Fictional Me #4

taken from http://tenaciousdesigns.com/clients2.html

I              : Mirror Mirror on The Wall! Who is the fairest of all?
Mirror : You, Milady.  Well, at least when every woman in this world has been removed.

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Fictional Me #3

I was gliding in the water contained with my own faeces, not that I care.  I never care to wash my body, brush my toothless mouth, and if working was described as staring as number and words all day, then I’ve never worked before.  I don’t need to since people always smile to me, a harmless beautiful creature; give me foods, water, and shelter.  All I need to do is...staying alive.  There is no business like “staying alive” business. With boredom as my long-last archenemy, I strive to live my life as the most competent self-entertainer. The view seldom changes and the glass walls around me will still be there until the end of the time, my time. Until the give me decent burial or flush me to the toilet.

The sun is getting older and self-entertaining isn’t my favourite anymore.  Old times.  My heart wanted me to give up life.  Oh, my...life was so damn hard when your heart told you to die, but your instinct forced you to stay alive.

Cheers,

Nidya

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The Swordless Samurai (Indonesian Version)

Still, regarding my Japanese Boss, I tried to read more books about the Japanese and luckily (or unluckily? Have no idea) I found a book in Gramedia (biggest bookstore chain in Indonesia) called Swordless Samurai.  It was written by Masao Kitami and edited by Tim Clark.  As you can read all over the internet, the book was about leadership advices taken from Toyotomi Hideyoshi.  Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a peasant who becomes the supreme leader of Japan in 16 century. You can see the official site here.

But this entry won’t be about the content of The Swordless Samurai, but about the Indonesia version of this book.  One word for it: awful.  Let me remind you, it is not about the content of the book.  Undoubtedly, the story about Hideyoshi was...what would you call it? Inspiring and amazing, but I won’t recommend the Indonesian version of this book. Because the book sounds like kids diary, a little scrapbook mumbling about ‘how good I am’.  It was supposed to be motivational, but end up like a messed up diary of an arrogant man. So, uh oh.  If you have trouble reading English (like me) but still want to know about Toyotomi Hideyoshi, please read Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa.  Both English and Indonesian versions of Taiko are good.

I know that translating isn’t an easy task because there are some problems stem from ambiguity, structural and lexical differences, idioms, and in my opinion, there are just some words that cannot be translated appropriately whatsoever.  Furthermore, words heavily depend on the context.  So, a book translator should understand the whole story. But despite of those difficulties, isn’t a book should be reviewed or edited or whatever before being published?  It was a shame that the magic of a marvellous book like Swordless Samurai lost in translation.

So, my recommendation...if you want to read the Indonesian version and have rather long spare time, go read Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa (it’s thick), but if you mainly interested in the leadership advices of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, please do me a favour...read the English or Japanese version of The Swordless Samurai.

Cheers,

Nidya Astrini

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Under The Dome

There was a very thoughtful man in my life and his wisdom was automatically recognized by my subconscious when he bought me a novel by Stephen King, Under the Dome, for my birthday.  This book was successfully keeping my eyes open for hours; and this piece of sentence tells a lot for a book that has more than 1.000 pages.  Under the Dome wasn’t actually new.  It was released in the late 2009 and part of King’s older ideas in 1970s or 80s.

The story evolved around how human interact when they were separated and isolated from the rest of the world, the politics, the emotion, the unpredictable actions of the characters.  Stephen King put a generous amount of characters in the story and since English is not my first language (proven by my long list of grammatical errors in every single article in this blog), I have a little bit difficulty in remembering the names of the characters and their physical features.  So, sometimes I needed to flip the page backwards just to recall few characters.

The story started with the appearance of a dome-like phenomena at October 21st around a small city called Chester Mill.  I imagined it like a transparent-Chester Mill-shaped-bubble...means it wasn’t a perfect dome like you might see on the cover of the book (correct me if I’m wrong).  At first, it was a centripetal kind of story.  King separately described multiple accidents during the descent of the Dome and the people were still wondering about what really happened.  The accidents conjoined and provided some kind of insight that there was something bigger happening in town.

