Kings and Queens to be

Termites have an interesting class system; the commoners: worker, soldier, and the aristocrats: prince, princess, king, queen. It pretty much resembles ant’s. It all starts from her royal highness, the queen, who give birth to all termites on the colony. She also decided which class they will get into, with some kind of pheromone given while feeding, to be the strong and scary soldiers, protecting the homeland and her royal highness, the queen, from any threat, or to be the humble servant, the worker class, taking the most compulsory role, providing food and maintaining the nest for the survival of the colony, as Napoleon put it: An army marches on its stomach. Or when they are seen as fit, to be the princes and princess of the kingdom, the heir and heiress of the great termite kingdom. They are “laron”-s in my language, or you can call it alate, the ones with royal wings and imperial eyes, educated in aristocratic manner for a noble purpose; expanding the great kingdom, claiming lands rightfully owned by her royal highness, which are every land, and preserving the royal blood.

These princes and princesses will be properly prepared until the day they have to quit the nest to carry out their royal duty, their purpose of life, to be the new kings and queens of the new colonies. In areas with a distinct dry season, like Indonesia, these royal children leave the nest in large swarms after the first good soaking rain of the rainy season, with the rain of sadness and love from people they will leave forever, a very sad goodbye indeed, but their destiny requires this farewell.

They will fly, as strong as their body could, as long as their flesh can sustain, as far as their wings can get them, and they will fall. Their wings will be taken afterwards and they will mate. And we have the new heralded Kings and Queens of the new colony of termites.

The new queen can live up to forty-five years, mating and laying eggs for life. And the king, unlike ants, will mate and continues to mate with the queen for life. That’s a very long time of mating, I must admit. Only death will do them part, what a noble family!

But let us see a better look of their life as princes and princesses. They are told all their life that they are the hope of the colony, that they are nobles, they are the chosen few, and that they will fulfil their royal destiny. But little did they know that their life survival chance are low out of the nest, or at least that’s how I see. I see them fly and fly relentlessly around my residence, to the light, all night long, and in the morning, their corpses will be abundant on the floor. A flight of doom. A sad flight. And as I compare the swarm I saw the previous night with the corpses on the floor, survivors, if there’s any, are not much. If only they were workers or soldiers, they would have lived a longer life, in the calm nest, and to die in the care of their brothers, not destined to have this kind of remorseful slumber far from home.

To live rained with all the motivation and hope from others, convinced that we are special and that we are the chosen few, that our destiny is greatness and glory, aren’t many of us lead that life? Aren’t many of us all then fly to the sun with our wings, and found out that, like Icarus, our wings are fake and they melt as the heat of sun demands them to? Or aren’t many of us then, like Phaeton, dare ourselves to ride the sun chariot, and found out later that we are unfit for the great task as Zeus’ thunderbolt is set to strike us?

A very pessimistic view on life, you might say about this post. A story of false hope, of those who doom themselves. But you can see it in a more positive tone with a little help from a simple phrase: what if. What if you are the survivor of the swarm? What if you are the King or Queen to be? I guess that chance, even at its slightest, worth the risk have to be paid when it is found that we are unfit for the prize. We don’t know what is waiting in our path, we do know that some things are inevitable, death, for example, but much else are covered in mystery, and the outcome of this shot, a rise-or-fall shot, which will only come in rarity, is also unknown to us. Maybe that’s why these alate-s keep flying anyway; this shot worth their life.

 ”In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”—Anton Ego (Ratatouille, 2007)

Anton’s note: Sorry for the long hiatus, my dear reader! Please be nice to me and leave some comments, with critics and advises, for I know a long vacuum has rendered my post creation ability weaker, grammatically, vocabulary, style, or anything else. And you can always tell me your opinion regarding the topic of this post. I will greatly appreciate them. Danke!

2 Different Strategy

Not so long ago, I was sitting around with two of my friends, chatting. One of my friend was an FTUI student and he’s a good Dota player. He was talking about one Dota round he had at a tournament held at FTUI. To make it short, there were five people in his team: two of them were pro (and three including my friend), and the other two were a kind of retired player, to put it in another way, those two hadn’t play the game for quite a long time and were not on their best performance. My friend told us how the battle went, and there’s an interesting point came out in the middle of his story.

My friend told us that, since the two retired player were comparatively weaker and easier to get killed in the game, the other three bought some expensive items to boost their performance in the game, thus preventing them from getting bullied by the enemies. His argument for that strategy was a weak spot on a team could bring the whole team down, so by covering the weak spot (helping the weak players), his team would have a better chance of survival, and winning the game.

