I cannot explain what happened to me when I was in Leiden last week. Perhaps it was the combination of the Dutch weather (it was raining like crazy), my lack of rest, my wild brain, and being with a partner in crime (who requested such crazy music) The result of such combination is the recording of some children songs — sung in a no-shame drunk mode :p

Unfortunately those who didn’t grow up in Indonesia wouldn’t understand the humor behind all of this craziness. But anyway…… please enjoy two of some songs I recorded….. they are about a dog and meatballs…. accompanied with a stolen guitar :p

The Heli Dog of WineHouse

The Meat Ball of Edith Piaf
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I have many stories from my adventure in the land of midnight sun, but currently I have no energy nor time to write them except this particular one. Cannot help but writing about Московское метро.

Both St Petersburg and Moscow are beautiful. Remarkably beautiful. They are gorgeous! As I mentioned somewhere else, though, these cities, unlike Western European cities, were really designed in inhumane scale aka gigantic scale, a very common style adopted by great (authoritarian) rulers who wanted to make ‘people’ feel small.

Russia really impresses me. The people, food, architecture…. One thing that impress me most is their Metro system. Not only it’s remarkably efficient and well designed, it’s architecture is also impressive, especially the Moscow one.

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Here I am, in another city with very unique Russian architecture. Beautiful? Of course. This city is just gorgeous. Remarkably beautiful, really.
Like Petersburg, Москва́ too, was designed in a gigantic scale.
Amazingly, it’s still very walkable… but not for disabled ones! Too many stairs, too wide, too big, too tiring!!!

Finally got online from Москва́. Just arrived here yesterday evening, so I haven’t seen much of the city yet. For now please enjoy some pictures I took at one evening after the conference at the city of Peter, aka Санкт-Петербу́рг (Saint Petersburg) aka Petrograd aka Leningrad.

Very stylistic and beautiful city, yet it’s obvious that the city wasn’t designed in human scale!

When I was little, I always dreamed of flying. I wanted to see the earth from above. I dreamed of seeing the cloud closely. I read that book Around the World in 80 Days and thought that someday I’d fly around the world, too. Of course, just like most lower class Indonesians, I didn’t have a chance to fly when I was a kid. I flew for the first time in 1996, for free. The I flew again once in 1997 and nothing happened in 1998. My academic flight started in 1999, with a trip to Taiwan funded by TungHai University — that was my first academic trip. Then second one was in summer 2000 with a trip funded by the National University of Singapore, to Singapore of course. I came there as perhaps the youngest conference presenter. I was so happy! Little did I know that I’d speak at conferences regularly after that.

2001 marked the beginning of my academic jet-setting, with the first big trip across more than one-third of the globe to the Netherlands. And since then, I’ve been flying for free for more than 160 times! (Yes, I did try to count it — in August 2007, it was 157 times, but perhaps I missed some flights). (more…)

Sometime ago, commenting in someone’s blog to answer a question ‘why i blog?’, i wrote ‘i blog to exist’. Does that sound that I was making a joke? No way, Jose.

Of course I exist even when I do not blog. I have a physical body. People can see me, they can touch me. But existence is a relative thing. Your existence isn’t something that is always related to your material/physical being. (more…)

This is one corner, actually not a corner just an area, of my house. Between living room and kitchen/dining.
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Last week, the fourth week, wasn’t much about ‘on break’, but mostly about breaking all kind of rules, regulations and barriers! I had to say I had my moments where I temporarily regretted myself for breaking those rules — for example when walking over the bridge and couldn’t continue or when I was stuck with my wheelchair in the alley of airport restroom — but those regrets only lasted 34 seconds each, haha, and after that I went back to my stubborn mode.

Should admit, I am not by-the-book kind of person at all. There’s something so satisfying about breaking. But it doesn’t apply to all kind of breaking rules behaviors. The satisfaction is not related so much to breaking for the sake of breaking. I am pretty much into gaining optimal experience with optimal pleasure. When breaking is necessary to expose me to the richness of life experience, then I’d do it. I also don’t believe that truth lies in rules/regulations. When breaking is necessary to reveal the truth, then I’d do it. And when breaking is a must to reconstruct new meaning, then I’d definitely break. I break and continue to break, when I feel the need to do so. Does it sound horrible?
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After Los Angeles, I had another conference trip. This time it was Minneapolis conference on Media and Human Right. Honestly, being drugged all the time didn’t help much in preparing me for the presentation. And for this presentation, I couldn’t recycle from my old powerpoint files. I hadn’t presented this one before.

But anyway, between sleepy and drowsy (biggest chunk of my time in LA and Minnesota was spent for sleeping!) I managed to finish my powerpoint before my turn. In order to hinder me from rambling too much, I decided not to take the painkiller before my panel. So I was kinda in pain. The result was I became a different person. This time my presentation was serious. No usual jokes. I was fast. And perhaps furious :p. Pain kept me awake too. And perhaps it’s good to be ‘different’, since I only had 10 minutes ++ to tell all! (more…)

It’s already the 4th week of my break. Haven’t done any sketch of the 4th week yet, so here is one from the week #3. (more…)