APOLOGIA : A Father’s Letter to A Son

Dear Indigo,

It’s lousy, isn’t it ? This thing we call life.

Somebody once said, “Life’s a bitch, because if it’s a slut, then it would be easy..” I laughed at that time, but now I am finding it hard to understand what’s so funny about it.

It all began when earlier this year I, - your father, was positively confirmed beyond doubt that I have HIV. Courtesy of some bad choices that I made in the past, my body had finally succumbed to the harsh realities.

You know what’s hard about it, Son ? It’s not the fact that I am suffering. Or even dying, for that matter. No. It’s because I may not be there on your graduation day. It’s because I may not sit there on the couch, waiting for you to introduce me to your first girlfriend. And it’s because I may not stand beside your mother, posing for some family picture, carrying your first-born child on my hand.

At that time, I thought I passed it. I mistakenly believed that my grief is over, safely sealed, so I can get on with life and prepare to what I can do to make our family’s circumstances better before my time comes. And boy, was I wrong.

For one day before my birthday, at the 11th of July, you were confirmed to have autism. Why so, in the name of the God that I worship ? Why you ? How many more blows have I to take ? And why should my family bear the legacy of my sins ?

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As I write this, Son; my eyes are filled with tears. Your condition hit me much harder than my disease. Come to think about it, I just can’t comprehend the hard realities you’ll have to face, the confusion you’ll have to bear and the wounds that will inevitably come your way.

I can go on and on about this. Yet I know that I have to worry hurry and get to my point. For I really do not know when will you read this. Will I still be around then ? I simply can not predict what happens.

Here’s my message. Your father was a scoundrel. My life was a blatant embodiment of the word “joyride”, marked by short, thrilling bursts of brilliance, but followed by sharp and sickening downward turns. Hence the consequences that I have to bear afterwards.

I want you to understand, Son, that I’m sorry it happened that way. I apologize that I’m not the man I can potentially be. I beg your forgiveness that I do not have even half of the life that I previously planned for you and the family.

But am I implying that not for one moment you should live recklessly like that ? Not at all. Because by now, you should have some idea that I am not your unusual next-door-dad. On the contrary, I want you to live life to the fullest and inhale its exhilarating draughts. The only difference I want you to strive for is Victory. In the end, I want you to overcome the world and whatever life has in store for you. Oh, you may need to bear your battle scars, but they will be like some shining badges of courage that are there for you to be proud of.

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It’s sickening how grief can break you. That’s why I want to close this short letter in a positive tone.

Don’t be afraid, my dear Indigo. I do not have any plan to leave this world soon. I know that I have no idea when will I depart to answer His call ; - but to combine Bon Jovi and The Psalms -, “until I’m 6-feet under, I’m gonna live while I’m alive”, for “this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it”

And when finally I’m not beside you at whatever point in your life, just take a look around, and find me in every bright rays of sunlight, every unusual forms of cloud, every extraordinarily shiny flowers, and every summer rain. If you look hard enough, perhaps I’ll even be there in some lousy notes of Debbie Gibson’s songs ( your mom hates her, by the way ).

Whatever it is, rest assured that I will not abandon you. Alive or not, I’ll slay whatever dragons come your way. Come what may…..

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( On January 2008, the writer was confirmed to have HIV. His son, to whom this post is addressed and dedicated, is declared to have autism 7 months afterwards )

PLURK : Musings of Fibonacci, Social Portrayal and Deconstructionism

Being a writer who spends a lot of his time in front of the computer, I make a heavy use of Internet for research purpose. Lately, with the genesis of so-called Web 2.0, I enthusiastically made a plunge into it with networking as a goal in mind.

One of the newest social network that I joined is Plurk. This post is not meant to explain what Plurk is, but rather to elaborate my personal experience in using it, - and yes, my strange, incoherent ramblings about it.

Assuming that you as the readers are already familiar with Plurk and its concept, let me first state that so far I’ve been involved in a love/hate relationship with it. What started out as an ordinary but excellent way to network with people suddenly soured when some “buddies” made jokes about HIV. Oh, I know that some of them didn’t actually meant it, because they didn’t made jokes directly about HIV itself, but rather what the acronym stands for. Still, for me it showed a lack of respect to other people who may have it. This is described best by the following arguments of one of the people when I stated my objection ( Note : I paraphrased, and names are omitted ) :

( Me ) : Please respect other people. By making a joke of the HIV acronym, you are making light of other people’s trouble. How would you feel if somebody said a joke about what C.I.N.A. stands for ?

