There's something very unpalatable about the hype surrounding Indonesia football team's progress in the AFF Cup. Everything has been so blown out of proportion thanks to PSSI and its infinite wisdom, no to mention the media and its insightfulness.
One victory ignited everything. The national team won by four-goal margin against Malaysia. This is surprising, considering that Malaysia isn't that weak of a team compared to us to begin with.
The media wasted no time at all to make the most use of it. While the pre-match news was primarily about precautionary steps taken by the Local Organizing Committee to prevent potential clash between Indonesian and Malaysian supporters, post-match reports were full of praises for the national team. As the team smoothly went further in the tournament, the media became more and more enthusiastic in their reports. By the sheer magnitude of it, one would've thought that we'd won the World Cup!
In no time at all, our gullible public started to fancy the team and the players whom several days before they couldn't care less about. Gelora Bung Karno suddenly found itself teeming with people battling to get their hands on match tickets. "Battling” is certainly not an overstatement here. What's with all the pushing and shoving, topped with PSSI's superb ticket distribution system, the GBK ground very much resembled a battling ground, even a plaza in riot a couple of times.
PSSI is no less quick in taking advantage of the situation. The PSSI Chief promptly laid claim to the national team's success, when everyone who has the slightest knowledge about Indonesian football can clearly see that we owe that thanks to the Head Coach Alfred Riedl. And seeing the enthusiasm of the masses, they raised the ticket prices without hesitation. It's quite funny really, to see that the ticket price to GBK is more expensive than that of corresponding category to the Bukit Jalil Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, when Bukit Jalil has better seats and facility for spectators.
You think it's all there is to it? Not even close. For some reason those friendly guys in PSSI allowed their good buddy Aburizal Bakrie to invite all of the team to his house for breakfast (or is it lunch?). You really have to wonder. Why did someone who never showed any inclination towards football--apart from a somewhat frail connection to the sport: his brother owns a football club--come up with this gesture all of a sudden? He happens to be one of the wealthiest men in the country and probably a strong candidate for the presidency in 2014 General Election (God save us all!), though, if those things count.
And just when I thought things couldn't get more absurd than that, the PSSI Chief dragged the players to a pesantren in Jakarta for this prayer ceremony thingy two nights ago. I don't know if he's real pious or just plain stupid. At such late hour players should've been taking a rest, not going around for a night stroll. What all due respect, can't they just pray together in the place where they're staying?
For the sake of the players and the coaching staff, I do hope that they win the cup. PSSI, politicians, the media, and those glory-seeker supporters would readily bask in their glory whenever an opportunity presented itself. As soon as the team fails to live up to expectations, though, these people are the ones who would throw them away most easily. Just like that.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Cut Out with the Handshake, Cut Out with the Joke 11/12/2010 10:31:00 AM
This post is written in a rage. Amazing what anger can do to your creativity.
So. I just watched Indonesia This Morning on Metro TV, and one of the news was about Tifatul Sembiring's handshake with Michelle Obama. Some media in Indonesia and the US make a big deal out of it, apparently. In fact, the story is deemed remarkable enough that Stephen Colbert--comedian and political satirist--made a note to mention it in his program, The Colbert Report.
Given the nature of his show, of course he took it upon himself to treat the whole handshaking business as a joke. And then he continued by quoting a passage from some article saying about how Indonesians swarmed Facebook and Twitter to criticize the Minister of Information for his hypocrisy.
I must say that I don't care about what Mr. Sembiring does. He can choose to shake or not to shake hands with women, or he can take a third wife, for all I care. As long s he doesn't mess up in his job, I couldn't care less. But I do mind with what Colbert said next. I don't remember his exact words, but it was more or less like this: "Facebook and Twitter? I always picture Indonesians banging coconuts to a log."
Needless to say, I was (and still am) incensed. What the hell was that? What the hell does he think we are? Savages? Monkeys? (Although I don't know if monkeys communicate by banging coconuts on a log, that's hardly the point, is it?) Honestly, I think it's racist and degrading and not funny at all. His studio audience shared a different opinion, obviously.
People would no doubt say "Don't you have a sense of humor? It's just a joke!" No, I don't have a sense of humor when it's my national identity that is trampled upon. Americans--obsessed with political correctness--are very sensitive when it comes to making jokes about African-Americans and Jews. But is it alright to make fun of everybody else?
So. I just watched Indonesia This Morning on Metro TV, and one of the news was about Tifatul Sembiring's handshake with Michelle Obama. Some media in Indonesia and the US make a big deal out of it, apparently. In fact, the story is deemed remarkable enough that Stephen Colbert--comedian and political satirist--made a note to mention it in his program, The Colbert Report.
