Thursday, November 4, 2010

We never know... we can only do our best... and hope for the best...

Following to my last post... my mind was still juggling with something that related to the phrase: what goes around comes around.
Coincidentally, when I was watching a show during my trip to Thailand... the show also uses this karma or ripe and show thing for its theme...

In this opportunity I would like to share some of my thinking... which extend a bit further concerning to the idiom... and probably a bit out-side of the box ... :P
It is mentioned in my previous post that the ripe could be happening directly or in the future... our kids can ripe something what we sow....
Because of this, I believe that our act now is determining our descendant’s faith...
Since we couldn't determine when and where we're born also we never know what kind of family when we're born.
We could be born either in rich or poor family... we could be born in either harmonic or non harmonic family... we can be born in peaceful period or even during wars...

However, one thing for sure is that we have the opportunity to create what kind of family that we are going build... and this means that we take part of our children faith... because we are the one who take part to prepare what kind family where they are born in this world... :)

I also believe that this starts with choosing the right spouse to spend our life with... and let’s hope that we are not choosing and having the right person... since it’s not only for accompanying the rest of our life but also for our descendant...
We never know... we can only do our best... and hope for the best... :)

*what the hell on earth I’m writing such a thing?... maybe lack of sleep made me loosing myself a little bit... :P

Friday, October 15, 2010

What goes around comes around...

--Attention: this article is loosing its grip and drifted outside the blog's unifying theme :P--

I don't know why this idiom always rings in my head lately...
So I decided to write something in regards to this idiom :P

The idiom means something like this... your deeds, good or bad, will repay you in kind...

And apparently, as far as I know religion also teach the similar thing...
Probably the words such as "You reap what you sow" or "Karma" are more familiar in our ears.

There are people who believe this idiom, but not few people who disbelieve this either.
Regardless which one do you believe, please allow me to share a bit of my perspective... but even if you don't allow me I will write this anyway... hahaha...
My opinion concerning this idiom is based on my experiences and some literature that I've read... but for some of them, I haven't got the chance to read it entirely... and some of them I only skimmed it :P

I will start to explain it with the "ripe" and "sow" approach... As we all know, when we sow a seed, it will takes time for it to grow... and it it depends on the type of the plant to fruit... :)

This illustrate that the "sow" can be happening sooner or later... or in other words it can be happening directly...

I believe it easy to understand... it's basically the human nature of behaviour either to repay or to seek revenge to someone depending on whether a good or bad deeds that the person got.

And I believe it's already crystal clear so example for this type would not be necessary :)

Mentioned also that "sow" can also happening in the future... or even to our kids... or our descendant...

Yup... it's not just a blunt assumption... without any prove... both my personal experience and some story about which based on a true story that I skimmed evidences a similar thing...

Ok, for the negative story... you can search around the internet or find some literature on this following people's history...

Oe Hui Lan --> daughter of a very rich sugar trader from Semarang
Tjong A Fie --> very successful businessman and banker from Medan

You may find writings about both of them by Agnes Davonar... famous blogger and writer in Indonesia :)

The reason that I don't want to discuss in this blog is that the topic is too sensitive can lead me to some problem :) so I don't think it is worth it to discuss it here... hehehe... so I'll give the clue which is "unfaithfulness" and let the you read by yourself and conclude what my point is :)

And I hope that this gives a gentle reminder to people who has already thought that something like that is ok although it is wrong just because it's too common...
Which also similar to a branch of knowledge that tickles my mind... it is called Kelirumologi... hehehe... but let discuss it in another session... :P

Ok then, let's get back to the business... the positive sow but not directly the person who sow who obtains the benefit...

I will use my personal experience to describe this... with this opportunity to share a bit my family background...

