Damn Dog Got Rabies in Its Teeth 11/06/2012 09:54:00 PM

Listening to this song, a snippet of lyrics caught my attention. "My teeth got rabies. I'm gonna give it to you." Wait a second! Rabies virus isn't found in the teeth, is it? When a rabies-infected dog bites a person, wounding him, its saliva enters his body by way of the injured tissue. The virus is in the dog's saliva, not in its teeth. But of course, "My drool got rabies" is hardly rock 'n roll, is it?

Well, at least the rumination above shows that five years I spent in college studying pharmaceutical sciences wasn't a complete waste of time.

The Temple of Dawn (Yukio Mishima) 10/31/2012 04:43:00 PM

----The Sea of Fertility #1: Spring Snow----
----The Sea of Fertility #2: Runaway Horses----

SUMMARY
Honda became a dirty old man. The latest Kiyoaki/Isao incarnation was a Thai princess (who ended up dead, again).

WHAT HAPPENED
After Isao's death, Honda went through a transformation: from the idealistic, righteous judge into the pragmatic lawyer who only took clients that could actually afford his service. A job took him to Thailand, and it was here that he met little Princess Chantrapa (nicknamed Ying Chan), whom her family thought was crazy because she claimed to be a Japanese youth--Isao. (And she recognized Honda, too.)

Next, Honda went to India on a paid trip courtesy of his current employer. Watching a funeral party and a cow by the Ganges, he achieved some sort of clarity about life.

A couple of years after World War II, Honda had developed a habit of secretly watching illicit coupling in public parks. It was also around this time that he met Ying Chan again, now a young woman who remembered nothing about her past life. He became obsessed with her, wanting to see her naked to establish her identity (both Kiyoaki and Isao had three moles in the exact same place).

KEY POINTS (or HOW HONDA SAW THINGS, maybe)
The ultimate personification of beauty = Ying Chan
The ultimate observer = A voyeur
The ultimate, godlike act in life = Sexual act

Quoting Albert Camus' Exile and the Kingdom 8/16/2012 11:39:00 PM

"[T]ell me: has your good Jesus always answered you?"

"Always . . . no, Captain!"

"Well, then?"

The cook burst out with a gay, childlike laugh.

"Well," he said, "he's free, isn't he?"

Albert Camus, "The Growing Stone", Exile and the Kingdom

Back Edition 7/03/2012 12:21:00 PM

Reading my previous posts from a couple of years back in this blog, I wanted to cry. Did I really write those things? God, how pompous! How pretentious! (Not to mention so many typos, grammatical errors and curious choice of words.) Well, I guess I'm still pompous and pretentious, even now. Just a little bit more self-conscious, though. I hope it means I'm acquiring wisdom. Or is it just a sign that I'm getting old?

Runaway Horses (Yukio Mishima) 6/26/2012 11:24:00 AM

----The Sea of Fertility #1: Spring Snow----


SETTING
Japan, early Showa Era (1932-1933)


CAST OF CHARACTERS
Isao Iinuma: A spirited young man seeking to cleanse Japan from degeneration by shedding his own blood and those he perceived as the personification of evil (e.g. financiers, westernized upper class). Isao was highly respected by his peers and elders, thanks to his strength of character and accomplishment in kendo. To fight for the cause, he founded the secret organization the League of the Divine Wind.

Shigekuni Honda: Presently a respectable thirty-eight year old judge, his unshakeable belief in logic and rationality began to crumble when he met Isao, suspecting the possibility that Isao was Kiyoaki Matsugae's reincarnation.

Shigeyuki Iinuma: Isao's father, headmaster of the Academy of Patriotism, former tutor/manservant of Kiyoaki Matsugae's. He's an intense person, but the type who had no trouble in living with himself despite glaring discrepancy between his conviction and action.


NOTABLE QUOTES (according to me anyway)
"Before the sun . . . at the top of a cliff at sunrise, while paying reverence to the sun . . . while looking down upon the sparkling sea, beneath a tall, noble pine . . . to kill myself." --Isao

When Honda reflected upon his own character, he had no choice but to conclude that he was a man possessed of a will. [H]owever, he could not avoid misgivings as to the ability of that will to change anything or to accomplish anything, even in contemporary society, let alone in the course of future history.

"Naturally, having a large number of unemployed is unpleasant. However to equate this immediately with an unsound economy is fallacious. Common sense tells us that the contrary is true. The welfare of Japan is not bound up with there being good cheer in everybody's kitchen." --Kurahara, the capitalist

Not feared nor, much less, hated, only loved, [Isao] found himself in a situation that wounded his pride.