Given the nature of his show, of course he took it upon himself to treat the whole handshaking business as a joke. And then he continued by quoting a passage from some article saying about how Indonesians swarmed Facebook and Twitter to criticize the Minister of Information for his hypocrisy.
I must say that I don't care about what Mr. Sembiring does. He can choose to shake or not to shake hands with women, or he can take a third wife, for all I care. As long s he doesn't mess up in his job, I couldn't care less. But I do mind with what Colbert said next. I don't remember his exact words, but it was more or less like this: "Facebook and Twitter? I always picture Indonesians banging coconuts to a log."
Needless to say, I was (and still am) incensed. What the hell was that? What the hell does he think we are? Savages? Monkeys? (Although I don't know if monkeys communicate by banging coconuts on a log, that's hardly the point, is it?) Honestly, I think it's racist and degrading and not funny at all. His studio audience shared a different opinion, obviously.
People would no doubt say "Don't you have a sense of humor? It's just a joke!" No, I don't have a sense of humor when it's my national identity that is trampled upon. Americans--obsessed with political correctness--are very sensitive when it comes to making jokes about African-Americans and Jews. But is it alright to make fun of everybody else?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Football-crazed 7/11/2010 03:19:00 PM
"I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically..." Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
For me, the defining moment might've been that day when Persib passed the street near my school on parade after winning the first ever Liga Indonesia. Or maybe it was the time I watched in awe as Brazil trashed Italy in that penalty shoot-outs that guaranteed their fourth World Cup title. Or during that time I saw Steve McManaman dribble his way through the defending team's right flank in a Euro '96 live coverage. All I know is that somewhere along the way, I deeply fell in love with football.
In rare moments of contemplation, I wondered to myself why I enjoy football very much. Does it have something to do with availability and constant exposure to the game? I don't think so, really. Just look at my younger brother. He's not the least interested in football even though he avidly watched Captain Tsubasa when he was a kid and played regularly at school. Not to mention that he has a Manchester United maniac of a sister. When you don't get it you just don't, regardless of the "availability and constant exposure". Therefore, when a friend asked me--quite innocently--what it was that I found so irresistibly interesting about watching twenty-two people chase one dirty ball around the field, I responded with a smart "Dunno." Because I truly don't know.
My inability to eloquently express the beauty of football, I suspect, is inextricably linked with the fact that I am not what you'd call an “analytical spectator”. Some people enjoy football in logical, detached way. They'd make a song and dance about the philosophical, sociological, and psychological importance of football, peruse all sorts of tactical setup, and they'd be upset when football teams replace perfection with pragmatism.
Well, I'm not them. I'd be elated when my team win and upset--at times angry--when they lost. I'd question the manager's strategy or blame a particular player (Sorry, Fletch!) when they had a draw against the supposedly inferior team. It's that simple. My devotion to a football team comes from irrational love, not critical thinking. I love football like I love . . . noodle, say. Noodle is tasty. What's so tasty about noodle? How the heck can I explain that? I'm not a connoisseur. You just have to try it for yourself, and if you don't like it, it's simply not the food for you. The same goes for football.
Football, computer games, traveling, collecting stamps, or whatever--we all have our very own little obsession. I prefer enjoying it than trying to rationalize it, period.
For me, the defining moment might've been that day when Persib passed the street near my school on parade after winning the first ever Liga Indonesia. Or maybe it was the time I watched in awe as Brazil trashed Italy in that penalty shoot-outs that guaranteed their fourth World Cup title. Or during that time I saw Steve McManaman dribble his way through the defending team's right flank in a Euro '96 live coverage. All I know is that somewhere along the way, I deeply fell in love with football.
In rare moments of contemplation, I wondered to myself why I enjoy football very much. Does it have something to do with availability and constant exposure to the game? I don't think so, really. Just look at my younger brother. He's not the least interested in football even though he avidly watched Captain Tsubasa when he was a kid and played regularly at school. Not to mention that he has a Manchester United maniac of a sister. When you don't get it you just don't, regardless of the "availability and constant exposure". Therefore, when a friend asked me--quite innocently--what it was that I found so irresistibly interesting about watching twenty-two people chase one dirty ball around the field, I responded with a smart "Dunno." Because I truly don't know.
My inability to eloquently express the beauty of football, I suspect, is inextricably linked with the fact that I am not what you'd call an “analytical spectator”. Some people enjoy football in logical, detached way. They'd make a song and dance about the philosophical, sociological, and psychological importance of football, peruse all sorts of tactical setup, and they'd be upset when football teams replace perfection with pragmatism.
