rants

1. props for the people whom able to keep up their commitments on blogging, not just a random energy spike when you "feel like you want to", change everything to be cute and updated with your latest style but later forget about it, and the next 3-6 months open it again, hardcore cringe with the contents that you've created, delete again, update the layout, colors, logo, forget about it again, and so on and so forth. lingkaran setan.

2. journaling my ass. I only able to keep up with my journaling project until 1/4 of the book (ps. plus it's a very thin one) and cannot carry on because of laziness and all.
laziness and all.
LAZINESS. orang seperti saya lah yang jatuh miskin pas keluar dari rumah orangtua, yha

3. these days i tend to contemplate about the path of my life. why do i keep being the little fish in the big pond. i feel so unworthy with the fate in which ive been given. i don't think i fit in my uni, so many smart people and i dont feel smart at all. i've always been the over-achiever but in the context of dreams and goals (making it unrealistic), at the end the pressure from the consequences of my choice making me so stressed out, thinking im an idiot, believing im an idiot, accepting im and idiot, giving in for being an idiot. *sigh*

4. at my first semester in my uni i dont have many friends. at the third semester, i have many friends and end up chatting and forgetting my duty as a student, which is paying attention and listen. misery makes me focus to my self fulfillment and social life is the opposite, i dont know what im talking about

5. why am i very good at comprehending but so bad at defining. why am i very good with things purposed to myself rather for others? selfishness at its best.

6. because of rants #5 i end up spend my alone time in the library, reading books and taking naps. the library in my uni is frickin heaven, so many good books. i've reread all 7 Harry Potter books both in Indonesian and English (so 14?), Fatherland, The Green Mile, The Road, 3 of Albert Camus' work, 5 chickflicks, and more. currently reading Camus' compilation of notebooks from 1930'ish to -40? if i wasn't mistaken and starting the Lord of The Rings series. KAPAN BELAJARNYA

7. My english speaking ability (and writing) is bad and i should feel bad. (why do i join the UI''s MUN? mau mati. ambis2 bgt manusia di dalamnya)

8. every time i open the internet i always end up watching make up tutorials in youtube. it's like magic when i saw those girls from 0 to 100 real quick

8 is an odd number to end a list but whatever bye

Deep Thoughts, Long Road

/Naive/

everything is sugar coated

so unknowingly blinded

unveil the truth

that sticks and stones

they break your bones

also

words they're poison

 able to kill you inside

ever so slowly

but still-

you pretend it's okay

think it will get away

just squint your eyes really hard

 see it does not seems so bad

forever in a state

of your daydreaming comatose

you need 

someone to burn it down

flat to the ground

then you might finally can see

and have this vision with me

                     

Deep Thoughts, Long Road from mxndae on 8tracks Radio.

but i live in a hologram with you...

Lorde - Buzzcut Season

Do you have an internet friend?

Someone who shares the same interests as you are, whether if you both idolise the same celebrity singer or you just kind of accidentally met from a forum which mainly talks about plants, vintage style, DIY, anything which you happens to like? Or maybe you're a type number two like me, who's an awkward in real life, but cheerful, goofy, funny, and confident in texts, chats, emails, letters--anything but in person. You find it easier to talk through written words, because when you actually meet person to person with someone, you're so vain! You think these bad thoughts that maybe your conversing partner is actually judging your every words or your appearance--what you wear, that one zit in your face, that maybe he or she think you're a freak because you are pretty sure they observe how you always like to wanders alone all the time. That's why you always think very carefully of what you're going to say, you're scared of saying the wrong things--making most of time you end up not talking at all. Even though it feels like it's not true, though I think if you're still similar with me up to this point, theres a fat chance you are in a denial. That's why you want an escape--we are humans after all and we need company. So, you go to the internet and chat with a random person, and if you're lucky that they don't ask for boobies pic of you (and also making sure they're not some strange old person) you become good friends with them. 

I, personally have an experience with this online intercommunication. There are 3 people who are still very dear to my memory. One from UK, one from Brazil and the latest is from Sweden. The first two are my first online strangers I've ever become friends. I met both of them from Twitter, the one from UK named Guilherme, and the one from Brazil named Brenda. Those two are related. Guilherme is from Brazil but moved to Kensington with her mother and her sister. The three of us were twittering almost everyday. I never actually talk with my own voice or see their faces, we would recognised each other faces from profile pictures or uploaded photos. That was around 6 years ago. They were fun and I found out that they would available for me to talk about every bit of my problems. The funny thing was, since I usually filled up the timeline with my replies to them, there are 2 of my elementary school friends who apparently made acquaintance with Guilherme and Brenda. It was okay at first, but as time passed by it felt kind of weird. Me and those 2 people from my real life, we barely even meet since we were not at the same school anymore at that time, let alone talk! Here they are chatting with my online friends whom they accidentally knew since they found it from my Twitter correspondence and they were talking with them but acted like I'm not even in the picture. After 2 years of that weird situation, I found myself slowly drifted away from them. We would not reply each other as much until finally we moved on and ignored one another. 

