Saturday, March 29, 2014

Ending March

Hello guys. A few days left in March 2014. Since I last wrote, it's been a scary week. My mother was feeling sick and wasn't getting better that she finally relented to be hospitalized last Saturday. That was really scary and sudden. Even more worrying was because I didn't have my passport at that time and going home immediately wasn't an option. It turned out my father wasn't feeling well also, but he didn't want to go to the hospital to get checked up as well. He did agree to go see a doctor in the evening. I think my brother was pretty busy and annoyed at the stubbornness of my parents. My mother was discharged the day after, so she only spent a night. As much as I would like to think it's good news, I think it's more because she was stubborn. She was feeling better and she decided to just quickly go home. Both of my parents seemed to be showing signs of getting better this week, which I think is good news compared to showing signs of deteriorating, but I'm not really sure if they're really okay, if whatever problems were handled, and if the drugs really work. Gonna call them later. My passport is also back, so I guess it makes it easier now if I need to go home immediately. I'll save the story of why my passport wasn't with me for another day. Anyways, still keeping my parents in prayer because seriously I was really really scared about the whole thing. People at home seemed to be not doing too good. Mom just told me today that my uncle is also sick now. I just hope everyone would be well soon and get stronger.

As for me, I thought I was doing okay, but today I found out the thing that stressed me out seems to be happening again. Damn it! I hate it when people lie to me or people are withholding information and not telling me anything. What the fuck?!? I hope and hope if a bad thing should fall my way, it would happen only when I am ready. I'd like to say I'll never be ready, but maybe when I am angry enough, it will be the right time because that would be the time when I would just take myself out of the situation willingly.

The other day, I saw a beautiful flowering tree nearby where I live. I was in shock, I was like what is that?!? It feels silly that there's something beautiful near you and you never realize it. The tree had been there for a long time and I'm pretty sure it's been flowering for some days or weeks and yet my eyes only managed to see it a few days ago. I thought it was glorious. It has pink flowers everywhere. I guess again because it's been so hot, the tree decided to just shed leaves and turn everything into flowers. I went up to it today and since I was in a hurry, I didn't really explore much of the area. I don't know what tree it is. Definitely not sakura.

Even more astonishing was that next to the pink tree is another tree with white flowers and they were blooming gloriously side by side. It was beautiful and yes again I was dumbstruck of how I do not know that such beautiful things exist very near me. I guess there's a moral to the story here, but I let you draw your own conclusion :P

Now let's go to our usual topics, movies. Here are the few that I managed to watch since I last wrote.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman - Chose this because Ty Burrell voiced the main character, the dog, Mr. Peabody. Ty Burrell played my favorite tv husband and dad currently, Phil Dunphy in Modern Family. Some people may argue, how about Marshall from How I Met Your Mother? Well, it's just Phil Dunphy has been married for quite a long time and I guess that kinda relationship and husband is the one I want to have :P So Mr. Peabody & Sherman being a cartoon, obviously there were many kids there. Luckily while they hadn't been the quietest kids around, I wasn't annoyed. I think the little blondie girl sitting in my row cried when it seemed Mr. Peabody died. It was so cute of her and kinda interesting to see how kids perceive the story. It's not a bad cartoon, I like the jokes that play around on words, and I love how the cartoon touched lightly on history, it made me realize how when I was young I learned some things also from watching things like this. If watching this made a kid remember that Marie Antoinette said, "let them eat cake", I think that's quite a good achievement, although it's not entirely true. Marie Antoinette didn't say that. I have googled this, but hopefully the kids would know this phrase or be interested to learn more about Marie Antoinette. Me myself, got most of my french revolution knowledge from The Rose of Versailles.

