Georgetterox

Please don’t look down under my desk at my office. It’s embarrassing!

There are a lotta paper trashes down under there.

There are prescriptions, absent licenses, lab forms, all the letters that I’ve miswritten.

Thanx to my office which forbids me to put tip-ex on every miswritings.

And beside, I don’t really love tip-ex.

Too much time wasted for waiting it runs dry, so it makes impatient for me to befall it.

And I even forget when the last time I buy tip-ex.

I think it’s about a few years ago, as I wrote a breaking-up letter for my guy.

That day, I scratched words a lot, then I put tip-ex on them.

Well, it made my letter looked full of white spots, and my breaking-up letter didn’t look beautiful.

Then I decided to stop writing, and I finally broke up with him by phone.

This technology era, and we still write letters for our darling? If you please..

Well, thanx to a lot of trash that I make everyday, it seems the amount is enough to insist my nurse chief to buy a new trash can, special for under my desk.

The problem is, this is the trend of green campaign, isn’t it?

Just count it, if a lot of people waste papers as extravagant as me, just imagine how many trees  must be cut for replacing them?

Let’s assume that the large of forest area that we must cut everyday is about as large as Disneyland, is it too much?

And the more important thing is, do we really need a lot of papers everyday?

Let’s count up now at your office, how many archive papers you pile up in your bookshelves?

How old are the archives, are they almost as old as your office?

Have you ever thought that your bookshelves would break and the archive papers could make a new mouse nest? Have you ever imagined there’s a RAT in your office? 

Then what would you do to solve it, burn the rat?

Coz rat is an animal which runs faster than human, in case the human here is you, then what would you do, burn the nest? Burn you office’s archive papers? I don’t think so.

So, why don’t we computerize all of the archives, than geld the dearest trees on the forest to make more papers for making more rat nests?

Computer just needs a little space in the office and we can use the result through the years, while archive papers for 100 years must need a lot of bookshelves and spend spaces.

No wonder how much the finance loss for something in vain.

And the budget for rodenticides haven’t been counted yet.

I told my colleague that I’d like to advice my executive president to computerize all of the archives. He said it impossible.

Said my colleague, “Communication from the staff to the executive president must be written in letters. So you just have to waste another paper again.”

OK, I’d like to send him SMS. I have his number anyway.

“Gosh, such an impolite. That’s informal!”

Damn, this formal relationship is just wasting papers.

“You fool, this duty absolutely is formal.

You wanna talk to the executive president, you must write a letter.

You wanna talk to the other installation, you must write a letter.

You just give a medication to the patient, you must write a prescription letter, don’t you?

And if the doctor’s writing is unreadable, you just waste another paper again.”

Then we’d rather type all of the prescriptions, so all the doctors’ writings are readable.

If necessary, just e-mail it for saving printing papers.

“The e-mail would be editable. 14 pills would be edited to be 24, could make overdose.

And kill the patients away! So lazy to do..”

Well, just lock up the file then to avoid the corrupted. Doctor must learn about technology.

“That’s too long.

Well, why don’t you speak now to the national medical association, make a new rule so every doctor write prescriptions with type machine.”

I ask my colleague, if he knows the e-mail address of national association.

“Well I don’t! But I know the address of the building at Jakarta.

Would you like to write down to the base?”

I grouse. It would waste another papers.

Let’s open back my blog a few months ago, which wrote that anti-condom campaign by giving brochures on the office just wasting down the papers.

The advertisings by brochures really contribute a lot for gelding the forest in the world.

But if you’re afraid that your future descents will die of global warming coz there ain’t enough trees for shading the earth, let’s prevent it from now:

-    Break up with your darling by e-mail, not writing letters.

And warn her not to print the e-mail. If she’s nervous-technology and has no e-mail, just use SMS.

If she can’t even read SMS then she’s not precious enough for you to make your ex, nor even your baby.

-    If you wanna get married, don’t make a marriage act.

The risk is, no marriage act, no family act.

But if you don’t have a family act, the public will slay you coz they assume you lust.

Though you just wanna make paper efficiency.

-    Advertise your company on-line. Don’t waste papers to give flyers on the street.

Just be honest to yourself, how many minutes the flyers will spend since it comes to you until you throw it to the trash bin.

You haven’t thought about the guilty feeling as the SPG sees you throw the flyer that she’s given you with a sweet smile.

-    Read the news by internet or PDA. Don’t read newspaper. 

And stop complaining about the small size of the font that you read on the PDA, compared to the newspapers’ font that you usually read every morning.

-    If it all ain’t enough to stop your habit of wasting papers, start to write the meeting’s result of your office on the banana bunches.

Now you get it why it’s so difficult to make the Earth Day become a day for everyone.

Coz the age of our needle to paper is almost as old as the human’s civilization who knows writing. Writing differs us from Pithecanthropus erectus.

Though we must waste papers for it. And out of luck, it causes us a lot of trees to cut away.

My late Grandpa said, knowledge is the most everlasting investment that we can have.

I always thought that he meant about my school certificate.

I never thought that he didn’t only mean the knowledge was just about that piece of paper.

This weekend I prefer spending the night at my villa.

It’s almost late when I get there, and I don’t want anything else but sleeping on the bed that I don’t usually sleep on at nights.

And as usual, I need a sleepmate. No, not a sleepmate who can fart.

I usually need a book for sleep with me.

It doesn’t have to be an heavy book such as Gray’s Anatomy, but a geographic encyclopedia is enough (what..?)

I’m not kidding. I really love geographical encyclopedia.

I save some sets of it at my villa, my Dad bought them all for me when I was a kid.

