Thursday, March 03, 2005

Sayang Kertas! Sayang Kertas!

Di antara macam-macam acara tivi, salah satu acara yang suka saya nontonnya (artinya bukan saya selalu tonton tapi kalau ada kesempatan nonton ya saya tonton) adalah acara tivi yang berkaitan dengan rumah, arsitektur dan desain interior. Senang rasanya lihat rumah yang bagus-bagus, apalagi kalau penataan interiornya asri dan cantik. Sambil nonton, saya membatin, kapan ya (interior) rumah saya bisa sekeren itu?

Bukannya sombong, tapi potensi ke arah situ sih ada, thanks to my Mom with her high and artistic taste *winking to my Mom. Jadi begitu anda main ke rumah saya dan masuk ke ruang tamu, anda akan melihat kursi dan meja serta hiasan-hiasan tertata rapi. Begitu pula jika anda memasuki ruang tengah/ruang keluarga. Tapi begitu anda masuk ke ruangan kamar, terutama kamar anak-anak dan kamar untuk tamu, huihhh, buku-buku dan kertas bertebaran di mana-mana!

Saya bilang sih susah kalau suatu keluarga punya anak yang masih sekolah atau kuliah. Yang namanya kertas dan buku menggunung itu inevitable alias tidak bisa dihindarkan. Masalah jadi lebih pelik apabila ada anggota keluarga yang punya kecenderungan menyimpan segala macam berkas dan buku dan secara periodik tidak mau memeriksa apakah berkas-berkas dan buku-buku yang ada memang masih diperlukan atau sudah waktunya dibuang.

Di keluarga saya, masing-masing anggota keluarga senang menyimpan berkas ini dan itu, tapi semua masih meluangkan waktu untuk meng-'audit' berkas mana yang masih patut disimpan dan mana yang bisa dikilo ke tukang rombeng. Hanya saja kalau kita menyinggung masalah 'periodisitas' dan 'tega', kita akan bicara hal yang sama sekali berbeda. Yang jelas, dipandang dari kedua segi ini, maka saya akan jadi orang yang paling tidak terorganisir*) di keluarga saya.

Pertama, masalah 'periodisitas'. Jujurnya sih masalah ini akan terselesaikan jika saya lebih rajin meng-'uprek-uprek' segala tumpukan buku atau kertas di kamar saya tanpa harus menunggu teriakan-teriakan dari Mama (even at this age *sigh). Saya sebenarnya bisa menyampaikan seribu alasan kenapa saya tidak segera menyentuh gunungan buku/kertas tersebut, tapi jawaban jujurnya ya itu tadi: MALASSS!

Kedua, masalah 'tega'. Nah, untuk perkara yang ini saya masih belum menemukan obatnya. Saya tuh suka tidak tega membuang kertas/buku, apalagi kalau:
  • masih ada sisi kosong di kertas tersebut, misalnya pada kertas bekas fotokopian, yang membuat saya berpikir betapa mubazirnya kertas tersebut kalau dibuang padahal masih bisa digunakan untuk menulis atau menge-print.
  • kertas tersebut berisi bahan-bahan kuliah atau pengetahuan yang sayangnya saat itu tidak sedang saya butuhkan sehingga saya simpan untuk keperluan di masa depan (yang entah kapan akan tiba dan kalaupun tiba, saya bingung juga mencarinya di antara tumpukan kertas-kertas/buku yang ada.
  • ada gambar-gambar lucu/bagus di kertas/buku itu yang bisa digunakan untuk membuat kartu ucapan or else.
Dengan pekerjaan dan hobi saya yang selalu berkaitan dengan membaca, maka dapat disimpulkan, di manapun saya tinggal nanti, tumpukan buku dan kertas akan terus ada, baik buku/kertas yang masih digunakan maupun yang sudah berstatus (atau sebenarnya lebih pantas jadi) buku/kertas bekas. Saat ini saya sedang berniatan menjilid kertas bekas yang ada untuk dijadikan buku tulis. Kalau buku tulis made from kertas bekas itu saya jual, laku nggak ya? I wonder...


*) Sebenarnya saya ingin bilang 'paling jorok' tapi untuk kenyamanan anda membaca tulisan ini, frase tersebut dibahasakan ulang :D

Saturday, February 19, 2005

To be busy is to live

With no teaching schedule and shrinking office assignments, January should have been a heaven for me. No need to rush to the train station to get to Depok during office-closing hours and no need to think up a teaching plan while still jostling with works from my boss. Clients' orders were diminishing in the first two months of the year as commonly happening to business consultants in Indonesia whose major clients are government companies (BUMNs). It should have been a moment of pleasure ... if only I didn't have my thesis to ponder.

