Anti-porn bills buzz

Punya pikiran kotor itu manusiawi, tapi kan harus dilawan.
Kalau sampai membatasi cara orang berpakaian dan bertingkah laku hanya gara-gara ngga bisa mengendalikan syahwat dahsyat ber-watt-watt? Itu namanya membudidayakan ketidakwarasan, dan sangat tidak manusiawi.

On the account of anti-pornography and anti-pornaction bills in Indonesia:

What is dangerous about lips kissing in public?
Almost nothing!
I think what Indonesia needs is anti-hatred and anti-hypocrites bills.

What is dangerous about what clothes women wear?
Why there are Indonesian female migrant workers in Arabic countries who got harassed, maimed, raped or even killed?
.....and migrant women living in the kingdom without husbands who become pregnant, whether through consensual sex or rape, have faced arrest and imprisonment for these reasons. In January 2003, Human Rights Watch representatives encountered several young Indonesian women with their newborn babies in Malaz women’s prison in Riyadh. These Indonesians, Saudi women staff at the prison told us, were imprisoned for “illegal pregnancies.”......source

I believe none of them ever wore any sexy dress there, but abaya or head-to-toe-covered attire.

If those bills are made to protect women and children from exploitation, then why not provide the better laws to protect children and women against perverts?

Puffing Superglue

...that he is
actually 17 years old. He argued that mal-nutrition, because his parents are so...

I was thinking of changing blog host some days ago when I came across Suprglu on del.icio.us.
It has its own Category, so that's what I want!
And the name sounds funny, especially on the previous day, I read a local newspaper article about two street beggar boys in Medan who like to sniff glue!

One boy still looks like 10 years old, but he swore to the journalist that he is actually 17 years old. He argued that mal-nutrition, because his parents are so poor, is what caused him dwarf.
Which is the truth, God only knows.

But he knows why he likes to sniff glue, because police won't arrest anyone who only sniffs glue, unlike sniffing cannabis.
Every day he needs 4 cans of liquid glue, and he even chooses glue for his breakfast.
The other boy looks even younger, about 6 years old. Real world cruelness isn't it.

Anyway back to my other world, I decided to stick to Blogger. I don't really like the idea that I can't remove the navigator bar there, beside I'm very pleased with Phydeaux3's wonderful Category Cloud, though I still can't apply it properly due to my very limited understanding of html/css things :-P

Maybe Puffing Suprglu will eventually be left deserted and forgoten....like those street kids.

13 = 1+3 = 4 = Good luck!

Last year when I went to Penang Island, I visited a famous Thai Buddhist temple. It's one of tourist destinations in Penang.
Usually in many Buddhist temples we can get fortune reading.
I like this kind of thing, though if I got bad reading, I will never believe it.
Say, I'm superstitious only when my reading outcome is a good :-D

So, as soon as I entered the temple, I asked Sarjid, our tour guide, where can I get a fortune reading. He showed me a machine with a slot for a coin. Since I didn't have the prescribed coin, Sarjid kindly gave me one. I put it into the slot. I don't remember exactly, I think there's a ball in that machine that would go round and stop at a specific number after the machine swallowed the coin. Before I got the result, I had a funny feeling that I would get either 13 or 4, and it was.
As I took out the small paper number 4, I told Sarjid,
- I knew I would get this number

I told him that 4 and 13 are considered as some omens of bad luck by some people in my country, especially by Chinese Indonesian, because 4 sounds like death. Some high-rise buildings with more than 12 floors don't have floor number 13, but 12B or other than 13. Though I never believe in any bad reading, I still felt cross a bit.
But Sarjid encouraged me to read it.
The saying started with something like "you are going to be lonely for a very long time before you finally find happiness in your life."

- See...I knew it I should not read it
+ Don't worry, it's my coin, so it's not your reading at all, just throw it away

But instead, I kept it in my jeans pocket.

In the car, on our way back to the hotel, I frivolously took that small paper out of my pocket. This time, I read the reverse side of the paper.
Surprise....
I shouted out the words, it was written something like this:
"For a married person, you will have your ill wife recovered and she will soon bear your son"

It was intendedly a reading for man. I was supposed to take the pink colour which is for woman.

+ That's a reading for your brother then, give it to him

My brother was also in the car with us. He just smiled widely, but didn't say a word.

At the hotel, I told about that to my sis-in-law who had just returned from hospital after her 3 or 4 days of stay there for her big operation. My Mom and she were happy to hear that, and wanted to see that small paper. Too bad, my brother threw it away, cos fortune reading is actually against our Christian belief :-P

Today my sis-in-law is 5 months pregnant.
But we believe it's only because of our God's mercy that my brother and her will soon have a baby.