Hmmm.... My grandmother from my mother is the second wife of my grandfather. Although the reason was because his first wife couldn't give him even a child, this leaded to a conflict.... similar with the story of the two stories that I've mentioned above :)
The problem was even worse when my grandfather passed away... as he was the only person who worked for the family... my mother family became really struggle because there was no earning at all... This forced the my mom's older sister and my mom to quit from school and help my grand mother working... to get earning so that can support her sister and brother... to buy food, buy clothes and for schools... :)
To simplify the story when my mother and father passed away because of terrible car accident... During that time I was at the very last semester of my study in the university. And one of my uncle offered a scholarship to continue my study... He asked me to choose whether I want to study in the reputable university here in Indonesia or even abroad... It was a very tempting offer... However for some particular reasons I refused the offer :)

That's my story... my mother the one who "sowed" the good deeds but I'm as her son "reap" the benefit...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Tutorial: Changing a phrase

One of my interest is to change a lyric of a song or a a phrase to be in very different meaning.... no matter if it is going to be silly, sarcasm or even sceptic. However, I still try to maintain the rhyme... :P

I've done this in since I was in Junior High School when Boy Bands were growing like a mushroom in the rainy season... or even similar to... spreading like very contagious viruses... :P So during the time the Boy Bands' song were my primary victim... hihihi...

The simplest way of changing the lyric was by changing the word 'heart' into 'butt'... they both have the same word category which is noun... and they both are body parts... and the best of all they have the both end with the same letter... so the rhyme of the song will still be maintained :P

The other word that you can change is... the word 'beauty' into 'ugly'...
Practice and training is really important so we can improve the ability to the find suitable word to substitute the words... :P
And if I may suggest... watching good quality situation comedy is highly recommended to enrich our vocabulary... specially the sarcastic vocabulary... hehehe...

I won't provide some example to this step because this is very easy to find and you can find enormous number of songs that contains the word 'heart'... since most of theme of the songs are love... but, let's discuss it in the different opportunity :)

However don't be disappointed... since I will provide a step by step example on changing a phrase...

Recently, I have a nice phrase regarding a of a friendship...
"Old friends are gold. New friends may be diamond. If you get diamond, don't ever forget the gold because to hold a diamond you always need a base of gold"

Ok, let's scrutinise this nice... humble... and sweet quote and destroy it into the sceptic one... shall we?

First, find the key words... for example: gold and diamond...

Secondly, find the substitute for those words...
gold --> goat
diamond --> demon

Thirdly, combine it!
"Old friends are goats, new friends may be demon. If you get demon, don't ever forget the goat... because..."

Nah, here's come the tricky part... which requires some thinking and a bit creativity... :P
Ok, since we had changed the keywords, we have to change the part of the phrase that explain the opening. This is important because we have to make the phrase still logical... hahaha... but c'mon this is the fun part... :P

Hmm... on of the way to make it sounds logical is to find the correlation between the words...
so the correlation between the word 'goat' and 'daemon' is... goat head and pentagram is the symbol of the satan/daemon... hahaha....

See! there's a correlation between them...
but if you can't find any... just make them up... hahaha...

Thus we can continue our modified phrase...

"Old friends are goats, new friends may be daemon. If you get daemon, don't ever forget the goat... because goat head is the symbol of daemon."

But wait a second... it's not finish yet... to finalize the modified quote... we have to explain the meaning of it:
"Sometimes we have a very disturbing and annoying old friend and you imagine this friend is just like a goat, and we got a new friend... but apparently the new friend you found is even worse than our old friend"
sounds realistic, isn't it? :)
or on the other words, this new phrase is having the same meaning with the famous phrase "things could be worse" hahaha...

See! changing a nice phrase to the sceptic one is not hard, is it? :P

Additionally, one day when I've become famous and there someone who wants to write a book: "How to think like Teguh Suryadi"* this article should be considered as good reference... hihihi....

*inspired by a book that I am currently reading "How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci" :)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Google Translate

As you may already notice, I added google translate tools in this humble blog.
One of the reason is that some friends told me to use bahasa instead. Maybe they don't understand what I wrote...
But please don't get me wrong... I'm not trying to blame them... what in my mind is that maybe they're trying to tell me that my English is too poor to be understanable for them... so they told me to use Bahasa instead. :P

So I added this awesome tools from google... so everyone who speak the supported langunge -which around 50 languages if I'm not mistaken- can read my blog... including the one who speak bahasa... :)

And for your information that the translation is not 100% as what I wanted, but at least it can deliver the main idea :)

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Instinct...

Recently I listened to another audio book about economic... however the topic is being introduced in different way... very different way... :)

In that book there are some phrases that tickle my mind. One of them is
"the male instinct to impress the female is apparently strong even when..."*

Hmmm... in this kind of sentence you can put almost anything without abusing the sentence so it will have different point...

For example, you can put even the most absurd reason such as... the woman is not from planet earth... the point of the sentence is the same... hehehe...

