He’s live and kicking

Sebuah catatan terakhir dari awal sebuah perjalanan panjang.

Ini bukanlah goresan pena dari sosok yang sedang mengeluh karena ketidak-berdayaannya dalam mengatasi masalahnya sendiri. Ini bukanlah ratapan seseorang yang berjalan tertunduk dengan wajah muram, dan langkahnya terlihat lunglai dengan wajah tanpa asa. Ini juga bukan ungkapan ketidakpuasan seseorang atas kerasnya hidup yang sedang dijalaninya, minimnya pencapaian yang diraihnya. Tidak, cerita itu mungkin adalah bagian dari hidupnya dulu, ketika dia belum memaknai betapa beruntungnya dia, ketika dia terlalu naif dengan definisinya sendiri untuk arti sebuah kesempurnaan.

Waktu telah memolesnya. Waktu telah mengubahnya dari sebongkah batu kasar berpasir yang tidak menarik menjadi sebuah ornamen perak yang berpendar, cukup untuk menarik perhatian orang yang kebetulan melihat sosoknya. Waktu telah menghancurkan egonya, meluluhlantakkan keangkuhannya, dan menguraikan bagian yang dianggapnya sebagai elemen pembentuk dirinya. Waktu telah dengan sabar menyusunnya kembali menjadi sosok yang utuh. Waktu telah membantunya untuk memahami dirinya sendiri, mengenali segala potensinya, dan membimbingnya untuk mengeluarkan pendar sinar yang dulu hanya disimpannya sendiri.

Telah tiba waktunya ketika dia selesai dengan masalahnya sendiri. Butuh waktu yang cukup lama untuk berdamai dengan dirinya sendiri dan menemukan sosok yang mungkin tidak disadarinya ada, tetapi ternyata sedang tertidur lelap dalam relung gelap yang tidak terjamah di dalam dirinya. Bukan caci-maki dan umpatan yang ia hadiahkan kepada Sang Waktu yang membiarkannya berlari-lari tanpa arah dalam pencariannya, melainkan sukacita laksana seorang musafir yang menemukan oase di padang pasir, karena Sang Waktu tetap berputar sampai waktu itu tiba dan masih tetap menemaninya ketika ia mulai memendarkan sinarnya.

Perlahan demi perlahan, pendaran sinar itu semakin menguat. Berkas sinar yang menyeruak dalam malam yang dingin dan kegelapan yang kelam, cukup untuk memberikan rasa nyaman dan harapan kepada jiwa-jiwa yang juga sedang dalam pengembaraan. Sinar yang terpancar begitu lembut, tetapi tegas dalam garis-garisnya. Dia telah menemukan kepercayaan dirinya untuk bersinar, menyapu penjuru yang gelap dan memberikan petunjuk kepada para pencari jalan untuk menemukan arah kembali ke rumah mereka. Lihat! Dia sedang membantu Sang Waktu untuk menemukan batu-batu yang berserakan di hutan yang lebat, tersembunyi dalam goa-goa yang gelap, agar bisa dikumpulkan dan dibentuk menjadi rupa-rupa perak seperti dirinya.

Tetapi, perak bukanlah sebuah tujuan akhir. Adalah Sang Waktu yang kembali akan mengubahnya menjadi emas yang kemilau, sebuah perjalanan yang harus dilaluinya dengan menghabiskan hari-hari dengan cuaca yang tak menentu. Rasa panas karena terbakar lebih menyakitkan daripada bara di pendapa seorang pandai besi. Rasa dingin lebih menusuk daripada siksaan musim dingin di antartika. Debu dan pasir juga tak henti-henti menghampirinya, menyayat-nyayat permukaannya yang licin dan mengkilap. Angin tak mau kalah dengan menggodanya, menawarkannya untuk terbang bersama ke Kefir dan menikmati musim semi yang hangat dan menawan.

Dia memilih untuk setia kepada rencana Sang Waktu yang telah menemaninya dalam pengembaraan. Sang Waktu sudah membimbingnya di masa-masa sulit dan kini saatnya untuk percaya bahwa perjalanan kali ini juga akan ia lewati dengan bimbingan Sang Waktu. Dia bukanlah kertas yang mudah terbakar, atau daun kering yang segera tertiup angin. Dia akan segera menjadi logam mulia, dengan pancarannya yang menyilaukan, cukup untuk membuat sekitarnya terusik dan beranjak untuk menemukan tempat dia berada. Kemilau itu membuatnya tampak begitu berbeda. Sinarnya tak padam meskipun permukaannya digerus. Sinarnya tetap hadir dalam terang mentari siang dan begitu dominan dalam gelapnya malam. Sinar itu adalah bagian dari kehidupan di sekitarnya.

