Buls_on_D@note$

My parents were chatting on something i couldn’t quite understand. They were using a lot of big words like finance, project, DPD, and stuff. I walked to the living room and sitting on the sofa was my brother. He didn’t appear as he usually would. He was sitting with his knees drawn to his chest using a thin cloth to cover his skinny hairy legs. Strains of thread like black curly hair sprouted from his scalp in disorder and muck. His eyes were dragged by the lower eye lids which were shaded with dark shadows of greyish black. People say that’s what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. I approached the sofa and took a seat next to his feet.
"Katanya kalau lagi sakit baca Qur’an" I said, not exactly knowing how to open the conversation.
He stared at me and gave me a smile, remaining silent for a while…
Finally he broke the silence…
"hehehehe…Iya. Tapi aku lagi pusing dan mataku sakit kalo membaca. Mas kalo buka matanya jadi sakit. Makanya saya lebih suka tiduran."
As always he would refute my suggestions with logic i couldn’t quite understand and most frustrating of all which i could not contend to
or rebutt in opposition.
"Mas, makan aja nih, aku ambilin makanan." I said as the only response i had in mind.
On the table i spotted a plastic bag full of snack boxes, possibly from an evening pengajian, and i walked over to fetch my brother a box. I noticed that he was paying attention to my every move, smirking, as if was holding in a puff of laughter
.
"Nih mas, ada lemper, eh ini lemper atau arem-arem ya mas?"
"Ini apa ya, ya lemper….eh, arem-arem. Ah gak ngerti ding. Wah dek aku gak selera."
"Yaudah ni kacang nih."
"Hehehe…ni mas tenggorokanku lagi gak enak,kalo tak isi kacang malah tambah serak."
"Ya gak papa"
"Hahaha"
Finally, he laughed with a lot more enthusiasm. I could see it from the creases of his eye brows when his eyes were closing in with his laughter.
I turned the TV on, i thought that it might keep him entertained…
"Ini one piece ya dik?One piece ato Naruto?" he asked. I couldn’t prepare an answer as i was preoccupied looking for the remote control.
"mas remotenya mana?" i asked
" Wah ya gak tahu, biasanya kamu yang bawa kan. Mungkin di bawah kursi."
I opened some shelves, closed them, moved on to another rack of shelves, reopened that i had already checked an eventually i took my brother’s advice. I looked beneath the sofa. Suddenly the world had become flat and the only thing separating sofa base and ceramic were the foggy mysts of dust. I serached through all the sides but nothing. Wheres the remote?
"Hu remote kok ilang terus. Baru beli ilang lagi." he muttered
"Mas nggak ada." i said raising my tone a little.

It was Saturday and the team had just arrived in Kutoarjo Child’s Prison. It was our second visit and we had to make sure the kids were alive and joyful to enjoy probably our last contact with them.
The team prepared a slideshow of photo’s showing the last activities that we had surpassed together. Along the background spiritful beats of the Nidji song "sahabat" accompanied the  slide show as the amused kids stared and spared a stretch of their mouths to symbolize a child’s smile. Not all of the kids were willing to shed a smile and expressions of boredom and frustration were apparent in a few. However when the activities of finger painting commenced the spirit had entered the the young souls partially taking over their self ego and relentlessly drawing them upon the enjoyful energy of childhood.
Expression…
8 meters of black material, previously used as a back drop was spared to spill the emotions and feelings of the children. Upon it read the words "love", "i want to break free", "i want to get out of here." Expressions of laughter followed the every mark that they had placed on the material. Hands prints, foot prints, distorted smudges not resembling anything in particular, were all apparent as the child’s projections of the childhood activities which had been taken away from them.
Confined…
Bitter as it may seem, days where these children must overcome the boredom of the prison life routine are far from plentiful. Attachments grow in an instant however the barriers of status separate the attachments from ever developing into something more meaningful. Affection is what they sought for and something we could not give in the long term.
Fractures of the Ivory…
One of the kids, Gading his name, proposed a new name for myself. "CS Nidji". He would continually reassure me while extending his handing asking "CS (sahabat sejati kan)kan?"
I would take a while to answer thinking about the fact that there is a small chance that we would meet after this occasion and finally i would answer "Yo jelas CS (as what mattered the most was the bond that we shared while in contact and that regardless of the barriers of status i would continually regard him as one)." We would then practice the ritual of Naruto building upon his "Rasengan" using the cyclic motion of our hands and supposedly shot the cakra out of our palms to the surroundings of the Child’s Prison. The other inmates were watching and possibly asking themselves what an idiot that curly freak is imitating the actions of  Naruto with  Gading. But who gives. I took my childhood back to the prison and it was a delight.
It is to my deepest expectations that these kids are able to extend their hopes and ideals when they have completed there time.  By the end of the day, i just couldn’t stop telling myself that "they’re just kids." Despite the history of their past, the nature of their acts and expression will always make them kids and thats whats kind of difficult to digest. Once again "They’re just kids"

