HP 530 (new laptop ballads part II)

Like I told you from the older post, I recently welcomed a new laptop (which if you wanna know, was credited for two years. Means I can't run way from Holland for two years. Otherwise I'm blacklisted forever) HP 530.

Í would like to thank Reyner Karnali, Alsya Affandi, and Reggie Raynaldi for all the critics and advices (quote from Reyner: you can turn on the laptop, then take a bath and a short nap, and that laptop is not even booted up yet). You all take part in this recent purchase. So you don't need to worry anymore the next time you come visit me :-)

My lovely laptop

Last week Oom Tony told me about a potential buyer of my four year old laptop. He assured me that this buyer would give me a pretty good deal, and he would lend me one of his many laptops while I'm looking for a new one. The price of new laptop has decreased considerably during these years, and now you can get one with 400-500 euro which would have costed you double four years ago. There is also a good deal with the mobile company, in which you could get a new laptop together with a cell phone and a certain abonement agreement just by paying 20 euro per months for 2 years. In short, today is the good time to ditch your old smelly laptop and get a new shiny one.

My laptop needs 10 minutes to boot up (you can take a shower and come back and it's still in the boot-up process). 5 minutes after on, the machine would growl like crazy and the board get as hot as a stove. It is completely useless without the non-stop plugged in battery. It has no webcam, no internal bluetooth, no card reader, no wireless, no DVD or CD burner, no nothing. It weighs like a ton, has no brand, 512 upgraded memory and 40GB internal disc (trust me, those are very very lame in this MacBook era) and was a bit dirty from a non-stop four years exposure to a student life. I was amazed if it could sell at all.

But however ugly my laptop is, it has accompanied me during this time without any major complaint. The keyboards are intact and the speaker never fails. It stays with me in the sleepless nights during my second years report craze, and it hold on when I typed my bloody thesis and presentation. If love exist, it would be justifiable to say that I'm in love with it. If soulmate exist, it was one of the many souls I have. It was a part of me. It knows my bank balances (which shown that I'm always broke) and the dirty little secrets and the skeleton in my closet. Those priceless and unrepleaceable things make me think twice to say yes to the offer.

Then Oom lend me his laptop. A shiny new Hewlett Packard with 2GB working memory and 1024 GB internal disc. Takes 5 seconds to boot up, one second to open a webpage, and a Window vista operator who said "welcome to Windows Vista. I am your official intelligent" every time I log in. It has a DVD and CD burner, weigh half as my old one, and is equipped with a wireless and a card reader. Wow. He said I could get the same laptop with the cellphone abonement system and an additional 70 euro. As you expected, this good deal shake my determination and cut the crap about those sentimentil things I've written in the previous paragraph :-)

So tomorrow afternoon I will say goodbye to my old friend. I'm sure he would be happier with the new owner. Finally he will be at peace. And maybe I will make a new acquintance soon. Yohooo!!

The legend of Narcissus

Narcissus by Carravagio


Narcissus, the handsome self-admirer who had chosen to die than turned away from his reflection in the lake. So handsome he was, that when he grew up not only women and girls but also other men fell in love with him. When he was born, his parents asked if he would live a long life. The answer was "yes, if he never knew himself".

Unfortunately, despite so many controversy on winning his heart, he could never have loved anybody else once he set eyes upon his own reflection in the lake. He was so much fascinated by what he saw there, and not being able to find consolation, he died of thirst at the brim of the lake. For if he had reached to take a drink, he would have shattered his image into thousands of pieces.

So famous this myth is, so that Narcissus is nowadays used cassually to name a person who take an excessive care of him/herself. If someone couldn't help glancing towards everytime he/she walk pass a mirror, automatically Narcissist would attach behind his/her own name.

However, recently I read a contemporer version of Narcissus story that goes like this: upon his death, one of the God asked the lake if it was sad to be the cause of death of someone as beautiful as Narcissus. The lake said, "yes, I am really sad. Not because someone as beautiful as him has to die, but because in the reflection in his eyes I could see my own beauty. Now I have none I could reflect my self into"...

Ahem. This is very interesting. This lake was like the people who surround the narcissist, and in their silence they laugh for they know they are not as shallow as the narcissist. In him/her, they see their own beauty... Is it possible?

The day you goes away

19.07.08. 11o'clock
Your cheek rested in my head
Talking to me, how much you're gonna miss me
Borrow the bluetooth device

19.070.8. 11.30
My arms in your shoulders,
Yours in my waist
Our face so close,
And I bade you goodbye

19.07.08. 11.45
Sit in your empty room
Two suitcases
I stand up, open my arms
You took me in,
And gave me something precious
Over and over again.