". . . Purity can't be toned down a little . . . . [I]f our ideas can't be watered down, and if they're threat to the nation . . . our ideas are just as dangerous as those of the Reds . . . ." --Isao


FINAL THOUGHTS

• I imagine contemporary suicide bombers are not so different from Isao, in their zealousness and intensity.
• I think I understand why Isao thought it necessary for him to die in order to be of service to the Emperor and his country, and I know it takes great courage to stare death in the face. However, I do wonder if there's an element of cowardice there. I mean, isn't it easier to end your life than to keep on living while staying true to your principles and fighting for them?
• Are fascism and communism two sides of the same coin? (Backdrop: The richer getting richer while the poor getting poorer; cheap imported goods abound, leaving local producers--e.g. farmers--in a pinch; increased activism from the Right and Left, sometimes taken to extremes, e.g. murder, bombings.)

----The Sea of Fertility #3: The Temple of Dawn----

Useless Tool 6/22/2012 07:18:00 PM

Are you serious? I don't need blog traffic statistic thingy to know that nobody visits my blog! Sheesh!

Spring Snow (Yukio Mishima) 6/18/2012 01:51:00 AM

A particular book would conjure certain images. Take Yukio Mishima's Spring Snow (the first book in the Sea of Fertility Tetralogy), for example. It evokes images of tranquil Japanese garden, flowy silk kimono, picturesque view from a summer villa overlooking the sea, palanquin crossing snow-covered roads. Mishima portrayed his setting in great detail that you can see everything vividly in your head. No wonder many Goodreads reviewers use the word "beauty" or "beautiful" in describing the book. The emotional effect it produces, however, is something else.

Maybe it's just me. But not far off through chapter 1, one encounters this: "Kiyoaki was . . . so sensitive, so prone to melancholy. One would have been hard pressed to find, in that rambling house . . . anyone who in any way shared his sensibilities." Reading those sentences, I felt a sense of foreboding. That feeling would stay with me right through the end.

Mishima's chief protagonist is Kiyoaki Matsugae, a young man so beautiful everyone took it for granted that he should have the sensibilities of a courtier despite his samurai extraction. (Yes, the class system had been abolished in the Meiji Era, while the story takes place in the early Taisho Era--1912 AD--but as far as I can tell, even today, Japanese are still referring to one's samurai origin, especially when they're talking about politicians, capitalists, etc.) Capricious and given to brooding, this was a guy whose consideration of the agreeable-distasteful took precedence over that of good-bad or right-wrong.

When we first met Kiyoaki, we found someone who languidly led an innocuous existence: going to school, moping around like your typical teenager and talking about life in general with his schoolmate, the sober Shigekuni Honda (the Nick Carraway of this story, sort of). But it is through his interaction with childhood friend (and later, lover) Satoko Ayakura that we got to understand Kiyoaki's "true self". It's obvious he was attracted to Satoko, but he seemed to be ignorant of (or chose to ignore) the fact, too busy nursing his wounded pride, because he suspected that she secretly laughed at his immaturity. Not until their situation became impossible--for Satoko was betrothed to another, an imperial prince to boot--that Kiyoaki sought to pursue a relationship with her. This, despite previous subtle prodding from multiple fronts--his parents, Satoko herself--to admit his feelings for her.

There's more to it than just the desire to hurt a person who loved him dearly, though. (And yes, he was being deliberately cruel.) Rather, it is Kiyoaki's fascination with the aesthetic aspect of things that drove him into action. Put it this way: when there's no impediment to his being together with Satoko, he did nothing; and yet, the prospect of engaging in a secret affair--which would be difficult to maintain--didn't deter him whatsoever. Why is that? Because for him, there's nothing more beautiful than forbidden romance between two young people who loved each other.

In the end, my apprehension--the oh-shit-something-bad-is-surely-going-to-happen feeling--was vindicated. But heck, Mishima wasn't aiming for it to be good or happy; it's supposed to be beautiful instead. And it is. Beautiful, but disturbing.

----The Sea of Fertility #2: Runaway Horses----
----The Sea of Fertility #3: The Temple of Dawn----

hollow 6/14/2012 11:53:00 PM

trivialities that drown
signal-to-noise lower than one

big words, lofty ideals
dispense at leisure, 'cause you never suffer

trudging through life
waiting to die

clinging to meaning
where there is nothing

Recipe for a Contented Life 4/04/2012 08:03:00 AM

1. Be grateful for everything
2. Do not watch TV news report
3. Stop feeling as if you need to justify yourself and your actions to others

Consuming Life (Zygmunt Bauman) 3/22/2012 07:50:00 AM

Not a summary or a review, but my personal note, having read Consuming Life. A couple of aspects of postmodern/post-industrial/consuming life according to Bauman, as I understand them:

We're all commodities
Preoccupation with images, because if you're not white enough (it's an Asian thing), thin enough, hip enough (the Nikes, the Jimmy Choos, etc), you're out of the game. (What game? Social relationship, I think.) You are your image.

