I have to hand it to the Majelis Ulama Indonesia aka the Indonesian Ulema Council – these guys really know how to make Indonesians sound even more stupid than we already have. First, they made a fuss about Yoga and decided to ban the sport since it had the “Om” chanting which they said, referred to the religious ritual of the Hindus. And then they changed their mind. And then they were revising the ban and decided to go ahead with it. The irony of this whole thing was that almost none of Yoga practitioners in Indonesia actually ever chanted anything during their Yoga activities. I don’t doubt it, since it would be very hard trying to maintain a Matsyasana position while breathing in and out with rythym and trying to go “Ommm..” with any breath that is left from your lungs.

Not satisfied with to-ban-or-not-to-ban Yoga (and also perhaps running low with bribery income), the MUI decided to produce an edict against smoking. Personally, I don’t care much about this fatwa as I am a non-smoker and I also think that the chance of making the people in this country to stop smoking is probably the same as trying to make Bakrie fix the Sidoarjo mud disaster. Not gonna happen.

But this topic caught my interest when it was being discussed on MetroTV’s Today’s Dialogue titled (quite creatively so) Obral Fatwa MUI, which means – roughly translated – The MUI Fatwa Sale. You can watch the whole show here.

Mr. Amidhan from MUI seemed to be so sure and confident that there were, apparently, a lot of people who demanded that smoking was to be an edict. He said, “Oh, we had plenty of requests from people, personal or from organisations, etc., asking for this edict to be made, sure, of course.”

And yet … he didn’t produce any evidence at all. No letters or petitions signed by people saying so. So how could he say those things when he had no actual proof whatsoever? Not good enough, wrinkly old man. I want proofs. Until  I actually see hard copied evidence of signatures from a bunch of hypocritical non-smokers who are actually looking for some charity fund from the tobacco companies, I won’t believe a single world that you say.

For me this just another classic case of ‘Instead of solving the problem, let’s just forbid people to do something and hope for the best!’, rather than ‘Let’s educate the people that smoking is unhealthy and even if they do smoke, let’s advise them to do it in the proper places.’

But I guess for me, the smoking edict was not as bad of a joke as it was for the edict to forbid people to abstain in this year`s general elections. This, I thought, had got to be a fucking joke.

I’d love to tell this wrinkly old man that it is my right to go abstain when I feel like it, because as far as I know, all the politicians in this country can only offer lies and deceit, and I won’t trust the fate of this country to those low-life scumbags ever.

I seriously think MUI must’ve thought Indonesian people are stupid or something.

As if we don’t know that those political campaigns either on television or billboards are all shite. As if we don’t know that they only bring up the poor and uneducated people at times like these but once they get elected, they’d be too busy exchanging bribes and dirty money to each other to even give a shit about the future of this country. As if we are too gullible to believe the empty promises those corrupt politicians say – how they’re gonna give 20% of the budget for educational purpose.  Golkar has actually done this in their telly ads and it’s kind of stupid because that is really nothing new – 20% has always been the budget and it’s stated in the 1945 Constitutions since, like, forever. So by bringing that up and claiming that they’re the ones who’d made all that possible, is equal to them visiting hookers and catching gonorrhea and go around saying that they’ve cured AIDS.

And the bits where these politicians always act as if they’re gods and appear as if they’re the ones who’re going to save this wretched country from it’s terrible fate – sickening or what? Fuck off, assholes, you’re the ones who make this country impossible to live in. It’s people like you, who made poverty, uneducated people, flood victims, and everything bad about this country, exist.

So is it really my fault for abstaining? Is it really? Because I seriously think by voting or not, it won’t make a damn difference. Not with the kind of law and justice system this country is running. No, not really.

*)Image of Suster Ngesot is courtesy of Golput.wordpress.com

Money can buy the law; at least that’s what I’ve witnessed the last time I bribed a cop to avoid getting a hefty fine. But apart from the law, it can also buy trust, because why else do politicians give away money to the mass if not for the trust they need to earn to gain support in the upcoming election?

Last but not least, money buys your beliefs too; which explains why people can change their religions in a snap whenever they get married to wealthy partners who promise happily ever after lives.

But there is one thing that money can’t buy:

Manners.

You know, those simple things that your teacher must’ve taught you during school; like throwing rubbish in the rubbish bin, not cutting a line when it’s obvious that people are queuing, not smoking because you’re in an indoor, air-conditioned room and there’s a sign that says “No Smoking”, or acknowledging that the waiters who are taking your orders in the restaurants you’re eating in are human beings too, not some robots who are there to serve you like royalties.

