Bronze Menopause

Bright lights, dim insights.
Merry go-round, turning in frown.
Contently disappearing towards sanctions we've created ourselves.
Moving on to pack our bags for an uninsured destination.

- R.U.S.
Jakarta, 30 June 2006


I.
The Lord may have blessed this piety creature with warmth and inner happiness. Couple hours worth of suiting valuables in the suitcase did'nt let anything less than better happened to him. Coming back to the infinite place made the mask torn apart. The face covered with mold and shadows was no longer there, on the contrary it had esqusite features unharmed upon the hardship through track and fields. Familiar auras gladly awaken him from the grim reaper's basement. He felt as he was human again. Slowly, the expression around began to sooth his heart. A faint but meaningful smile caught the still frame in his soul. White, carefree, authentic, and overwhealmed was the theme today. Travelling past midnight back to the habitat where life was created and learned. The sail boat was full of true colours, he laid back and wished to the Almighty to give him memory of this exact moment everytime thunder striked, flood soared, or hunger prevailed.

II.
The nutshell where he began early new steps was in visual distance. Immediately, he rhetorically asked himself why should Peter Pan leave Neverland? Undoubtly, he knew the answer. Neccessity. The only thing that was still in question is what sort of neccessity? Two glowing trees whose branches and leaves provided shelter in rainy and fiery days was there to seek permission indulging their own exitement of long awaiting. He embraced both of them and wondered for a second whether unconditional love did exist, the second after, he knew he was having schizophrenic sequences for having such a thought. Inside the nutshell, everything he touched, smelled, or saw had this distinct recognizable pattern. An eternal world inside the greater universe. The humid temperature above and the flat mirroring surface beneath was things he had took for granted was actually unappreciated luxury all these times. Until now, he may never recover from his internal guilt of bringing new ambience into camping season the past year.

III.
The bird was supposed to be chirping. Enjoying the fine weather, herding together, nesting, and hunting worms for the cold winter. To his very surprise, his flock was disentangled in their own problems. Adding to such shock, they choose to flew South, seperately. Fortunately, he was no longer prone to such disenfrenchised gatherings. The camp down the big island had desensitize enough to such a level of threshold. He pronouced the phenomena as "social frigidity". He suddenly reliazed that the big pond down the courtyard was half empty. The few left out, had a talk with him. Nothing was remotely enlighting about their conversations. Nature has a complex way of sorting things out for you. If forest destruction could guarrentee orangutans to be given a more decent life in conservatories, then illegal logging is the ultimate means. In his eyes, dissappointment was no where to be found. But, pragmatism and an enchanced sense of reality was certainly visible. He knew it was a cycle of life itself. A process which is'nt limited to clustered locations or vacuum spaces. Fluid as water, subtle as air, hard as rock. Whatever you call it, Mothernature is definitely saying hello to all of us newly mature creatures.

Consumer Stroller

Grocery shopping. Though the eyes of Eastern masculinity is an unacceptable behavior, although it sure is a well-established chore for other groups. Opposing the view above, I actually consider grocery shopping as a neutral activity, without any impositions from gender roles. And please, don't argue that at a certain age you have to actually follow those perscribed roles. Buying something for yourself surely can't imply your level of machoism.

Back in Jakarta, I was really a big fan of accompanying Mom or Grandma into supermarket chains when the ritual family outing day to mall came. When the rest of the male species in my family (dad, bro, grandpa) seemed to scramble to other directions, I stood my ground. It was really fun for me. I could grab everything from the rack, mostly I choose imported stuff that was way too expensive thanks to our dears tax officials. I did this maybe, since I was 4/5 years old until now. So, when I moved to Brisbane it was quite fun doing the shopping myself. Well, there are some downsides since I no longer can take anything in the store and not to mention having to arrange my own budget. But, overall it was great. Picking the kinds of meat, the spices, and creatively thinking how to create an edible dish out of that.

Today was another day of grocery shopping. We grab everything we needed and even some (a lot) that we wanted but did'nt need. After nauseating a bit thanks to the "Proudly Made In Australia" stickers on the labels, me and my housemate went to the cashier. We were quite shocked when the digital display showed a 3 digit number when our trolly still was half full. In the end, a brand new record was spent: A$142.21. Okay, let ask an expert on foreign exchange (www.oanda.com) how many rupiah I spent today. What? Oh, Rp. 970. 364. What? Are you trying to be funny? I could employ someone for a month in Indonesia for that price. Ok, no offence man. Thought, you were joking.

Damn. I gotta make an asertion here.
Now, is it the price of retail supermarkets chain in Aussie that's unreasonable or is the cost of human capital in Indo downright absurd?


Now, now. I'm no Marxist so Indonesian police please don't imprison me for asking such provocative question (You know the drill: "Hey he's a Communist. Throw him with the lions."). The best answer I could give for question number one. Yes, because they put heavy tax on imported products and give protection fees to local ones. Also they put high premium to employ their staff. The answer for the second question. Ermmm. Relative. Because, my family pays someone the A$142.21 for a month work. Although, food and accomodation is provided with better quality than their village. See, I guess both are good in some ways.

Wow, another added quota for positive reasoning. Yipieee.

Food for the soul

Chocolate.

A potent substance far more superior than any other in terms of addictiveness. Dark, milk, bittersweet, or white all choice for your natural indulgence. Nevertheless, they all share the same magic that keeps people craving for more. It's not the heavenly taste nor the appetite filling effects. In fact, reaserchers has provided compelling evidence that chocolate nibbling could enhance our mood and relax our mental capacity. Further studies has also proved that the ingredients could make chocolate feel, taste, and smell better. Sound like weed? Read this http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/indepth.food/sweets/chocolate.cravings/index.html.

As I would like to sway this blog from personal, self-perceive stories and change it into an insightful reading providing objective analysis and rigid methods of persuasion, I must say I have fail with dignity. Last night was supposedly a rare time in this far away land where my senses were tantalized with food. Not just the sort of fulfillment delight in my mouth but a sort of enlighting upheaval all around my body. I had the best White Chocolate Cheesecake courtesy of Freestyle (and my dear friend's early birthday celebration). The three of us all sat there easting our preffered fattening dessert. Just a few moment after the food affected the chemicals in our veins we started to have a very nice fun chat about not-so-favorite-pasttime-things without the reversed attitude and diplomatic rebuttals. The playing field was out in the open sky and none had complains about the heat. Yup, you guessed it right. Previous lovers, tainted/well dealt relationship, and absurbly awkward moment were discussed. Flowed like running water in our backyard, it was especially hard for me being the minority in terms of gender to disclose certain events. However, the endorphines and serotonins thanks to our meals made our encoding and decoding part much easier. Basically, the warm and lighthearted exchange on previous datees (a plural for people we have dated, taken from my own over rated brain) got me to think that my long abstinence from formal romantic relationships is with good, solid reasons.

This had me to think back the comments other people had presented to me on my single status patheticness. Close significant others such as bestfriends has postulated my over-pickyness while my dad thinks I'm a free and unattached individual. Some people that knows me at some distance would regard me as stupid when they acknowledge the many opputunities (not to mention qualities) I could have pinned down. But an interesting electronic moderated dialogue with a certain opposite gender older generation artsy individual gave me a very uncommon explanation which is that my way of thinking maybe more mature to have a committed partnership with someone my own age or younger. She further stated that I need to date someone two years older because most of the girls my age are demanding and dependent.

Well, since I'm still high on chocolate (although, I doubt any empirical studies that would prove the effects last this long) I just want to say that I don't regret any decision in the Love Department. Conversely, I'm glad that those are the decisions I took.