19.07.08. 12o'clock
Three plastic bags
You told me maybe we could make it works somehow
I said we could try later
And I bade you another goodbye.

20.07.08. 02.45
Sit in my chair,
Write this piece
Miss you terribly
Even though you're just one step away
Maybe I'll give you what you want later

20.07.08. 9o'clock
You board the train.
So early, foggy summer morning
And taking away a piece of my heart.

- tribute for Brucie-

A temporary end to my sleepless nights

Tomorrow is one of my biggest days during this four years. THE presentation in front of so many people (thanks to the much-excessive invitations I sent last week). It won't take more than 1 hour, or 1.5 hours at most, but just imagine how long I remained rigid in front of the pc screen with the cups of black coffee and long abandoned spaghetti? hahaha.
Anyway, after tomorrow I'm going to take it easy for a day before getting immersed again in the unfinished bussiness such as reports and the end defense. Still long way to go, 2 more weeks before the internship's finish, moving back to my cozy den in Nijmegen. By then, hopefully the report is finish, the presentation time has somehow magically shorter itself into a mere 20 minutes (now it's half a-hour) and everything's working out.

Pray for me, would you??

The Prophet on Crime and Punishment

...then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of crime and Punishment".
Ans he answered saying:
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commint wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait awhile unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Like the ocean is your god-self;
It remains for ever undefiled.
And like the ether it lifts but the winged.
Even like the sun is your God-self;
It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self does not dwell in your being.
Much in you is still a man, and much in you is still not yet man,
But a shapeless pygmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pygmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime.
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the tumbling stone.
And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not accountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yes, the gulty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun even as black thread and the white and woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.
If any of you would bring the judgement to the unfaithful wife,
Let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurement.

.....

What's written above is obe verse from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. Even if it's difficult to interpret what's written in this masterpiece, it is quite easy to understand what this verse meant: THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU PLACE YOUR JUDGEMENT UPON SOMEONE ELSE, FOR HIS POSITION COULD HAVE BEEN VERY EASILY YOURS, TOO.

Walk with your heart AND your head

When I was so little I used to be really really happy when my mom came and gave me one little sweet candy. I would laugh out loud and thanked her thoroughly. I would taste the candy and feel every precious lick as if I would not get a hold on another candy for ever. But then, after several minutes the candy got smaller and smaller until it finished completely, left me with only one white small stick as a reminiscence of the big big happiness I felt just a moment before. Then came the sadness emptiness and that particular feeling caused by subside happiness...

When I was a bit bigger I would jump to the door when I heard my grandma's voice calling my name from the door. I would run and run and hug her and told her how much I missed her. We would play the whole afternoon and she would listen to everything I said, even if it was just a child talk. We would have fun and have a nice meal that seemed to last just a second. And then came the moment when she had to go home and left me with another years before I could smell her skin and hair again, feel her soft and wrinkled hand caressing me again. Then the familiar pang of sadness and emptiness and that particular feeling caused by subside happiness...

When those rare meetings were taken away from me as she passed away so suddenly in the early morning thirteen years ago, when I realized I would never feel her touch and see her smile again, when I saw my grandpa cried over her final rest and witnessed how much he lost her, when I felt the tears streaming down my cheek and I couldn't stop myself from wailing from my lost; thinking that my world would never be the same again, I knew it was time to learn to shield myself away from those sadness and emptiness and that particular feeling caused by subside happiness...

When it was time to learn to share my heart with my high school sweetheart, I would embrace every day with smile and went to school with full spirit. The world seemed so bright and promising and everyday was heaven on earth. I would enjoy every minute we spent together, from the moment we sat on his car to the time when we called each other from the radio to say goodnight and goodluck. I would feel the strength of his hand when he put it around my shoulder. Then came the time when our paths were no longer crossing each other and we should go to our separate ways. Again and again the familiar sadness emptiness and that particular feeling caused by subside happiness...

The aftertaste of happiness, is REGRET. Because after everything was gone, the pain and hollow were almost unbearable. God creates everything in balance. Happiness and sadness are like two surface on the same coin; when one is awake, the other is lurking in the dark. There was not one could last forever because another would never sleep for long. Behind a happiness there's always a sorrow. And the greater the happiness, the greater the sorrow. Balance. Libra.

I don't need these unbearable sadness and emptiness and regret anymore. I need a wall. I need a distance. I need a brake. I need less emotion. I need a composure. I need calmness. I need a warning. A warning not to be too happy.