( X ) : CINA ! If I’m a Javanese, should I be offended if somebody said a Javanese jokes. Will I be that retarded ? Sheesh !!

At this point, I was really angry. But that’s all in the past. All I said was that : No, Mr. X, you don’t have to be offended … But I’ll be damned if that means that I can tell Javanese jokes as much as I like. You may not be angry, but I have to think about million other Javanese others who may well have finer feelings than you do.

But I digress. It’s just an illustration of how Plurk made me feel. Good potential, but also comes with considerable shortcomings in the same package. I blame it on their Karma system. While understandably it’s an excellent way to induce traffic to their site; at some points it may excite some otherwise-idle users to gain Karma by making meaningless and disturbing plurks.

The way is now paved. Following are what I muse about Plurk.

1. Fibonacci numerical sequence never fails to fascinate and frustrate me at the same time. Fascinating in its beauty, but frustrating in its complexity. This is also exactly the way Plurk makes me feel now. It’s pretty, in the sense of quality contents scattered here and there, the neat way of timeline presentation and also the greater intimacy you get in the conversational thread ( rather than just replying in the generic timeline a la Twitter ). It’s also frustrating because all that appealing benefits are sometimes so rare and clouded by the junks. In fact, from time to time I do feel that searching for good plurks is akin to looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.
2. That being said, I think Plurk is an excellent portrayal of our society condition. When I protested about some aforementioned offensive plurks, I couldn’t help but think : maybe this is just the way our society is…. Maybe, just maybe, our world ( read : country ) has indeed grown so selfish and shameless to gain self-indulgence ( read : karma ) at the expense of other people’s feelings. And if it indeed is a good place where I can stare at the most graphic and descriptive ( however brutal ) picture of our culture, then I have a really excellent tool for research.. !
3. But the ultimate reason why I still love Plurk until now is that for me, Plurk is a honest and actual manifestation of deconstructionism. You see, as I man, I am not perfect and never will be. Plurk forces me to consider some issues and values I would not even think to challenge otherwise. For instance, this question popped out in my mind : Does it really matter what other people think about your condition ? Does it really matter if for them, it’s nothing serious ?. And I have to say that, in answering them, indeed I am pushed to think hard and grope deep inside myself. In the end, similar to the greatest appeal of Deconstructionism as a school of thought; Plurk holds a potential of making a person a better man… !

So there you go… Rather incoherent, isn’t it ? I told you… But I really am till struggling to understand this weird animal. All I can say is, if you roll Fibonacci, social portrayal and deconstructionism into one; you’ll surely end up with a creature that is ( as Mr. Joe Satriani likes to put it ) strange / beautiful. I don’t know about you, but I surely am enjoying myself watching and playing with it… !

NOTE : This post is imported from my Main Blog, and as such, do not have any working links. Please visit http://sanewords.wordpress.com instead.

A Strange Nation We Have

Let’s see, what should I blog today ? Life wasn’t so special lately, excepting that new PC I got as an early birthday present ( I can’t thank you enough, dear Wife.. ).

I was bored, actually. Bored to write, bored to do anything. In fact, if I can concede to you my readers, I feel that there’s just nothing exciting enough in life anymore. No, I am not intentionally being morbid. It’s just that bland taste you got in the tip of your tongue when you just ate something tasteless.

But last week, I was suddenly yanked awake by several strange things happening in Indonesia, our country with which I am engaged in a love/hate relationship. One of those things, sadly, involved a person closely related to me.

First, there’s this man Joko Susilo from Nganjuk, a small town in East Java. Apparently, he made an outrageous claim to our President that he has the proverbial Midas Touch necessary to turn water into fuel. Strangely, the President seemed to buy it. He sent the man away with an order to report back within an agreed-upon period of time. This came to the news when the man failed to keep the appointment with the President and reportedly went missing, only to be found up lying sick on a hospital bed by ( here comes the interesting part ) Densus 88 : a special counter-terrorism squad of Indonesian army.

Don’t you all agree with me and find it strange ? No matter how hard I tried, I got a big contradiction in my head. If this man really can do what he claimed, how come nobody in the world ever heard of him ? Why did he got dismissed as a con-man when he made a presentation of his “invention” to a prominent, authoritative university in Indonesia ?