I see elegantly dressed women in their forties, coming into a restaurant, clutching some designer handbags and covered in bling-blings from head to toe treating waiters in restaurants like they are a piece of shit just for some things that can hardly pass as big deals; like a tiny, miniscule spot on their tables or  food that is taking too long to arrive (when it’s only been five minutes), or the waiters misplacing their food with the person sitting in front of them.

I see people getting off their fancy cars and hand their car keys to the valet, step into the mall and throw a crumpled tissue in a plant pot that is positioned about a few metres away from the rubbish bin – which I don’t get. What is it? Laziness? Lack of intelligence to spot the difference between a pot and a bin? Or perhaps they own the freaking property themselves so they think they can do whatever the hell they want with it (which still sounds totally unacceptable, by the way).

And just recently, my friend Cn attended a wedding reception in which the guests were allowed the luxury to be placed in dining tables – which is different from the usual reception where everyone has to eat standing up and they all have to queue (for those lacking manners, this is obviously an unnecessary task) to get food in one of the stalls. You’d think that the people on these tables would wait patiently for the food to come so that everyone could eat and be merry? Wrong. As soon as the food arrived, everyone stood up immediately and proceeded to their own mini food battle in which the “jungle law” existed there; the quickest ones win their shares.

Apparently, the food wasn’t the only thing they fought for – wedding guests who brought their children’s nannies with them actually told their nannies to steal flowers and whatever leftover food was left on the tables.

If you observe such behaviors, it is easy to identify their greediness with pigs, isn’t it? Because despite the fancy parties and the expensive dresses people buy to be worn on wedding receptions, their money has failed to buy them some manners.

Despite their education and their current positions in their companies, some people fail to read something as simple as a “No Smoking” placard hung on the wall, that they proceed to lit up and make everyone around them cough and curse like mothereffers. Yes, the same people who wore expensive suits and use ten million rupiah leather-encased mobile phones hung on their designer belts.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have people! If you don’t have manners, then you’re just an asshole. But I guess nobody gives a shit about it either, since everyone in this country can easily be bought, right?

There is a weird give-and-receive system of this whole party scheme; My dad asked me to go, just so I could put my name on the guest book, received the little thingamajig wedding souvenir, and in the future, when it’s my turn (or my brother’s, if such miracle can happen) to have a wedding party, it is the inviter’s turn to feel the pressure to attend to it.

But I must ask you this: Do you seriously, honestly, whole-heartedly, enjoy wedding parties?

Do realize it’s the one where you have to try on about ten different outfits before you can finally decide that it’s not the dress that people will recognize from the previous parties you have attended earlier, and it’s the one where you have to wear high heels and develop bruises because you have to eat standing up.

Because no matter what I wear, I always get the downright judgmental once over that girls give to me at every wedding parties I ever attend. It’s the kind where you’re chewing on your fifth satay sticks and realize that an absolute unknown girl is staring at you up and down as if to say, “Do you really have to wear that kind of dress?” and even though she knows that I know that she’s staring, it’s still happening, and it’s not really helping either that she is wearing what one can hardly pass off as a wedding party attire (white shirt, black skirt? Are you waitressing, dear?), and that’s just one. If you’re curious of what I’m wearing to receive such looks, feel free to imagine the dress on the left, only in muted brown and without the glitters and the holes on the breasts area.

And there will always, always be, some elderly lech who’s as old as my dad, openly ogling me in the most impolite manner ever. Never mind that my beau is standing right next to me, on his way to his second helping of the traditional meatball dish from the nearby stall.

And it seems that you can always spot either one or two types of people described in Benny & Mice’s 100 Tokoh Jakarta (if you haven’t got the book, you should, because it will make you laugh so much you’ll piss your pants); it’s like the whole ballroom is exploded with caricature characters that are hilarious and worthy to be laughed at. Hey, I might be one of them too, if the stares I get from some people is anything to go by. But I’d like to think I’m a normal type who is nothing like the pretentious people who seem to enjoy being anything but themselves.

As I was sulking in the corner with a plate of carefully selected dim-sums on my plate, I asked my beau for the point of this whole wedding party, and his theory was that it was designed as one of those ways people do to update their social status.

Ha! I look around and start hearing conversations coming in from every directions that are nothing far from these subjects:

- Business talk. As in; how’s work? Oh, I’ve been promoted, yeah I’ve a bigger salary than you, hahaha. Nevermind that I lick my boss’ ass everyday for it to happen but how about yourself? Ah, I’m fine. Yeah, just opened my own business, I’m in a different league altogether, and you’re still an employee? How sad.

- Family talk #1. My son is much smarter than yours. No, my daughter has higher IQ than yours. And she’s only ten! Well I’ve entered my son into an international school where they all speak English which in turn forces me to enroll into the local English institute just so I can understand what he’s talking about.

