Saturday, 16Dec06
Highlights: Hotel Flora internet, Inconvenient Truth
The internet at home is on the fritz again. =/ can a guy catch a break around here?
So I packed my lappie & hiked over to a ritzy hotel in Kemang, 10 minutes away in South Jakarta, where they have free wireless internet in their lobby. (=
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I camped out there for 8 hours & made 3 new friends between the singer (from Surabaya) and waitresses (Jakarta).
I don’t know why anyone likes me these days, because it takes virtually nothing to get me going on a rant lately.
“Oh, you’re from Surabaya? Which part?”
“Well,,, I was born here in Jakarta, and have never set foot in Surabaya, but my parents are from there, so I’m East Javanese.”
I swear I don’t mean anything offensive or ugly by it,,, but that just doesn’t make sense to me.
I heard a great definition of “culture” when I was in Bandung last month:
“Culture is knowing how to act in your social environment.”
I love that definition. Simple, hard to argue with.
So if the singer I’m talking to is culturally or ‘ethnically’ East Javanese,,,, but everything she knows & has experienced has been here in Jakarta (on the opposite side of the island of Java)… how is she a cultural product of Surabaya again?
Surely parents don’t have a monopoly on cultural learning. Friends, neighbors, what you see at school, life outside the house has an effect too.
We had fun beating that subject up for a while & left with smiles. She said she wouldn’t forget me. Sadly, I believe her. I didn’t ask if the memory would be a positive one. I didn’t want to hear the answer. I don’t know why anyone likes me these days (=
I went home & popped in a video… Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Huh! Well,,, I gotta say- it was well done. There are a lot of things to pull away from this documentary (all comments on his political aspirations aside). The impact for me is that the environmental history that he traces out & shows in a somewhat succinct 45 minute film,,, is believable.
When it comes to environmental studies, I believe Al Gore more than the environmental appointees that our current administration has. Put it that way.
Highlights: Hotel Flora internet, Inconvenient Truth
The internet at home is on the fritz again. =/ can a guy catch a break around here?
So I packed my lappie & hiked over to a ritzy hotel in Kemang, 10 minutes away in South Jakarta, where they have free wireless internet in their lobby. (=
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I camped out there for 8 hours & made 3 new friends between the singer (from Surabaya) and waitresses (Jakarta).
I don’t know why anyone likes me these days, because it takes virtually nothing to get me going on a rant lately.
“Oh, you’re from Surabaya? Which part?”
“Well,,, I was born here in Jakarta, and have never set foot in Surabaya, but my parents are from there, so I’m East Javanese.”
I swear I don’t mean anything offensive or ugly by it,,, but that just doesn’t make sense to me.
I heard a great definition of “culture” when I was in Bandung last month:
“Culture is knowing how to act in your social environment.”
I love that definition. Simple, hard to argue with.
So if the singer I’m talking to is culturally or ‘ethnically’ East Javanese,,,, but everything she knows & has experienced has been here in Jakarta (on the opposite side of the island of Java)… how is she a cultural product of Surabaya again?
Surely parents don’t have a monopoly on cultural learning. Friends, neighbors, what you see at school, life outside the house has an effect too.
We had fun beating that subject up for a while & left with smiles. She said she wouldn’t forget me. Sadly, I believe her. I didn’t ask if the memory would be a positive one. I didn’t want to hear the answer. I don’t know why anyone likes me these days (=
I went home & popped in a video… Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Huh! Well,,, I gotta say- it was well done. There are a lot of things to pull away from this documentary (all comments on his political aspirations aside). The impact for me is that the environmental history that he traces out & shows in a somewhat succinct 45 minute film,,, is believable.
When it comes to environmental studies, I believe Al Gore more than the environmental appointees that our current administration has. Put it that way.
posted by jonathan adventures at 7:43 AM
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