July 6, 2011

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

It’s been approximately 10 months since I stepped into this land where traffic congestion, honks, and people wearing excessive make up were prevalent (not all of them are like that, I know. I’m just saying that Jakartans, or, Jakarta people, are quite eccentric). I arrived in Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and there she was, my sister, tottering towards me. She told me she had been looking for me for ages since I got all my stuffs ready 45 minutes away from the expected arrival time. It’s not my fault, it’s the conveyor belts’, if you know what I mean.

I brought home a nice amount of novels, most of which I have already read in Canberra. Huxley’s majestic dystopian novel ‘Brave New World’, Saint-Exupery’s ‘Le Petit Prince’ (the English version one, of course, as I can’t read nor talk in French. This made me a little bit guilty since Afu said that translations can, in a way, diminish the value of the book itself), Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Chbosky ‘The Perks of Being A Wallflower’, etc. There are some books I really wanted to bring but Civic Library wouldn’t let me. Obviously.

In the interim before my departure to Abu Dhabi, a lot of things have to be done: forms, surveys, vaccinations, flight confirmations, etc. I’ve been enjoying the process very, very much though, since everytime we (read: Class of 2015) receive something new, such as new emails from NYU or an inconceivably long survey, there’s always somebody out of those 150 people who would post things related to it onto our group’s Facebook wall. I love the fact that Facebook really help people connect, I really do. Such a magnificent invention, Zuckerberg, a genius you are. 50 days left before getting stung by Abu Dhabi’s torrid weather! As hot as it could be, I totally believe that the camaraderie between us NYU Abu Dhabi students will metaphorically cool down the temperature, that’s why I’ve been looking forward to it. Now that’s poetic!

My current level of ‘poeticness’ is attributable to having just read Stephen Chbosky’s ‘The Perks of Being A Wallflower’. I couldn’t finish it on my way back home to Jakarta in a 7 hour Qantas flight because that time in-flight movies were so alluring and that time I remembered the harrowing fact that Indonesia no longer allows MPAA-produced films to enter our lovely cinemas (this infuriated me a little bit since Warner Bros films, my friends, won’t be here too. Deathly Hallows won’t be here too). So I finished the book yesterday evening when it was raining and my little brother was sleeping like a small panda next to me (don’t depict this falsely). 5 out of 5, Chbosky. Such a great book, written colloquially, yet I completely got the message the author’s trying to say. I should have read this years ago, I knew I was late. People weren’t talking about this anymore since it’s no longer a hot potato every teen would pass to his/her friends back then in 2000. I came up with the idea of buying this book since I knew that Emma Watson will be in it and both @ghiankr and @Afutami, two of my favorite twitterers, have been mercilessly talking about it. The book (and all of my classics) is now on my sister’s hand. I literally went directly to her room yesterday and hand it over. I hope she likes it, I think she will, because even a type of human like me, in which I kind of dislike being sentimental or capricious, like it so much. I wanted to write a review of it but it will be too academic, and nobody reads a formal review on holidays, right? Anyway, I look forward to watching the novel-adopted movie later in 2012.

That’s it for now. Good morning, by the way. And lets start this day with swimming as if we were infinite.

Written in Cibubur, Jakarta.

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June 28, 2011

Linear

Dalam satu minggu saya akan meninggalkan Canberra, saat situasi Canberra sedang dingin-dinginnya. Sedih, senang, bercampur. Klise sepertinya frase sebelumnya, setiap orang yang meninggalkan suatu tempat ke tempat lain pasti memiliki perasaan seperti itu. Dalam beberapa hari sebelum meninggalkan Canberra, saya setiap pergi berangkat ke Hancock library yang, anehnya, sepi. Jarang sekali perpustakaan-perpustakaan ANU sepi, karena perpustakaan di ANU, berdasarkan pendapat dari siswa-siswi ANU sendiri, bagaikan rumah kedua. Buka setiap hari hingga pukul 11 malam.

Mungkin itu salah satu alasan mengapa saya menyempatkan diri ke perpustakaan setiap hari dalam masa liburan: melihat bagaimana ‘bentuk’ perpustakaan ketika tidak ada orang didalamnya (Hancock library masih buka hingga pukul 5 sore saat liburan). Di hari ketiga saya mengunjungi perpustakaan, ada seseorang yang saya lihat semenjak hari pertama duduk di tempat yang sama, dengan buku-buku yang sama. Saya beranjak dari buku Introduction to Analysis yang saya baca, menuju ke komputer yang khusus digunakan untuk browsing buku-buku. Di saat yang sama, dia, orang yang belajar dan duduk di tempat yang sama itu, beranjak menuju ke kumpulan komputer katalog juga. Demi menghapus awkwardness, saya ajak berbicaralah si wanita itu.  Kira-kira kalau seperti ini:

Saya: “Seems that somebody has been working hard over the winter break. Been studying eh?”

Dia: “Haha, yeah, sort of. You know you need to move forward when others don’t feel like doing so.”

Kira-kira seperti itulah bagian penting percakapannya, sisanya tentang hal-hal kolokuial seperti mantapnya internet ANU yang menyediakan suplai internet 2 GB setiap hari, dan di-recharge dihari berikutnya. You know, those stranger topics: topik-topik yang berkaitan dengan hal-hal trivial tapi unik.