But my other friend on the discussion, a student of FHUI, disagreed. He believed, like the Pareto principle suggest that we should focus on the profitable 20% and ignoring the 80% less profitable, the better strategy should have been by empowering the pros. Spending money on the weaklings would only restrain the pros from securing victory for the team and even putting the team in great turmoil, for the enemies are getting more and more powerful as the game proceeds.

They are two different strategies, taken from two different point of view, and I believe very relevant in reality, not just in that game. Some country gives tax cut for rich individuals believing these people would generate more profit for the good of the people, some country taxes this kind of people more to help those leaving on poverty. Some school focused more resources on brilliant students, giving them better teacher, better facility, better than lesser students, but some school gives extra lessons and more care on those with learning difficulties.

Each of these strategies yields different result. But which one is better? I believe everybody wouldn’t have the same answer on that question.

So what do you think? Support the greater or help the lesser? Or is it possible and efficient to pursue both strategy considering our resource constraint?

Are You on Your Rock?

Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakable. (AT VII 24; CSM II 16)

Just a little note before you continue, this post doesn’t really relate to rock in reference to a music genre. And it doesn’t come from the idiom “on the rocks”.

Not so long ago, I spent my day with a couple of friends. They were Jeremiah, Benny, and Vina (Benny’s girlfriend) [Lord, we lost another single in our group!]. Come to think of it, it was quite an unusual combination. We went to SMAK 1, watched Kung Fu Panda 2, browsing some musical instruments, and spent our last hours for the day at a cafe, playing cards.

One of the interesting parts in our day-wasting-activity is the last Chapsa game we had (a kind of poker without bets and the aim is to make sure your hands are free from cards). On the moment of truth, the round when almost everyone had the chance to be victor or loser after the present round, Jeremiah, a student of FHUI (a prestigious law faculty on Indonesian soil), spit out double two (a two card and another two card, so we have two cards now, get it?), and smiled innocently thinking he had the highest card on the table. And we just know how to thwarted this little boy with his foul imaginary hope. We told him that in a one-to-one fight, card number two is the mightiest of all, but in any other fight, that card is pretty much a loser kind. So, he protested a little, but eventually accepted it, since the three of us agreed that the rule was universal, and he lost that game.

That incident reminded me of a movie titled “Flightplan” starring Jodie Foster about a woman who lost her daughter in a plane and all the passengers tried to convinced her that she had none. In the end, she found her daughter. If she had believed all the passengers and stopped looking for her daughter, her daughter might’ve been found dead. And, in the same sense, what if we had lied to Jeremiah to win the game, knowing he was quite a rookie on this card game and had no full knowledge on the rule, and he believed us?! He would’ve been conned easily by his foxy friends and lost bitterly because of his friends cunning wits. Or what if there was different rules from different region or high school?

I believe such condition is applicable to almost every aspect in our life where decision has to be made and external influence exists. “What to believe? Should I believe them? I don’t think so, but they told me that… Everybody does it anyway. Nah, maybe it’s just me. It’s just my imagination.” Frequently, we comply to society demands without trying to figure out the truth of it, or we do and we found out that it is wrong but we do it anyway, choosing what is convenient for people around us than what is right and proper, questioning ourselves more than questioning others. If you put it that way, then the truth and fact are what majority or the side with stronger influence decides. I don’t think it is always good. Just like the quotation mentioned above,”one firm and immoveable point” is enough “in order to shift the entire earth”,but yet not easily found.

So, what am I trying to say? I don’t know how to put it clearly, believe me, I’m even confused with the message I’m sending here to you, my dear reader. I think you got to find your rock. A stance where you belong, which is “firm and immoveable”, so that no tide or storm may swept it and you altogether. You have to make sure that you and the rock you’re standing on have the strongest influence on yourself, and decisions you made are in certainty, not in doubt, because you know for sure what is right and what is wrong.

Does the voice of the people represents the voice of God? Not always, I suppose. You can always tell vox populi to shut up when you’re certain.

Confused? Welcome to Anton World!

We can have more confusing conversation about this topic through the comment box.

Little note:

• Adam, Charles, and Paul Tannery. 1964–1976. Oeuvres de Descartes, vols. I-XII, revised edition. Paris: J. Vrin/C.N.R.S. [references to this work (abbreviated as AT) are by volume and page, separated by a colon.]

