Goresan Ngawur

The world is such a small place. You often hear people say that when they just knew that the person they were just talking to was a friend of their friend or even a cousin of their ex-lovers. There is a famous theory called “six degree of separation”, stating that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on earth.

Well, I think that theory is relevant in small place but, globally speaking, I doubt its relevance since I do not think I am merely six steps away from Osama bin Laden or Zooey Deschanel (Why Zooey? No reason, I just like her ). However, when you accidentally meet someone in an unthinkable place, who actually know some people you know, that theory sounds really convincing. It happened to me couple of times, here is the most amazing one.

Remember, I participated in exchange student program for a year in Budapest, Hungary. There is hardly any Indonesian there, except those who work in Indonesian Embassy. It was 7 p.m. I was walking in Vaci Utca, one of the most famous street in Budapest and features fashion outlets and restaurants,  when I saw two people who looked Indonesians. And Indonesians they were.

One of them, the older one, said he worked in Indonesian Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, around five or six hours drive from Budapest. He was ordered to hand some Indonesian movies to Indonesian Embassy in Budapest, which would later be shown in Hungarian cinema. The younger one was just came from Indonesia to visit his uncle in Belgrade and apparently accompanied the older guy to Budapest.

We chatted a while and it took me by surprise that he was the close cousin of one of my bestfriends back in Junior High School. To sum up the story, I met a guy, who was visiting his uncle in Belgrade, in Budapest and it turned out that he was a second-degree friend!!

What about you? Have you experienced something like that?

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Today is Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday. Just in case you have no idea of who she is, she is the daughter of the founding fathers of independent Burma, Aung San, after whom she was named. She married a Briton and had lived in several countries outside Burma. She returned to her country in 1988, when Socialist Ne Win’s sudden resignation led to mass demonstrations.

Military junta took over the country in September 1988 and she founded National League for Democracy (NLD) in the following week. In 1989, military junta put her under house arrest.  Her NLD won overwhelming victory in 1990 elections, which meant she is Prime Minister-elect of Burma. The result was eventually annuled and she continued to be held under house arrest until 1995.

She was placed under house arrest again in 2000, released in 2002 and rearrested a year later. Burmese Constitution allows the government to hold someone under house arrest up to 5 years without trial. In 2008, military junta violated the Constitution by extending her house arrest until May 27th, 2009.

In May 3rd, 2009, around three weeks before the end of her detention period, an uninvited American apparently swam across the lake surrounding her house, spent 2 nights at her house, swam back just to be caught red handed. This Nobel Peace Prize awardee was brought to notorious Insein Prison, where she could face up to 5 years confinement for the intrusion, ultimately disabling her to participate in 2010 elections scheduled by junta. Her obviously unfair trial has caused an international outcry.

In a website called “64 Words for Aung San Suu Kyi“, you can leave your message of support and 64 words birthday message for her. If you want to participate, just click here.

Here is mine:
By sacrificing your personal freedom and being a prisoner of conscience, you have been the symbol of robust and consistent struggle against tyranny, something which I truly admire you for. International community shall speak louder for your immediate release, and I certainly pray for that. Happy birthday Daw Suu Kyi.

Picture was taken from here.

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The Annus Mirabilis of people in the Soviet Bloc must be 1989. They were liberated from oppressive communist regimes as they collapsed one by one. One needs to consider several internal and external factors which played roles in leading communism toward its end. Internal factors included the presence of anti-communist resistance, the desire to join Europe and the absence of obstacles to transition toward democracy and market economy.

Anti-communist resistances had been most vivid in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. They were not willing to be communist states; instead, communism in there was imposed by Soviet occupation forces. Hungary even had its own reasonably free and fair elections in 1945 before Hungarian Communist party used salami tactic and fake votes to seize power in 1947.

Hungarians showed their detestation to communism in their 1956 revolution while Czechs did the same twelve years later in what was called Prague Spring. Both of these events incited Soviet brutal responses. Polish workers in Lenin shipyard in Gdansk took a softer way to fight for their rights by creating independent free trade union, Solidarity, which brought Lech Walesa to prominence. The fact that communism was even opposed by workers, the backbone of its economy system, in those countries created wound which Soviet could never recover from. Read the rest of this entry »

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Up until Friday, May 15th, there had only been found four cases of swine flu in Japan. Three students and one teacher, who just returned from school trip in Canada and the States, apparently suffered from fever and were diagnosed to have been infected by new strain of H1N1 virus. Since then, the number of cases has been increasing in tremendous speed.

First domestic case was confirmed in the city of Kobe. One male student who has never been abroad got infected by H1N1. He was soon followed by his school-mates, who participated in inter-scholastic volleyball match, thus helped spreading the virus to other cities. The outbreak in other prefectures followed exactly the same pattern. For instance, when one female student in Osaka was found to have swine-flu like symptoms, another 100 of her colleagues were also diagnosed as carrying the new strain of H1N1.

