Jaberwocky

Today is our 6th anniversary but as if nothing happend. The reason is my and particularly my husband’s culture have nothing to do with anniversary. Even my husband, as a man who most likely not so-attentive in any dates, doesn’t remember at all. I know it is a kind of rite of passage and deserved to be celebrated because I know it from other culture notably, western one. If I were living in a village without knowing this thing, I probably do not even care about this. So, it’s a matter of culture again who made you do this and that is about imitating other culture. However, we can recognise which is the high culture and the low culture (sorry, it’s totally my theory). The more civilsed society the higher culture will be for instance the recording matter. In some culture recording is so important such as by writing or putting some memories into pictures or in any other ways. Recording is a very good example of a high culture like recording some important dates that can be a milestone for someone.

Anyway, this is what the way it is. The culture made you do this somehow.- thoughnowwearelivinginamodernsetting.

It’s been all about party in this late fortnight. Since celebrating Eid, every weekend is all parties. Last weekend was a party hosted by a group of Indonesian who lives closely together in Highland Tce St. lucia. They called themselves the "coalition" party while actually the party was celebrating the Eid. The party was quite exclusive where only closest friends were invited.

Everybody was enjoying the party, daddies, mummies and kids. All dadies got along very well and enjoyed the chat and loud-laughter. The kids were celebrating Della’s and friend’s birthday. The mummies was the most interstinng thing to think about.

After tasting all the satay and various typical Eid-dishes, the mummies got together and talked non sense. The non sense was all about non sense, not even single value came from their mouth. I didn’t understand how could every woman involved in the conversation was unaware of talking useless thing-including me. I just realised it wasn’t a good issue after I remember one laminated A4 quotation hanging on the notice board of the dormitory in St. Margaret School in Ascot when I worked casually tidying up the dorm. It said " Positive People Do not Put Others Down". This quote was tickling me and made me think about what had happened during the conversation among the women in the party. Most of the conversation were putting others down disguising in jokes. One of my closest friend was intensively made fun of a particularly innocent geek and untactful enough in countering the jokes that put her down. I felt a bit pitty on her but as a matter of fact she was a real geek that helplessly keep saying inappropriate answer. I myself made a big mistake as well, like one or two times putting others down. I felt so sorry for myself for such being a loser by ridiculing other with the purpose of just to break the ice and make the jokes. I didn’t like the situation at all at the end.

I was thinking that this phenomenon might be caused by our bad culture in enjoying useless and not-so-serious topic in conversation, especially among women. Once I had an idea about turning the topic into the useful one but people then again will ridicule me in taking such topic. It’s kind of dilema, whether renovating such bad culture and consequently judged to be ridiculous or just let it grow and take it for granted. There must have been some breaktrhough in our culture to build a good manner as a civilised society.

Every morning my daughter always stick on ABC channel, airing lots of kids’ programs without ads, before she goes to childcare centre. They are all dedecated for children until on the weekend, all the kids program turn into music program along with some worrying video clips to be watched by my daughter. Unfortunately, she likes watching them, pay attiontion carefully to the song and movement and finaly tries to copy them. It was surprising when the first time she sang "boom ah I lost my bra, I lost it in  my boyfriend’s car". That’s the caption from the song she could catch without knowing why somebody lost her bra in her boyfriend’s car. OK, I don’t mind, it’s already happened. I consider it as a funny things because she’s just an innocent four-year-old girl. But the second edition of my daughter’s video clip imitation has just been heard and seen and even I recorded it in my camera for fun. The second one was Don’t cha by the Pussy Cat Dolls. Now, she is not only singing on some of the lyric but also dancing like the girls in the clip. The worst is the way they dance was like a porn star and my daughter innnocently did it like them and showed me playfully with her cute chukling. Please God, help me. The lyric she could catch was "Don’t you wish your girl friend was hot like me" and then followed by "don’t chaaaa" with a sexy voice. She copies the dance by rubbing from the head moving down to her neck and her body like most of the sexy dancer did. What can I do? She is innocently funny and if I commenting negatively about this, she will feel distracted. So just let her go until her age is coming to do the right thing.