• Cottingham, John, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and (for vol. 3) Anthony Kenny, eds. and trans. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. 1–3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [All quotations are taken from this edition (abbreviated as CSM); any deviations from it are the author's own. References to this work are by volume and page, separated by a colon.]

An Odd Kind of Investment

For the first time of my life, I suppose, I felt an odd emotion. Something that they call “galau”. I’m not even sure it’s Bahasa Indonesia, and I don’t like that word. And yes, for those who wonder, it’s because of a lady.

She made me live in a roller-coaster mood: very happy at one time and sad at another time. I even got the feeling I was being toyed.

Then I made some discussion with myself and I realized it had to stop. So I tried to think what to do with my relationship. Every man needs a life partner, a fiancée, a wife. That is true, but I don’t like to be saddened because a lady ignored me. Then I got a brilliant idea: I can treat it like a kind of investment!

Let’s say that our concern, time, and perhaps money spent on somebody just like a trade-off we need to pay on an investment (that person). Like buying gold, oil, or stock, you buy them now, hoping that the price will rise and you can make some profit of it in the future. You chose your investment carefully, watching its profile, judging its performance over time, and deciding whether it worth your sacrifice. But you never really know the outcome, you speculate, no matter how smart or how well-informed you are, you can’t see the future. It may rise beyond your wildest dream, rocketing to the sky, just like property, gold, oil, or stocks at some point of time and condition, or it may default and let you wish you had not invest on that bloody thing at all. Interesting events might affect your investment, like: war, natural disasters, scandal (remember Enron?), mortgage crisis, new technology, etc. And in this romantic relationship, you pay the necessary “love” over and over again, wait a little while, hoping that this relationship may get mature and profitable in the future. Then it goes pretty much the same like other kind of investment, it may be a diamond mine, or a chat en poche (cat in a sack). That’s why you have to select carefully, watch it closely, nurture it well, and wait patiently. And you can always choose to put your “eggs” on many “baskets”, just to minimize the loss if bad thing happens. Hey, it’s not like you’re committed already anyway, you’re just investing.

This point of view does help for me. It enables me to control my emotion better, and holds me back from falling to another “galau” state.

So, ready for this odd kind of investment field?

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“Attraction is an emotion. Emotions are not based on science. And if you can’t quantify or prove that something exists, well, then in my mind, it doesn’t.” —Scarlett’ O’Hara (G.I Joe Rise of Cobra)

Laffayette

Image via Wikipedia

Salah satu bapak pendiri Amerika Serikat adalah George Washington yang juga merupakan presiden pertama Amerika Serikat. Ia memiliki seorang teman seperjuangan yang bernama Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, atau Lafayette, seorang aristokrat dari Perancis. Mereka bersama-sama berjuang dalam perang kemerdekaan AS melawan Inggris.

Singkat cerita, perang berhasil dimenangkan dan AS akhirnya merdeka. Lafayette kemudian kembali ke Perancis, dan nanti baru pada tahun 1784 mengunjungi AS lagi. Di Perancis, ia mengadvokasikan kesetaraan hak untuk rakyat kulit hitam bebas dan penghentian perdagangan budak. Pada tahun 1783, ia berkorespondensi dengan George Washington mengenai emansipasi budak, dan memintanya menjadikan budak-budaknya sebagai petani penyewa. Meskipun Washington berkeberatan, Lafayette membeli sebidang tanah di Cayene dan menjadikannya perkebunan tempat bereksperimen dengan pendidikan dan emansipasi yang ia beri nama La Belle Gabrielle.

Adalah hal yang cukup menarik melihat bagaimana seorang aristokrat, yang lahir dari keluarga bangsawan, di negara yang masih menjunjung tinggi kebangsawanan (Perancis pada masa itu bahkan masih berbentuk Monarki Absolut), memiliki ketertarikan besar pada kebebasan dan persamaan hak. Lafayette adalah seorang pendukung monarki, hal itu terlihat dari tindakannya pada masa-masa Revolusi Perancis dan kepemimpinan Napoleon, tetapi di saat yang sama ia juga memuji-muji kemerdekaan AS, menjunjung nilai-nilai demokrasi, dan menentang keras perbudakan.

