa, and Liu Xiaobo. They are the people who made countless efforts helping people and making the world a better place to live. They are the extraordinary people.

With all due respects to all the names I have mentioned above — you all are heroes — I need to say that I should find a way to get one myself. So I think I need to know how to get it.

Without belittling the meaning of the Nobel itself, I think these are the formulas to win a Nobel Peace Prize: you are basically just “nobody” who do the humanitarian-and-related works with all your heart and soul, gain trust from the society, receive a lot of coverages in the media because of your hard work and dedication, win it, keep doing the work. Or, you have an important position in your country [let's say you're a statesman], work and get paid — because that’s basically your job, some coverages in the media, do the work well, get exposed again, win.

After considering a thing and some, I think I’ll take the second order to win, it looks easier. But I know that if I desire to take the second path, I need to become the President of Republic of Indonesia, or at least the Minister of Foreign Affairs or Minister of Manpower. So I might need some years to get elected as a president or appointed as a minister.

Here’s my idea, that I hope neither my President nor Foreign Affairs Minister would steal it to save the Nobel Peace Prize for themselves:

Do you know that there are bunch of things you could do in Indonesia to bring about peace and justice? The nation poverty rate [2010 stat] is 13 percent or around 31 million people. Unemployment reaches 7.41 percent or about 8.59 million people. Tens of thousands people lost their homes and hopes to Lapindo mud ‘disaster’ in Sidoarjo, East Java. And look at the recent stat: 303 Indonesian migrant workers are facing serious charges including death penalty overseas, especially in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Indonesian government cited recently that some 22 in Saudi Arabia are waiting to be executed in near future.

Just earlier this week, Indonesian people were in mourn and enraged for Ruyati binti Saputi, a migrant workers from Bekasi, who was beheaded by sword in the western province of Mecca without notifications. The s**p*d Indonesian government did not have any idea that one of its citizen worked in Saudi Arabia was dying alone — they soon blamed Saudi Arabia for not sent them a notification.

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What’s the root of all evils?

Religion is the root of all evils.

If you don’t have the heart to watch the video, you can read this piece from the Jakarta Globe to know what the horrific video shows.

MY HEART CRIED seeing the sickening video showing a brutal attack on Ahmadiyah people. How those people, while chanting God’s name, killed others, in a very savage way. No, they are not humans, they are beasts.

We, Indonesians, are in mourn for the Black Sunday in Cikeusik, Banten, had claimed lives.

It’s only on Tuesday that the police arrested two in the attack. And oh my, and it’s only Tuesday, it’s still Tuesday for God’s sake, that another mob of Muslim attacked two churches in Temanggung, Central Java.

Yes. Fanatical Muslim mobs were, as reported so far, behind both brutalities. Apparently, some Muslims in this country ponder that their way of practicing Islam is the best and most correct of all. For them, those who don’t practice Islam the way they do are deserved to be lynched.

In the Ahmadiyah’s case, those who attacked believed that Ahmadis had tainted Islam. In their eyes, Ahmadiyah is not Islam as the people believe in different last prophet. And while in the case of churches, some hardliners are sure that non-Muslims are infidels that are halal to be bullied.

They believe that that’s what God wants, and thus, by doing what “God wants” they could get in to God’s heavens someday.

Of course, there are rumours on some other possible scenarios behind the attacks too. Such as there are “certain groups” actually planned it, and ordered [read: paid] people to hold the attacks.

But no. My post is not going to talk about rumours.

I have this question in mind when I read arguments on Twitter yesterday. There were some debates among Tweeples, besides on how slow the government is to take a concrete action processing the killings, they also fussed about religions.

A famous liberal Muslim activist tweeted: “Religion is the root of all evils. Full stop.” Apparently, he’s quoting Dawkins.

I stopped and stared, asked myself: is it, is it really religion the root of all evils?

I have been believing in God and a religion my whole life. But I cannot see any evils dwell inside me — well, maybe once when I cheated on an exam, but only that! Cheating an exam, not killing or lynching people. What about you, do you believe in religions or even practicing one devotedly? You think you’re a beast who could torture others because they don’t practice the same rituals as you do?