Ok, now let's get down to the business... Of course the instinct is part of the human as we are a living creature...
However as a human we are given ability to think that define us with the other creature...

And it is our call to determine whether we let the sense of thinking win... or the instinct win because of the temptation...

Don't get me wrong... and I am not trying to say that the instinct is always wrong, and the sense of thinking is always right. After all the instinct sometimes tends to be more honest then our mind.

Some people will say it depends on the situation...
For instance, in situation when one of the person is already going to married and still the male is trying to impress her... simply to get her heart... most of the people will say it is something that really wrong to do...

And this kind of situation usually is being risen as the topic of a movie... And recently I watched an Indian comedy (3Idiots)... yes I watched an Indian movie! (let's discuss this another time hihihi...)
This topic was also existed on the plot of the movie...
Even in the movie, there was an idiom that says "Everything is fair in love and war"... and personally I don't know exactly where is it come from...

There's no one know, which one is the right thing to do... to follow our instinct or to follow the sense of thinking...

However this also reminds me to a controversial Chinese espionage thriller film which is titled "Lust, Caution" or 色戒 (Se, jie)

--- WARNING! Spoiler alert! ---

The movie is telling about a attractive woman who has a mission to lure and then assassinate a corrupt leader. But she failed although she's able to lure the corrupt leader and only just one step to complete the mission. And it is because she is overcome by emotion bound and then breaks down and urges him to flee. Hence the mission is failed; after all of her tremendous effort... you can see the movie by yourself if you want to say why I choose the word tremendous... :P

Maybe that's the differentiate between love and lust... love should give you power to help you getting what you aim for... or make you move forward... not giving obstacle or even worse... dragging you back into your darkest past...

But I don't know... Since as you all may already notice, I'm just a geek... for me these kind of things are more complicated than quantum physic... :)

However I do understand one thing... even if the male has tried to seduce but there is no reaction from the female... the result would be nothing... just like third Newton's law of action reaction... hehehe... or in less geeky way there's saying "It takes two for tango"...
So the "tango" won't be happening until there are two people doing it :)

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Reputation

It's been a long while since my last post on this blog :)
The reason is just simply I got lazy and had no topic to write...

Recently, I enjoyed to have sunset jogging. While having jogging I usually listen to musics... Then some idea pop up in my mind... the idea is to listen to an audio-book while jogging so I can learn something and practice my English listening skills :)

Few days ago a friend of mine suggested me to read a quite interesting book... and then I searched for the audio-book version of it. And fortunately I got it...

Some chapter of the book inspired me to start rolling this blog again :)

One of the book chapter mentioned: "So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it with your Life"
It explained by using the story of a strategist in china history, named Zhuge Liang who beat his sworn enemy Sima Yi "only" by using his reputation. It was the legendary Empy Castle/Fort. The tactic can only be successful if the user has absolute reputation. However, I won't give the detail of the strategy here... since I don't want to kill my reader... :P but the detail can be found easily by doing simple googling... if you're interested even further...

The story is describing the idea on how important reputation is. Another silly simple example is if someone has been labeled as a fart master... when there's rotten smell... it is common that person will be accused :)

A bit serious example is if you has been labeled as a liar, although you are telling the truth... no one will believe in you... In the other hand, if you're an honest person and you telling a bit lie... and everybody will believe in you... :)

The practice is also being applied in the real world situation. In my country, when we want to apply for a credit or mortgage... a bank officer will check whether the applicant is trustworthy or not... the first thing that bank officer do is looking for a at the black list which is released by Bank Indonesia. If the person is listed on that list, it means that the person has a bad credit history. In the other words it is difficult or almost impossible that the mortgage is granted....

This reputation thing will applied even though when someone has repent and forswear. Religious people said it is the wages of the sin. However it doesn't mean that I don't believe in repentance... I still believe people can change... :) However, I think repentance without any forswear means nothing...

Due to the fact, many people tried to change their life, maybe changing his/her identity or by going to remote place which no one know... just because he/she had committed something that killed his/her reputation.

Reputation is a lifetime tag... or even more than just a lifetime... another example is when Zhuge Liang already dead but still could beat Sima Yi by only using a wooden statue... yet again it's all because of the reputation...

And the history will label you as a person with a good or bad depends on how your reputation right now... :)