Let's wait and see, baby girl or baby boy?

Insensitive Preacher

...it really is a very ignorant mistake
using
skin colours to illustrate that, especially when it's done at Church by
a supposedly pious person...

What a lucky day, I attended this jester sermon again today :-P.
In his sermon, God's Words vs Reality, he mentioned that we should respect one another's culture. He asked people to accept with open heart the celebration of Chinese New Year in Indonesia, which I think it has been done since two years ago when our government granted Chinese New Year as our national holiday.
He said, if Church can support Valentine, then why doesn't Church support Chinese New Year? Because according to him Valentine is actually to celebrate the affair of goddess Venus and Cupid.

Whatever nonsense, I basically agree that we must respect any culture.
But why then when giving example he had to mention racist thing? (Though I had predicted that he would say it, and I was right).

It's more or less like this.....
"dia hitam, jelek / he is black, ugly"
"tidak seperti saya, putih dan ganteng / unlike me, white (in Indonesia, we call lite skin as white, no matter it's actually yellow or really white) and good looking"

Ok so it's probably just his joke*. He and those other preachers who also said that are probably want to illustrate "Don’t judge a book by its cover".
Of course, we're human, no matter pious; we are not mistake-resistance.

But it really is a very ignorant mistake using skin colours to illustrate that, especially when it's done at Church by a supposedly pious person.

...I really wish
I will never ever hear that kind of
'black/ dark skin=ugly ; white/ light skin=good looking' illustration anymore, especially
at Church

At least today at Church I saw one person from Papua. Papua people have skin as black as generally African people, and not only him, there are many people with dark skin too. When today I heard this kind of preaching again: hitam=jelek (black/ dark skin=ugly), putih=cakep (white/ light skin=good looking), I looked at that guy from Papua. I wonder what did he feel hearing this thing at Church.

This preacher probably forgot this verse:
Luk 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

I really wish I will never ever hear that kind of 'black/ dark skin=ugly ; white/ light skin=good looking' illustration anymore, especially at Church.

*Today, more than thrice he laughed "jangan pasang muka formalin dong (please don't give me that stern look)", when he didn't see us laugh every time he threw out his lame jokes.

Art Attempt

I have felt privileged since last Saturday when an invitation of Sri Hadhy's opening painting exhibition arrived for me.
I know I probably got it because I once, though only for a day, joined his course.
He, one of the notable painters from Indonesia, will have his painting exhibition next week, and it seems he invite all of his ex-/pupils to attend the opening ceremony.

Leet phoned me about Sri Hadhy some days ago when she saw her friends' painting exhibition at Hotel Nikko. Apparently one of them was Sri Hadhy's student. Leet and I have been dreaming to live for and from painting. What a coincidence that I got that invitation on Saturday.

That only day when he saw me doing a sketch, he eulogised my sketch! :-D
Well...though it was probably just his encouragement as a teacher to his student, it did and does make me proud because he did not say that to my two friends.

Maybe I do have a little talent on art, but I never really practise it, unlike Leet.
There is this axiom that says that success is about 1% talent and 99% attempt or practice.
My problem is, I have too much wants that lead me nowhere at the end. I'm so easy to like something.

I love Van Gogh's brush stroke. I like Klimt's rich and sensual paintings. I like Basquiat's puzzled paintings. I'm taken by Edward Hopper's capture of aloneness. I want to make pop art drawings like Lichtenstein. I admire some paintings and drawings on deviantart. I dream to be like each of them, not just one of them :-D
C'est terrible, n'est pas.

Anyhow, these are my latest attempts on paintings.
Hey you, sorry if I used the design that I made for you ya ;-) I like it so much. Don't worry, I mask your face and the word on your heart so it won't reveal you.

If my fingers could successfully materialise the picture that I saw on my head, this picture could have been much better.
He wanted me to make a tattoo design that depicts yin-yang concept. Him with his feminine and masculine sides blending, but that doesn't mean he's a sissy. He's very straight.

I feel that he's a good person, full of spirit, loves life, loves women and loves his ‘favourite sport' ;-)
He has a very artistic face, so I made it as part of my design. Hence I decided that his tattoo would be him with my tattoo design that shows his passions: woman, nature, beauty, and kindness, all over his thorax and his hands. I was inspired by a cover illustration of Secret Rendezvous, a novel by Kobo Abe.

These two are just a draft and a remake of the design. He took the original one.
See how I failed the colouring scheme :-(