Jika dipikir-pikir si wanita benar. Pemikirannya semacam konsep perang Sun Tzu yang pernah sekilas saya baca di salah satu di rak buku ayah saya. Lakukan sesuatu yang krusial ketika musuh lemah atau tidak sadar. Belajar ketika mahasiswa lain tidak belajar, niscaya dirimu akan ‘menang’. Sepertinya patut diaplikasikan nantinya.

Hal-hal seperti itu mungkin yang akan saya ‘rindukan’ dari ANU: pertemuan-pertemuan tak terduga di perpustakaan, yang berujung pada perkenalan unik (2 bulan lalu di Chifley library, perpustakaan ilmu sosial ANU, saya pada akhirnya berbicara tentang ‘hidup’ dengan seorang mahasiswa baru asal Jerman yang meminta bantuan saya untuk dapat terkoneksi ke internet). Baru kali ini saya punya hobi datang ke suatu tempat publik, semacam rumah kedua, kata beberapa mahasiswa, duduk diantara dua aisles, baca, dan terkadang berbicara dengan orang-orang yang tak terduga.

Sepulang dare Hancock library, saya mengecek gmail. Ada satu email dari NYU Abu Dhabi, isinya tentang flight saya ke Abu Dhabi tanggal 26 Agustus; kali ini bukan sebagai kandidat mahasiswa, tapi sebagai mahasiswa. Semua mahasiswa Class of 2015 (yang notabenenya hanya 150 orang) pun berebut membuat list keberangkatan untuk melihat siapa bisa bertemu siapa di bandara nantinya.

Aneh rasanya, masih aneh. Semenjak SMP saya bercita-cita kuliah di Amerika, dan hampir terwujud. Di suatu malam di Magelang, tiba-tiba email dari Jakarta memanggil untuk proses seleksi ke Australia. Rencana berubah, terbang menuju Australia. Di suatu malam di Canberra, tiba-tiba email dari Jakarta memanggil untuk proses seleksi  ke Abu Dhabi. Rencana berubah, akan terbang menuju Abu Dhabi.

Jalur hidup tidak linear sepertinya.

Ditulis di Braddon, Canberra.

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June 17, 2011

On Being Wrong

TED talks are always nice to watch, and there’s a nice TED talk I’d recommend watching, an interesting one, by Kathryn Schulz, a ‘wrongologist’.

The speaker discussed about a misconception of human understanding of erroneousness and presented a riveting talk to convince people on why being outside of that bubble of misunderstanding may affect us positively. Humans tend to understand the concept of collective fallibility, by which every human may render mistakes. Interestingly, said the speaker, when it comes to the perception of being wrong as an individual, humans are inclined to believe that they are invariably inerrant—they are always right; people thinking that s/he is wrong is wrong, not the other way around. There are two main reasons why humans are attached to this belief, she argued. The first is due to the incapability of seeking internal cues regarding wrongness, which results in a consolidated feeling of always being right. The second reason is associated with cultural reasons: humans grow up being exposed to the understanding that mistakes always derive from negative conduct, thus leading to some sort of conviction that erroneousness is negative. The sense of perfectionism also contributes to bolstering the aforementioned fallacious concept.

She continued by elucidating why adhering to this false concept is detrimental. She said that it is practically and socially adverse. Practically, relying on the feeling of inerrancy may lead to ‘bad’ physical consequences–one of the funny stories she told to audience in the talk was a story about a medical surgeon who, instead of amputating his patient’s supposed-to-be-amputated body part, amputated the patient’s wrong side of the body, since he deeply believed that he was right. In addition to harming in a practical way, being self-righteous is adverse in a social context: having an unwavering conviction of self-righteousness may culminate in the ‘fabrication’ of facts in disagreements and discussion; for example, if a person assumed that s/he is always right, and the other person s/he has a discussion with is, according to the first person’s point of view, wrong but too witty enough to talk down to, the first person would do anything, such as making up facts, for the sake of being seen superior and retaining the notion that s/he is always right.

At the end of her presentation, she explicated the reason why it is important for someone to step outside the false understanding of rightness. By being open-minded and admitting to erring, one may learn, improve and introspect. She also managed to convince the audience by emphasizing that the story of life fluctuates, and by conceding to being wrong, one could be more adaptive and capable of making things work.

I fully agree with her; some people (or all of us, maybe) have this kind of ingrained propensity for being intransigent such that we sometimes refuse to be enriched with new and beneficial ideas given by others. Her explanation in regards to this problem, honestly, has helped me open my mind wider, and I hope it has also left the same effects on you, too.  Although it seems to be demeaning in a way,  admitting to being wrong, is actually advantageous for us as we may learn and improve. On the other hand, being self-righteous, although seemingly beneficial to ourselves in terms of reinforcing our self-respect and retaining our pride, self-esteem, and dignity, may negatively affect ourselves and others. Being wrong is normal, and it is not something we should be ashamed of.

Now that’s theoretical. What we shall do now is to implement it in a daily basis. Admit to being wrong, introspect, learn, improve. Erro ergo sum.

Written in Braddon, Canberra.

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