I am always curious about men’s bracelet. Those that looked like some twirled or wrapped or rolled string of leather, rattan, or hemp. The stash could be adorned with some silver beads or any other charms to make it look both nifty and ragged. What function does it serve besides as an adornment? Sometimes I think maybe it would accentuate muscles around the arms or focusing people’s eyes to the hands’ part. I bought one for an ex-boyfriend as a birthday present. That ex was an accessories aficionado. When we were dating he used to wear four rings in one hand. He had two. So, it was at least eight rings. I am not kidding. Now we know why we broke up, don’t we. Less than a week after it was official, I successfully (made him) pull those rings out into a safe, dark place, and they had never emerged ever since (rings or kiss!). After the rings were gone, I started to see hemp ankle bracelet that looked very hippie and casual, like the things you got from a stranger in a backpacking trip. You know, they would look at you, make you feel special, read through you, and tie up their craft to your body parts and it is impossible to unwrap it because they make it to “Fit” you. Even showers do not weary them. Scissors do. But, who have the heart to cut an ornament given by a stranger? Neither did that ex. He said, he would only cut it after he got married or meet the right girl. Ha! Could you imagine how challenged I was with that term? Therefore, I bought him the sleek bracelet to sway his mind off that ankle bracelet and maybe I could cut it off when he was off-guards. Just kidding! Not. Anyway. Since then I know guys (at least those I am attracted to) wear bracelets because it tells stories, their bodies are their portable museums. Some got it in India, some in Kalimantan. One got it from his sister. He was from a port city in Southern Europe and clearly, sail clubs are just like the neighborhood’s skateboarding club. I may be wrong! But, sailing was his hobby. He was going to make an anchor tattoo on her arm while instead his sister advised him not to. She replaced the thought of ink with literally a long black skinny leather string with a small, silver anchor head. It was to be rolled around and hooked with anchor head as the finishing. He showed me how it was done, unwrapped and wrapped it again. The anchor, he said, is sometimes problematic since it could hook into passerby’s coats or shirts accidentally. Tattoo is safer, he said. He wore the leather on his right hand. That night I drew an anchor on his left inner forearm and he drew a donkey on mine (another story on the donkey). Looking at my accessories-less everyday getups, I quite appreciate guys who wear those other than a watch. Because it opens up stories and, “hmmm nice watch!” sounds like appreciating the price rather than the watch. Although I also like men’s watches! 

Vintagologism (or sort of)

First scenes in Wall-E present vintage La Vie en Rose video played in half-wrecked television. The mix between deserted dystopia and faraway fleshy past creates sweet irony that we could feel sorry for the future earthlings not being able to embrace that romanticism first-handedly. But, at the same time, we are in the middle between past and future, we are on that track. We could sympathize with Wall-E, at least fifty percent. It would be cool if in the future such job of curating vintage, grounded ambiance would be in demand. In fact, they are baking it now at www.radiooooo.com (five O's), where you could go through past and present music in different eras. Just click the interactive map and tick the era box. My favourite for today would be going back to 1950s Argentina.

On Uber

Sharing economy is like fun, meaningless, cheap dates. It is a blast, but you cannot control their ever-readiness to always be there for you. You would always need long-term, committed service even (especially) when it is holidays. This is why I think we still need taxi, ojek pangkalan, and anything that is committed to serve you despite their moods.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch could be a story about many things for different readers. Its Littlebrown soft copy edition back cover sums it up as a "bestseller about a son, a mother, and a life-changing work of art". For me, the striking plot is the one between Boris and Theo (the protagonist). Everyone has their own Boris, who thinks what they do to us is funny, fun, who leads us to bad things, yet they would end up very lucky and well (even great) in life. The very same person who actually teaches us to loosen up and might finally make us contemplating nihilism. Or, maybe you are the Boris for Theo.

This book is a nice coming-of-age first person point of view narration. It does not constantly rant like The Catcher in the Rye or even On the Road, which left me with the urge to shut the rant up. But still, it evokes the couldn't-care-less side of you. Also, nihilistic thoughts. 

To accompany your nihilistic thought, give it a bit of scientific flair:

I don't want updates

It bothers me how software updates eat up my smart phone memory and slow the phone down. I am okay with my phone's capability right now and don't need nor want more innovation. However, compatibility with other services, bug fixes, better data mining, etc. will force you to update your phone, delete your unnecessary applications, photos, videos, and in the end to buy more phone memory, and new phone in the end. Silly

What if nothing is as complicated as this?

Scattered Photos in my Phone #1

  

One of my Chinese friends whose childhood was spent with government coupons for food and other basic staples said, he would never queue for food. Agreed. But, this is my one significant food queue last year: The Breakfast Club, SoHo. Fortunately, d**n good breakfast food. We ordered pancake, breakfast burritos, the full monty, and their coffee. Meanwhile, their interior directly brings you back to Breakfast Club, the movie (1985), with late 80's and 90's trinkets on the wall. I have 90's as the worst decade with visual image in my memory, but somehow it creates comfort. I am currently listening to 311's Amber in a loop and the song describes the restaurant's vibe: as simple as Ska beats coupled with wooden tables and stools, messy, colourful mementos.

