Georgetterox

What’s the mean of a name? That’s what William Shakespeare said.

Coz Mr Shakespeare  is the first literature teacher that I knew at school (my first literature teacher wasn’t my school teacher, except if pupuh Kinanti can be considered as a literature creation!), so I just swallowed the sentence at the moment.

Till last week I watched the news that Steve Emmanuel had just replaced his name to Yusuf Iman.

What’s wrong?

Coz, we know that Steve Emmanuel had been in conflict with his girlfriend, Andi Soraya, coz they had been sleeping together for years but they hadn’t married yet, coz one of them went to the church and another one went to mosque.

Finally Steve changed his mind, he decided to be a mualaf so he could marry her.

Actually what I know is, the terms of being a mualaf is just vowing two sentences of syahadat, but Steve moved further by replacing his name became Yusuf Iman , so his name could sound like Islamic.

I never thought that being a muslim must name like Islamic, too.

We know that the general goal of replacing name is usually due to commercial reason, such as recruitment of artist.

We still remember Demetria Gene Guynes  which we know more today as Demi Moore.

Or many of us don’t know who Gordon Matthew Summer is, who familiar at our eyes in name of Sting.

No need to go further, in our country we have a chick from Pangalengan named Siti Tuti Susilawati Sutisna a.k Sania.

The producers argue that if they don’t change their name into more commercial ones, their career as artist couldn’t succeed.

What about the mualafs?

If they don’t change their names into Islamic names, won’t their “career” as muslims succeed, too?

My spiritual teacher has ever said that we should name our children with good names.

That name that stuck into us, that’s what we’ll bring into death, even through the post-death life.

They said that at the end of day, they’ll call us with the name that given to us when we were born.

So we can imagine what’ll happen if at that day our children are called with names such as slutty, paganie, or even sinner, coz that’s what we named them.

Does Steve Emmanuel feel unconfident with his own name at the end of day till he felt must replace his name into Yusuf Iman?

What about me?

My name’s Vicky Laurentina, and I’ve made a lot of misperception for a lot of people with this name.

I’m often mispercepted as has been christened, and for it, each year my Christian fellas often send me a lot of X-mas cards.

But the most sucker thing is the reality that my name sometimes makes me rejected by my own religious community.

I still remember when I was hanging out with my campus fellas, then there came a campus mosque activist shared envelopes for charity-request to all of my fellas there, but she didn’t give me at all!

“Don’t be offended, Vic,” my fellas entertained me.

“She didn’t give you envelope not coz your name sounded like Catholic.

You didn’t get envelope coz you’re famous of meanie!”

Then what’s my fault if my name sounds like Catholic? I ask the one who gave me the name.

That year, my mom had just become a member of Koran club.

I was glad coz it would give my mom a new work beside housekeeping. After a few weeks, I just realized that Koran club could make an undesireable side effect.

She said to me that, “I think you should replace your name. It doesn’t sound Islamic.”

What?! I rejected the idea instead. Coz:

1. Name-replacing means replacing the ID card that already printed.

Though we know that making an ID card takes a lot of time, full of unnecessary birocracy, and we must pay for it!

2. I’m afraid if I change my name, I’ll forget my old name.

If the angels at the end of day calls me with my born name, I’m afraid I won’t look aside.

Beside if we replace our name, will it guarantee a better behavior of us?

If we’re named like Mohammed’s wives, how willour life be blessed if we still behave like a jerk?

If we’d like to remind, a lot of people who does corruption in our country names Muhammad, and more corruptors are the people who wear kopiahs. You don’t believe me?

Just watch, the accused ones in the trial at the court usually wear kopiahs. 

Maybe they thought that wearing kopiahs will invite sympathy. Or probably like atonements.

The only thing that I wanna replace is my full name, but only my nickname.

It’s been so long that I want the people call me with the name of Laurent, but I’ve been too popular with name of Vicky.

My boyfriends sometimes didn’t call me that name, they called me instead with the ririculous names such as honey, baby, or sometimes sweetie, but they never called me Laurent, so I’d already been hopeless.