Contagion. It is quite amazing how small things can develop to become big things. Take for example the filosofi of the lidi broom (a broom made out of lidi). Don’t expect one line of lidi to be useful, unless you wanna pick your nose or your ears (don’t be encouarged to do so). But stickem together and you are able to perform large tasks of sweeping floors. Another example,lets talk about neurotransmitters. These weird things are microscopic but they could make the difference of a person to feel happy, satisfied, lustful or stressed out. Now, as i write this blog i continue to be dazzled at these red spots that colour the landscape of my body. These spots are unique as they are shaped as miniature mountains. As i glance over my hands, i picture some sort or mountain range or a map with all the weird traingles, circles that are meant to indicate certain topographical functions. These small mountains are supposedly filled with lava, in this case puss. Similar to the nature of the lava, these spots ignite heat that are sometimes unbearable to leave alone. Now i know, that when you’re in this type of condition you’re not supposed to scratch yourself but God help me, its so freaking itchy. What seems to amaze me is the way that these spots have developed to take control of my bodily appearance. Starting from a little itch, merely located in particularly small coordinate of my body, after undergoing intense scratching and more scratching, they spread from neck to foot. My hands look quite horrible. I like to tell my little brother that i’m evolving into a monstrous creature (he’s too smart to believe this) as these spots turn my hands and body in to a less appealing feature. Or say that i was one of Orochimaru’s right hand men, and i was in the middle of combat with some Konoha kid, these spots make me look as if i have summoned my second jotai (i don’t know if this is the actual concept or not, but as i remember, it is so) supposedly enabling me to a thousand times more strength. So much about strength, one thing that is certain, is that it gives probably ten times more itching. However i’m learning lots. One thing is that i’m learning that health is a very expensive asset. My first check up was quite expensive and i’m going back to the doctor again this evening because of the unsatisfactory results of my first check up. This of course implies more cash. For those of you who have acquired a daily life without having to encounter daily sicnkesses, Let me just say i envy you a lot. You are saving lots of money hehehe. Another thing is that being sick gets me more stressed because i can’t function and accomplish the tasks that i’m obliged to. One way or the other, accomplishing tasks become one of my obsessions and the fact that i’m lying down or staying home doing nothing gets me even more stressed out. I guess thats enough of my wining, i just wana say sorry to all those people who have expected for my cooperation in accomplishing tasks. Anyway, i hope i could get over the itch as soon as possible. Hope the doctor gives me some reliable drugs this time

Its been a week of translating and i’m kinda a relieved and kinda not. I’m relieved because i could take a break from sleepless nights of document translation. On the other hand due to to the habitual effects of "nglembur" i jave developed a case of insomnia. What makes things even worse is that from Monday until thursday i have morning classes at 7.30. This becomes a problem coz the translation effect had demanded that i sleep with an average of 3 to 4 o’clock making me only get around 4 hours of sleep. In other words i’m losing rythm. This is actually scientific because humans have a sleep regulation system known as cycardiac rythms. I’m not gonna ellaborate much as i only understood little aspects of the concept. I remember the concept being explained by a kinda graph. On the graph it had word melatonin in it, and this refers to the neurotransmitter suggested to trigger a person to feel sleepy and eventually fall asleep. So in certain times of the day for example night time, the production of melatonin increases leading to the sluggish and sleepy effect. When eventually sleep is practiced to succumb to the effects of melatonin the production of the neurotransmitter gradually decreases. So what i think is happening to my body is that the rythm, referring to the periods of melatonin production, have been tampered with, leading to a modification of its period of production. This probably means that my body has adjusted to the translation routine and has scheduled melatonin production at 3 to 4 o’clock (thats what i think, correct me if i’m wrong). There are ways to help this problem that i have beem trying and sometimes they work. One is to drink warm milk beofre going to sleep as it may elevate melatonin production, or do relaxing activities like reading a book. Sometimes its works sometimes it doesn’t, things are never certain as we want it to be. Thats just life.