- Family Talk #2. When are you getting married? clock’s ticking you know. Can’t be a career woman all your life. What’s that? Oh you’re busy? Well aren’t well all busy, but look at your cousin, she’s already well settled, on her way to her second child! Thirty is the latest age, you know, you really shouldn’t wait!

- Women’s talk. Ooh, I’ve got this bag at a designer sale, so cheap you know, only ten million, can you believe it? Yes, isn’t it lovely? I’ve also got my hair done at so-and-so salon, it’s the best! You’ve really got to try it! Bushy and big, bird-nest hairstyle is all the rage right now, you know? Ooh, by the way, do you know that so-and-so is getting divorced/a boob job/a liposuction/a face-lift/fill in the blanks?

And if any of you would like to add to the list, feel free to do so. For all I know, people hold wedding parties because they want to celebrate and be happy, but now, instead of making the invited to enjoy the event, they simply make them to dread it. Well, I do. It’s hideous, it’s tiring and it’s phony.

Why do we have to eat, standing up? And why do those women have such big hair? Is this really in, I mean is this what we’re doing now? And why do those men wear their shirt collar over their suits? Are they pimps? And do people actually make use of the wedding souvenirs that are given in exchange of the ambiguous amount of money in the envelope that each guest must produce in order to get one? And what about the crazy MC with Koes Hendratmo hair who’s totally anything but funny? Do those newlyweds actually know all the people who have been invited because I sure as hell bet they put on very fake smiles when it comes the time to greet them. Take the last party I just attended; I don’t even know who those people are, because they are my dad’s friend, not mine!

So why am I the only one suffering from it? Am I strange? Do I have an allergy to this type of event or am I simply not cut out for the phony scene? Or maybe, I should just stop attending wedding parties altogether.

But that’s not a possible option. Right?

I tried all the numbers I could think of; my birthday, his birthday, my dog’s birthday, our anniversary, but all of them worked to no avail. I was going to switch providers from Fren to Esia (because Esia users could text message for free!) but the sodding security code prevented me from doing it. I couldn’t figure out whether it was just playing up on me or I had just totally forgotten about the code.

Himself, who’d obviously heard my complain, asked around his workmates and the word was that apparently you could get it fixed at mobile counters that gave mobile services. I remembered vaguely that my friend Ivan also mentioned the same thing, thought I seemed to conveniently forgot that he meant to bring it to Roxy – the biggest, most complete and notoriously famous mobile centre.

Since it was impossible for me to go to Roxy (mostly because I couldn’t be fucked, it was too far and being stuck in a traffic jam was not my ideal way of spending the day), I decided to go to the shopping centre next door, and stopped over a couple of mobile service counters, but as soon as they knew it was a CDMA, they all grimaced, shook their heads and showed a ‘no go on this one’ look on their faces.

“We don’t do security code. Sorry.” sez one.

“You ought to go to the Nokia Service Centre.” sez two.

With a resigned look I finally yielded to my destiny – I headed to the Nokia Service Centre and braced myself – body and soul – to have enough patience being bollocked and forced to join the offensively long queue just so I could get my phone working.

And a long queue it was – which was funny, since Nokia was a very well-known brand, especially in Indonesia. HP sejuta umat, was what people say. I personally detested Nokia phones but back then, their CDMA phones were the cheapest in line, and moreover, that mobile was given from himself when we started going out, just so we could spend hours talking on the phone without having the risk of getting heart attacks after seeing the bill at the end of the month. It had a nice, nostalgic memory behind it and I didn’t want it to die on me.

After waiting for about an hour, my number was finally up, and I explained my problem to the woman at the counter. Once again, I got the grimace. Then she said, “Lemme just check whether we can fix it because it’s a CDMA.”, and I was like, “Hello? You’re Nokia Service Centre, you’re supposed to be able to fix a simple problem like resetting a code! You guys, like, invented those things in the first place!”

When she came back, she told me that I had to let my phone stay the night since it might take a while to get it fixed and they didn’t want to let me wait in uncertainty, so I thought, fair enough, until she told me that it would cost me Rp. 100,000.-

Fuck.

I mean, how hard was it to reset a code? I’m sorry if I sounded ignorant, but if there was any Nokia service dude reading this post, I’d really love to know how you could charge a person that much money just for something so menial. Surely you must have an extensive collection of softwares to hack into any mobile systems? You could have just hooked it up to a cable, run some programs and you’re done, right?

The good news was that I didn’t have to queue on the next day, but it didn’t do much difference – I was still waiting. For a very long time. And even when my name was finally called, they told me to wait for another fifteen minutes because the guys in the back were still checking my phone. Instead of screaming in agony, I chose not to say anything, walked out and go straight to the nearest bookstore to vent out all the anger I had in me by spending my money on books.