On the other hand, if he’s nothing but a complete hoax; how could the First Man of our country buy it at all ? What made him so important that the President sent a special counter-terrorism squad to guard him ? For once, I really could not guess at this answer. By the time I write this, he is still in the recovery process of whatever mysterious disease he is suffering now. I am waiting in anticipation for the continuation of this story.

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Second thing is the rather more stupid, blatant lie from a man named Achmad Zaini from I-don’t-know-where. This man claimed that he has fund as much as 18,000 trillion of IDR ( I don’t even bother to calculate the currency conversion to USD ), which would mean 35 times of Indonesia’s country yearly budget !! He told the media that he gained possession of the fund when he received inheritance from his deceased parents, in the form of bulk gold stored abroad, complete with collateral advantages and all.

This second man did not impress me as much as the first one I mentioned above. He just disgusted me. Had what he said is true, he will be richer than Mr. Bill Gates itself !! He will be the richest man in the whole damn world !! Are you trying to tell me that you’re that rich, yet somehow keep yourself off from the attention of international media, government and other powerful parties ? Mr. AZ, you have to invent better lie than that even just to fool a 10-year-old kid !!

But he, indeed, made me angrier. One of the things he planned to convince people is by staging this so-called press conference in Bandung. One of the vendors for the said event is my Father-in-law. I honestly didn’t know when he told me and my wife that he was going to Bandung for some business; that he was dealing with this man. To cut a long story short, AZ and his cronies just flatly refused to pay his bills due with a lot of excuses. I don’t care how plausible his excuses may seem to be ( My father-in-law told me that it was because there’s some “technical difficulties” ); if you are that fuckin’ rich, you just don’t hold back any payment that you have to make !!

( Wheew, that was the first time I use a swear word in this blog ). I am so DAMN ANGRY !! See, another story has it that when the event got dismissed by the police for failing to produce a permit, the person-in-charge ( one of AZ’s team ) was put behind the bars for a while. Now, my Father-in-law heard that he could buy his way out by paying IDR 10 M ( 10 juta ) in hard cash. Even THAT was not being taken care of Achmad Zaini, the self-proclaimed Godfather. How could you let your trusted man suffer like that if you have some money, hey mister ? Don’t let me catch you in the street, I am DAMN INDIGNANT !!

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Thirdly, a well-known successful motivator threw away some crisp bills of money out of a lightweight-airplane in Serang, last Sunday. There’s really nothing wrong with this. But I do protest. As a motivator, he surely understood that there’s nothing motivating in giving people money easily like that. If our government’s BLT program was being asked by so many people because “it is not educational to give them fish. Teach them how to fish instead”; then how could you do something like that ? When I heard this story, my respect for Mr. TDW just fell flat on the ground. He instantly lost his credibility, I personally reckon.

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That’s about it. This may not be a nice post to read for some people. I didn’t even try to make it coherent. This once, just this once, please allow me to use this blog as a media to vent my frustrations of what happening in Indonesia. Underline how true is this : Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction !!

Life Supercharged..!

It’s been so long indeed since I’ve been this happy. Not even on Christmas. No, not even that. Not even close. This is how it came that I feel this way…

See, my old PC was tired. Long and numerous have been the discussions between my wife and me to replace it with a new one. However, the business of living and daily worries have a nasty habit of creeping up and postpone such useful investment. In the end, she was never replaced ( By she, I mean the old PC, not the wife ). She just sat there, tired and slow; but ever-faithful to help me do whatever I need to do, be it working or gaming. I even got to the point where I told myself that this PC would only got replaced when she literally just stop working, and not before. You know, after all they say that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. And a fat lady she is, indeed.

Until last Friday. Until suddenly my wife came home smiling; - telling me the news that she hit an unexpected jackpot that finally she’d like to buy me a new PC. And that she wouldn’t take no as an answer. Being pompous, I had my pride. I made sure that we had some necessary arguments first before agreeing to the recommended solutions from her. She had this list ready where she list down all the CPU specs that she wanted, complete with the estimated price. I, on the other hand, tried to argue that maybe a desktop PC isn’t what we need. Maybe what we need more is a new laptop. With that kind of budget, who knows, maybe we can look for a used one. But in the end, I found that I just had to concede and admit defeat. It was simply impossible to find a good used laptop with our budget. It wasn’t easy, though. I was dreaming of a new laptop when I slept that nite.