I had just been back from Surabaya accomapanying my father on some kinda business trip i guess. As soon we as we landed on the Juanda airport we decided to stop by at the mud resort also known as Lumpur Sidoarjo. As we sidetracked the mud sites i took out my digital kodak camera and started taking shots from my window. I then switched on to film mode and started documenting while narrating the moment to make things like amazing videos or real tv.We then parked the kijang and turns out the mud site welcomed us in as if we were tourists. And the indecent fact was that yes we were tourists. We wanted to enjoy the display of disastrous mud that had elevated the land to 6 meters gulping the houses and rice fields that were once implanted there. We took photographs of the sites had interviews with the local residents and had a tour of the site which was surrounded by this scent of wierd sulphur gas. I don’t mean to be insensitive but thats how things were, my mixed feelings of enjoying the fact that i could finally witness the mud site and empathy towards the victims kinda conflicted with one another.

Disregardless of what i felt at the time, i couldn’t stop feeling a certain amazement at the person who took me for the tour around the mud site. So it turns out that the mud site had already prepared jasa ojek or a tour service that would take you around the mud site just for paying 10 or 20 thousand rupiahs. The very person that had given me the tour was the same person that had lost his home and rice fields in the mud site. Everyday he would make his way to the mud site and show other tourists like me about the place. When the day reaches night he would walk back with his collegues as far as 2 km to the refugee camp. The refugee camp itself was packed with 8.000 families and upon them bared the uncertain hopes that the government had the capacity to distribute financial aid to cover their property losses. I asked my tour guide how long he would remain in the refugee camps, and he answered firmly that he ain’t moving until the government pays all the funds that they had promised.

I truely appreciate the spirit and strife of my tour guide. Rather then lying helpless upon the conditions he decides to make a living out of the condition. Even though the stories he shares may open wounds to himself however this does not stop him from doing so. He knew his condition and simply weeping upon it did not resolve anything. He was well aware of it.

One thing i regretted though…i never even asked his name 

Borneo was kinda stranded for some time. Dito was like come on man, figure out the next pieces of the song. I was like, mate your not helping at all. So we kinda gave Borneo a break, and since the ‘Family meeting’ had kinda disintegrated a bit we kinda focused on some classical music. At the time the ‘Family Meeting’ was left with 4 people hanging. I was still on lead guitars, dito still had the grips with the violin, Sulist was still on percussion and adit was kinda still hanging on the rythm guitar and saluang (wind instrument from Padang), Raras and Ratri however had more things coming in PSM (Paduan Suara Mahasiswa UGM). This  was probably  worsened  by the  fact  that  for most of the Family Meetings practice sessions they were sort of marginalized because of the instrumental atmosphere and the lack of attention paid to the vocals.
The next show on the road was this theater play coming as a collaboration between three theaters, Lilin theater of atmajaya, Parkir theater of Psyhcology UII and Keluarga Rapat Sebuah Teater Psychology UGM. This was kinda the first time I actually concentrated in arranging music for theater plays. I was the so called coordinator in theory but in practice, it was the play director Pak Trio, that kinda organized everything from acting, producing and fortunately the music. As he arranged the main music for each opening and closing i was more involved in coming up with creative ideas that would fit the atmosphere of each scene.Of course this had to fit the taste buds of the director and he seemed impressed anyway.
The play was to be held in Tembi, Bantul and my faculty, coinciding with KPD YTC 2006 (Dedication to the new students of psychology). For this, the Family meeting had to present a performance on their behalf. At the time, Sulist was in charge of the production team and Adit was busy with the gamelan music, so we were left with Dito and myself. There were two pieces we were working on at the time, Canon from Pachelbel and Theme from Magnificent 7. I had an obsession for working on the latter ever since entering university and this moment was perfect to succumb to my obsession. For Canon, i actually found the interpretations for guitar in the internet so i directly engaged with the finger work. I asked Dito whether he wanted to try it out and he seemed happy to do so. We had to cut out, duplicate, add a number of bars to synchronize the arrangements for the guitar with the arrangements Dito had obtained for the violin. But we  worked it  out and  it was  quite neat. Afterwards we had to figure  the arrangements for  Magnificnet 7. I had  figured  some of the opening parts of the song  but had never  arranged it  completely. One of the  barriers for this was that both, Dito and I  just didn’t know how the  whole  song went. So out  of the blue  we just kinda  tried to  figure out  how the song went and try to make something exciting out of it. Fortunately for me, i have heard and tried to play this song as a duet with RIndang (electone player who won a national competition with this song) so i gained some more knowledge on how the song went. What i liked about this song is the fact that it is very dynamic and it had a very distinct rythm to the song that made up for the whole cowboy atmosphere. The different variations of the song also complemented the distinctiveness and glory of the piece. Eventually we had accomplished our simplified arrangement of the song, and of course our arrangement was a lot less dynamic and far lacked the quality of the actual song. To play this song through a duet  seemed incomplete as it did not compensate the dynamic character of the song. I asked one of my friends Fajri, a superb musician and debater from the Pyhsics faculty (now in Law) to add some more dynamism in the song and he seemed interested to join the club. We probably spent a week practicing together and he was very active in providing feedback in the arrangement process. His company actually made the three of us modify our arrangement, adding a few spices or two to the earlier arrangement.
The night finally came on a Saturday night.We had practiced and finalized our arrangements and were ready to perform. Just for the heck of the things, we picked up some of the blangkons in the costume box and we decided (actually i kinda forced everyone to wear it) to wear the blangkons as we played our pieces. We set our positions in the stage and were tuning up. Minutes later Nara (MC and kencrung player)introduces us to the crowd. He didn’t know what to call us and we didn’t specifically have a name for the group even though we are under the Family Meeting organization. So i guess as a response to Trisum, G3, Trio Macan and etc he came up with the idea to call us Trio Singo using his distinctive Lombok accent. Then we played.Canon was a little slow and they only ones seeming to enjoy the song were the old fellas from the Rotary club(our sponsors). Magnificent 7 however, proved to be as magnificent as it is meant to be, despite the minimal arrangements we had came up with. The audience loved the song and seemed to admire the finger techniques displayed by Dito, Fajri and myself. It was a great night. The crowd totalled a hundred or something (according to Dito) and their claps represented their gratitude and appreciation towards our performance. The Three Lions finally came down the stage with a lot of pride on their shoulders. The production manager later commented that our performance was the preliminary peak of KPDYTC 2006. Cool. Me and Dito later joined the theater and played the background music and the show was a success.
Shows over. The lions preserved their paws. And the paws were ready to stir up more musical creativity.