Well, I'm not them. I'd be elated when my team win and upset--at times angry--when they lost. I'd question the manager's strategy or blame a particular player (Sorry, Fletch!) when they had a draw against the supposedly inferior team. It's that simple. My devotion to a football team comes from irrational love, not critical thinking. I love football like I love . . . noodle, say. Noodle is tasty. What's so tasty about noodle? How the heck can I explain that? I'm not a connoisseur. You just have to try it for yourself, and if you don't like it, it's simply not the food for you. The same goes for football.
Football, computer games, traveling, collecting stamps, or whatever--we all have our very own little obsession. I prefer enjoying it than trying to rationalize it, period.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Idea of Nonexistence 5/20/2010 10:06:00 PM
A fate worse than death. That's what a human who uses a Death Note--writing people's name on it and thus killing them--is subjected to. Light Yagami, an overzealous lover of justice turns mass murderer, undoubtedly earns that. But the anticlimactic ending got me very disappointed. Because for all his ruthless killing, in the end Light Yagami simply ceases to exist. That's what "a fate worse than death" is all about.
Upon death, your brain stops sending and receiving impulses to and from its nerves, your heart stops pumping blood, etch. Death equals irreversible systemic organ failure. Many systems of belief, though, consider death not as the ultimate end but simply a gateway to another state of being. And beyond this, retribution lays.
The idea is that no good deeds go unrewarded and no bad deeds go unpunished. Hence, heaven and hell, good karma and bad karma.
Interestingly, nonexistence does have its place in this sort of concept. Just like many of us, Ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife and judgment. It is said that a person's heart would be weighed against a single feather representing Ma'at--the concept of truth and order--by the god Anubis. If one's heart were pure, not weighed down by the guilt or sins of his actions in life, it would be lighter than the feather and he would be welcomed to the Ancient Egyptians' version of heaven (a big farmland, actually). On the contrary, if one's heart were heavier than the feather, it would be eaten by Ammit, a demon part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus. Since heart was the center of reason and emotion, Ancient Egyptians believed that someone without a heart essentially ceased to exist--which was the worst possible fate they could imagine.
Let me say this: I think nonexistence is not a fate worse than death, and it is surely not a good enough retribution for a mass murderer who doesn't even repent for his crime. Oh sure, it might sound frightening now when you think about it while you're living. Imagining that your whole being is wiped out completely and that, fifty, a hundred, a thousand years from now, nobody would now that you ever existed. But nonexistence is terrifying only if it is perceived as just another state of existence, which doesn't make sense.
Okay, let's imagine that you're non-existent. If you're non-existent, it means you have no body, no conscience, no feeling. You are nothing. (Even using the word "you" is superfluous, but let's just keep it for the sake of the argument.) Simply put, you will not be around when you "experience" being non-existent. And how can someone who doesn't even exist feel happy or unhappy? The answer is: they can't.
Nonexistence is a fate worse than death? I don't think so. You should've thought of something better than that, Ooba-sensei.
Upon death, your brain stops sending and receiving impulses to and from its nerves, your heart stops pumping blood, etch. Death equals irreversible systemic organ failure. Many systems of belief, though, consider death not as the ultimate end but simply a gateway to another state of being. And beyond this, retribution lays.
The idea is that no good deeds go unrewarded and no bad deeds go unpunished. Hence, heaven and hell, good karma and bad karma.
Interestingly, nonexistence does have its place in this sort of concept. Just like many of us, Ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife and judgment. It is said that a person's heart would be weighed against a single feather representing Ma'at--the concept of truth and order--by the god Anubis. If one's heart were pure, not weighed down by the guilt or sins of his actions in life, it would be lighter than the feather and he would be welcomed to the Ancient Egyptians' version of heaven (a big farmland, actually). On the contrary, if one's heart were heavier than the feather, it would be eaten by Ammit, a demon part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus. Since heart was the center of reason and emotion, Ancient Egyptians believed that someone without a heart essentially ceased to exist--which was the worst possible fate they could imagine.
Let me say this: I think nonexistence is not a fate worse than death, and it is surely not a good enough retribution for a mass murderer who doesn't even repent for his crime. Oh sure, it might sound frightening now when you think about it while you're living. Imagining that your whole being is wiped out completely and that, fifty, a hundred, a thousand years from now, nobody would now that you ever existed. But nonexistence is terrifying only if it is perceived as just another state of existence, which doesn't make sense.
Okay, let's imagine that you're non-existent. If you're non-existent, it means you have no body, no conscience, no feeling. You are nothing. (Even using the word "you" is superfluous, but let's just keep it for the sake of the argument.) Simply put, you will not be around when you "experience" being non-existent. And how can someone who doesn't even exist feel happy or unhappy? The answer is: they can't.