The latest one is from Sweden. He was my online friend for a year and a half. He's a year younger than me and his name is Mathias. I met him in a chat room on the year 2012 and as two lucky and naive people in that room, we found each other. He was very sweet and encouraging. Up to this day I still remembers what his dreams and anxieties. Four times a week we would go on video chatting on Skype and I also remembers that one time he loses a bet on a competition between the two countries (I forgotten which ones) on 2013 World Cup , and had to sing a song to me--and God how he was so horrible at it or when he overheard my father's voice and thought that he was mad at something but it's actually just the way he is. He was the best online friend I've ever had (if you wonders what he looks like, just imagine a young Bradley Cooper). Yet even him also departed from me after a fight that was so unimportant but was too easy to be the reason on our online separation. 

What I like about befriending people in the net is the opportunity to be whatever you want--or of course, finally being able to confidently unleash and express the real you. You can create a whole persona and just be adventurous by experimenting lots of things with it (well, as far as the term "adventurous" goes by sitting alone in the darkness of your room with a laptop on your lap LOL).

Furthermore, recognise this?

Bad dog!

I guarantee you 100% that this quote is true. We need to be extra careful out there, because the internet is a platform where all the people in the world embedded--and they all brings different motives. Having friends online is complicated, we might unknowingly being tricked into a fraud, or lured to a meet up where we would be the target of a rape. Even if you think you have this special bond with this significant other, you might be wrong and it can just slipped away from your fingers like that. Why? It's because the internet is not the ideal place to search for a person whom you can trust wholeheartedly. You'll never sure if someone is as true a it's saying. When you have a conflict, you can't confront and sort it out directly like humans in a relationship naturally would. You depend on the line, on the gadgets on your hands. Both of your commitments being questioned all the time and if only one person work very hard for it to keep going, it will always very simple for the other to just disappear and cut all connections since both of you never actually meet. 

Nevertheless, it is still intriguing. You feel like you live in this perfect fantasy where you would actually meet each other and finally be able to touch them, talk to them, hold their hands, go somewhere and do things together. You keep holding on to this vision, making reality seems more bearable, yet you know it's just holograms. It's not there, it's never there. It'll all just plainly ordered alphabets, frozen pictures or grainy video shown in each other screens. It doesn't mean it can't be real though. Many people met their best friends or lovers online. One thing to understand, connecting with others from the internet, sometimes meaning that there's distance. For example--like in my case, I live in Indonesia, and my friend lives in Sweden. To meet each other we need to build trust, patience, strong wills to save the money and make the time, if not--most of the time it will always end up like Gotye's song : "Now you're just somebody that I used to know..."

M.

Happy (belated) Kartini Day!

(center) R.A. Kartini. My feminist role models (opposite clockwise) Malala Yousafzai, Emma Watson, Tavi Gevinson, Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel, Lisa Simpson

Happy (belated) Kartini Day to all my Indonesian strong, independent women! This post is supposed to be published on April 21^st, but I needed 2 days to make the post and the edited picture of Raden Ajeng Kartini to work. For those who wonders who she is, well, I’ll guide you through it. Back then, in the middle of 19^th century, women in Indonesia were prohibited to get a proper education. Once they reached the age of maturity (around 16-19 years), their parents would told them to be married to a man. Most of the time, they expected that the man come from a respected family, so their daughter (indirectly) would raise their family status. If the daughters haven’t met the right man, then they are being told to stay at home doing domestic housework. Most of the time, these girls didn’t have a choice. It’s not easy to push through boundaries and social oppression with a fright of being dishonored from their families. 