The Grand Budapest Hotel - A Wes Anderson's movie is just too scintillating to ignore and how I loved this movie. So many things to love about this movie. Love Ralph Fiennes and the boy who played Zero, Tony Revolori. Love love the cinematography. I think if you press pause on the movie, every single scene is just so beautiful, postcard like images. It's not all warm and fuzzy and in the end you do feel a tinge of sadness, but I still love the story :)

Divergent - Glad to see Theo James again. I've known him since his brief but very influential appearance in Downton Abbey. If you think about it, it was only with the Turk that Lady Mary let go. She didn't think about consequences, she just let go and obviously it was stupid of her to do that, but still the only guy who managed to get Lady Mary on pretty much the first try :P Anyway, watched Divergent with La Gioia and she was totally smitten with him which is kinda out of character for her :P I know there are some type of guys she likes but to hear her gushing about a guy, I think this is my first time :P Me too, I am still in love with Theo James :P Anyway, Divergent was pretty good. I like it and looking forward for the sequel. Can't help thinking which faction I would end up in. I conclude that I may end up factionless. Not a hippie. May not be smart enough to be the smart ones. Not that brave. Too selfish to be selfless and all is left is the lawyer looking faction and while some people may say that I speak with no filter, I'd like to think that they're all wrong, there are so many things that I keep to myself :P So in the end I'll be factionless, but hopefully not a useless factionless. I mean why are all those people without a faction look like a hobo? How can they just lose all will to live and think or even try?

Last piece of information. Today I posted my vote for this year's Indonesian parliament election. Dropped the envelope in with a little prayer to let God make it good and alright in our country. I'm going to waive my right for secrecy and just say openly that I voted for PDIP. Totally didn't expect to do this especially since I thought it wasn't right of them to be putting Joko Widodo as a presidential candidate (read my previous post). In the end I voted for them because above concerns of economy and corruption, my biggest concern in Indonesia right now is Muslim extremists and hardliner Muslims being more and more intolerant and force their ways into rules and regulations that affect the whole country, which is populated not only by Muslims, and so when I googled the candidates, I found that at least in Jakarta, PDIP has the most diverse candidates. So I thought, it would be just a fact that the majority of the people in the government are Muslims, but if in some way we can put some more non-Muslims then there will be hope that there will be more diverse voices, voices which would hopefully really voice out the concerns of non-Muslims who are getting really pushed with these hardliners. It's quite a hard election for me this time. It's hard to choose. It's all because parties need to be able to get more than 20% of the vote before they can put a presidential candidate in the presidential election. So right now what the parties have been doing is saying this is the person we want to run as president, but they never mention the vice president. Only one party states their presidential and vice presidential candidate in this election and already people are calling them presumptuous since they don't even know if they'll get 20% of the vote. The parties are hoping people will vote for them because they want to support their presidential candidate. What is worrying for me is if we vote for a party because we want to support their presidential candidate and then this party doesn't get 20%, they'll end up forming a coalition with other parties. Parties we may not like. Parties which they may have attacked during campaigns but then they form an alliance with, all for the sake of power. I would feel so betrayed with that. However such is the fact of Indonesian politics :( Indonesian political landscape is interesting though. It seems to change every election. People cannot be sure that they will be in majority. For example, the current president's party, the Democratic Party was the only party that managed to get 20% in the last election, but I think in this election they will not be doing so good. They have been dodged by scandals and when I saw that one of their candidate for Jakarta is FuckedUp Abbas, whatever respect I have for this party is just gone. Seriously?!?!? Do you seriously think we can take you seriously when you ask us to vote for FuckedUp Abbas? I wonder if they're even trying to win votes. It's kinda sad because there are many intellectuals from the Democratic Party wanting to be presidents, people I think more suitable than Joko Widodo. If I have to predict, PDIP will win the 20% and then Joko Widodo will win the presidential election unless the parties start campaigning and educating people to choose more based on potential and facts rather than sentimental feeling. It's been a subdued campaigning season in Indonesia because of more rules being enforced, which is kinda a good thing, but more coverage and debates are important so that people can be more informed. I live and vote for Jakarta, so it seems there are more information about the candidates and all, but it's not the same for other areas of Indonesia. The election committee should put all the candidates profiles in the net so that people can easily search information on them. 1.5 weeks left and I am looking forward to see how everything unfold. May all be okay and be good in Indonesia. Amen!

:) eKa @ 8:15:00 PM •