Tampilannya lumayan eye-catching, bernuansa biru muda dan terkesan seperti tampilan pada linux. Pada media bar-nya terdapat terutama shortcut yang sangat menarik. Sebagai saudara sedarah, add-ons pada si Rubah Api hampir semuanya bisa digunakan disini.

..to be continued..

Secara khusus, saya akan menyoroti beberapa hal terkait kinerja pemerintah kota Bandung yang sekarang. Berdasarkan data yang saya kumpulkan dengan teman-teman, ternyata kota Bandung ini mencatat beberapa “prestasi” yang cukup bikin miris. Ini beberapa di antaranya:

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Peringkat IPM (Indeks Pembangunan Manusia) kota Bandung menurun drastis dari peringkat 14 melorot keperingkat 49 dalam 5 tahun terakhir (Bappenas 2007).

Kota dengan jumlah keluarga miskin terbanyak se-Jawa Barat (BPS Jabar 2008).

7 dari 10 warga kota Bandung menderita kekurangan air bersih (Basis Data LH Bandung 2006).

Ribuan anak bayi di kota Bandung terjangkit gizi buruk (Dinkes Jabar 2008).

Ribuan ruang kelas di sekolah di kota Bandung rusak berat (Disdik Jabar 2008).

Kota dengan jumlah wanita rawan sosial-ekonomi terbanyak di Jawa Barat (30.000 wanita).

Kota dengan jumlah korban narkoba terbanyak di Jawa Barat (Dinsos Jabar 2007).

Kota dengan jumlah anak terlantar terbanyak di Jawa Barat (Dinsos Jabar 2007).

Kota dengan jumlah keluarga yg tinggal di rumah tidak layak terbanyak di Jawa Barat (Dinsos Jabar 2007).

Jumlah timbunan sampah di kota Bandung mencapai 8000 m3, dengan 3000 m3 diantaranya masih tertinggal di TPS. Angka ini tertinggi di Jawa Barat, dan kota Bandung berhasil meraih penghargaan Bandung Kota Metropolitan Terkotor se-Indonesia selama 2 tahun berturut-turut.

6 dari 10 murid SD di kota Bandung beresiko menurun kecerdasannya, akibat kadar polusi di atas rata-rata (Dept. TL ITB, BPLHD Jabar 2007).

Kerugian akibat kemacetan sebesar Rp. 1,78 M per hari.

Kota dengan jumlah pengangguran terbanyak di Jawa Barat, mencapai 178 ribu orang (BPS Jabar 2007).

Omzet pedagang tradisional menurun tajam hingga 40% per tahun (DPRD kota Bandung 2008).

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Agar tidak dianggap hoax atau asbun, ini saya sertakan juga sumber-sumber dari data di atas, supaya dapat diverifikasi kebenarannya oleh pembaca yg ingin (siapa tahu kan?).

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Indeks Pembangunan Manusia. ketik IPM kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Bappenas – Jl. Taman Suropati no. 2 Jakarta 10310, telp. 021 3905650, www.bappenas.go.id

Kemiskinan. ketik MISKIN kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Biro Pusat Statistik Jawa Barat – Jl. PHH Mustofa 43 Bandung

Air Bersih. ketik AIR kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Badan Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah Jawa Barat – Jl. Naripan no. 25 Bandung

Gizi Buruk. ketik GIZI kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Kesehatan Jawa Barat – Jl. Pasteur no. 25 Bandung, telp. 022 4232292, http://diskes.jabarprov.go.id

Ruang Kelas. ketik PENDIDIKAN kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Pendidikan Dinas Pendidikan Kota Bandung – Jl. Rajiman no. 6, telp. 022 4202404, http://disdik.jabarprov.go.id

Wanita Rawan Sosial Ekonomi. ketik WANITA kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Sosial Jawa Barat – Jl. Raya Cibabat no. 331, Cimahi 40522, telp. 022 6643149, http://dissos.jabarprov.go.id