Sebuah pribadi yang menarik, seorang aristokrat yang demokratis. Dalam buku-buku sejarah yang dulu saya pelajari di SMP dan SMA, kaum bangsawan Perancis seolah-olah adalah pihak jahat dan kaum revolusionis adalah para pahlawan. Tetapi buku-buku itu tidak menceritakan pembantaian dan perampokan yang dilakukan ekstremis revolusionis, dan tidak menceritakan tentang Lafayette atau bangsawan lain yang sebenarnya “baik”.

 

Anda bisa membaca kisah lengkapnya di wikipedia, atau jika anda suka, di artikel yang lebih lucu.

Soldiers Who Build Road

Not long ago, when I was a lot younger, that’s quite long actually, my teacher at CNN International asked me:  “Does gun has any purpose but to hurt?” He unintentionally resound Homer’s words that “the blade itself incites to violence” which I have seen on my Rome: Total War game. I didn’t have any answer to that question.

But not so long ago, I saw a  war-zone-report program and they were talking about Indonesian Garuda contingent. They were stationed at Congo, but guess what, they were not there to ensure security, to fight rebels, or any “Black Hawk Down” action you saw on TV. I heard they didn’t even allowed to open fire. They were on a special mission, a very special one, to build a highway from Dungu to Faradje. And that highway was not for a troop mobilization purpose, it was meant for the welfare of the people around there. It was new for me.

So, it gave me a glimmer of light. Maybe what was meant to hurt, can one day be transformed.

For a better world, it is worth a try.

My Umbrella

Image by solidether via Flickr

I have an umbrella, a big one, it gives a larger protection from water drops because of its size, and it is strong, a lot stronger than average compact umbrella. And I just love it when rain falls and I have my umbrella on my hand. But in the same time, it is troublesome when it is not raining ’cause I have to carry it everywhere. Remember I mentioned “big”? It is like carrying a longsword of a medieval knight.

They say one must prepare an umbrella before rain pours, and that means I have to carry my umbrella everywhere all the time. That’s not practical at all. And the funny thing is when I carry my umbrella, although I know I will get wet, I expect some heavy rain to fall, so that my umbrella won’t be useless.

Remember the quote: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” by John A. Shedd ?

So, there are unfortunate events in life that we dislike, and we prepared ourselves very well for that events, but somehow, because of that preparations, we expect those unfortunate events to happen.

Now let’s take that little bizarre theory into another example. Consider an armed force, an element that almost every nation has, don’t you think they would wish a clash will happen? Do you think a soldier would go through all the long and harsh training without hoping that one day his honed skill will be utilized? Or a police man, without a thief to catch?

It makes wonder, is it possible that some unfortunate events, are propagated by the very people designated to face them?

Pesan dari Revolusi Hijau India

Image via Wikipedia

(Post ini dibuat pada masa ulangan umum kelas XI, ternyata ga sempet di publish dan numpuk di draft)

Kemarin saya melihat sebuah acara dokumentasi di TV (padahal lagi ulangan umum, masih sempet aja nonton -_-). Ceritanya tentang para petani di India yang bunuh diri.

Di situ dibilang, selama ini kasus bunuh diri para petani di India sangat sedikit, tetapi sejak revolusi hijau, kenaikan angka bunuh diri sangat drastis.

Revolusi Hijau adalah sebuah modernisasi besar-besaran usaha pertanian di India, melepaskan India dari keterbatasan pangan. Hampir semua aspek pertani

an dimodernisasi menjadi cara Barat: bibit-bibit unggul diimpor, pupuk-pupuk kimiawi diperkenalkan, irigasi modern diterapkan, bahkan pembuatan sumur pun dibuat lebih sophisticated. Dan India telah berubah dari “pengemis” makanan menjadi peng-ekspor makanan. Lihat sini.

Loh, lalu kenapa malah petani bunuh diri?

Ternyata revolusi hijau itu membawa efek lain yang tidak dipikirkan sebelumnya. Penggunaan pupuk yang terus menerus dan pestisida kuat telah meracuni tanah dan air. Irigasi besar-besaran membuat kandungan nutrisi alami dalam tanah hilang. Penyedotan air tanah dalam jumlah besar membuat persediaan air dalam tanah menipis sehingga air laut masuk dan membuat tanah menjadi asin. Penggunaan beberapa jenis varietas unggul yang tidak alami dan secara terus menerus juga ikut berperan dalam membuat tanah menjadi tidak subur lagi. Memang para petani mendapatkan kekayaan yang besar dari panen yang berlimpah, India tidak lagi kelaparan. Tetapi efek yang tidak terlihat baru bisa dirasakan lama setelah masa panen besar. India bukan hanya bisa mengalami kelaparan hebat lagi, tetapi sekarang kekeringan besar juga mengancam karena supplai air dalam tanah menipis. Kemudian, para petani setiap tahun menambah terus modalnya untuk membeli peralatan, pupuk, dan irigasi, dengan meminjam uang dari lintah darat, padahal hasil panen terus menurun. Dan saat mereka tidak bisa membayarnya, bunuh diri adalah jaan yang mereka tempuh. Penggunaan pupuk dan pestisida juga telah membuat hampir semua sumber air di India tercemar, bahkan beberapa desa agrikultur dianggap serupa dengan tragedi Bhopal. Suatu masalah yang berlipat.