Precisely fifteen minutes later, I came back, and waited for another twenty minutes – I swear I almost grew a beard from all that waiting – when I was finally called again to the counter. This time it was a different woman, who was a bit nicer but nevertheless very unhelpful.

“We have to send your mobile to our head office because apparently the signal is not working. We have tested it with different cards and the we couldn’t get any signals, so it might be the hardware that’s damaged.”

Appalled, I protested, “But there was nothing wrong with the signal! It was working when I was using my Fren card. I just couldn’t get into the security code!”

“Oh, we managed to reset the security code, but now the signal on your phone is not working, so we have to send it to the head office, and if there are any additional charges you willl be notified immediately.”

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Additional charges? What if it costed more than the actual price of the phone? the signal was fine when i brought it in, and now they told me it wasn’t working?

In the end I told her that I’d rather have my phone back, no signal and all. The good thing was that she only charged me Rp. 25,000, but I was still pissed off.

Now I have to find a mobile service counters to get the signal working. And the whole point of switching providers in the first place was only because I wanted to save money. Instead, I ended up spending money just because of the sodding security code.

I am never using that damned feature again, and I make damn sure I will never use any Nokia phones again – ever!

Girls are mean. Not exactly in a cat-fight kind of way, but more like the bitchy comments they say to each other or the negative responses they give out when other friends are doing better.

I remember when I was in high school I had this best friend (notice the past tense ‘had’) and one day when we were walking together to English Second Language class, her arm linked to mine affectionately, she casually asked me what I scored for the final English test. When I told her I got an A+ her whole face changed rigid and she snorted out, “Easy when you’re a teacher’s pet.” which shocked me to the core and I had to say “Excuse me?” to which she immediately plastered a fake smale on her face and go, “I was joking! Relax!”

But I recognised that face already and I knew what it meant. It was the familiarity of a girl not liking her friend for doing so much better than her – as if the whole thing was a competition. I didn’t notice it before but the signs became even more visible on other occasions when we were both out to the city and she bumped into some of her friends, instantaneously she stood right in front of me and started talking with them for ages, and not once did she ever introduce me to her friends, which was very rude, I must say. I am glad to say by the time we got to college we stopped talking to each other completely – which was done on her part. One day she just snubbed me off for no reason. I didn’t bother confronting her because I hadn’t done anything offensive to her and being friends with her was tiring me out – what with all those mind games and the invisible rivalry between us. So I was glad to discover that by the time we got to third year in university she had gained so much weight that she looked like the female version of a Michelin. I in the other hand had scored a boyfriend while she desperately moped around the campus and eyeing every guy she met.

But that was just one mean girl of which I had encountered during my adolescence. There are other mean girls who are not aware of the mean things they say to each other. Girls who say negative things when you are happy. Girls who make you doubt your big decision instead of supporting you. Girls who only want to be friends with you when they want you to do them a favour (I get this a lot), and girls who refuse to accept who you are because they discover that you’re not the person they thought you were.

When I finally met my ‘The One’ after so many failed relationships in which I had to keep dissecting and analysing together with my bestest friends, I was so happy and obviously the natural thing was to tell the good news to them. So I was deeply disappointed when one of them retorted disbelievingly, “How do you know if he’s The One?” when all I wanted was for her to be happy for me, because I held her opinion in high regard. Especially because she was actually getting married at that time, which was why it seemed odd to think such question would come out from her.

I am sorry to say that sometimes they feel like they have more in common with me back then when I was single, lonely and frustrated out of my wits because of the fear in becoming a spinster. We were chums when it came to talking about guys and why they were so difficult and made us so miserable. It was like Carrie and The Gang or Bridget Jones and her chummies.

So when I stopped saying, “No man would ever want to spend the rest of his life with a sad old spinster like me”, and instead sang about, “I am so happy I finally meet my other half”, they said that I had changed, and that perhaps I shouldn’t be so sure about it so much. As if it was so unnatural of me to be that happy.

When I stopped feeling cynical and sceptical about life, my friends and I stopped having anything in common. When they were cussing about relationships and getting married off, I was talking about dreams and goals and retirement plans. When they were wondering why men were so complicated, I was wondering about my purpose in life. I felt a huge gap between me and my friends, and I had the sinking realisation that none of my friends knew who I really was nor the person I was becoming to be.

People do change – all the time. It happens even to those who claim that they don’t. There are those who can accept these changes as phases in life that we all must go through, but there are also those who refuse to think that we can ever be someone different.

I refuse to have a bleak outlook in life – even if it meant becoming an unfamiliar person to those around me. Because at the end of the day, who is going to tell me to get up and do better, if not myself? It saddens me to say that sometimes, even those who are closest to you can kill your dreams as much as those who are strangers to you.