Narkoba. ketik NARKOBA kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Sosial Jawa Barat – Jl. Raya Cibabat no. 331, Cimahi 40522, telp. 022 6643149, http://dissos.jabarprov.go.id

Anak Terlantar. ketik ANAK kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Sosial Jawa Barat – Jl. Raya Cibabat no. 331, Cimahi 40522, telp. 022 6643149, http://dissos.jabarprov.go.id

Rumah Tidak Layak. ketik RUMAH kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dinas Sosial Jawa Barat – Jl. Raya Cibabat no. 331, Cimahi 40522, telp. 022 6643149, http://dissos.jabarprov.go.id

Sampah. ketik SAMPAH kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Kementrian Lingkungan Hidup – Jl. D. I. Panjaitan kavling 24, Kebon Nanas, Jakarta 13410, telp. 021 8517184, www.menlh.go.id

Polusi. ketik POLUSI kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Dept. Teknik Lingkungan ITB – Jl. Ganesha no. 10, Bandung, atau ke Badan Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah Jawa Barat – Jl. Naripan no. 25 Bandung

Kemacetan. ketik MACET kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke DPRD Kota Bandung – Jl. Wastukencana no. 2, http://dprd-bandungkota.go.id

Pengangguran. ketik PENGANGGURAN kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke Biro Pusat Statistik Jawa Barat – Jl. PHH Mustofa 43 Bandung

Omzet Pedagang Tradisional. ketik PEDAGANG kirim ke 085220000179, atau dapat ditanyakan langsung ke DPRD Kota Bandung – Jl. Wastukencana no. 2, http://dprd-bandungkota.go.id

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Sedih rasanya, kota Bandung yang terkenal sebagai kota wisata (apalagi buat orang Jakarta), ternyata banyak menyimpan catatan yang kurang baik. Buat teman-teman yg berdomisili di kota Bandung, saya yakin pasti pernah merasakan salah satu dampak dari daftar di atas, apalagi buat teman-teman ITB yang pernah merasakan TPS darurat di depan kampus (kebun binatang), hwehehe.

Nah, mungkin di antara teman-teman ada yg bertanya, “kok ga ada daftar prestasi yg positifnya?”.

Hmm, mungkin sebenarnya ada, tapi berhubung saya kurang tahu dan tidak begitu merasakannya, jadi silakan para pembaca aja yg mendata apa aja prestasi pemerintah kota Bandung 5 tahun belakangan ini. Tapi kalau saya boleh kasih opini sih, yang pasti prestasi positifnya bukan di bidang olahraga atau pembangunan industri kreatif.

Lihat saja prestasi Persib yang tidak berdaya di Liga Indonesia (belum pernah juara selama 5 tahun terakhir, belum lagi “oknum” bobotohnya yang brutal, hehe, no offense yah). Industri kreatif (distro, kuliner, dsb) pun setali tiga uang. Kebetulan saya punya beberapa kenalan yg bergerak di bidang tersebut, dan mereka memang benar-benar bergerak sendiri atau dari komunitas, bukan dari dukungan atau dibina oleh pemerintah kota. Misalnya saja distro unkl347 dan Brownies Amanda. Saya kira pemerintah kota Bandung yang sekarang tidak banyak andil dalam mengembangkan industri kuliner dan distro hingga seperti sekarang ini. CMIIW

Bagaimana dengan perbaikan jalan dan infrastruktur? Wah kalau menurut saya sepertinya bukan juga, habis perbaikan jalan baru ada sekarang-sekarang pas mau pilkada (kecuali pembangunan Pasupati kali ya? Itu mungkin termasuk positifnya).

Dari sederet daftar “prestasi” di atas, rasanya banyak pekerjaan rumah yang mesti diselesaikan oleh pemerintah kota Bandung nantinya, atau mungkin malah timbul pertanyaan di benak pembaca, kira-kira masih layakkah pemerintah kota Bandung yang sekarang memimpin kembali?