Dia tahu, dia akan menjadi bagian dari sejarah…

One year after my last post here.

I finally realize. I’m sucked. I’m green. I just know that I know nothing…

But my golden rope is there waiting. As Queen cheer from the world of divine, encouraging me to stride up and walk through the end…

Does age really matter with you?

Initially I never took this question so seriously. This question was ridiculous. Life is only once, to have it to full satisfaction, spending time for fun, enjoying every moment doing whatever one likes, wandering, being free as a bird was what I thought about how my life will go on. Let it flow naturally, don’t push too much was what my naive mind drove me.

Time passes by, you don’t see everything the same as it was before.

Where are your friends when you grow up? During your childhood, it was so fun gathering with your friends. Playing together, having good laughters, studying in a group, planning your future (of course from a child’s perspective), quarrelling (hey, kids have their own way to express feeling) are some things you averagely remember. To be eternal was what you hoped they would be. The reality, they are just your past. Some are stored in your photoalbums and the rest are left in your memory.

Here comes the adult world. You start thinking that it’s less likely to meet friends. There are merely colleagues, apt people you meet for interest. Take and give. They be your enemy some of the time and they are your friend at the other time. You’re gradually acquainted to a term call "business friend". You start questioning why situation around you changes when you’re still not ready yet to accept it as a fact. You get distracted. Feeling like being in a maze where you haven’t already found the way out or like facing a scattered puzzle with a clear picture unrevealed.

Just like another journey, you meet people around while you’re on the walk in the journey of life. People around give you influence, some insight, or even direction to your final destination. Step by step, you collect the pieces or trace your path in the maze and obscurely figure the bigger picture, your final destination. You soon realize you’re not a child anymore. You’ve grown up. Responsibility is around you. People take a look at you by who you are, not your parents. All your acts lead to consequences. Sad fact is you can not decide for your own sake. There are some constraints you should take into account, commonly people around you like your family or your beloved person. Your choice is not pure, even if the consequence is burdened on your shoulder.

You can’t predict how your path will be. Say you’ve already known your destination and now are putting your energy on each steps in the path. Will you be able to walk through smoothly, ignoring all the obstruction, and achieve your goals.

The art of life is problem solving and self controlling to meet the final destination. Life is a game which Creator is too magnificent. You may take pointers, learning from your past, but you’ll never predict what to occur exactly. Here a condition applies. Unless you’re able to pass each step, you’ll never find the end.

As a living creature, two events must occur, birth and death. All of us have undergone the first event, the birth, the starting node of our life. Nobody knows his/her death, so that one can never predict when he/she can consider him/herself achieving most (or radically all) of his/her goals. Hence, a constraint must be properly weighed, time.

Time can not lapse back. It always goes forward.  It’s like a line which is shortened as the clock ticks and the smaller, wasted bar can’t be taken back. Completion of goal is accumulation of effort. If some bars are not carved with effort, to achieve the goals, there can only be two options to occur: 1] the line (or life span) is longer - which is unlikely to happen (though they say, one should dare to say that he will live a hundred years, i’m against this statement indeed) or 2) the rest of the line has more dense effort.

I did mistakes in the past. Making some of my bars uncarved. Without any notice, time has eaten some of my age cake. Twenty four. Two and two square. If I walked at two efforts per day to reach the goals, it’s now time to speed up, square the speed. Hopefully.

The road is narrow ahead. I’m taking my path, diving into the trench of challenges.

Being a genius is sometimes a trouble…

Have you ever thought yourself as a different entity from your surroundings? When you see numbers, you feel the meeting with an old,intimate friends. Floating around and lighting up your soul. So tempting and challenging. The blossom face is full of smile. Your brain is fully deployed. Electric pulse is constantly generated, flowing smoothly through the nerve system. Dendrite and neurite are quite orgasmic, triggering the impulses so fast. You’re a total living machine.

They avoid it, you seek it.

And now you are among other living creatures. They are not numbers nor codes. As a nature of problem to occur anywhere, you immediately realize that you’re in a game of life with troubles hindering. They are your stages. You need to overcome them one by one. The difference is unlike the game you usually play with your game console, you can not save your current path and replay it later from your saving scene when you score a mistake. You know it, realizing it as a fact, and your genius mind starts plotting strategies.

What’s behind your mind? Witty strategies and accurate calculation are your weapons. You predict the outcome by observing how such problem might occur in the past and planning how you will solve them with your ability. You think that they are all trivial. You should make no mistake. The fact, you failed the stage at your first attempt since you oversimplify your cases.

