Afraid of being Old

Today, my grandfather was rushed into ICU at around 3AM this morning. His condition was reaching critical level. And it hasn't been better up until afternoon. And at 4pm, we were rushed to get B-type blood to supply him. We were told to gather as many family member as we can to prepare for his last day(s). I rushed myself to the hospital to prepare for the blood supply, and now, here we are, waiting around ICU to wait for the latest info of granddad's condition. And prepare for the bad news.

It has been a few days that he has been hospitalized because he hadn't been very well at house. He hardly eat a lot, drink less than 200ml per day. It seems that he had trouble drinking or eating. I don't know whether it is because something caught up in his throat or it is that he was merely unspirited to take the nutrition we gave. All he does was sleeping for most of his days. It is his second time being hospitalized in this month. A few months ago, I still remember him able to move from bedroom to the terrace to see the surrounding and inhaling air. But this month, he can only lie down in his bed and rarely go to the bathroom to pee or poop until eventually obliged to wear diapers to prevent him unable to reach bathroom in time. I watch him drinking from glass, to drinking from a bottle of mineral water using straw until he can only drink if we spoon him bit by bit until a maximum three tiny spoons of water.

I haven't seen him in full health monitoring equipment as people say for those who has been treated in ICU. But I guess something like that is not the state I want to live in my old days.

I have two things in mind: 1, being pictured the state of old and rusty human, 2, that I'm going to lose the last granddad I have in a matter of hour.

Seeing my old granddad bring me the picture of who I will be in 50-60 years; thin, bald, running out of teeth, lack of vision, lack of hearing, incapable of chewing or even drinking. I wonder if these are the picture of someone who thinks about too many things in his mind while lacking the time to speak of it or solve his problems. He is a kind of person that doesn't like boasting or grumbling or yelling at other people that he has problems or that to the people he thinks he has a problem with. He likes it to keep everything in his mind only, speaking things that never solve his problems, saying the same thing such that it seems unsolvable. Those things keep lingering his mind for a long time. He is a type of person that finds it hard for himself to tell someone when he is wrong,or even say things he doesn't like to the person himself. He keeps it in his bottom of his heart only. Now, I can only see that whenever he has thoughts that troubles him, he got sick. And when he can't stop thinking it, he got hospitalized for his blood sugar level rising drastically, though he keeps his sugar diet.

Now, by the time I finish this writing,after two days of writing delays, I am 30minutes past his death. May he rests in peace, being released from painful and suffocating life, being freed from painful thoughts. And may this death moves us on forward.

We miss you, granddad.

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Upload Speed Assumption That Breaks My Heart

I recently read Digital Photo Pro ed November 2011. It was late in the night, so I just skip pages until I reached an atricle, "Is Cloud Storage For You?". Yes, Cloud computing has been a trend in discussion, inside or outside Indonesia. So, I read those tiny font size quite carefully. It stated that professional photography can utilize this service to backup and access their pictures everywhere in the world as long as they are connected to the Internet. It helps a lot because there are more and more company offering this service and we can store our pictures without having to bring our external hard drives along with us everyday.

But it doesn't mean that this cloud storage has no disadvantage. It will surely take some time to upload our picture collection into their server. Yes, pictures taken by professional photographers are huge in size, around 8Mb/picture. And they assume that if the upload rate of around 2Mb/s, they will count that it will take 4s to upload a single picture. You can do the math suppose that we need to upload 1Terabyte of picture. This statement that breaks my heart.

You see, in Indonesia, it is practically impossible to find retail Internet connection users who can enjoy such high upload rate. The highest rate offered by one of the biggest operator here is only of around 1Mb/s for download speed, not upload speed. It is known that upload speed is usually slower than download speed, so we can conclude that the upload speed is less than 1Mb/s. Normally, it usually takes me half an hour(if lucky) to download a 50mb file. I can't imagine, how long it will take me to upload such huge(relatively, uploading a 50Mb file is a huge file for me) file to the Internet. *sigh...

So, it breaks my heart by their statement stating that 4s is a long time to upload a 8Mb picture. Well, in here, I can take a cup of coffee and a couple slip of it if I were to upload such huge file to the Internet using the available Internet connection for retail users in Indonesia. I guess I have to wait a few billion seconds to have a hi-speed internet connection here. Or, should I just go abroad to enjoy it? That would be an expensive bypass alternative..:p

What do you say?
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How Fast Do We Turn Our Face Away After Shaking Hands

Today is friday. As a moslem, it is obligatory to attend what we call as Sholat Jumat. It is a weekly noon prayer conducted every Friday(Jum'ah). In the end of the prayer, we usually shake hands with persons, at least the one on our left and our right, whether we know him or not. I believe that shaking hands are obligatory as well, which enforce us to see someone next to you as a brother, whether you know him or not.

