Monday, March 17, 2014

Terikat




"Mas, aku sama mbak Yanti tebak-tebakan siapa di antara kita berenam yang pertama lupa temen-temennya dan kita sepakat, kamu itu," said Ika when we rode together from Ondo-ondolu on our last month in Banggai.

I didn't think she saw how I react, and neither did she hear my indignant scoff in reply. I justified my indignation by comparing myself with Lilli, who was besotted in a new relationship and Luqman, who was isolated in a separate island from the rest of us.

I did acknowledge to myself, that the year was drawing to an end, and after that, we most likely will never work together in a team again. Lilli and Auliya will return to the field of medicine. I imagined Luqman would be running his bussiness (though he's in Halmahera now). And me, well, what'd I be doing?

I wistfully admit that the possibility of us being in the same city will be slim to none. I wondered, will we even ever meet again to sit together in a table (and preferably cracking crabs and teased Yanti who won't eat crabs and squids)?

Despite of that, I would like it more if our friendships last.  The trouble is, unlike my friendship with my high school friends, we don't share the same place of origin. Lilli is from Jakarta, Luqman is from Surabaya, Yanti hails from Kalimantan, Auliya's home is perched on the slope of Semeru while Ika has Bojonegoro to call home. There will be no halal bi halal to rely upon to gather us every year.

But then I realized something, we don't share the same place of origin, our interests lie on different field, our religious convictions conflict, but we were bound together in Banggai for a year. We grew there and we have vowed to return there, too.

I have regarded Yanti's and Auliya's host family as mine too, and I would love to visit Solan and Tembang again. I might not be able to make the omission of Sinorang more inconspicuous from this list, but in the whole, our lives did get entangled.

And it's an entanglement I don't wish to unravel. It's a knot that tethers me to the realm of ideals and good intentions. It's a bond that will never let me forget.

So don't worry guys, I won't.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Bersilaju dengan Waktu

Aku menumpang di kos Ojan, yang mengukir sejarah baru, menjuarai World Universities Debating Championship kategori English-as-Foreign-Language.

Aku menginap di Uphie, yang menceritakan serunya bekerja mengurusi Pemilu ketika Pemilu mendekat.

Aku makan bersama Tirza, Joan, Denny, dan Apu, dan waktu itu Tirza dan Joan menyesalkan kerja kementerian-kementerian yang melambat ketika Pemilu mendekat. Kerja mereka yang bersinggungan dengan berbagai kementerian membuat komentar mereka relevan.

Aku berkunjung ke kos Denny dan Tirza, yang ternyata hanya sepelemparan batu dari kosku. Denny berkisah tentang berbagai rencana bisnis yang ingin ia kembangkan, dan kilah-kilahnya melepaskan diri dari kungkungan sosial untuk ber"karir".

Aku mengobrol dengan Aino dan saudaranya. Aku bertukar cerita horor jadi guru di Banggai dengan cerita horornya Aino menjalani internship dokter di Bima. Saudaranya bercerita ia akan bersekolah di Kyoto University dan mempelajari neuroscience. Aku bertemu mereka tidak sengaja.

Aku bercakap-cakap dengan Ria, yang mendelik separo tidak percaya, "Kok teman-temanmu keren Syhur? Kok kamu punya teman?" Ria sekarang bekerja mengetes obat kanker.

Aku bertemu Karina, yang berkilah bahwa selain kena kemalangan kehilangan barang-barang berharganya, ia tidak banyak bepergian, dan semuanya "gini-gini aja".

Aku bertemu Kirana, yang telah menetapkan pilihan untuk mulai belajar hal baru, English Lit, dan pasti semuanya tidak akan "gini-gini aja".

Aku bercengkerama dengan Ella, yang kini bekerja sambil ambil MBA. Di sela-sela waktunya, dia menyalakan lagi asa menyingkap surga di perairan Sulawesi Utara.

Aku bertanya pada Firman, seperti apa kerja dia menulis aplikasi Java. Ia sebentar lagi akan bekerja di tempat baru di Malaysia.

Aku makan bersama Ayu dan Rangga. Memang makan dengan wartawan (dan mantan wartawan) energi, tentu saja pembicaraan beralih ke Chevron dan Ciremai.

Aku menemani Ayu mencari kado untuk Cindy, lalu mencari waktu agar bisa bertemu dengan yang ultah, sebelum ia pelesir menjelajah Eropa.

Aku datang menemui Danti yang kakaknya menikah. Setelahnya, ketika aku mengantarkannya ke stasiun, aku bisa menumpahkan kesahku tentang sanak dan kerabat, dan delusi sosial manusia.