Kadang memang kita harus membiarkan alam bekerja dengan sendirinya. Hidup harmonis dengan alam adalah pilihan yang lebih baik daripada harus memaksa alam memuaskan kita.

Jadi, apakah kejayaan sementara pantas untuk ditukar dengan masa depan anak cucu kita?

Deleting My Inbox

In this long time vacation, I have so much spare time, or maybe too much. Sometimes I’m just lying on my bed playing games on my 6120c and checking images or videos within. I realized that my mobile phone ran slower than usual and sometimes it’s just frozen. The cause of this problem was there was too many messages on my inbox. So the best solution was to delete some of them.

I started to scan for “deletion” candidates from the oldest one. The oldest one was a good night message from Astrid (7/4/2009) and some math solution from Adi (about exponent or something). That means I’ve done deletion not so long ago.

Each one of those messages brings back memories.

-When I was invited to Michelle’s sweet 17 party at Tamani Cafe (I got it from Alex, ’cause Michelle lost my number) which then led to my first meeting with some IPK Pluit girls who after some time turned into good friends with me. A funny kind of introductory meeting we had back then. I and my male friends gathered in a same table, then we make a courage game: each one of us chose a lady on the next table and try to know her name. Yeah, young blood.

-Some birthday messages for me. They kept me awake at dawn, not only because they were loud and noisy, but they also made me deadly curious whether more messages is coming.

-many messages from my Goethe friends, some messages from VC, my CNN friend, and there’s many-many more

But in spite of all the good memories they gave (and give, when I read it again), my mobile phone memory is limited. There are messages I still have to erase to make sure I can receive more messages in the future. Some important and meaningful messages will stay, but many valuable messages would have to be dumped.

Funny, I see it resembles life in a way. We have friends, a lot of them, but we have to “dump” (I think there’s another softer word for it. Help me here!) some old ones to make way for the new ones, though of course we will keep our best friends.

We don’t have unlimited room in our life. That’s why we have to make selections, which one we must hold on and which one we must let go.

Sad but inevitable.

“Alice in Wonderland” (you know what?!)

I think you already know the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She discovers a bottle labelled “DRINK ME”, which causes her to shrink. A cake with “EAT ME” on it causes her to grow to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling. With notable side characters like White Rabbit, the Chesire Cat, Mad Hatter and his hare. A children classic.

But probably there are some facts that you don’t know.

I found out that Lewis Carrol, the writer of the story is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and a photographer. Now, do you ever wonder how could somebody imagine such nonsense realm? There was this migraine called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, not coincidentally named after Lewis’ work. He suffered from this syndrome which also known as micropsia and macropsia, it is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. The patient with the Alice in Wonderland syndrome has a feeling that their entire body or parts of it have been altered in shape and size. The eyes themselves are normal, but the sufferer ‘sees’ objects with the wrong size or shape or finds that perspective is incorrect. This can mean that people, cars, buildings, etc. look smaller or larger than they should be, or that distances look incorrect; for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close. The syndrome is usually associated with visual hallucinations. Remember Alice shrinks and grow?! Lewis also suffered from a form of epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost, but altered to a fantasy world, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland.

Lewis’ life shrouded in mystery. At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Dodgson’s diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been deliberately removed by an unknown hand. Some said it was connected to his romance which was objected by his family, some said it has something to do with his pedophilia.  Who knows?

By the way, Queen of Hearts is not The Red Queen. The Queen of Hearts is part of the deck of card imagery which is present in the first book while the Red Queen is representative of a red chess piece, as chess is the theme present in the sequel. Many adaptations have mixed the characters, causing much confusion.

Source:

http://migraineforefront.blogspot.com

http://en.wikipedia.org