Wallahu ‘alam, kita doakan saja semoga siapapun yang nantinya memimpin kota Bandung diberikan hidayah dan petunjuk oleh Allah SWT agar dapat memimpin dengan adil dan membawa kota Bandung yang katanya Paris van Java ini menjadi kota yang membawa keberkahan bagi penduduknya.

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“Apakah manusia mengira, bahwa ia akan dibiarkan begitu saja (tanpa pertanggung jawaban)?”

(Q.S Al Qiyamah: 36)

]]> http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/pilkada-kota-bandung/feed/ 3 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/7-days-to-demo-deadline/ http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/7-days-to-demo-deadline/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:48:03 +0000 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/?p=88 ]]> Never crack under pressure, Keep istiqomah, Keep working, Keep smiling, and Keep walking.
]]> http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/7-days-to-demo-deadline/feed/ 0 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/in-kicfest-08/ http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/in-kicfest-08/#comments Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:11:49 +0000 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/?p=81 ]]> “sekarang lagi di stand British Council (www.britishcouncil.or.id), laporan selengkapnya menyusul yah.. hwehehe..”

-end of transmission-

Yup, kalimat di atas kutulis di gasibu pas lagi kickfest. Buat yg belum tau (kebetulan aku juga baru tau), kickfest adalah acara tahunan berupa expo dari distro2 lokal di Bandung.

Nah buat yg dah kenal ma aku, pastinya bertanya2 kenapa pula tiba2 aku jadi ikutan dateng2 ke acara anak muda kaya gini (hwehe, merasa tua). Jawabannya simpel ajah, nemenin sodara yg emang pgn datang kesana, hihihi. Wew, dah ah, cukup ga pentingnya.

Alasan saya pgn ngeliput ini adalah karena saya melihat stand yg cukup menarik, apalagi kalo bukan yg dah ditulis di atas: stand British Council. Nah, kenapa menarik?

Pertama: Beda dengan semua stand yg saya lihat, stand ini ga jualan. Isi stand ini adalah memamerkan hasil-hasil karya yg kreatif dari anak-anak muda di Bandung. Ada juga panggung kecil yg menampilkan kesenian tradisional Sunda yg dibawakan dengan alat-alat musik kreasi sendiri (seperti suling dari pipa bekas, dsb).

Kedua: Selain stand penjual makanan, inilah satu-satunya stand dimana kita bisa berteduh dan duduk di kursi. Selain itu karena letaknya yg agak keluar dari arena belanja, stand ini benar-benar solutif bagi orang-orang seperti saya yg cape jalan2 dan pgn istirahat di tengah panas terik. Eh iya, di stand ini semuanya terbuat dari kardus recycled loh. Mulai dari dinding ampe sofa dan mejanya.

Ketiga: Stand ini bagi-bagi souvenir. Hwehehe, ya iyalah, siapa juga yg ga suka barang gratisan. Souvenir yg dibagiin juga berupa kaos loh. Jadi dah beradem-adem, dapet kaos pula, asik kan? hwehehe.

Nah, di stand ini juga aku menemukan sesuatu yg menarik. Apa itu? Ini dia…

Lebih dekat..

Betul sekali, itu adalah kardus-kardus yg dibuat menjadi box tempat menaruh barang-barang. Lucunya lagi, “potongan-potongan semangka” itu bisa dimasukkan ke dalam semangka kotak di belakangnya, jadi kaya semangka beneran deh, hwehehe.. (jadi inget seseorang..)

Ngomong-ngomong, dari berita yg saya baca, kickfest tahun 2008 ini mencetak rekor pemasukan terbesar dibanding tahun-tahun sebelumnya, yaitu sebesar 4.5 milyar dalam sehari. Nah mengingat acaranya diadakan selama 3 hari, silakan temen2 hitung sendiri deh berapa total pemasukannya

Apa ini pertanda minat belanja anak-anak muda Bandung meningkat dari tahun ke tahun?

