Marriage and Education: Dinner Chit Chat

Hi,

Long time no see, yap? I'm actually in a research training program and I can't really write much. This is going to be a very short paragraph.  Bear it with me, kay?

About two nights ago, I sat with two wonderful people over dinner and we talked quite a lot about the fact that women with high educations in Indonesia tended to find it hard to get a husband.  A friend (a man) said that it was partly because the men did not feel confident enough to propose. My other friend (a woman) stated that she did not really care about money or education.  As long as he has the same faith (religion), there was always a possibility to be her husband. I...personally has the same opinion. I mean...as long as he is a he, he is a good enough muslim, and I can talk to him comfortably, I don't see why he couldn't be my husband.  However, after spending another 30 minutes I could see clearer that it was actually because the nature of men and probably,our culture. 

First, I think that it was the nature of man to expect to be more superior than his wife. At least for the most important matters like education, money, position at the office.  I do not really know exactly about what men feel when they are financially or educationally inferior, but I think, in general, they don't like it. No matter how bad the situations, being lower than their wives was not normal and of course it could cause frictions from time to time.  So, to avoid that friction, they choose to propose someone "lower" than or "equal" with them.

Second, apparently in my friend's culture, the amount of money that must be paid by the groom in a marriage arrangement is positively correlated with the "value"of the bride. This value of a bride was affected by her education, blood, and ability to generate money.  A noble-blood woman with master degree who works for the government could value more a hundred million. Well,no wonder men felt a bit intimidated.

It was nice to see how a culture could value a woman so much.  But, it also created a certain dilemma for a woman. At some point, she needs to choose of whether her love for education is bigger than her passion to be a wife and a mom.  I would be frustrated. Sigh...


Cheers,
Dya


*I'll write more after mid May I guess

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V: Bajingan dan Penjahat

V

Bajingan dan Penjahat

"Seseorang bisa ada dalam hidupmu bukan hanya karena mereka datang, tetapi juga karena kau memperbolehkan mereka masuk, " satu kalimat yang dikatakannya setelah bermingu-minggu terapi.
"Jadi, aku yang memilih memasukkan para bajingan dan penjahat itu?"
"Yah, setidaknya kamu yang membiarkan mereka menyakitimu."
"Cih..."

Tiga puluh lima tahun hidup di dunia dan sudah bertemu segala macam bajingan.  Pemerkosa, pengkhianat, pengecut, dan pembohong.  Satu laki-laki baik yang kukenal sayangnya sudah berumur setengah abad, agak gila, Cina, dan berbeda agama.  Satu-satunya laki-laki dalam hidupku yang pernah berkata, "jika ada yang mengajakmu tidur bersama sebelum menikah, larilah. Dia tidak sungguh-sungguh mencintaimu." Kata-katanya itu, bukan kata-kata dari orang tua atau saudaraku, yang membuatku tetap bertahan untuk tidak menjual diri di pinggir pasar atau di selasar kampus.  Aku menyayangimu, Pak Tua. Sungguh. Aku berharap suatu saat, ada perempuan yang bisa melihat menembus semua kegilaan, kebodohan, dan idealisme mu yang berlebihan.

---

Aku bertemu Bajingan 1 saat SMA walaupun aku tahu kecenderunganku "menjual murah diri sendiri" sudah mulai terlihat jauh sebelumnya.  Mungkin SMA adalah saat yang tepat untuk melepas keperawanan? ada yang salah dengan penalaranku. Saat itu dan sekarang.  Dia datang menjemputku di depan sekolah.  Sesaat, setelah diabaikan begitu lama oleh orang tuaku, aku merasa senang diperhatikan oleh seseorang. Dicintai dan diinginkan. Tiga kali pertemuan dan dia sudah berusaha membuka semua pakaianku dan mengajakku ke tempat tidur.  Dia membawaku ke salah satu tempat paling mesum di Jogja, Kaliurang.  Aku membiarkannya melakukan apapun yang dia mau kecuali satu hal, mengambil keperawananku.  Kata-kata Pak Tua itu masih terdengar di telingaku, "dia tidak sungguh-sungguh mencintaimu."  Dia selalu benar, si Pak Tua itu.  Satu kali penolakan dariku sudah cukup untuk membuat Bajingan 1 pergi dan tidak pernah mencariku lagi.  Bajingan memang.

---

Bajingan 2 adalah ayah dua anak yang dengan pengecutnya menyalahkanku atas semuanya. Dia datang dan pergi, keluar masuk dari hidupku dan aku membiarkannya. Dia tidak menarik, jauh dari tampan, jatuh di skala 4 dari 10 dengan kekurangan terbesar 'pengecut'.  Kenapa aku bahkan meliriknya? Kenapa aku masih memirkannya? Pada suatu hari, orang-orang akan menaruh fotoku di sebelah kata 'bodoh' dalam Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia.

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Follow Up on TOEFL iBT

Hiya there!

I promised that I would tell you about the test result. Well, I got 99 (reading 26, listening 28, speaking 20, and writing 25). I actually aimed 100 because most research master ask for at least 100.  I was quite disappointed, but...you know...God does not make mistake, there is no fault in the design. Ninety-nine was exactly the best for me at this moment. So, instead of regretting things, why don't we just celebrate? I did. A large cup of iced milk tea and olive-mushrooms pizza. I believe God has the best plan for me.