As some of you have already known, I had worked on my thesis since early last year and it had become an unfinished business for me. I think everybody agrees, having unfinished business will make our life miserable. We can't and won't stop thinking about it, anytime, anywhere. It wears our mind and our mental state, and may enventually lead to physical exhaustion. For women, it either will make us eat more or the other way around. For dead people, their restless soul will wander and haunt, so some people said (which I don't buy).

Such things happened to me so it was such an immense sense of relief when I was finally through with my thesis. I felt like celebrating it, like having a vacation or doing nothing for a change. Yet it was just too good to be true. It was already near the end of January when I was done with my study and assignments from my boss started to pour in.

The assignments were not the big, mind-boggling, forehead-wrinkling kind, yet. I just needed to make confirmation calls, surf the Internet to get source materials, draft proposals, attend classes and perform as a mentor, and make confirmation calls. Not much but may take time, quite long time which made me unable to get a brief break for myself.

The positive side is perhaps I'd get to go home smiling a bit wider when I walk home after receiving my monthly pay, next month. Still, there are things all the money in the world can't buy, and time is one of them. In days like this, I wish I could go back to my years as a student, the time when I could easily skip a class to join the rally to bring down the president.

But hey, no use crying over spilled milk. Let's just walk on and look out to see whether tomorrow brings a better state to me, to you, to us.

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
Bet you by a dollar that tomorrow
There'll be sun
Just thinking about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobweb and the sorrow
'Till there's none
("Tomorrow" from the movie Annie: The New Musical)


Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Cakes, anyone?

Come join this small celebration of my graduation from the postgraduate program! :)
I know they're only pictures. But hey, people say a picture speaks a thousand words.

So, cakes, anyone?



From left to right:
  • Brownies Roulade
  • Strawberry Cake
  • Assorted Cakes
  • Chococheese Snow Cake

    Pictures are taken from http://www.sedapsekejap.com

    • Sunday, January 23, 2005

      What is she doing in that place?

      Being a teaching staff sometimes brings annoyance to your life because suddenly you have to pay attention to your speech and attitude. No more freedom to act because you are expected to behave properly and accordingly as your profession demands you to do so. Once other people catch you doing something unworthy like reading comics, you will face a serious threat of honor degradation.

      And that worries me because I'm a fan of comics. Japanese comics or manga, to be precisely. No, I'm not a maniac who will read any manga there is in a store's book shelf. I only fancy the "serial cantik" kinds of manga. Well, a bit of "Kung Fu Boy", "Dragon Ball", or "Detektif Conan" is okay for me, but no "Crayon Sinchan", please.

      Still, you can say I'm a fan because I do make and have collection of manga. I started my collection way back since I was still in senior high, which means like 10 years ago. Phew, quite a long time, huh? Right now I guess I have almost 100 mangas, and the number keeps on growing, especially after I find out that there are kiosks selling mangas at cheaper price. It's like feeding a hungry lion with meat - the supply meets the demand.

      However, as I mentioned earlier, I don't have the luxury to linger at those kiosks or manga section in Gramedia for fear of meeting my student(s), or worse, my boss/senior lecturers. I know the fear sounds so unreasonable, yet that is what happens - I'm afraid those people see me in the kiosks/manga section and ask questions like: "What is that teaching staff doing in a manga kiosk? Shouldn't she buy something of more value like reference books?" Whoa!

      So far, I haven't been 'caught' making manga transaction (as far as I know) and I hope it stays that way. But I once got caught reading manga in my office. It was a security guard who caught me redhanded. Guess what he said. He said: "I never thought a staff would read books like that." Darn. Had I not been too eager to read the sequel of a manga, I would not have got caught and lost face to a security guard. All I could do then was smiling stupidly and putting away the manga I've been reading.

      I was trying to make myself busy doing something else when not long after that, the security guard came back to me and said: "Erm, do you mind if I borrow your comic sometime?"

      *Speechless*

      En Fin...

      Finally, the day I have long been dreaming of had come.
      Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to inform you that on Wednesday, January 19, 2005, it had been officially declared that:

      I PASSED MY THESIS EXAM!

      Alhamdulillah! I'm glad that it's over (although not really over yet because I still have to make some correction here and there) - the agony of getting the thesis approved and thus giving me the chance to take the thesis exam. Sometimes I think the length of time I had to undertake before I could go for the exam did not justify the time it took for my exam which had been so brief.

      I no longer care, though, because what matters now is that I have kept my promise to my 'stakeholders'. I even think of giving something as a present for my lecturer who had become my thesis guide - something which I barely thought of because I grew a bit pessimistic that I could make it with my thesis, what with such a perfectionist characteristic of his.

      But now, gone are the clouds and here comes the sun! So glad, so glad, so glad!!!