Below is the synopsis I took from StephenKing.com

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a selectwoman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

Or you can read a rather longer review here.

Happy reading,

Nidya strini

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Fictional Me #2

I imagine this conversation since...forever.

Him: Would you marry me and make love to me every single day?
Me:   What? Why? I am ugly and fat.
Him: So what? I don't get it
Me:   So, I don't understand your interest on me.
Him: You are ugly,fat,noisy,and bossy. I agree, I know it already because I have pair of eyes, ears, and a heart. But what does it have to do with my interest?

If you find that kind of man, please chain him to your bed.

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Fictional Me #1

I was sitting quietly in my dark world, little wooden box cramped with thoughts, dreams, and desires.  No one came in and I never came out.  Just poking one of my eyes from the holes on the wall from time to time, looking for some wisdom, but afraid to be struck by any light.  Small and inconvenient, but curiosity was settled in my blood and worked as a gifted feature which always successfully dragged me to the edge of a cliff. That was why I trapped myself in the box, to runaway from unchangeable foolishness created by my little feet and make no more.  Because I was vulnerable, but lethal.

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Cultural Shock

Taken from http://globalcitizenblog.com/?p=2701

As a management graduate, not to mention majoring in Human Resource Management, I have learned about Cross-Cultural Management a whole year and I should have, as earliest as possible, developed something called cultural sensitivity, the quality of being aware and accepting the existence of other cultures, but in the mean time, I haven’t acquired this handy feature yet or been able to diagnose myself.

At my last employment, I was surrounded by a very individual environment.  My former boss would give few projects and asked me to complete them with my own way.  He gave some corrections and suggestions, but the work output would still represent my style, my original style.  The only principle he forced me to swallow was to take quality as part of my passion and pride.  My former colleagues were blunt speakers and there was no stratification involved when we were discussing projects.

How about my current employment? I started to work in the new office since February 21st and honestly, I felt uneasy.  I have some problems which can be defined easily as “symptoms” of cultural shock like headache, lethargy, sleep problems, irritability, and anger over minor frustrations, feeling moody, isolated, and insecure, and confusion about morals and values. I am working with seven seniors and one supervisor and the thing is...major revisions and super polite conduct of communications rooted deeply in this unit long before Moses ripped apart the Red Sea.  Something I am not used to. But willing or not, I have to make some adjustments so I won’t be dragged into futile attempts to survive.

Lysgaard[1] (1955) introduced a theory so called U-Curve of Cultural Adjustments.  It has been the most cited model in cultural adjustments research. The first stage in the U-Curve is Honeymoon Stage.  The phase when people feel fascinated by new things, different kinds of sight and sounds. This was me a month ago. I was excited of being the new researcher candidate and I felt some kind euphoria of happiness being a part of tight bundle with outstanding senior researchers.  Similar with the one little kids usually feel when they hear, “Then the fairy mother came to help Cinderella”.

The second stage is Cultural Shock, every possible discomfort you can feel in your life. Now, I still feel that I’m standing at the edge of this stage, between the second stage and the third one, Recovery.  Moody, isolated, insecure, and confuse stand resolute as my primary characters these days.

The third stage is Recovery.  Stating that I already recover from cultural shock is highly too optimistic.  I already know how to behave appropriately and try to understand the behavior of each member in my unit, but cultural adjustment is a natural process.  I won’t force myself to form a new identity or question my worth, flexibility, and strength. Once, a friend said that if you hated someone, means you didn’t know him/her very well.  So, I try to understand the underlying reasons behind each behaviour.

The fourth stage is Adjustment, functioning effectively in new culture.  This is the kind of phase I would like to be, but not yet happened.  My partner is coping very well, but I’m not.  I won’t be so anxious, though.  Because this cultural adjustment thing is an individual process.  It depends on what we bring to it.

Hope I can get to the fourth stage A.S.A.P.

Cheers,

Nidya

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[1] Lysgaard, Sverre.1955. Adjustment in Foreign Society: Norwegian Fulbright Grantees Visiting the United States. International Social Science Bulletin Vol. 7.

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