Here I list ten most common mistakes, a genius often makes when dealing with problems:

1. Underestimating the problem. You think it must be it and you’re smart enough to solve. The fact, it’s sometimes harder than you think.
2. Undisclosing the hidden variables. The other name is simplification. Let’s speak from  math approach.  You have a linear equation with N variables. To have a trivial solution, you need to have unique solution for each variable x1,x2,…,xN so that they satisfy equation y. Unfortunately, the number of variables you take into account is less than N so that now the equation has non trivial solution. Simply speaking, the outcome will vary. The result is not like what you expect since you forget to include the hidden variables.
3. Too much focus on single problem. Well, now the problem takes more of your time. You’re too much involved and running out your time. There are more problems to be solved, general! Life is not only about single problem.
4. Abandoning the problem, when it’s too hard. You now realize that you’re not up to the solution.  Your genius mind boasts your pride that you only need more time. At the other side, your sanity timidly acknowledges that you have failed. Seconds, minutes, hours pass by and now you’re at the edge of a river with swift current where you’ll throw the problem and forget that you ever faced it. Running will never solve a problem, indeed.
5. Not learning from previous mistake. Only donkey stumbles upon the same holes three times. Sadly said, a genius is sometimes worse than a donkey. Here is the cause, pride and self confidence. Genius hardly says that he has done a mistake. His pride is too high to consider such thing exists in the world. What happens next is mistake occured repetitively. To learn from mistake is what everybody should do to make better self quality, even for a genius.
6. Not focusing on single problem. Contrarily to [3], a genius sometimes does too many things at the same time. The basic reason for this is since he considers he’s so talented and up to many different cases. It might be right but it could possibly wrong. A genius may be able to solve many different cases, but solving them at once? Not really. Focusing on single problem, setting priorities is proper method to manage the problems and find a way out of the potential troubles.
7. Not communicating well. People won’t know your plans unless you properly tell them about. A genius often makes presumption and consider people aware about his steps and plans. The fact, even if he tells people, not all will understand. Building a communication skill is an important factor that a genius often neglects. Sometimes, the solution involves people around you and you need them to know how it would be achieved.
8. Not listening to others. They have suggestions and advice, but you’re too ignorant to even consider it a bit. You might be on your right track by relying on yourself. But sometimes, people’s advice is right and could avoid the bitterness that might occur in the future.

You’ve read eight, and now come the two most fatal mistakes:

9. Not revealing yourself as a genius. You know yourself a genius but you’re too much afraid of how yourself will be messed up with popularity and exposure to more troubles in the future. Genius means responsibility. You have to take into account that you have something that makes you not so ordinary and you can not avoid it. Keep away the thought of living happily in a calm small village and instead start thinking that you can change a tidbit of the world, however small it is.

10.
Not thinking from ordinary human perspective
Is what geniuses often abandon
Once they realize
It’s the gateway to their actualization
As a part of the humanity

Less a genius more a human
Swaying in a dream
To be sprayed in reality

Slow movement results in havoc.

Dreaming about visiting Louvre
Climbing up Eiffel
A glass of wine in Bordeaux
Skiing at Alpen downhill
Being a monk in Lourdes
Experiencing the spirit of liberte, egalite, fraternite

A day before D-day
Thought I left my TOEFL score at home
Went back at night
Slept tight
Woke up late in the morning
Searching a gem in my document
Found nothing
I lost my precious certificate

Good bye France
You’re still far away
Good bye girls
You won’t meet this man
Who will shed a light to your romance life
Good bye higher education
And welcome to the circle of repentance
Back to the school of life again

Yet Mike, you’re still slow

Tuhan
Aku tahu
Tiada layak aku memohon
Tiada patut aku bersimpuh

Darahku hitam
Lautan kebajikan takkan memutihkannya
Samudera pengampunan takkan mampu menampungnya
Hanya palung kematian
Dan dera bara kemerahan
Yang mampu memurnikan jiwaku

Mungkin Engkau sudah bosan padaku
Setiap hari mencairkan pinjaman kerahimanmu
Hanya untuk melihat
Aku berjudi lagi

Tapi Tuhan
Aku yakin
Masih ada sisa tabungan pengampunan
Yang dapat kugunakan
Masih ada permohonan
Yang akan Kau kabulkan

Hanya satu pintaku
Agar Kau menolongku kali ini
Gulirkanlah angka tujuh
Pada dadu yang akan kulempar

Agar baju yang telah kuserahkan
Agar celana yang telah kugadaikan
Dapat kupakai lagi
Atau aku akan telanjang
Dan terjerat RUU APP

Mejikuhibiniu
Warna busurmu
Menghiasi langit biruku
Mengalahkan awan kegelapan dan petir yang bersahutan

Warna-warni
Rupa wajahmu
Mengingatkanku akan jalan setapak yang kulalui
Meski kau lebih beruntung
Dengan warna-warna cerahmu
Terasa semarak dan meriah, tanpa kerikil-kerikil tajam yang menghalangi

Sepotong pelangi
Kutemukan hari ini
Dalam cerahnya hari dan sinar mentari yang panas

Sepotong pelangi
Membuatku takjub
Terpesona akan keindahanmu
Meski bukan seluruh busurmu yang kokoh
Dan rupamu yang tampan membentang langit

Sepotong pelangi
Membakar fantasiku yang liar
Membawaku ke dalam vorteks imajiner
Merangkai mimpi-mimpiku jadi satu

Dalam kenyataan…

In 2001, I made a yahoo account which uses "hacked" suffix.
In 2006, I got hacked.
My account got blocked.
I couldn’t access my email and almost my other online credentials.
I lost some $$$ from my e-bank account.