But what I see today, that people give different expression in each people shakes. The one on my left side gave me a smile while shaking my hand, but the on my right side turn his plain face away just a few second away from releasing my handshake. I felt happy from the smile given from the man on my left, but from a man from my right, I felt just the contrary.

I realized now that a little smile can bring different feeling towards people. I realized as well that we often give smile to important people handshakes. Whether it is important for career, love, or even a matter of respecting the authorities. And the smile must be presented sincerely, without hesitation and unwillingness.

I admit that we often give smile, even a fake and excessive smile to those honoured people handshakes, but then we give less smile while seeing our own family. So I believe that we should give smile everytime we shake everybody's hand.

Now, do we smile everytime we shake our hand? I'm waiting for a 'yes' answer.:D
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Ways To Conquer People Around You

A few days ago, I was interested to a book entitled "19 Minutes To Conquer People Around You". I thought that I can get some tips in influencing people around me. From a slight view of the book itself I can conclude one thing :

BEFORE CONQUERING OTHER PEOPLE, We Need To Conquer Ourselves First.

It all seem so simple. Yes, because it is that simple. A General of an army won't win if he can't win his army's heart and commitment. A Manager can't achieve the target given if his/her teammates are supporting him.

So, we shall be more discipline to conquer ourselves, before eventually winning the life.....
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Sincerity Can Be Found Anywhere

A few hours ago, I just had my hair cut at a mini barbershop. I don't go there too often, only once every one and a half month. Up until now, I don't know their names (there are two barbers, a father and his son), they don't know mine either. Everytime we go there, the always welcome us with the same smile they used to show. But today, I didn't see the similar smile from the 60s-year-old one. Of course, we reacted by asking him, "Are you okay? You don't seem well". And, yes, the answer was that he had a surgery a few days ago. It was hernia, I guess. So, the old man started telling his story.

The story was about how grateful he is to be able to do the surgery, though at first he felt reluctant because he has no enough money and so did his son. Eventually, they could make the surgery happen. Speaking with the low volume of voice, he admitted that he hasn't fully recovered or even at his normal state of health post the surgery. Accompanied by the sound of traditional javanese folk song from the radio, he kept making hair cuts while telling about how grateful he was and we should have.

Since I'm a type of good listener and less-than-good chatter, I chose to hear him speaking and make a few short comments to ensure him that I'm listening. Everytime I make a haircut there, the old man will surely tell that we are grateful for life, whoever we are, in a low tone as if he is not telling us what to do. In very javanese style of wisdom sharing, he provided ideas of simple happy life,sometimes advises for younger generation and teenagers.

What made me amazed that, although he was not in his best state of health, he still provided the best service. Not only making a haircut for me, but he also noticed that my hair is damaged, so he used a special scissor to cut those damaged hair. He also clean the hair on several places to make me look better.And other services but giving simple massage(a simple massage is a massage around shoulders,neck,and head. The barber usually do that after a haircut is done. It needs quite some power to do so) since he might not strong enough yet to do massage. For those extra service which is unintendedly given, I tried to give the unintended extra fee for the barber. For the normal rate of ten thousand rupiahs, I gave him twenty. And the second thing amazed me was that the face of the old man showing a very gratefu,happyl expression. I mean, man, it might be not that much, but still he gave such expression that gave me the delightful feeling to do so in the future. I was very glad to get there.

And, I was the last customer there. It was almost 9 o'clock pm. They didn't usually open in night so that they can rest a bit. Yes, I believe it was a luck, and that small luck bring me to happiness.

Yes, I like their sincerity in providing barber haircut service. In my office, where service matters, we often found out being dissapointed by our mate, and we sometimes dissapoint our mate as well. The haircut event reminds me that sincerity can be found anywhere, and it affects other people.

So where ever you are, you can always find sincerity. If we can't see any, we can always create it.

Can you?
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Sincerity Can Be Found Anywhere

A few hours ago, I just had my hair cut at a mini barbershop. I don't go there too often, only once every one and a half month. Up until now, I don't know their names (there are two barbers, a father and his son), they don't know mine either.
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Zhou Li, the excellence of foreign study

Dear readers,

Last night, when i watch NHK World, I was amazed by the story of Zhou Li a Chinese student of one of university of technology in Japan. he studied there since 2008, arriving from China in 2006. He got a scholarship to study there. He is studying in Robotic division(pardon me if I'm wrong--I was unable to find his data in Google's first page). In the story, he was building a tiny robot that can fly like a dragonfly.

In that story, it was told that the fellow students in robotic division acknowledge his hard work, because he has to overcome the language barrier, and usually, students there only add what is lacking in their previous students' work. So, instead of adding up or perfecting what was left by the former students, Li started his own work from his idea. So why does he have to build a tiny robot that flies like a dragonfly? He said, "So that we can use this robot to fly over terrains or wrecks of a building that cannot be reached by human or even places that are harmful to human. Whether it is to see the surrounding area or even to look over victims that can't be seen from far". Wow, I didn't think that simple idea need a very big hardwork and patience. First, he needs to go to Japan to study there, then overcoming language barrier, work hard to get scholarship, doing weekly review to his professors about his work, and of course, being far from home.