Once upon a time I was in a party and a friend introduced me to a very hot hunk.

I introduced my name with my dream nickname.

“Hey, I’m John,” said the cute hunk who had that good smile.

I was shining. “Laurent,” answered me gorgeously.

But suddenly a friend, which came from the corner that I never knew, clapped my arm so hard and shouted excitedly, “Eeh..! Vicky?! Ke mane aje lu, Vic? Sombong lu ya sekarang!

Ayo kita ngegosip sini, Vic, sambil ngantre di stan batagor!”

(Where the hell have you been, Vic? You’re so snob now!

C’mon, let’s hang out and talk about gossip right there, at the batagor stand!)

Loquaciously I’m watching the show of the resurrection day, live from Senayan Stadium.

What a pretty view to see, those dancers, but I’m astonished to see them, where da hell are their shoes?

Maybe this is dull coz we aware that this is a show of our land’s culture, so it’s natural if the dancers don’t wear shoes.

Imagine, since when the Saman dancers  ever clapped their hands in shoes?

The original Cakalele dancers don’t wear their swords without shoes.

And even those Madurese celebrates the cow race on feet-naked.

So what must we care about if they don’t also wear shoes in this huge show?

I thought I believed that until the ronggeng dancers showed up.

I’ve just realized that they’re not feet-naked, but they still wear white socks.

I’m not comfy to see them, coz they skip on the grass and they dirty their socks with soil.

I’m sure that they’re not intended to wear those white socks when they go to school tomorrow.

But I think they rather get feet-naked now than dancing in dirty socks.

Damn, I think I’ve already forgotten that fifteen years ago my school sent me as a delegation for a pencak silat show on Pajajaran stadium. I had to dance on the grass, too, and my feet wore nothing. Not even shoes, nor even sandals.

Beside, where have you ever found a pencak silat show where the performers wear sandals?

The original fighters were always feet-naked, too!

So is feet-naked being our original culture?

Coz I’m more interested to the conditions of the dancers’ feet after they dance.

How many antihistamine ointments are sold out for their grass allergy?

How many feet are wounded of grass-thorn injections?

How many feet are invaded by worms after they dance on the grass?

Do we believe that the grass of Senayan Stadium are clean from the microorganisms that can itch our beautiful foot?

I know that this show is created for showing off our culture, but I think we should observe the location, too.

What’s wrong of dancing in sandals? Feet-naked ain’t a culture; feet-naked can itch our feet.

It’s not wise to dance on the grass without shoewear just for cultural reason.

Healthy feet sign an healthy nation, and it can be started by wearing shoewears.

Let them be, Vic. What matters more is, they dance and the president watches them. And they show up in tv.

Being feet-itched a while? No problem..!

Which one do you like better, pizza or shrimp rempeyek?

Which one do you prefer, watching home theatre or installed screen ?

(Installed screen – Indonesian: layar tancep)

Which one do you wanna be (with), Cinta Laura or Sarah Azhari?

I bet you love the firsts of them all.

Whether we like it or not, we must accept that our nation still love everything smells foreign.

Food must be the foreign one (but shrimp rempeyek is OK?), technology must about the foreign one (but what’s wrong with installed screen?), even foreign celebrities is liked better.

Don’t interrupt that I miscompare Cinta Laura and Sarah Azhari  coz they’re both are mixed descents.

Sarah remains one of us, at least she still speaks in Indonesian accent, compare the other one.

This is what I call an Inlander mental. Inlander is what Dutch call to Hindian as their colony.

We spent too much time being a colonized nation, and inside ourselves a mental is formed that the foreign nation grades higher than us. And even though we’re independent, the mental still continues today.

The examples ain’t far from the three of my questions above.

Even when these intellects of us are diligent enough and can build on our own, we still need being taught by foreign professors. As if the professors from our homeland ain’t smart enough to teach us.

The story happens in one of symposiums that I visit, where the speakers are doctors, and one of them is Australian.

The symposiums basically stretched a theme of hypertension, and this Aussie professor is invited to talk about an hypertension drug named nifedipin.