Wallahu ‘alam…

Jadi ceritanya, di jurusan tempatku kuliah -teknik elektro- itu jumlah ce-nya minoritas banget. Dan konon kabarnya, karena itu pola pikir mereka jadi agak ke-”co-co”-an, hihihi. Nah trus ada yg nge-forward email ttg translasi dari kata-kata yg sering diucapin ce. Akhirnya jadi bahan diskusi deh di milis, sebenarnya apa sih maksud implisit dari kata-kata yg sering diucapkan ce?

Ini beberapa diantaranya…

1 ) Fine:
This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2 ) Five Minutes:
If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3 ) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4 ) Go Ahead:
This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do It!

5 ) Loud Sigh:
This is not actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

6 ) That’s Okay:
This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7 ) Thanks:
A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you’re welcome. (I want to add in a clause here: This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a lot’ – that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say ‘you’re welcome’… that will bring on a ‘whatever’).

8 ) Whatever:
Is a women’s way of saying SCREW YOU!

9 ) Don’t worry about it, I got it:
Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking ‘What’s wrong?’ For the woman’s response refer to # 3.

Ada yang benar ga tuh..? Ato malah benar semua..? hihihi..

Hum hum, sampai waktuku senggang, ini ada joke tentang macam-macam kepribadian menurut golongan darah. Gambarnya lucu deh.

Enjoy, just for laugh..

(hihihi, tapi beberapa ada yg beneran mirip aku loh…)

Berikut ini ada 2 pidato yg cukup menginspirasi aku, baik dalam berbicara maupun berbuat. Mungkin para pembaca juga dah tau orang-orang ini, J. K. Rowling (ada hubungan saudara dengan Wapres Muhammad J. K.? hihihi) dan Steve Jobs, foundernya Apple. Sekedar opini, pidato-nya Steve itu masih pidato terbaik yg pernah kubaca (belum dengar cara dia ngomong sih, masi nyari rekamannya).

Selamat membaca, semoga bermanfaat..

‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure,

and the Importance of Imagination,’

(This is the text of the speech by J. K. Rowling at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, delivered on June 2008.)

—

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’

Jobs says

(This is the text of the Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.)

—

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

]]> http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/great-speech-from-great-people/feed/ 3 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/surat-buat-mama/ http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/surat-buat-mama/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:34:47 +0000 rmulyawan http://rmulyawan.wordpress.com/?p=37 ]]> Dapet email lagi dari milis, belakangan ini sedang sangat sibuk, jadi ga sempet2 nulis, padahal banyak yg dah kepikiran buat jadi bahan tulisan,, sabar yah para pembaca..

Sementara ini aku akan nge-posting2in artikel/email menarik dari orang yg aku dapat. Semoga bermanfaat..

SURAT BUAT MAMA

Mamaku sayang, aku mau cerita sama mama.

Tapi ceritanya pake surat ya. Kan, mama sibuk, capek, pulang udah malem.

Kalo aku banyak ngomong nanti mama marah kayak kemarin itu, aku jadinya takut dan nangis.

Kalo pake surat kan mama bisa sambil tiduran bacanya.

Kalo ngga sempet baca malem ini bisa disimpen sampe besok, pokoknya bisa dibaca kapan aja deh.

Boleh juga suratnya dibawa ke kantor.

Ma, boleh ngga aku minta ganti mbak? Mbak Jum sekarang suka galak, Ma.

Kalo aku ngga mau makan, piringnya dibanting di depan aku.

Kalo siang aku disuruh tidur melulu, ngga boleh main, padahal mbak kerjanya cuman nonton TV aja.

Bukannya dulu kata mama mbak itu gunanya buat nemenin aku main?

Trus aku pernah liat mbak lagi ngobrol sama tukang roti di teras depan.

