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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