Cheers,
Dya

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Publish and Perish

Is This The Case With LAP (Lambert Academic Publishing)?

One of my friends, SS, got this email from LAP stating that they were interested to publish his work on passengers' consumer behavior.  SS is a well-respected employee and a keen researcher.  To have a publisher trying to publish his work was something highly believable.  So, when he asked me to help him with some further editing of our work and to follow-up on the offer, I just leaped and started to work without any second thought. I foolishly did not check their credibility at all (and I cursed myself so many times because of it).  I cursed myself even more when I realized that I almost shoved down my partners, SS, Titi, and Yuda into a chasm while there were plenty of information available on how to avoid it (even their acquisition editor's English was not really good. I had plenty of rejections letters from editors and their English were superb).

If you google LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, you will get like a gazillion information on how "fishy" it was. The internet (blogs and official university websites) was filled with information about this publisher.  I do not want to call them a fraud because they asked for people's works legally, they did intent to publish your work, they did not ask any money from the authors, and they promised a fee.  However, somehow I feel like publishing with LAP will not benefit me (us) in any significant way because they offered no support on editing and reviewing and it was a very serious shortcoming since we are not English native speakers, we do not have many experiences about publishing a book (even experienced writers still use editors), and it will be a fatal flaw for a scientific book to be published without respectable reviews (actually, it was ridiculous).

If you have a really good material, but not good enough to be screened by big publisher, then go to a small one. A respectable small (perhaps regional or national) publisher. Being published by small publishing house is one thing, but being associated with a bad one is a totally different matter.  It will be better also if you can trim your work here and there and submit it to a respectable academic journal.  However, if your material is average at best and your English is not too good (like me), then you should avoid LAP too because they did not seem to give significant support in editing and reviewing. You do not want to end up as an awful author in amazon.com with people stating your work as "horrible". I do not want to be remembered as an author with "at least five grammatical and lexical errors in every page".  I actually feel sorry for LAP authors that unintentionally got bad publicity in amazon.com. They actually have pretty good material, but lack of supports on editing and reviewing. It was like suicide.

Bellow are some links about LAP:
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/performance/herdc/criteria

http://www.research.swinburne.edu.au/researchers/resources/lap-publishing/

http://www.lub.lu.se/en/publish/open-access/freely-accessible-journals/grey-zone-oa-publishing-houses.html

http://www.bth.se/fou/forskinfo.nsf/textpages/oa-forlag-i-en-grazon

http://journalology.blogspot.com/2012/09/lambert-academic-publishing-or-how-not.html

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/09/victoria-strauss-vdm-verlag-dr-mueller.html

http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishing-continues.html

Cheers,
Dya

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Teamwork Experience

Another Assignment for My English Class

If I had to choose one medical term to describe my general teamwork experience before I joined my current team, I would definitely go with Dead on Arrival. I have read the advantages of working in a team, but those advantages assumed an ideal team while I almost never had one.  Instead of making me more productive, my previous teams successfully made me feel lazy, inadequate, and or confused.  I have three categories for them; the underachieving team, the do-what-you-want-to-do team, and the over-competitive team.

The first type of team was the underachieving team. It was the worst of all three. I experienced this kind of team at school. My fellow teammates seemed to give up at every bump on the road as if they did not have any motivation to finish the task. I gave them little nudges every day, but at the end, 24 hours before the deadline, I always burned the midnight oil to finish the team’s assignment.  I was pissed, but I never snitched them out because at that moment, I thought that it did not really matter and the tasks were not that difficult. However, after all these years, I realized that actually, I was afraid. I did not want to become one of those kids who have a difficult time getting social acceptance.  

The second one, the do-what-you-want-to-do team, appeared when we had a leaderless bunch of smart, but uncompetitive people.  All of the members knew the goal; most of them understood what needed to be done and how to do it.  The phrase “most of them” meant that some of the team members were left out. Unluckily, I was part of the some.  At that particular moment, the university had not assigned a supervisor for me yet.  Consequently, I was extremely confused. I decided to wait for everyone to finish their part, analyzed the gap, and filled it.  It was not a smart move since I had to wait until the last minute to finish my assignment, but I did not find any other solution. So, I stuck with that method.

The third type of team was the over-competitive team.  This was the kind of team I often met at the university.  Team members were at each others’ throats. Once, I had a team that could not come into agreement on the analysis of Michael Porter’s Diamond and at the presentation session, they just presented their own individual ideas and frequently negated other members’ conclusions and hypotheses.  Since I was the youngest and less-experienced member, I felt inadequate to compete with their ideas. Fortunately, my academic supervisor was more than supportive. He helped me swim around those piranhas without getting my fingers bitten off.

In summary, my experience working in a team was as morbid as a patient with no pulse.  Fortunately, the patient has not shown obvious sign of decomposition or other injuries not compatible with life and my current team appeared to be able to perform wonderful CPR. So, here I am enjoying the flow of ideas and jokes from other members and trying to give at least the same amount of support for them.

Dya

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Error

 

 

I still believe that you care about me even though there was no single sign of that. None. Nada. Zilch.

My earth shattered when I realized that you were slowly closing every door, burning every bridge, making me "someone you used to know, but not anymore". 

Nidya

*the image was taken from here. But, the drawing part was my doing.

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