Discipline and Punishment 2.0

What do three or four stars in Goodreads or Rotten Tomatoes tell you? Do you buy rating system? Well, to point out the obvious, of course it helps you to get a feel of something, whether the product lives up to the name. For example, Haruki Maurakami’s The Strange Library may sells well due to its author’s fame and the fact that most Strange Library books are sealed with plastics in bookstores so you cannot peek at how disappointing the book is. (I am not a Murakami fan. I am not disappointed, but it is disappointing for his fans).  

I never buy public ratings for books, movies, restaurants, because I have peculiar judgments.  But, what if the ratings are related to safety? For example, Uber taxi app that will automatically pop up the driver’s rating when you are ordering a car. Well, I kinda trust this. Like I trust airbnb’s rating. So, I do not negate the use of rating in this sense. Aside from its functions, however, it itches me how rating scrutinizes service provider to influxes of users’ opinions. But, don’t all businesses work like this? When I saw the Uber taxi rating, I imagined what if I got rated on-line or publicly for every single task I got in my workplace. With my face and name in it. I wouldn’t like it. Then, why do I like the Uber taxi rating?

One day, I participated in this workshop. Their objective is to practice how to be innovative social problem owners and to design the results into prototypes. The people are great. Most of the participants and mentors are doers, practitioners, and they are used to get requests from clients to design their products based on user’s experience so it will satisfy the users, us, those who could buy, those who make the rules and what is good & not. The participants were divided into several groups. We then got couple of days to define a social problem that we would solve, one day for research and prototype designing, and one day to finish our prototypes.

The teams were very creative. Several social problems they chose are: the lacks of Jakarta waste management, Jakarta government’s plan to manage informal food vendors that causes most of the vendors cannot sell from their usual spots, how to locate our lost items, etc. Interestingly, the solutions to most of the problems are to make the elements visible. For example, for the “lost items” problem, they would like to put something that could be detected and located with your devices (obviously). Another example is to list, rate, and locate the food vendors so we could detect where they are since they will be strolling around, not in a fixed area. Look, both people and object could be located!

No one objected when rating food vendors. However, when a group proposed an interactive device in museum space that could detect which paintings that you like, people suddenly felt uncomfortable. Why? Isn’t the idea the same? To instantly detect and announce what you like, to cut social interactions to infer your favorites, to cut the context why people like something at that particular time, etc? Why do we put CCTV for our babysitters and watch it from our iPad in the office, in non-challant manner, while we do not like being observed? Is it a matter of different social classes?

I could get the idea of Airbnb and Couchsurfing, for example, because the rating is reciprocal. With food vendors, babysitters, etc. it is not reciprocal. Of course, they could give their own “ratings” of the users or employers through words of mouth or other tactics. But, doesn’t it bother you just a bit to see how technology becomes more and more intrusive rather than liberating? If you have any examples of non-intrusive technology or product design, please let me know (I will browse IDEO site as well). On the other hand, we could argue, through all of the money they get from good rating, technology could be a liberating tool to succeed, and it gives a “measurable” steps: more stars mean more customers (?). 

Aside from the benefits for you and for the service provider, what do you feel when you give out stars on the people we could lurk at and decide their narrative of quality for public? Practicing our minor power at least? Surveiller et Punir, Discipline and Punishment 2.0.

    

She tries to give a confusing smile as she likes Murakami but hates this book (or is it because she is cold from Edinburgh weather?) Where are the stars to be clicked? Would be easier than figuring out this puzzling smile! :) 

Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to His Abusive and Narcissistic Father (from Brainpickings)

In Indonesia, we consider family is the ultimate nuclear group where children could find refuge and support. We also assume that seniors would be taken care of the children, and babies from young family will easily find support from the grandparents, if not from babysitters. Our social policy also hinges toward the assumption that every individual has a familial safety net. When that's not always the case. With this thought, we tend to be dismissal with policies that could cover individual's interest. We do not imagine a differently-abled person or a senior walks out of their home alone. There is no such thing! Since we assume they have family. We assume they have a nice, decent, non-abusive family. Hence, we do not create infrastructure for individual people. Instead, we promote that marriage will give the solution for better life (since you'll have a spouse and children who take care of you). We also glorify communal value, when not all people feel comfortable in social bonding. Meanwhile, I have always believed that detachment from social life is important as well, to respect individual thought, privacy, and empowerment. 

Brainpicking just shared Kafka's letter to his abusive and narcissistic father. Good entry to de-romanticize family.  Not all family is nice and glam as our new order Posyandu ad. The spectrum of "abusive" is not necessarily physical, but broader and more delicate than that, as what Kafka wrote below:

"To you the matter always seemed very simple, at least in so far as you talked about it in front of me, and indiscriminately in front of many other people. It looked to you more or less as follows: you have worked hard all your life, have sacrificed everything for your children, above all for me, consequently I have lived high and handsome, have been completely at liberty to learn whatever I wanted, and have had no cause for material worries, which means worries of any kind at all. You have not expected any gratitude for this, knowing what “children’s gratitude” is like, but have expected at least some sort of obligingness, some sign of sympathy. Instead I have always hidden from you, in my room, among my books, with crazy friends, or with extravagant ideas… If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don’t charge me with anything downright improper or wicked (with the exception perhaps of my latest marriage plan), you do charge me with coldness, estrangement, and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, while you aren’t in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me.

This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what would be possible is — not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that — but still, a kind of peace; no cessation, but still, a diminution of your unceasing reproaches."

#NoRaisins