Nonexistence is a fate worse than death? I don't think so. You should've thought of something better than that, Ooba-sensei.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pinball (Haruki Murakami) 2/11/2010 10:20:00 PM
Reading Haruki Murakami's works is like seeing through the mist. At times you can't see anything at all, even though you have a hunch that something wonderful is out there. Other times the mist parts just enough to allow you a view of what's beyond--although you can never be really sure what it is, everything's so blur and all. Pinball--Murakami-sensei's second novel--is of the latter category.
The novel is about pinball. At least half of it is. The novel consists of two voices, first person's and third person's. Interestingly, the two stories run parallel to each other. It means that, despite taking place around the same time, these stories never come to a point where they intersect. (Flashback aside, that is.)
"I" spent his days by working for his translation company, fooling around with a pair of identical twins, and walking round the golf course. At one point he had an inexplicable urge to locate a particular Pinball machine, a three-flipper "Spaceship", with which he had had a brief period of "honeymoon". On the other hand a friend and fellow three-flipper Spaceship player, Nezumi (Rat in English) continued living uneventfully in his hometown, having an indefinable relationship with a woman, hanging out alone at J's Bar, and basically doing nothing.
You might be wondering, What the hell is it all about? What's the point in a story about people looking for a Pinball machine? I know better than to ask such question. I squint harder through the obscurity and vaguely see something within the seemingly trivial story. Suspended animation, that's what it's all about, even though--I hasten to add, again--I might be wrong.
I particularly love these lines from the book: "Pinball machines...won't lead you anywhere.... Replay, replay, replay.... So persistently you'd swear a game of pinball aspired to perpetuity. We ourselves will never know much of perpetuity. But we can get a faint inkling of what it's like. The object of pinball lies not in self-expression, but in self-revolt. Not in the expansion of the ego, but in its compression. Not in extractive analysis, but in inclusive subsumption."
You don't need a Pinball machine in order for that to happen, really. Sometimes you go on living without thinking, just going through the motions, that before you know it, you have lose yourself. That's what I call suspended animation. You're constantly doing something, but you're not really doing anything. (Still, I must confess, it's good to lose your self now and then. Playing video games--or pinball, for that matter--is a good way to achieve such sense of detachment.)
Sooner or later, some of us would have to decide whether to get out or to stick to it. The book ends with a breakthrough of some sort from both camps. "I" said goodbye to the three-flipper Spaceship and the twin girls, and Nezumi willed himself to leave his hometown because he "gotta go". For the time being, though, I'm still living in limbo, in the world of pinball.
Note: Try listening to Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" while reading Pinball. They make perfect match, I reckon.
The novel is about pinball. At least half of it is. The novel consists of two voices, first person's and third person's. Interestingly, the two stories run parallel to each other. It means that, despite taking place around the same time, these stories never come to a point where they intersect. (Flashback aside, that is.)
"I" spent his days by working for his translation company, fooling around with a pair of identical twins, and walking round the golf course. At one point he had an inexplicable urge to locate a particular Pinball machine, a three-flipper "Spaceship", with which he had had a brief period of "honeymoon". On the other hand a friend and fellow three-flipper Spaceship player, Nezumi (Rat in English) continued living uneventfully in his hometown, having an indefinable relationship with a woman, hanging out alone at J's Bar, and basically doing nothing.
You might be wondering, What the hell is it all about? What's the point in a story about people looking for a Pinball machine? I know better than to ask such question. I squint harder through the obscurity and vaguely see something within the seemingly trivial story. Suspended animation, that's what it's all about, even though--I hasten to add, again--I might be wrong.
I particularly love these lines from the book: "Pinball machines...won't lead you anywhere.... Replay, replay, replay.... So persistently you'd swear a game of pinball aspired to perpetuity. We ourselves will never know much of perpetuity. But we can get a faint inkling of what it's like. The object of pinball lies not in self-expression, but in self-revolt. Not in the expansion of the ego, but in its compression. Not in extractive analysis, but in inclusive subsumption."
You don't need a Pinball machine in order for that to happen, really. Sometimes you go on living without thinking, just going through the motions, that before you know it, you have lose yourself. That's what I call suspended animation. You're constantly doing something, but you're not really doing anything. (Still, I must confess, it's good to lose your self now and then. Playing video games--or pinball, for that matter--is a good way to achieve such sense of detachment.)
Sooner or later, some of us would have to decide whether to get out or to stick to it. The book ends with a breakthrough of some sort from both camps. "I" said goodbye to the three-flipper Spaceship and the twin girls, and Nezumi willed himself to leave his hometown because he "gotta go". For the time being, though, I'm still living in limbo, in the world of pinball.
Note: Try listening to Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" while reading Pinball. They make perfect match, I reckon.