Pointilist nature of time
Emphasize on the here and now. Past and future hardly matter. (Modern people buy precious metals and houses, postmodern people buy designer stuff and refurbish their kitchen with stainless steel countertops even when they never cook.) Boredom is a vice. (Imagine office types who'd gladly get stuck in a traffic jam in order to go to some vacation spot, rather than spending time with their family to just talk and enjoy each other's company.) You consume to alleviate your boredom.

Quoting A Wild Sheep Chase 3/16/2012 03:37:00 PM

"I was twenty-nine years old. In six months my twenties would be over... One big blank. Not one thing of value had I gotten out of it, not one meaningful thing had I done. Boredom was all there was."

- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase -

George Orwell Said . . . 3/04/2012 01:05:00 AM

. . . this, about how to write (in his essay Politics and the English Language):

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Sound, simple rules. I think I need to follow them.

The Manics Made Me Manic 3/01/2012 03:56:00 PM

I listened to this song in heavy rotation the other day:



Come the time to sleep, I just couldn't, because the song kept repeating itself over and over and over again inside my head. God knows Judge Yr'self is hardly the perfect lullaby.

Maybe I should listen to this song instead. Problem is, as much as I like Manic Street Preachers and love James Dean Bradfield('s voice), the idea of him singing a Wham! song simply reduces me to giggles. Thus, same effect as the above.

A word to the wise. Playing a single song on a loop for hours on end isn't a very good idea, no matter how much you enjoy that particular song. Now, where is that MP3 player . . . .

Note: Before you ask, no, I don't have "4REAL" tattooed on my arm and Karl Marx posters in my room.

We Don't Speak Dutch 2/24/2012 10:19:00 AM

For some reason, we got Dutch commentary for last night's Manchester United-Ajax game. Thank goodness it was switched to English halfway through the first half. It's not that I enjoy football commentary in particular, but hearing that oft-parodied language in the background of a United match was disturbing, to say the least.

"Oft-parodied", yes. You see, Republic of Indonesia was the Dutch East Indies once upon a time, and we didn't part ways in the best of terms. "We'll accept your claim of independence"--I can imagine the Crown said disdainfully--"if you pay the Dutch East Indies' debts. All of them." That's exactly what we did. And Indonesians disdainfully retaliate by reducing all Dutch to the role of blabbering bad guy almost every time they appear on motion picture/TV movies/literature.

Anyway, I don't know for sure what the Dutch's cultural strategy for this particular colony was, but I dare say it was markedly different from that employed by other colonial powers, the French, for example. The Dutch and their practicalities, you have to hand it to them, really. Why bother with the theoretical discourse about cultural superiority when one can opt for a more practical approach? Learning local custom, and then infiltrating them to foment discord or inspire submission, say? (The Dutch were great ethnographers.)

Long story short, the Dutch didn't promote their language in this part of the world and thus, Dutch--the language, I mean--had never really taken roots in Indonesia. In his memoir Doing Java, anthropologist Niels Mulder remarked how difficult it was in the late '60s-'70s to find Indonesians who were capable of conversing in foreign language (Dutch, English, German, anything). That was twenty, thirty odd years after we declared our independence. These days, many Indonesians understand English, but Dutch? Even my brother, who majored History and therefore was required to learn Dutch at college, only scoff at my notion that he should at least be able to read Dutch text.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, it is the East Asian languages that seem to generate interest amongst young Indonesians. As for Dutch, a small number of my country fellowmen/-women will keep on learning it, no doubt, but while Dutch once functioned as a status symbol of some sort, nowadays fluency in Dutch would probably only earn you respect reserved for speakers of "exotic" languages, on a par with Russian or Farsi perhaps. Not too bad, eh?

Pointless 2/01/2012 01:17:00 PM

I hardly watch TV these days. And when I do "tune in", more often that not it's for the English Premier League, which isn't exactly what you call local content. Between the dramas, the reality shows, and the newscasts, I don't know which one is worse.

Anyway, one program I dislike in particular is a curious specimen. It is . . . what? A talk show? If you define "talk show" as a program in which people talk incessantly, then yes, it is pretty much it, although "open forum" would be more accurate. But there's a catch. Its participants aren't just your typical laymen; they're lawyers. (They invite a few non-lawyers too, though, usually to share their tales of woe or to represent some government agency.) Week in, week out, they regale us mere mortals with their well-informed opinions on a wide range of topics, from the inner politics of our country's football governing body, to DUI (last night's topic).