Padahal kata mama kan ngga boleh ada tukang-tukang yang masuk rumah kan?

Kalo aku bilang gitu sama mbak,

mbak marah banget dan katanya kalo diaduin sama mama dia mau berhenti kerja.

Kalo dia berhenti berarti nanti mama repot ya?

Nanti mama ngga bisa kerja ya?

Nanti ngga ada yang jagain aku di rumah ya?

Kalo gitu susah ya, ma?

Mbak ngga diganti ngga apa-apa tapi mama bilangin dong jangan galak sama aku.

Ma,bisa ngga hari Kamis sore mama nganter aku ke lomba nari Bali?

Pak Husin sih selalu nganterin, tapi kan dia cowok, ma.

Ntar yang dandanin aku siapa? Mbak Jum ngga ngerti dandan.

Ntar aku kayak lenong. Kalo mama kan kalo dandan cantik.

Temen-temen aku yang nganterin juga mamanya.

Waktu lomba gambar minggu lalu Pak Husin yang nganter;

tiap ada lomba Pak Husin juga yang nganter. Bosen, ma.

Lagian aku pingin ngasi liat sama temen-temenku kalo mamaku itu cantik banget, aku kan bangga, Ma.

Temen-temen tuh ngga pernah liat mama. Pernah sih liat, tapi itu tahun lalu pas aku baru masuk SD,

kan mereka jadinya udah lupa tampangnya Mama.

Ma, hadiah ulang tahun mulai tahun ini ngga usah dibeliin deh.

Uangnya mama tabungin aja.

Trus aku ngga usah dibeliin baju sama mainan mahal lagi deh.

Uangnya mama tabung aja.

Kalo uang mama udah banyak, kan mama ngga usah kerja lagi.

Nah, itu baru sip namanya.

Lagian mainanku udah banyak dan lebih asyik main sama mama kali ya?

Udah dulu ya, Ma. Udah ngantuk.

I love you Mom

(Sengaja kuketikin buat temen-temen, semoga bisa memberi inspirasi. Melankolis mode ON.)

Menjemput Surga

Wito namanya. Ia seorang yatim. Ayahnya meninggal saat ia masih di bangku Madrasah Ibtidaiyah. Sedih tentu. Tapi, ia dan keluarga bukan tipe manusia yang gampang patah. Ibunya pekerja keras, biasa membantu keluarga tetangga memasak untuk hajatan. Wito kecil itu juga seorang ulet. Ia bekerja keras membantu siapa pun sambil bersekolah.

Lulus SMA swasta di kampungnya, ia hijrah ke Jakarta untuk ‘ikut orang’. Ia bukan saja andalan keluarga yang diikutinya untuk tugas-tugas domestik, namun juga andalan masjid untuk menjaga kebersihan. Masih sempat pula ia kuliah. Meskipun dengan tertatih-tatih, ia merampungkan kuliahnya. Sebuah bekal untuk memperoleh pekerjaan di sebuah kantor di Solo.

Di kantor itu, ia pekerja andalan. Ia sanggup mengerjakan tugas apa pun tanpa pilih-pilih. Kepala Bagian Umum menjadi tempat yang pas baginya, sampai kemudian perusahaan itu bangkrut. Ia harus kehilangan pekerjaan, saat sudah harus menanggung beban keluarga dengan satu anak. Limbung?

Wito bukan seseorang yang suka memikirkan nasib. Apalagi, meratapi dan mengasihani diri sendiri sebagaimana jutaan manusia lain. Ia memilih berbuat dan berbuat. Ia tahu persis bahwa perbuatanlah, dalam istilah agama adalah amal, yang akan dinilai di Hari Akhir nanti. Bukan pikiran, apalagi ratapan. Mushala kecil di sekitarnya ia rawat dengan baik. Anak-anak di sekitar itu diajarinya mengaji, tanpa bayaran sama sekali. Untuk penghidupannya sendiri, ia menyewa becak dari tetangganya. Tanpa ragu dan malu sama sekali serta tanpa mempersoalkan bahwa dirinya sarjana, ia menarik becak itu. Sebuah becak yang kemudian menjadi miliknya.