The next tune i came up with was the kalimantan charactered ‘Borneo.’ I came up with the idea  somewhere  at  home, while working on Javatunes and then showed it off  to  my Buto Ijo colleagues. Both  Johan and Dito welcomed  the  opening tune. Johan  was so  fond  of  the  tune  he recorded in his Nokia  notebook, which became the first ever documentation of the  Borneo introduction. After coming up with the introduction which lasted for approximately 2 bars, i kinda figured the next parts opening parts consisting of a repetitive combination of C and D arpeggios and leading to a very suttle but meaningful G, Em and D arpeggio. This was the first established part of the Borneo introduction and had not consisted of the basic violin verse yet, for this was to be arranged a few years later. The opening part Borneo was firstly introduced to a group of psychology lecturers, to celebrate the Doctor’s degree obtained by my development psychology lecturer Mrs Eti. At the time we used the song to fill in the background music for a poem made by Adit (Rythm guitar) titled Ibu (Mother). It was a perfect blend of human mother-to-child emotion expressed in verses and expressive declamation filled with a soothing Borneo tune accompanying the joyful atmosphere. This occasion was the first time we had figured the ending of the song which basically consisted of the last part of the Borneo opening (G, Em, D chords), elevating the  ambience  of the song and sort of giving  you a glitch in the gut. After  numerous G, Em, D (without determining how  much bars to be precise) progression bars had been  played we some how felt that we had to end the song. This was also due to the pains recollected by my wrist for playing the high tension samick guitar of my brother. What was so great about the experience was that we were able to figure the ending of the song in a spontaneous manner. Dito, Raras and myself were practically continually looking at each other to see where the songs going to be directed and when is the song going to end. I guess  when the moment was precise, we kinda agreed by intuition that this was the moment and we all nodded our heads for approval and ended the song.
So that was kinda the process on how the Borneo song began and concluded. The middle section consisting of the basic melody had not been discovered and this was accomplished a year later.   

I have always wanted to become a musician. Ever since elementary school, i never hesitated to express that feeling.Even in my elementary school graduation i announced to the public (shocking my parents) that i wanted to become a guitarist. However the journey back to my origins actually mixed up and blurred up my ideals.