Oh, did I say "well-informed opinions"? Well, not really. Sure, at times they pepper their observations with reference to this or that chapter from our legislation. But they're mainly saying what everybody else knows, like "There's no justice for the poor in our justice system," or "The government had let us down."

While I understand that people need to whine now and then about the dismal state our country is in--lighten the load, you know--I can't fathom why they would want to listen some guys (yes, they're mostly male) in fancy suits doing the same thing. I mean, the kind of talk you hear in that show, I imagine it's pretty common at coffee shops and public pavilions (poskamling) in the whole country. Of course, when you engage in a discussion in such places, you can always participate, put your two cents, and not just sit passively. Like I said, it's not as if those lawyers give you new and valuable insights to the matter at hand. (And even if they do, it's only rarely.)

But . . . I'm being unfair. After all, those lawyers are encouraged to spew forth lame comments. And if they end up having a shouting match with each other, the better. In fact, I suspect that that's what the moderator is after. Stir up a bit controversy, heat things up.

Oops, maybe I should shut up now. In case they sue me for libel or something.

Tale of Warrior 1/21/2012 05:54:00 PM

Do you know? Warriors Sport had made a deal with Liverpool FC, replacing their current sponsor, Adidas. You don't know? You don't care? Well, I reckon you won't, unless you're a LFC supporter. But anyway, this inconsequential piece of news reminded of something. A different kind of Warrior. Warrior shoes, to be precise.

Now, if you happened to go to public schools in Bandung in the '90s, I'm sure you would know what those are. Warrior shoes were the select regulation shoes at that time. They were cheap, they were made in China, and by God how I used to hate them. They had too many eyelets, their green insoles made your white socks (yes, only white socks were allowed) all grenish, and after a week of use they would definitely let wetness seep in from underneath--which is why Warriors were hardly the shoes of choice for angkot-taking school children in a relatively wet city in a tropical country.

The (in)famous Warrior Shoes

The funny thing was, school regulation didn't actually necessitate the use of that particular brand, but rather, a specific style--black high-tops canvas shoes. A couple of school mates ended up wearing New Balance or Converse, which were maybe five times more expensive than Warrior. Completely defeats the purpose, methinks.

Anyway, if someone were to ask me to pick out regulation shoes, I'd choose Chinmi shoes, or kung-fu shoes, or whatever it is that you call them. They're Chinese, too, and really cool. Okay, so they let water in as well, but at least Bruce Lee wore them. What more can you ask?

Going Solo part 1 1/05/2012 04:43:00 PM

Visiting Indonesia, he got to understand his country a bit more, Malaysian writer Karim Raslan once said. The reverse could be applied to me: visiting Malaysia helps me understand what my country--Indonesia--is all about. Sort of.

My quest for solo adventure began when I realized, belatedly, that my passport would soon to be useless. My passport would expire in eight months, and it's still empty. I reckoned it would be awkward when the time comes to renew my passport and the immigration official finds it yet to be used. Where to go then? The common opinion was Singapore, but what the heck would I do there? Shopping? Gawking at its modernity and displaying what a bumpkin I am? Thanks, but I'll pass. The next candidate was Malaysia. It's close, I don't need a visa to visit the country, and my parents wouldn't needlessly fuss over it too much (what with it being my first time abroad and all by myself to boot, my attempt at coaxing a friend to join me had previously failed). So Malaysia it is. I've been wanting to go to Malacca for some time, and a friend said that Penang is a must-see. So up I went.

Landing at Penang after a two-hour flight, I was greeted by a blast of humid air upon stepping out of the airport. It's a small island after all, I mused, with sea all around it. The arrival of Rapid Penang bus soon afterwards confirmed that I was indeed in a foreign country. Indonesian buses aren't much to look at, but Rapid Penang is so sleek and clean, and . . . Oh, look! Gigantic letters of T, E, S, C, and O on a strip mall! Not just any foreign country then, but a foreign country that was once a British colony!

The bus took me cruising down neat, wide streets to the conspicuous KOMTAR--Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak, named after the former Prime Minister--the tallest building on the island, in Georgetown. I had a map in my person, but thanks to my terrible sense of direction, I got lost within five minutes of getting off the bus. The fact that Malaysian road signs are parallel to the street--in contrast to those in Indonesia, which are perpendicular to the street--didn't help either.

After a couple of wrong turns--well, more than a couple--I finally found the place I was meant to stay in. When my declaration of having made a reservation in Bahasa Indonesia was met by blank stare from the attendant, I realized once again that despite the linguistic similarity, despite the common roots, Bahasa Indonesia and Malaysian Malay are two different entities, mirroring two different paths the two nations had taken.

to be continued when i feel like writing again . . . .