RED YELLOW GREEN, A DRIVE-IN, A PONDER

Traffic lights are our drive-ins for movies everyone so eager to pass by. From behind the car windshield, what I call movies are scenes of people performing the ignorance and laughable agony invading those people in front them in their cars waiting for the light to turn green.

I love the bitterness, not in terms of I enjoy it but because I know my ignorance has kept all this, by giving them money to repel them when these kids come to me. As cars stop, children barely five years old will come and start singing songs out of tune you would not have wanted to hear or they simply extend their hands asking for your money. And not very far from them, if you ever notice, some adults, acting as their protectors, make sure that they at least accumulate today’s target; Rp 20,000 for one day’s work. If these little beggars fail, they will beat them and make them promise they will perform better. It is only a matter of time before the girl beggars learn to know they can make money faster by being prostitutes and the boys by being thugs or drug dealers.

Another scene is those people selling gimmicks, cigarettes, sweets, sunscreens, ashtrays, anything to survive the day. How could they are so excited to face this life when they know what they always make is roughly around Rp 15,000 a day? I talked to many of them and when I asked them how they made it with school age children and wife depending on them, they said, “I don’t know. I think God gave us different math or something.” And in front them, people in the air conditioned cars are cursing the government for the oil price they could have paid more, grumbling for the twenty million Rupiah short out of the eleven billion profit they made for the contract they won; and whining for the increased exchange rate of US Dollar as this will disrupt their overseas vacations.

Checkered flag is waved. Another traffic light to stop for.

HEY OIL COME AND GET ME..

As life did not satisfy to see you suffer for daily survival, it now comes big time with this impending increased price of the oil; one of the things the government can not stop it from being more and pricier. The consequence is clear; prices go up and all you are left wondering how you make it through. But the core of the problem, in my opinion, is that what we have done has paradoxically survived the ever increasing price; we have tried anything but kept or even made it lower. People in the higher income level start buying cars and those in the lower income buying motorcycles as soon as they hear it is hiked, thinking it costs less if they commute by theirs. This buying action on the contrary is pushing, if not keeping, rather than lowering the oil price as the new cars and motorcycles increase the total demand and deplete the oil supply. And as you know it, when the supply side is less than the demand, then the upward adjustment, a.k.a new more expensive price, takes place.

People are encouraged to buy and not to save because the economies, as we believe it, run when people keep consuming. When you buy new clothes, ready to eat food, cars, etc, you keep pumping the production of these items and their production has always involved the use of the electricity. As you know, our PLN generates the electricity by consuming the oil (supplied by Pertamina) and when you buy any of the products, you indirectly ask more of the oil. That is one more reason why you can never see the oil price go lower.

So what to do? First, live simple (for the urban and ultra chic you, this is not a good idea, I suppose). Just buy less and be content with the life you have. Besides, you are too smart not to know that you just cannot quench your thirst for more by possessing more. But when you can Second, use the public transportation (certainly, it is not a very good idea for PT Astra). I know it is not a good idea, knowing all these pickpockets, thugs, and those horrible things you'll find in there. Anything you think helps reduces the consumption of the oil is already half of this battle.

Start now with Bike To Work.

NATIONAL PLUS SCHOOLS, ANYONE?

I grew up without knowing what they call now national plus schools. I did not go there; my parents would not have been able to afford them. But more importantly, such national plus schools did not exist. But with all of them boasting they do better than non-plus ones do, I started my own search to find out if they really were better. And here are some of the facts you need to know.

1. To maintain quality education, they have always selected “only the best”.
I think their statement is very delusional. This is what happens; when the number of prospective students falls below the seat capacity, all of them are surely accepted and the admission test to select “the best” students is nothing but a phony activity. With each junior or senior high student confirmed to contributing more than one hundred million for the next three years, rejecting these money machines is so uneconomic, so irrational, so un-capitalistic. These schools are no non-profit organizations; they are corporations clothed in education.