What about millions other believers [both in God and religions]?

I could only remember myself then tweeted: “I don’t think religion is the root of all evils. EXTREMISM slash FANATICISM is.”

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This morning The Smiths and narcism

MY SHUFFLED-MODE iTunes played The Smiths’ There is A Light That Never Goes Out this morning. I sang along to the song as I remember the lyrics by heart. It is funny how some lines of the lyrics always make me chuckle.

And if a double-decker bus crushes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die. And if a ten ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure the privilege is mine.

I honestly think that that’s just an idiotic notion!

And  if a double-decker bus crushes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die… NOT. Thanks, but NO, thanks.

I don’t know, probably because I was never really in love or had any serious relationship so I can’t feel the ‘pleasure’ of being crushed by a double-decker bus with some guy. Well, either that or, I just love myself [much] more than anyone or anything else in the universe!

Let us be honest, don’t you think it’s saddening to find yourselves becoming more and more selfish [slash/] narcissistic each day? [If it is fine to call having an excessive love toward oneself as selfishness or narcism, surely].

It wasn’t long ago that I asked my friend about her display picture on BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter. Ulma, this friend of mine, has these provocative avatars from Adbusters. Adbusters is Vancouver based anti-consumerism magazine. Their aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way people will live in the 21st Century.

Her Twitter profile image says:  ”It’s time to reject our culture slide’s to narcism.”

How narcissistic are we these days? As my friend asked me: check your cellphones, how many smiling face pictures or even videos of yours do you have in them?

I would ask you Facebookers and Tweeples: how many photo albums have you uploaded on Facebook so far? How many photos have your friends tagged you on Facebook? [some friends have more than a thousand photos on Facebook!]. And did you take your own picture eating a glass of frozen yogurt and upload it on Twitter and write: this froyo I just bought is oh so damn good!

Why would people tweet some photographed-froyo? I don’t know, probably they want to help Sour Sally promoting its products or honestly amazed by how good the froyo is or probably… because they want people to know that they snacking some expensive frozen yogurt? So that the whole city knows that they are COOL people who follow Jakarta’s trends.

According to my New Oxford American Dictionary, narcissism is “excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one’s physical appearance. Psychology extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.”

Do you think eating a glass of frozen yogurt would make you look admirable?

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To survive millions of Jono(s)

PART  ONE

THE GLOBE’S TUESDAY’s ‘Most Read’ article dazzled me. Well, ‘dazzled’ is probably not the right word, let me simply put it: left me speechless.

The article was not about legislators’ overseas trips to South Africa or London, nor was it a story about some 103-meter span of road that collapsed suddenly near Jakarta’s Tanjung Priuk port. It is a ‘My Jakarta’ written by a contributor to the Globe: Gizelle Shore. Her interview was with Jono: a cheating husband.

Yes, you concluded it right, a cheating husband dazzled me.

Jono’s story is an old tale I have heard hundreds of times, but still strangely surprised me. It surprised me to find how most men could take almost anything ‘easily’, while most women couldn’t.

In the interview, Jono, a 42-year-old business planner for a private bank who has been married for 14 years, said that he had been cheating on his wife for the past seven years.

“She [my wife] just started acting crazy. Like she called the security guard at my office building and asked him to check whether my car was there or not… It was just so frustrating,” Jono said.

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Investing “monsters” for the future

MY DEAREST friend, Irene, once told me that she would never give birth to “another monster to this world.”

What she meant by another monster is: a baby, a child, girl or boy, who consumes water, air, electricity, uses tissues, chops trees, pollutes air and drinks gas from its tanks. “If I really want one, someday, I think I will just adopt him/her. Earth cannot bear for another monster,” she said.

By any reasons, environmental, psychological, or financial, women such as Irene — a 29 year-old single lady who doesn’t really think of kids, marriage, and family — is growing in this developing country of Indonesia. Intelligent women today [raised with good education], mostly those in big cities, do not want to surrender their twenties to some husbands. They want to pursue careers, enjoy lives, and explore the world.

Do you find him/her cute? Cut this from Babies trailer on youtube

And in this country, pending marriages is the same as postponing pregnancies.

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