I believe that psychology surprisingly was one of the places that i spent most of my time to stirr up my right brain for music creativity. Senior high school was probably the phase to mold my left hemisphere, therefore i spent most of my time joining debate competitions and studying the do’s and do nots of argumentation. I decided to get back to music in university. In my first year (2005) studying in psychology, i, along with my friends kinda formed a three person group calling ourselves Buto Ijo. This was based on the inspiration to create instrumental music with an ethnic character. We came up with our first song ‘Javatunes’ and we soon promoted this song whenever we had the chance to. Along the way we collaborated with a few more personel under the organisation of Keluarga Rapat Sebuah Teater (KRST)/ The Family Meeting (Keluarga Rapat) and we kinda stirred up this ethnic Kalimantan song called Lamen or in Kalimantan meaning ‘Home’. The title of the song was inspired by the fact that for this particular song we had spent most of the creativity process in our second home, psychology, particularly in the KRST secretariat. We had an extension of members with Mas Sulist as the Jimbe-er, Mas Adit as second guitar, and Raras and Ratri as vocals. The idea of the song actually stemmed from a melody that i came up with at home, which sort of did not leave my memory system, and then later became the trademark introduction of the song. I asked Dito to play the melody and he seemed very enthusiast. It was actually in the KRST secretariat however that the second part of the song was revelaed. It was like, i just told Dito to just play anything and see if we could get anything nice out of the jamming session.1 , 2, 3 and go… suddenly out from the violin melodies i spontaneously picked out the C, G, Am, F and G chords, and this sounded perfect for the song. From there on we progressed further collaborating with the vocals, jimbe and second guitar. The song is primarily instrumental, in the mid section however, when the instruments do a one by one melody leading to a harmonization of various melodies, this is when the vocals kick in. The vocals add up to the melodies and do not function to lead the direction of the song as this was done by the violin. Ever since we rarely proclaimed ourselves as Buto Ijo anymore as we had mostly represented the KRST organisation when we did our performances. This was strengthened when Johan decided that he would not continue playing the keyboards for the group.

As a consequence the group downsized and had six active members left: Buldan (lead guitars), Dito (violin), Sulist(Jimbe/Percussion),Adit (rythm guitar), Raras (vocals), Ratri (vocals)

It was on a saturday.  I cant remember the date but this nights was to be a special nights for the Jogja dEBATING Forum.  It was one of the hi hi ha ha wacky programs of the wacky JDF comittee and friends to come up with some kinda awards ceremony.  So be it… the 2007 (if not mistaken) Jogja Debating Forum Awards Premier (Drums Roll, Cymbals splash, Trumpets,Timpani with the Magnificent seven theme song following).   

It was a really cool idea, the process was complete, there were nominees, they actually had award novelties, the dekat rumah cafe was specifucally booked for the occasion, JDF founders had attended, there was food and of course there were the debaters with out the complementary debate.  I figured that i had to show up.  After finishing my gig in Kaliurang i went to see if the action had presumed.  Turns out that the party remained and and you could probably say had just started.  The awards had been announced and then the next minutes to hours were expressed with music, hi hi ha ha hi ha ha, light conversations and more hi hi ha ha hi hi ha ha ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

It was cool

This is a Thursday (21st of June 2007 approximately 23.21). I open up my mail to see some interesting stuff. Ternyata ada friend request, comments stuff and stuff and ternyata to my surprise on the 15th of June ada sebuah email dari the LOTTERY BOARD. Hmmmmmmm…..???????To my further surprise the email was entitled …….Your email has won……..Hmmmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmm ?????????
Cool.
So i opened the so victorius email.And inilah isinya:
FROM: THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT
SWISS ONLINE LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL
60 MERRIMAN ROAD BLACKHEATH
LONDON SE3 8RZ ENGLAND
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the winners of the SWISS
ON-LINE LOTTERY PROMO PROGRAMME, held on the 14th of June, 2007.You
have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of £750,000.00
(Seven hundred and fifty thousand Pounds Sterling)
To file for your claim,please contact our fiducially agent claims
officer via email as soon as possible for the immediate release of your
winnings: (dikutip dari email buls_on_danotes@yahoo.com, 21st June 2007)
Now i don’t exactly know how to react. I mean look at the figures, 750.000 poundsterlings, sure cool and yeah i could use that money. I mean if i’m not mistaken, The Brits are doin quite well with their currency and if not mistaken around the kurs is like Rp13.000ish or Rp12.000ish per poundsterling. I can’t be bothered doin the maths but it seems quite a plentiful bunchy bunch.
On the other hand Lottery???…..mmm i mean i don’t gamble and i consider myself an obedient muslim who knows a thing or two about the Halals and Harams of life. Furthermore how can i win something that i didn’t even join or participate in. Its just not FAIR girls and boys. NOT FAIR. Viva la meritocracy, lNNA judi la ANNARRRR Its weird…could it be somebodys usin my email to win the lottery? Who knows buls_on_danotes mights have some magical jinx sutet voodoo power or some kekuatan supernatural waaooo keren keren. I don’t know.
Anyhow its probably just a silly prank some pathetic ignoramous is playin. Or probably the same weirdo who seems to be messin up wit my friendster.
Well at least i got some joy out of the prank, i mean it still makes me a winner.