I was so disappointed coz I must accept the truth that the professor ain’t interesting at all.

His English speech is too common, his presentation is flat and boring

Coz I’m bored of watching him, so I looked around to the other audiences for finding out if there are a face or two which probably as bored as me.

Actually, a quarter of the hall had fallen asleep, and another half had ran away for lunch.

Drove me jealous coz they had lunch without letting me in.

Very contrast compared to the speakers before, which actually still doctors of our own country, which though the presentation was spoken in Indonesian, but they still could hold the audiences to remain sitting on their seats.

The funniest one was the discussion session, a local doctor asked the Aussie, what the Aussie’s opinion about the use of Ca-channel-blocker drugs in treating hypertension.

But then the Aussie professor refused answering coz he was invited there for speaking about nifedipin, not about the other drugs. Certainly the sleeping audiences woken up and laughed out loud.

Is this man meanie, does he dislike sharing, or does he just understand about nifedipin only?

There are a lotta strength of Indonesian doctors compared to foreign ones, no matter which countries they were from.

1. Our doctors talk to their patients in Indonesian.

So they still can answer all of our questions in Indonesian.

Even they’re bilingual; they speak Indonesian and ethnical language.

Some are even multilinguals, for example they speak Indonesian, and also Javanesse, Madurese, Sundanese, etc.

2. Our doctors know diseases in Indonesia, not in abroad.

We know Indonesia is a nest of diseases, from typhoid infection to diabetes.

There’s no other country has typhoid patients as much as Indonesia.

So though the doctors on abroad are really smart, but Indonesian doctors remain smarter in handling diseases in Indonesia.

3. Our doctors are brilliant in handling all kinda disasters.

There’s no other countries have disasters as complete as Indonesia.

Traffic accidents strike daily, flood comes annually, quakes are like queues, even tsunami happens a lot.

Waiting for disaster comings feels like waiting for getting arisan prizes, you wait or not you will still get them. Even slide garbage  only happens in Indonesia.

Intermezzo: If you ain’t Indonesian, you probably won’t understand what arisan is.

Arisan is some kinda gathering for a bunch of family or neighbourhood, where there’s a fiesta and lots of foods.

The best part is, all of the people inside the gathering collects money for a lottery, and the lucky winner can go home bring the large amount of the money.

Usually there’s also a door prize, it’s probably an houseware or something else for fun. It doesn’t matter what the prize is, but winning it means more.

If disaster is like arisan, so the slide garbage is the door prize. Or probably the jackpot?

Inviting foreign speakers doesn’t always guarantee that the symposium’s gonna be attractive.

The example of my symposium above is the event where the foreign speakers just become the boomerang for the symposium itself.

All people know that a symposium can attract if the certificate can tone up our CVs, or if there’s a door prize in it.

But beside them, each speaker can be attractive if they speak interactively and they are understandable.

And each people can do it, it doesn’t matter what the nationality is.

Trend of inviting foreign speakers only brightens our mental as inlanders.

Dislike the product of our nation, including the speakers from our own nation, only prolong our status as a low class nation.

And this ain’t appropriate issue coz this week we’re dealing with National Resurrection Day.

Well, now I’d like to answer my questions in the beginning.

Which one do you like better, pizza or shrimp rempeyek?

Pizza. Coz I’m allergic to shrimps.

Which one do you prefer, watching home theathre or installed screen?

Home theathre. Coz about installed screen, when the drizzle comes, the scene will end right away.

Which one do you wanna be (with), Cinta Laura   or Sarah Azhari?

Me. I prefer me. Coz I absolutely rock more than those girls.

Tell me your deepest secrets. Do you have a tattoo on your butt? Or do you scrap inside your nose?

Or do you masturbate by fantasizing about your aunt? Or even about your dog?

Everybody has secrets. There are embarrassing secrets, such as the extreme examples that I mentioned above.

There are secrets which can drop your image, and you don’t want anybody else find it out, especially the ones you respect to.

A mother told me a story. Not telling me actually, exactly she interrogated me.

She said, her daughter, which actually still a friend of mine, acted mysteriously.