The day after, we went to a shopping centre famous ( or should I say notorious ? ) for its computer-related products, legal and illegal. We found a good store with a nice man for a seller, sat our asses down, sipped the complimentary glass of mineral water, and began the crucial negotiation. Pushed by desire but pulled by budget-constraint, I settled for a CPU with Intel Dual Core 1.8 Ghz processor and 1 GB DDRAM 2 memory. Not willing to be defeated in arguments two days in a row, I forced him to gave me a brand new, shining Simbadda speaker and subwoofer system. After going around, we finally went home bringing that new machine nicely packed.

Now, if you allow me, just let me skip the gruesome part of formatting the drive and data moving from my old machine. For obvious reasons, any writer who also happens to be a tech fan just won’t write about that part. Maybe one little complaint I’d like to log here is that I lament the fact that it gets increasingly complex to do the installation process of any newer OS.

That being said, my new CPU is now running Windows Vista Ultimate. It got me pessimistic at first as Vista is so resource-consuming, what with its shiny animation and all. But again, boy was I underestimating my own weapon : the new Dual Core processor paired with the DDRAM. I am not going to dwell in the technical side ( It’s a domain of my other blog ) but this is the point where I said that I am now feeling euphoric as I mentioned in the beginning of this post. Just imagine, as I write this post, my computer is running Winamp , Windows Live Writer ( a blog editor ), Windows Live Mail ( my default email client ), Last.fm software, Digsby ( a feature-packed but heavy-as-hell IM software ), Absolute Privacy ( a budgeting software, IE 7 ( my default browser ), AND Football Manager 2008 ( a game almost as heavy as AutoCAD software - the greatest PC game of all, by the way ) all at the same time !! No strike that; all of those at the same time with no system “hiccups” whatsoever !! ( see my desktop pic, look at those programs sitting beautifully in the Windows taskbar ).

Wicked. There’s no other word for it. A badass myself, I’ve had my share of past where I indulged on a lot of things just to get high. Let me tell you, my friend, I am never as high as I am now. My life is now supercharged !!

P.S. : This post is lovingly dedicated to my wife, Leonnie Flora Merinsca. My strong wife, personal Hera and angel incarnate. Dosvedanya, mi Inamorata….

Surreal Requiem : A Novel ( Work In Progress ) - Part III

A LOVE LETTER OF A CANNIBAL : An Interlude

Dear Butterfly,

Are you there ? Wherever there is ? Are you there, crossing your feet on top of each other, sipping your coffee while observing the sky from behind those cat-eye glasses of yours ?

3 days, 8 months and 11 years. That’s exactly how long since the last time I’ve seen you. You see, I’ve been counting. I’ve been counting my days since I walked out of your door that Sunday evening. And wondering. What happened ? What happened to our warm bubble of lovemaking ? What happened to turn a butterfly back to what it used to be, - an ugly caterpillar ? Reverse metamorphosis ? Unable to find out, I did likewise. I regressed to mankind’s most primal existence. I dug deep to its most primitive desire. I feed.

It’s been downhill since. Life after you was black. Black. Bleak. Dark. Naked. Torn. I can only see two colors now : Black and Red. And because red is the only bright hue I can see in this otherwise insipid monochrome damned world of mine, I got addicted to it. And because there is nothing redder than blood. The beautiful crimson. Once tasted, forever hooked.

I wonder how does it feel like ? Sitting on the lap of somebody who betrayed your closest one ? Prowling around on the green grass like two carefree children who escaped their mother’s vigilant attention ? Basking in the orange rays of Singaporean dusk, I bet treason tasted good then, eh ? You see, what dumbfounded me was, - and constantly is, what was on your mind ? Why would you do such thing ? Broken promises ? Unsung odes ? I searched and searched and searched, until it hit me. It’s just a plain, blatant, stinking backstabbing at its most ugliest.

They say fight fire with fire. Would a fire be hot enough to consume the vile stench of what you did ? When you kill someone, the best way to avoid the stinky decomposition fumes is by eating the body. See the logic now ? I do not eat to hide the traces. I feast on the glorious vermillion of blood and meat and eliminates the obnoxious smell at one stroke.

In a way, what I’ve been doing is searching. I’ve been searching for that critical point where our universe was bent into an unrecognizable shape. Answers. Reasons. Motives. Explanations. Triggers. Did I start the doomed chain reaction myself ? Was it some involuntary decision of mine that somehow created a different, twisted perception to you ? And searched I did.