2. They are better facilitated.

They boast the swimming pools, gyms, and even equestrian activities they have. But face it; they come at the expense of exorbitant fees charged to students. Any school could do that if they charged that amount to students. Those facilities are by no means desired but not deemed necessary for the classroom learning.

3. They guarantee they make better graduates.

For the last statement, I think it is very funny. Just go to UI and other outstanding public universities and ask those college students from which senior highs they come from and what you will most probably hear is "I am from SMA 14, SMA 12, SMA 100, sekolah negeri", with no national plus string attached. You may disagree with me but Indonesian parents send their kids to schools to enhance their kids’ eligibility for public universities, since graduates from public universities are still perceived to make better employees by job markets. And to me, these so called plus schools have not done enough to secure admission to those public universities.

I quit teaching there one week after.

BUY BABY BUY

Is there any moment for a pause as an economy opts for Capitalism? Capitalism has kept shareholders restless for ever increased returns in stock returns and dividends, pushing managers continually to sell more and more. As a result creative ways have been formulated to guarantee that you and I keep buying and improving the return on their equity.

Forget nine to five and Monday to Friday; now businesses run around the clock. Not so long ago, Mc Donald’s were open until 9 PM but now you can drop by there at 4 AM as they are now open twenty four hours. Malls have frequently devised so called late night shopping, enticing us to keep spending at hours we are supposed to be sleeping.

They do not stop there and I think they have been undoubtedly responsible for blinding us from wants we do not need. Ten years ago I was content with one but they have successfully persuaded me to own two or three wristwatches because I was made to believe one is not enough (to tell me time). To some greater extent, I keep replacing my cell phone with a new one, not because it is broken but because the new comes with features I do not need and I bought new shirts just because they were on sale. I was told to lighten my skin and I did with this whitening lotion, and as soon as it was lightened, I happily followed the suggestion to tan it. I knew someone who buys all Nokia series with no apparent reason and I shook my head in disbelief to find out that a woman bought two identical cell phone pouches from a boutique store; she only owned one phone and the reason why she bought two was because she loved the LV insignia too much.

And for the pursuit of higher revenue happiness in the financial statement, they have extended targets of their products. Ever noticed commercials displaying barely a junior high school girl who survives friendship thanks to the deodorant and some high school students hanging out riding their first Hondas? The message is clear; they, in the past targeting working adults, are now preying the under-aged. And you are bound to see more of it: hair colors for toddlers, lipsticks for octogenarians, and more.

Next month I will be buying a basketball cap designed specially for babies.

CUSTOMER NUMBER ONE

I am going to talk about one of such jobs that has to do with maintaining a client. Maintaining a client is like, you know, he bought from you once and he will buy from you or your company again and again. And to make this happen, you must keep the client happy. However, what keeps one client happy is not what keeps another one happy too.
Below are some brief recollections regarding this maintaining activity.

To some, nothing is sweeter than money and my friend knows this conventional truth and she would comfortably start with, “Is there anything I can do to support you?” Happily this kind of client responds in varied answers; one would say about the broken sound system in his car; one would say his wife is now in the hospital; one would bluntly say “How much is my cut?”. For the last statement, he said, it is easier and time saving.

Another is playing dumb and dumber. What I mean here my friend is playing it for herself. Though she takes hold of a certain subject too well, she would let his client think he knows more of the subject. To her, this is like a free session to learning to humble oneself, suppressing the ego to let someone go on speaking of something he does not know of and learning to do more listening than talking. So, some expressions like “I see”, “And then what?”, and “No, please go on” are profusely uttered.
Sometimes the resilience of this humility was tested further in a different ground. When playing tennis with the client, she knew how to make the client feel good; she let him beat her in the game he could have never won had she meant it a little.