She said, the daughter locked her own room and forbade the mom to get the duplicate.

The mom was afraid that my friend had got addicted to coccaine. 

Then I defended my friend and said, how she would dope, coz I knew she coughed right away just when she got exposed to smokes. A few months later, we found out that my friend got pregnant.

Though she hadn’t married yet.

Her mom was stressed about.

She said, “I’m her mom, how couldn’t she tell me that she’d made out with him?!”

It made me ask, must we tell our mother that we have sex?

Another friend of mine also told me another story.

He had to break up with his girl coz she opened up his diary.

I was astonished here, I never thought that man also writes diary.

Frantically his diary was written that he flirted with another girl.

He got mad, why his girl must read his diary.

According to his theorem, “I’ve already had sex with her, why didn’t she still trust me that I loved her until she must open up my diary?”

Those are the examples of secrets which actually dropped the images of my pregnant friend and my cheating friend. I’m sure you got more.

I never ask my friend why she made out with her man, I think sex is our own business, not also our mother’s mind.

And about his flirting, something mustn’t be right here with his girl until he must find another girl to flirt.

Having secrets is an human right.

We’re supposed to confront this to Human Right National Commision if necessary.

Insisting the other people to open their secrets to us is really unwise, even though we’ve been their spouses or even though we’ve born them.

Other person’s secret probably will hurt us, why must you create a chaos by insisting to open it?

What if you don’t like the secret, that he actually is gay, or his middle name is skanky, or he hates your mother, do you still appreciate him as a person?

We’re lucky that he esteems our feeling by keeping his secret from us, what if we don’t love him anymore after we find out the secret?

Just keep your secret well, it doesn’t matter what the secret is.

Just write it down in your diary  to make it everlasting, just lock your book so other people can’t read it, if necessary just hire a guard to keep it safe. OK?

May Day is always a day of traffic jam in big cities, coz the labors are long-marching for more salary, and it makes me think 10 times of avoiding traffic jam in finding highway-home.

But then I think that the labors in my city do long-march nearly monthly, not only at May 1^st, create traffic jam, so every month always feels like labor day.

Why does it title Bleeding Day?

Coz the bleeding day is related with the issue that the labors often carry at the long-march, beside the salary issue that never been absent yelled about by all the labors.

What else except demand for menstruation excuse?

Usually, menstruation or period is assumed as the source of disaster.

For period, planning of praying is cancelled.

For period, the schedule of swimming must be vacanted.

For period, the white silk skirt that we’ve just bought last week has to be delayed for office-launching.

For period, say no to chocolates and almond nuts to prevent acnes.

And for period, no sex for a while.

Shortly, thanx to the period, everything’s are messed up!

But the labors, especially the female labors, will be glad to pray for the period will come.

Their reasons, for demanding for menstruation excuse.

This is where the problem comes from. “Why must you excuse for the period?”

According to a lady who came to my clinic without disease except a request for menstruation leave, she needs an excuse from her work.

Then I read the MoU that’s been signed by the clinic and the textile factory where the patient works at, that a menstruation excuse is given for two days a month.

The lady asked me three days, coz according to her cycle, she has the worst bleeding for three days. I ask her what she’s dealing with in the factory.

She said that she made threads.

Well, do you have to leave it? Do you make thread with your vagina?

I thought you did it by your hands.

No wonder that our female labors are assumed weak.

How could the period be a reason for leaving your work?

Menstruation is a gift from God, so why does it have to be an excuse?

Next time if He delays the period, we’ll get panic so bad.

Why late? Didn’t I always be careful with the condoms?

Geez, whom do I have to blame it on if I’m delayed for my period?

Brad Pitt?

I don’t think so.

Tom Cruise? It can’t be him.

Roy Marten?

He’s in jail, how could he had made me pregnant?

Oh if only I had my period now, then I’d get down on my knees and I wouldn’t ask my vacation.

That’s a crab, ladies don’t need excuse from their work only for their period.

The only profession which needs vacation for period is just an whore.

That makes me ask then, do whores need vacation, too?

Coz they are the only labors who don’t do long-march at this May Day.