I never have enough time to read them all, but my late Grandpa had finished them all. I wish I had.

So tonight, I take one from inside the bookshelf.

Wait a second, why does it feel a little bit of wet? As I look at it, I get shocked.

The book’s already rotten of termite!

Instead I turn the shelf over. Damn it, f*ck, sh*t!

The termites have eaten a set of my encyclopedia!

They’ve also beaten the others of my book, such as a full picture collections of Mecca, Beijing, the cities I never saw but I swear wanna visit as I saw the photos.

And the termites have also rotten the wood of my shelf.

My mom said that we’ve given it termicide when we built the shelf years ago.

Maybe the termites have been already resistant.

I haven’t slept in the villa for a long time, and maybe some roof has leaked, we didn’t observe them for too much time and we didn’t alert that termites have spread and they started to eat the shelf.

It’s only a matter of time until they eat all of my books.

Thank God tonight I decide to come and find it.

Another few sets of encyclopedia still survive. I must let go the rotten ones.

I must thank God.  It’s only termite. Not flood. Nor even fire.

I’m sorry that I haven’t read them all though I expected to.

That’s my unvaluable treasure. And the damn termites have eaten them all.

If Grandpa knew this, he must’ve been so blue.

A wood bookshelf is a very beautiful furniture for you to have in your home.

But termites problem is the thing you must learn to make your shelf well-preserved.

And me, as the victim who suffers of the termites’ cruelty, still must learn a lot about this.

Do you believe in taxi?

I actually don’t; I don’t often have taxi to ride, coz I prefer angkot coz it costs less. In a year, my frequency of having taxi is fingers-countable, with light reasons:

-    I’d just had arrived at the train station and no angkot passed by the station (there are only a few carriages, the coachmen wore blangkon and the horses didn’t smell good)

-    I brought my aunt who had rheumatics and had trouble in climbing the trap of angkot (it was weird coz she never had a trouble to climb into the trap of her nephew’s Avanza, though Avanza is higher than angkot?)

-    I brought my sista who was allergic to the smoke of the angkot’s boarders (it was weird coz she was never allergic to the smoke of her father-in-law.

She was so fine though her husband’s Dad smoked like train.

Made me ask, why are the allergic daughter-in-laws always immune to their in-laws’ smoke?)

-    All angkots at the town were in strike and they demanded the tariff rising.

(Though the angkot’s tariff would rise if the president replaced.

The drivers have already known this, and the strike only would reduce their daily income, but they kept strike like an annual schedule.

And they planned the strike very carefully, they even sent SMS to everyone to tell that they would go strike. It’s clear that this strike of the angkot drivers much stricter than the state election).

Now you understand how I’m depended to the angkots.

Then I remembered as I arrived to the Tugu station; my brother had an appointment and he couldn’t pick me up, so he told me to hail a taxi. As I came out of the platform, I looked around for a taxi.

A taxi driver whose eyes were trained to detect the tourists’ expression of vehicule-needing, certainly caught in the act, the pretty confused girl. So he offered himself to bring my suitcase.

“Taxi, Mbak? Where are you going?”

The pretty popular-of-mean girl replied, “Argo?”

Of course the driver said that his taxi didn’t use argometer.

“No way,” I refused him frankly, then I went ahead for another taxi.

Actually the next driver didn’t use argometer, either.

Even, all taxis at the station didn’t use argo.

I didn’t know if the argometers were damaged of the hot sun of Jogja, or the drivers had damaged the argometers intentionally.

Finally I had to surrender, coz there was no angkot at the front of station.

And I didn’t wanna heathenish the carriages coachmen  to get me from the Tugu station to my brother’s place at Kaliurang.

After the small argue between the argometer’s-damager taxi-driver and the pretty super-mean girl, so there it went, the taxi on deal about 25 thousands rupiahs, under condition, no over-speed.

Well..as I arrived to my brother’s place, my sister-in-law said, “Vic, it’s supposed to be 20 thousands. You didn’t insist to him more.”

Made me disappoint, coz this was the first time I didn’t try hard of insisting.

Damn it, how could I go wrong?

I never had had a taxi to ride before.

I went home to my town and I was welcomed by the taxi drivers of Kebon Kawung station.

“Neng, taxi, Neng? Where are you going?”

OK, so taxi drivers will speak the same in every stations you go, only the address name will differ.

Were they trained to speak the sentence that they’ve dealt together in the National Consensus of Taxi Drivers?

Maybe yes. Coz as I asked for the argometer, the driver said he didn’t have it.

So the conclusion was,in the consensus of taxi driver, they had a deal that:

-    always greeting the boarders by, “Neng/Mbak, taxi? Where are you going?”

-    never use argometer. Who wins the price from the tourist, he’s the lucky one.

Thank God I’m used to have angkot.

So trailing the suitcases from the Keebon Kawung station into the angkot didn’t make problem to me.

And thank God now we have TransJogja at the front of Tugu station.

So no taxi, the bus will exist!

(Of course this would make a note, don’t bring your false-rheumatic aunt or your ‘I’m allergic to the smoke’ sista).

But we are customers.

Are we gonna stay like this, riding taxi which we don’t know how much we will pay?

Then, fight it!

-    Never have a taxi without argometer

-    If you bring lots of baggages, don’t be shy of renting an angkot for your own. How expensive you rent an angkot for your own, an argometerless taxi still costs more.

-    Never hesitates of riding carriages. Remember, carriages don’t make air pollution. But they polluted the road, especially if the horse didn’t wear pants, heheheh..

-    If you’re still dependent to taxi, maybe this is the moment for us to think of having our own taxi. Comfy, free of charge, and no need to think of argometer. Hihihi..