But nothing would have been more surprising than this following one to me. I asked her what she hated most from this job, and she did not answer immediately, fearing I was not ready to hear it. After I pushed her a bit, she was right; I would never have been prepared for this...
She said that another way to keep a client happy was a companion. To find out if he desires one is easy; for the client who enjoys this kind, what she would do is ask him what sort of entertainment he wants to have during his stay. And when the answer is someone he can talk with, then he is asking for that kind of companion to come over to his hotel. When I further asked her how she felt about setting this all up, she said she hated it as much as she did the client and felt like she was like a pimp doing a pro bono.


And that was all I got.

GOD’S APPOINTEES STRIKE AGAIN

As if securing people’s physical matters is not enough, some took a step further with the spiritual one. Last month governors of Tangerang, Bandung, and Depok took the like measure on Dewi Persik, a Dangdut singer; she is not allowed to stage in their territories. Their grounds are that her stage performance is too ‘sexy’ and may lead young people into sex conducts. They said what they were doing was to voice the public and it fully supported their action.

Dewi Persik’s case is not the first of its kind. Another Dangdut singer, Inul Daratista, known for her gyrating hip moves, too was condemned for her stage performances by those public figures claiming responsible as moral guardians of people.
So far these people could not prove how the performances had been responsible for the moral decadence.

Though seen by many as nothing but a cheap fad that distracts people from more important concerns like skyrocketing daily commodities, those individuals, in the name of morality and faith, have many times successfully gotten away with that and left the other party unable to defend, let alone to retaliate.
Take for example, DEWA, Indonesia’s premier rock band, had to redesign the album cover because somebody, claiming he represented Islam, said the cover insulted Allah and thus insulted Islam. The band had it redone; they were left numb with their room for reasoning.

Unfortunately, the government has not been decisive in this matter; it seems it’s best to leave it in God’s appointee’s hand.

THE BEST JOB EVER

Would life be better if people were given choices for work? With jobs so difficult to come by and needs (or wants?) increasing, it is very difficult to answer YES as people are left with not so many choices and they just grab what comes before them. I think there are three typicals of jobs that people love to hate from today’s jobs but nevertheless, when they are offered with such jobs, they just can not say NO.

Some jobs simply do not do any good and this one is not far from the truth. Though justifications may there be, I know people know the cigarette is a killing business; either the selling or the production. Though WHO reports hundreds of thousands died of smoking every year, that simply does not stop people from reconsidering working for the killer puff. It is clear that to survive life some are willing to kill life.

The second is the wasted time to reach the work place. Gone is the saying Early To Bed And Early To Rise Makes a Man Wise. People wake up before the sunrise not to wise up by doing morning contemplation on life nor savor precious morning hours with loved ones but to waste these hours to get them to the workplaces. Millions living in Bogor or Sukabumi commute for more than one hundred kilometers everyday as they work in Jakarta. This means they start at 4.30 A.M and arrive at the workplaces at 8.30 A.M, leaving them, if there is any, thirty minutes before works start at 9 A.M. With more than six hours wasted and totally spent on the street, these commuters would arrive home only to bath and sleep. You may say these people are exceptions but the truth is most people waste at least two hours to commute every day. You do the math how many (hours) they will have wasted after twenty years of work.

The last one, and I think this one has become more and more common in fashion, is that people do not see work as a part of life but see it as their whole life. I do not know if the work commitment was invented by employers or somebody who loved his work too much but some just hate it to stay in the office for at least fourteen hours, and during peak seasons or book closing times, eighteen hours. But complaining is not an option; many other people are waiting to eagerly replace them if they mind. They have literally surrendered their other aspects of life to working around the clock, thinking that this is the only way they could do to show the boss they are worth the job and their commitment goes beyond those other aspects; they go home so late that they find their families have been sleeping and their families only find them sleeping on weekends to revitalize from the fatigue.

So with all these as the available options; jobs that do no good, jobs that are very distant from home and jobs that take them away from other engagements, then I think jobs have reduced people to a boring position they can not avoid.