Is this karma?

I hope it’s true so that from now on i will add "president" [1] and "idol" [2] suffixes in such favor when i can’t reach [1], i can still be [2].

Hehehe..

Who is Al Di Meola?

Born in an Italian family, then, while growing up in New Jersey, young
Al Di Meola divided his time between guitar lessons and hanging out at
the local salsa clubs. Influenced greatly by jazz guitarist Larry
Coryell, Di Meola enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where
his marathon practice sessions are still the stuff of legends (Al
continues to be the technical master by which other guitarists are
measured). "We had three guys in one space; one in one room, one in the
bathroom and I got the closet". After a brief stint with keyboardist
Barry Miles, Di Meola, at 19 was tapped by Chick Corea in 1974 for
"Return to Forever". His star quickly ascended. Twenty-two recordings,
countless awards, (including three gold albums) and six million albums
later, Al Di Meola is still challenging himself and his music.

I’m not an Al’s big fan. I reckon that his music and creativity are fantastic yet sometimes confusing and not easy listening. What amazes me so that i decide to write here is his picking technique. Unlike many other guitarists who play speed picking, Al technique is bit distinguished, or if i can say, astonishing. He picks every single note on the bars, just like how your master taught you to do arpeggios in your classical guitar class.

If you’re playing triplets, do you pull or hammer the second and/or third note in the triplet? Ask Al, and he will show you how to do it by only using pickings. Here I give a transcription from "Race with Devil on Spanish Highway", bar 7 to 12. Please also note that the intervals are not constant. Cool huh?

His technique is not so easy to follow. Who wants to spend extra energy to pick every single note if one can plainly use simple pulling or hammering? Perhaps nobody, but we have Al. Have you ever heard Al’s song entitled "Orient Blue"? I guess this is a good start to imitate his technique, to answer the challenge that the technique is not divine though it seems sophisticated (but if you’re satisfied enough with echoing effect from your electrical guitar by doing some pullings or hammerings, no need to try, honestly). Please pay attention to the first 12 bars below. You may say it’s just simple arpeggios, but please remember, don’t use your fingers. Do picking instead. Too easy? Oh no, i must have no musical talent. Would you please help me get over my stiff fingers problem?

Credit: Guitar Pro 5, a guitarist’s must-known application for creating and listening to musical transcription

Saturday night. Full moon and twinkling stars covered up the darkened blue sky.
Cold night, shattered debris.  Dust in the wind raced to reach the end of borderless spatial arena.
Street lamps were on a line, marching up like a race. Shedding some candelas. Un-dimming the night.
Crowd were everywhere. Cozy places were taken, almost occupied. Chatters and laughters were mesmerized. So merry.
Not even a preach, everybody was on bliss.

Sitting a woman in grief. Melancholy song guaranteed a handkerchief.
Slim body was wrapped by decent dress, a silhoutte of sexiness.
Beautiful face was so flattering, diminished flawlessly by the reddish eyes.
Elegance was a story, sadness won a victory.
Paradox or irony?

Telling me a story. A heartless man in history.
Trying to listen in silence. Grasping each word in details.
Keeping self control, not to be owned by emotion.
She paused the tone, asking for a solution.
You know, you’re talking to a wrong person.

Speaking with logic, telling her the truth. Arranging my words, harder than blabbing my mouth.
"Don’t live with only feelings", said I. "You know how you feel but you know it won’t fix things".
"Commitment is about two persons. No use forcing your feeling if you don’t get the same feedback".
"When you dare to start, you know, you should be ready for the ending, however bad you don’t want it."

"Yes, but I’m afraid"
"I’m not ready for this situation. I can’t just plainly accept that this is for real"
That man triggered the killer gun, saying:
"Life has to go on. If you keep behaving like this, you’re torturing yourself. You have to move on. Do you believe that ‘love isn’t always to be defined as possessing?’"
Her eyes got more gloomy. Reddish eyes were burned with more sorrow.
Finally it was there.
A clear drop was falling from the edge of her fine eyes.

In front of me,
A woman cried
For a thing called love.