Up to the writing of this post, there have been 342 confirmed cases of swine flu in Japan. Outrageous. You may think that swine flu is not that dangerous and there is no need to panic. You can say that because you are not in Japan, dude.

Japanese media has a very strong tendency to blow things out of proportion. News on swine flu make up the most of first page and some part of the second page of any newspapers published here, be it English ones or Japanese ones. In some newspapers, the updated number of cases is printed in enormous size. Meanwhile, television regularly shows the scene of people lining up to buy surgical masks in Kobe and Osaka. All drugstores ran out of surgical masks within one day because some paranoids bought tens of surgical masks at once. Knowing that Japanese want to do anything to have the masks, one bastard sell them in Japanese auction sites for almost 1 million rupiahs each. Meanwhile, the government already closed 4000 schools in Osaka and Kobe, continuously announces that it is in high alert and has stocked 33 million pills of Tamiflu and 2,7 million pills of Relenza, whatever it is. In short, Japanese are in, to borrow my friend’s words, “I am Legend” situations.

Three cases have been found in Tokyo, place where I currently reside. I bought one mask in the evening of May 21st as a precaution and on the very night, running text in some television channels announced that swine flu had finally reached Tokyo. On May 22nd, no surgical mask is to be found anymore in ALL drugstores in Tokyo and its surroundings. GREAT, considering that I have to commute by train and bus a lot and I live in huge dorm with more than 500 students who might possibly visit places which have swine-flu-infected people.

So, yeah, I am a little bit anxious. I washed my hands with soap and alcoholic wet-tissues more regularly than usual. I avoid sleeping late and take vitamin to keep my stamina. And, YES, I understand that the virus is actually milder than feared but I just do not want to be brought to Japanese hospital for medication and have my name mentioned in Kompas as the first Indonesian to get infected.

Anyway, I got some surgical masks with me now, don’t ask me how I got them. Should I wear it? I wore it before and my friends said I looked like a malicious terrorist.

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It is official now. SBY and Budiono has just announced their nomination in Bandung. Unsurprisingly, representatives from PKS, PAN and PPP showed up. Their threats to leave the coalition if SBY persistent in picking Budiono proved to be a mere saber-rattling.I knew it. These religion-based parties had no other options but to join SBY and confirmed their thirst of power.

Disagree? PKS was among the first parties to throw its support to SBY. It eventually became “the most important” ally of Demokrat for being the fourth in previously held legislative elections. However, SBY’s attempt to approach Golkar (the second most voted) to join the coalition was responded with the threat to leave Demokrat. As we know, JK nominated himself and PKS ended up remaining in the coalition. I perfectly remember that PKS said it was up to SBY to choose his running mate and it offered 9 of its cadres to be considered as running mate by SBY. When SBY chose Budiono, Tifatul threatened to leave the coalition for not being asked to involve in choosing VP candidate. It also argued that SBY’s VP should belong to Islamic parties to represent Muslim community, which kind of tickled me since both SBY and Budiono are Muslims. Funnily, as we know, Tifatul appeared in the announcement of pair’s nomination. Maybe today’s meeting with SBY in Sheraton Bandung, in which they discussed about power sharing, influence their decision to stay.

Meanwhile, Amien Rais, widely known as fierce critic of SBY, for strange reason endorsed SBY. His offering of Hatta Radjasa as SBY’s running mate put him in conflict with Soetrisno Bachir. However, when SBY picked Budiono, Amien, out of disappointment, proposed the creation of “poros alternatif”. PAN still appeared in the nomination though.

Imagine if PKS really left the coalition. It can not join Golkar considering it previously did not want Golkar to join Demokrat-built coalition. It will not join PDIP, since it opposes the idea of making a female a President. It only has one choice, SBY, and SBY certainly knows this. By picking Budiono, who does not belong to any parties, he also smartly avoided any jealousy among PAN, PKS, PPP and PKB.

In case you do not know, Mega and Prabowo also already reached a deal and will be declared in immediate time.

Further readings:
Budiono has said his commitment to clean-governance, explain his vision on what good VP should do and denied to be a neo-liberalist. As you may find plethora of online articles accusing him as a neo-liberalist, I want to make a balance by offering Faisal Basri’s interesting pieces of his not being a neo-liberalist. You might also want to read Ndoro Kakung’s opinion about him. And, here is the reasons why SBY chose Budiono.

Image was taken from here.

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While JK seems to be comfortable with Wiranto, SBY has not picked any of 19 vice-presidential candidates to be his running mate. Nor has he given any hints of who he would eventully choose. This has left other political parties, which made it to Senayan, big room to manoeuvre.

Polls conducted by various institutions showed that SBY still enjoyed overwhelming supports compared to other candidates. Some even say that he will still win if he picks sandal jepit as his running mate. This might be a little over-optimistic argument but let’s see what other candidates have. Read the rest of this entry »

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