Aku menerima Arry menginap di kosku, memberinya tebak-tebakan tentang e-filling pajak sebelum ia menguji kemampuannya untuk mendapat posisi baru yang akan memindahkannya dari Sumbawa.

Aku menawarkan kosku untuk tempat menginap Indras. Kawan senasib beda penempatan, yang gambarnya tidak bisa tidak bikin saya minder secara seni ketika kami duduk bersebelahan untuk seleksi ODP Indonesia Mengajar.

Aku terburu-buru meninggalkan Didin di halte busway setelah ia menginap di kosku usai ia wawancara kerja.

Aku berkilah pada Cahaya tentang lingkar pertemanan dan keimanan. Menariknya, ia berkomentar, "Ini mah kain aja," sembari merujuk ke jilbabnya. Ia baru saja menemukan kalau keping puzzlenya bukan keping yang cocok.

Di pertemuan dengan Korps Donatur Publik Indonesia Mengajar, aku sadar bahwa siklus penguatan dukungan itu nyata. Good will beget good.

Di pertemuan dengan kandidat calon pengajar muda VIII aku sadar bahwa banyak orang-orang hebat rela berusaha untuk ikut membangun bangsa. Aku pun tak tahan untuk tidak mengusili mereka di rangkaian Simulasi Mengajar Direct Assessmentnya.

Di latihan debat SEF ITB, aku senang junior-juniorku berkembang. Agak tertekan memang tidak menyenangkan, tapi mereka toh mengambil kesempatan.

Di Astronomi ITB, aku menyimak cerita Ajeng memaparkan penugasan satu tahun di Kalimantan. Suasananya riang.

Satu tahun dua bulan bertugas di desa, aku melihat Indonesia dengan warna yang berbeda, yang membawaku mengalami Jakarta dengan perspektif kaya. Delapan pekan berlalu, aku hampir tak sempat merasa sendu.

Aku akan bergerak maju.


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Quotes from The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

I started reading Alain de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work ages ago, when I was on my trip around Indonesia. For some reasons, though, I hadn't been able to finish it until I had been accepted to be a Pengajar Muda with Indonesia Mengajar. I finished the book when I was in a travel to Bandung to catch up with debating friends.

With mere days before we're about to start our camp, the book resonated anew. Here are some of my favorite quotes. Emphases in bold face are mine.

"When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the [making of the] finest biscuit."

A meaningful job usually isn't the path to riches, however.

"Why in our society the greatest sums of money so often tended to accrue from the sale of the least meaningful things, and why the dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity at the heart of the Industrial Revolution so seldom extended beyond the provision of commonplace material goods like shampoo or condoms, oven-gloves or lingerie. I told Renae that our robots and engines were delivering the lion’s share of their benefits at the base of our pyramid of needs, that we were evident experts at swiftly assembling confectionery and yet we were still searching for reliable means of generating emotional stability or marital harmony."

Though surely making the production process more efficient by breaking down its steps and improving the efficiency of each step to maximize profit, has externalities.

"But however great the economic advantages of segmenting the elements of an afternoon’s work into a range of forty-year-long careers, there was reason to wonder about the unintended side effects of doing so. In particular, one felt tempted to ask – especially on sombre days when the eastward-bound clouds hung low over the head office in Hayes – how meaningful the lives might feel as a result."

All that, and the following, are from the third chapter, Biscuit Manufacture.

"What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things"

"You perhaps think, “to waste the labour of men is not to kill them.” Is it not? I should like to know how you could kill them more utterly’."

Chapter One is another favorite of mine, with its descriptions of Cargo Ship Spotting. Transporting cargo from all over the world, the cargo ship passed through places like Tunis and Alexandria.

"A romantic charge [clings] to names like Yokohama, Alexandria and Tunis – places which in reality cannot be exempt from tedium and compromise, but which are distant enough to support for a time certain confused daydreams of happiness."

Carrying countainers--which are touted as the most underrated invention, the cargo ships are by and large invisible.

"What renders the ships and ports invisible is an unwarranted prejudice which deems it peculiar to express overly powerful feelings of admiration towards a gas tanker or a paper mill – or indeed towards almost any aspect of the labouring world."

Other quotes of interests from the book,

"It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved."

"Symons preferred a quote from  Motivation and Personality , by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, which he had pinned up above the toilet: ‘It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement’."

"Living with science without understanding it forced one to consider machines in the same quasi-mystical way in which a sparsely clothed Waiwai might have contemplated the phenomena of the heavens. What talent and insolence it was on the part of the white-coated fraternity to have succeeded in generating an impression of mystical awe with the help only of an ammonium perchlorate composite."