Sang istri semestinya bisa membantunya. Tapi, kondisi fisik istrinya ternyata sangat lemah. Apalagi, saat istrinya hamil. Dengan riang hati, Wito menyampaikan pada istrinya untuk berhati-hati dan menjaga kesehatannya sendiri. Seluruh urusan pekerjaan rumah ia tangani sendiri pula. Seusai jamaah Subuh di mushala, ia akan masak untuk keluarga, mencuci pakaian, serta menyapu rumah dan halaman sekitar. Lalu, ia mandi dan menarik becak hingga pukul 10 pagi. Saat itulah ia akan membelokkan becaknya ke pasar untuk berbelanja kelapa.

Dengan tangannya sendiri, ia membuat gerobak untuk berjualan es kelapa di dekat rumahnya. Sendiri ia berjualan es kelapa. Dengan harga murah, tempatnya menjadi pilihan pengendara motor untuk istirahat sejenak, menghapus dahaga. Malam hari, setelah mengajar mengaji, ia sempatkan diri untuk mengikuti kursus pijat terapi. Ia terus perdalam sampai jadi pemijat mahir. Jam berapapun diminta untuk memijat, ia akan berangkat tanpa pernah mau menetapkan ongkosnya. Berapa pun yang ia dapatkan, akan ia syukuri.

Menarik becak, jualan es kelapa, hingga jadi pemijat menjadi ladang rezeki yang terus ditekuninya dengan riang. Hasilnya, di antara banyak teman seangkatannya, kehidupannya relatif berkah. Ia punya rumah dengan tanah hampir seluas 300 meter di tepi salah satu jalan penting di kota Solo. Ia dapat menyekolahkan anaknya ke sekolah yang bagus, yang oleh kalangan kebanyakan sudah dipandang elite. Lebih dari itu, praktis shalat lima waktunya terjaga untuk selalu berjamaah. Hal yang sekarang semakin sulit dijaga oleh kita yang kadang merasa menjaga agama sekalipun.

Di tengah jutaan para sarjana yang lebih banyak hilir mudik mencari pekerjaan; di tengah jutaan pegawai negeri ataupun swasta yang kegembiraan utamanya memperoleh komisi; di tengah banyak pebisnis besar yang sebenarnya cuma calo; di tengah banyak orang-orang terhormat yang seolah bekerja untuk rakyat, tapi kesibukan utamanya mencari jalan untuk ‘mencuri’ keuangan rakyat; Wito sungguh penjemput surga yang efektif. Ia seorang yang riang untuk selalu berbuat dan berbuat.

Hanya sesekali ia tampak sedih, dengan alasan yang istimewa. Di antaranya, setelah pemerintah menaikkan harga BBM secara mendadak. Tanpa bertahap. Setelah kenaikan harga BBM itu, ia sebagaimana ratusan ribu pedagang kecil lainnya harus berhenti berdagang. Harga jual es-nya tak lagi cukup untuk membeli kelapa di pasar. Ketika ia mencoba menaikkan sedikit harga itu, orang-orang tak lagi mampu membeli. Maka, ia pun menutup usaha. “Kasihan, pelanggan saya tak kuat lagi membeli,” katanya. Ia, sekali lagi, lebih mengasihani orang lain ketimbang diri sendiri.

Adakah di antara kita yang lebih dekat ke jalan surga ketimbang Wito? Adakah jalan untuk menjadikan seluruh bangsa ini menjadi pribadi-pribadi penjemput surga? Yakni, pribadi yang tak punya rasa sakit hati, kecewa, apalagi putus asa. Juga pribadi yang tidak malas, namun justru antusias untuk terus berbuat dan berbuat.