Even until I found you myself. Even until I chew on your finger one by one. Even as portions of our limbs are joined together in my grinder to create the most tantalizing and delectable meat paté you’ve ever had. I won’t stop, my dear butterfly. If I can not bend heaven, then I will stir hell for an answer. And before I can do that, I will have to pass the ultimate border of all : death itself. Oh, I’ll do it gladly enough. We’ll do it together, remember ? I will die asking, slowly, smiling. Looking into diminishing glow of life in your pretty eyes.

Evernote : Your Life, Lock, Stock and Barrel

I always struggle with organizing issue. There are so many interesting bits and pieces of life I stored that I keep on forgetting where to find them. This is a frustrating issue, not to mention my own information fetish where I tend to keep anything worth mentioning, sometimes just as a keepsake.

Enter Evernote. Being a free software and web service ( for now, at least ), it is my personal Messiah in my quest for information. It does its job perfectly by functioning as a vault where I can keep all my infos ( notes ) in one central place. The ability to make multiple notebooks also enabled me to classify my notes into any system I see fit. I can make one for family matters, for example. Or I can forget about content, and make one according to its content format ( my image notebook ).

Totally great and maybe underrated feature of Evernote is its ability to search for some text, including text contained within an image ( JPEG file, for instance ). This is excellent, as some information will be readily available from that pic I took with my digicam. I just don’t have to re-enter the information manually.

It also employs the contemporary system of classification by using tags instead of categories. Supporter of tags will cherish this as it would mean multiple search method for one single item. By synchronizing your local client and its web site, it also give you a backup if your local data gets a problem ( My wife will love this feature ). One complaint, if any, is that it’s still currently in Beta and you need an invitation to use its service. You can register for one, though it gets faster if somebody just sends you one directly. I will give 5 invitations for any of you who live any comments ( That’s total 5, for this blog and my parent blog ).

Alternatively, you can download the client and use it locally. There is even a client for your mobile phone, though I haven’t tested it for I don’t like working long with my cellphone.

All in all, Evernote is an excellent way to store your informations. It does what it does simply without necessary hassles. It handles your life to you on a silver plate : lock, stock and barrel.

NOTE : This post is imported from my main blog, and as such, do not have any working links. Please visit http://sanewords.wordpress.com instead.

On Life Mistakes

“A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” (George Bernard Shaw)

I raised my brow a bit reading this quote. Not because I disagreed or anything, but because I have firsthand experience of what it means to spend your spare time making mistakes. I am of the same opinion of Shaw when he said that it could not be compared with a dull, bland lifetime that you spend in living a blameless life. However, I have to remind you that learning experiences derived from making mistakes is not a route that I recommend for all people. It could be uncomfortable, painful or even destructive for some people.

Why ? Someone might be tempted to ask. I believe that basically people are different in personality, - and ultimately, destiny. Some people with a certain type of personality tend to make a lot of mistakes as a part of growing process. Others, on the other hand, just seem never to fall into the same trap. My brother falls neatly into this category. No matter how complex his situation seems to be, he instinctively chose the most correct options. Now, this may be a bit as trivial as avoiding a juvenile fistfight, or more profound life decision such as deciding not to smoke tobacco.

Being on the other pole, early on in my life, I made a point about committing all the mistakes there were and learning ( sometimes a very long process; the learning part, not the making mistakes one ) from them. Am I now being regretful ? Not really. Yes, there are one or two decisions that I wished I could undo from my past ( I even dreamt about pressing Ctrl + Z for them ), but overall I also believe that I could not be in a position where I am now had I not committed them. In other words, I may not be a writer I am now, or a father of three adorable angels I now have; if I lived as holy as my parents would like. And I am thankful now. For what I am and what I have now; and for the mistakes that I made. I am made a better man through them by the God that I believe.

Not to say that my experience is without tears of course. These days, I pray as hard as I could that someday I can be back from a medical lab and coming out negative somehow. I still have that haunting nightmares of leaving my children earlier than expected because of HIV. But I am content for now. As twisted as it may sound, having the virus carries some certain blessings of its own. People shower me with attention they even fight about who of them is gonna drive me for an interview. I thank you all. I am convinced that this condition is a venue where ( if I allow it ) I could stand up, hold my head up high and give something back to my environment and community.

So to get back to the original quote; yes, a life spent making mistakes most likely would be more useful than life spent doing nothing; with one catch : not always.