And why did he choose Japan? He just simply saying that he was inspired by Astro Boy and Digimon. What I can take from this simple statement is that, he only need simple reason to achieve what he does right now. Sometimes big dreams come from small admiration of one thing.

He even lives in a small rented apartment, doing his laundry by stepping on them instead of putting into washing machine, do shopping in closing hours for 30%discount, put groceries in mini refrigerator, and cook on his own for dinner. He does it all day. Very simple life he has. Even his father still write him letters instead of texting or sending emails as young people nowadays.

So far from I can see that he only need simple life, simple reason but big idea and big patience and boldness to be a brilliant person whom people acknowledge.

Do we have big ideas?

"Tired of getting someone new, or I only want you!"

Dear readers, recently I have met several people who has trouble in love. Usually, Indonesian women in their mid to late 20s are subject to the matter of "When are you going to get married?" stuff. There are those who has happily married, there are those solemnly concealing their spouse-to-be, and of course there are those who encounter challenges in their way to marriage.

There are one thing that tickles me everytime I hear this phrase " I just don't want to look for another spouse-to-be" for these reasons: " because it takes time to start over" or " because I'm too old for that" or " because I don't feel like I'm into it anymore". And most of them are said by women. I wonder, why I haven't heard from my fellow male friends...

If we take a different point of view, why don't these women uttered " I just want you to be my spouse,no one else"? It comes from the same source, but it may imply a different thing. Saying "I don't want to look for another because I don't want to start over" can imply that she doesn't have any other option of male which she dreams of. It implies that she's desperate and chooses the male available to marry with rather than finding the one she loves and loves her. That is what I regret because there is a chance that she will regret the choice she made. And as I know, women want to have marriage once in their life. Their first and their last marriage.

So, instead of saying negative sentence as such, wouldn't it better to say that " I want to spend my life with him/her, no one else". Are we brave enough to say that sincerely in front of our spouse(or spouse-to-be)?
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When what info you want is not what they give you, in the office

We know that in large company and organization, we work with an enormous number of people as its employee. We can find good things and less good things in it,as usual. Today, I just found something that is quite funny and rhetoric in daily life in an office.

Yesterday, our division--got an email,which is forwarded from head office. In this email, we were asked to get some data about several companies in our city that can be targeted for our business. The data requested are address,account number(indicating that they are our customers or not), and acquisition progress.They do that to be able to map the targeted customers throughout the nation.

Usually large companies/organization, almost every employee is provided by on-line internal database that can be used to obtain customer's certain data. In this case, I assume they can do the same thing as I can-- obtaining customer's data from the database. Now,considering that that request can be done by people from head office as well as we can, why don't they take the data available from the database?

So, my supervisor lightly recommend me to give the data available from our customer database. I guess that our teammates should have specify more clearly about the data they request us to search. If they want an update of the data,(which is not available in our customer database) then say so. Given enough time, we will do our best to deliver the request, as great teamwork is necessary.

Has it ever happen in your life?

If life is a journey,then career is just a small part of it

Some poeple says that life is a journey,some says that journey is their life. Whichever we are, I agree that we can feel life by having a journey. By having a journey, we can see the world ( at least some part of it), we can see how large our world is, we can see how beauty it is, we can see people, meet people, get to know people, and making friends. We can feel life by knowing that we are not alone in this wide and spacious world.

Through journey as well, we can also see how bad some environment can be, we can see how poor sanitation in can be, how poor our society can develop to, we can see how lucky our life can be compared to those who is suffering. We can feel sorrow, we can feel grief, we can feel dissatisfaction, and we can feel empathy and sympathy. We can feel life by knowing that we still have heart.

Through journey,we can taste different tastes of meal, we can smell different scents of flowers and wind,we can dive different water or lake, we can see the tears of a child wanting her mom to be close to him while the mother is occupied by her effort to get income to feed that child. We can go everywhere we want, or even to places we are told to go to, or even places we haven't kniwn before. And what makes a journey brings life is when we got home, we can smile a lot wider, welcomed by the hands of our smiling family, sit down and have some tea while sharing the stories we have from our journey. We feel life more into ourselves..

During my career in one of national bank of Indonesia, I have been travelling to almost every branches in the Area of Balikpapan. Although acting as a temporary assignment clerk, I can see more part of the world, at least a very small part of it. I can see a lot people, I can learn to get along faster than I used to, and I can view bigger portrait of people. Some friends feel pity for me, some feel that I'm pathetic to do such task, but I have to say that some part of me enjoying it. But for sure, I want to aim bigger than what I do right now, because though I am enjoying it, I don't want to stay just like this. Now, through my journey, I can see that I need to learn to be patient. That is for sure.

What about you?