Now, Raden Ajeng Kartini is one pretty lucky lady to come from an upper class Javanese (a quite dominating tribe in Indonesian government back then before it gained it's independence from Dutch colonialism) family, that's why she had the chance to study at ELS (Europese Lagere School), a Dutch school--where she learned Dutch language until the age of 12 years old. After that she had to be dipingit (a phrase for Javanese custom where a girl being confined for a certain time before she meet her soon-to-be husband). In this period, Kartini started to trained her Dutch language ability by corresponding through written letters with Netherlanders, one of them named Rosa Abendanon. Rosa supported Kartini a lot, and through European books, newspapers, and magazines, Kartini was inspired by the advanced thinking of European women. She soon realised that the women in her own country are considered to be in a lower social status than men. That why she started to write critics, protests, and demanding tolerance and liberation through articles which she sent to major publications and the books she written, especially on the issue of education for native women in Indonesia. She had a goal where she would like to achieve, that her writings might raise awareness among public of that time. Eventually many people actually did came around with Kartini's idea. Her last contribution before she died at the age of 25 was building a school for girls named as "Sekolah Kartini". At the end her school got big and made branches on lots of places in Indonesia. That's pretty much how she became an icon for women and education--feminism in Indonesia.

I am myself was introduced with the word "feminism" in my Sociology class back in the first grade of high school. I know the term of girl empowerment since preschool but not really putting much interest to it. When the first time I found Rookiemag website (and actually reading the contents, not just looking at the photos in the eyecandy section, ahah) I was a 11th graders. I like the idea of feminism and considered it as interesting how lots of girls trying to express their sexuality for liberation and equality through campaigns such as FreeTheNipple, not shaving your pubic and armpits hair, videos or photos with girl empowerment messages.

  

All the time I found myself thinking like "yeah, yeah, yess that's true", "YEAH, I know right!" and so on, and so on. But then, I also found a different side of perspective where certain people (mostly men) thought that feminists are just a bunch of angry women, creating sensations, demanding something which only beneficial for them, they called them as FemiNazis. I think that the idea of feminism itself is still so odd and biased since it appeared as something that's recently flared up. Why? I figured it's because for thousands and thousands of years, patriarchy ruled the world, and the sound of women are just a pile of in-deliberated anonymity. There are many presumption that women are mostly weak, and are not so advantageous compared to men, thats why the men made most of the decisions to us. That's why we're feeling oppressed and losing touch of their freedom of choice. As the modern day arrived, women realised that they are the same as men, that we are people too. We contributed to science and technology, we can do as much as men do. When the access of education to women are open, apparently women realised that they are capable on doing lots of things. Their perspective are opened, and they demand changes. 

There are 3 types of feminism; 
First are the socialist :  "Socialist feminists view gender inequalities as intrinsic to the capitalist system, which makes vast profits off women's unpaid labor in the home and underpaid labor in the workforce"

Second is the reformist :  "Reformist feminists believe that gender inequality can be eliminated through legislative or electoral reforms without the need to alter the capitalist system itself."

Third is the radical :  Radical feminists target male psychology or biology as the source of women's oppression. The most extreme form of radical feminism is separatism, which advocates a total break with men."

First off I want to tell you one thing about this whole feminism idea, "It's about liberation, not equality". We have to accept that both genders are different, and supposedly complement each other. What's wrong is when one of them dominating and limiting the choices that other's should have. 

          "Liberation is not about assimilation, it is about asserting difference. Feminists of the late 1960s and 1970s were aware that women would not find freedom by living the lives of men"

That's why I personally rooting on the socialist side. There are lots of cases in a workforce, where women would've less payment in spite the fact that they did the same amount of work. Up to these days, women are still being underestimated to lead in a white collar jobs--just because, well they're women! 

From where I live, in Indonesia, feminism though already being promoted, it's still not being handled seriously. Over-sexualisation, prejudice, sexual harassment, etc; are still very strong here. I am, boldly stated, it's because of the majority of radical religion values which is pretty much commanding the way people perceive" how women should be. Their clothes should not be too revealing, not too tight, girls dont make the first move or she's a bitch, and god forbid if you're not a virgin--I mean the government literally considered that virginity test will be an official rules for certain submission test for high school or certain academies!? (I kind of forget about the complete story, but it was being discussed some time ago). 

I know Indonesia had came along the way to emerge from the days it was being colonised, and I did truly happy for RA Kartini to fight for the right of the ladies in future generation to have the right of their education. But we are still have to take women's right more seriously and it should start from the people itself .

Dear woman, you are the queen--don't depreciate your value. You can be whatever you want to be. So, respect your body and respect your self-worth. You are no less, yet not more than your lifelong partner men. Boys and girls we are here to celebrate, to be side by side ruling this world, respectfully and righteously.

Here's a part of a beautiful poem by an anonymous I found online, 

In a Man's World

Mistreated by the man

Hypocrisy runs the state

Oh my god we can't escape

In a mans world.

Tend the house they say

You don't deserve equal pay

In the kitchen you gotta stay

In a man's world.

Break the cycle 

Change the game

We're all the same

Through my eyes.

M.