Levy is right, now the raunch culture has risen up. My daughter has become a victim of this culture. Nearly all the clips show not only sexy women in their outfit but also some sexy movement. They are all like whores and pornstar, once my dad commented on such phenomenon that he said not any of our family tried to be such entertainer as it is in a high risk of being a prostitute. Those women will surely deny that they are not porn stars because the excuse is being sexy doesn’t always related to doing some sexual activities, particularly in my country that this issue is in the high level of hypocricy. Not like in western culture that they might show or admit their sexual activities and even commercialised it confidently-but doesn’t mean better. In Indonesia, they would argue for a denial in a gossip show until the press finally reveal what they really did and their CDs has spreading under ground. It happened to the late Sukma Ayu and Bejah pictures which was published on the net. Some Indonesian celebrities attutide was not far different from Sukma Ayu because some of them were not strongly supported by motion of still pictures. Nonetheless, after being famous with their obsence attitude they will get famous and strangely become a role model. It happens to Paris Hilton with her tape having sex with Nick Carter (said Ariel Levy in her book-unfortunately I don’t have a chance to watch it), being a star in the Simple Life reality show and many more daring things. By doing this things, she become highly marketable woman and popular. Then, she is very confident producing parfume and jewelleries branded after her name. BUT why people like to buy the product and even feel proud to have a product which is branded after a name of a bitch. It happens in Indo as well even ironically. Couple of years when the new stylish mukena (cloth for doing Shalat) called Mukena Krisdayanthi.  It just because she was a star in Ramadhan’s sinetron and putting on the new style of mukena. As a matter of fact who is Krisdayanthi? In other show, she came in a very sexy outfit and published in Popular magazine. Another girl is Inneke, after being a pornstar then turning into a very good moslem as indicated by putting on elegant hijjab. I think if you want to be famous or to be a star, just copy Inneke because Inneke wouldn’t be as famous as she is now if she wasn’t a porn star before. Now many moslem girls, Islamic media and some islamic organisation paying attention to her and may be make her as an idol. Like Levy wrote " … being exposed in porn was something you needed to comeback from." (p.27)

Strangely, those who was involved in such things will get the great succes, I think in the last decade, there is a tendency like if a woman is not bitchy enough she will not get what she wants. The Bitchy attitude is a big fat loser attitude. It happens in a real daily life as I just remember my itchy-bithcy friends when I was in college, the bitchy ones were always the winner. They like lobbying some furnurable lecturers to get the good grade. And even in advance level when I was working for foreign company, one of my friend (from the same college who was previously a bitch too) slept with the foreign professor to get what she wants like going overseas with him, get the coolest outfit and accesorice and proudly showed them to friends. This tendency will enforce every girl to do such a thing in order to get anything she wants. What can we do?

However, where are all women voice? It said women fight for their right but apparently they are smacking down each other like represented in a very small illustration in the liryc of "Don’t cha". Like being bithcy will be the winner among women and even men. It just like now this fact is become part of our culture that if we do not follow them we’ll left behind.

This year’s ied is gonna have some yummy yummy food everywhere. Most of my friends invited me from day 1 to day 3. My family had it on the second day with some other families with their own style of celebration. When some of them’s gone the other’s coming. I was pretty much delighted to have this things in our big day. It felt like having a family and relatives though their just friend.

The mum’s recipes cookies, nuts and my family raditional food were quite entertaining to cheer me up and feel me like at home. Not only me, my friends from the same ethnic background seemed pretty happy with my food and hospitality. We started from 1.00pm till 8.00 p.m. Lots of things to talk about, beating around the bush yieling to their own children, practicle jokes and ended up with cleaning my rental property wall.

The first session was all women that might us feel free to do anything even taking off our jilbab. One of my hubby’s friends finally was going home since he was the only man. It happened becoz my husband was away attending some islamic seminar. We were talking and talking, coming another friends and talking more intensely a bit serious talk - children’s education and their future BUT suddenly Bu Tia was curious about kids, she said she was supicious when the kids were not interrupting parents and enjoying them selves.  She was right, the shocking things suddenly riped off my ear "Afi, gak papa kalo anak-anak coret-coret tembok?" WHAT? OOh my God …. I just found out the artful graffity was sticking on my rental property wall and in the coming more weeks the agent will have some inspection. Hell NO. Anyway, It was Okay as long as I the graffity was removable though I cleaned it up stressfully. See the pics? I was so shocked. However, this ied is the sweetest and colourful ied fest during my stay in Aussy. Thanks mate!

It was really unexpected that the end of Ramadhan changed so suddenly. I felt like LOST on the expected day was not coming as my mental set was well-prepared enough to welcome the Iedul Fitri. I know it’s kind of naive to feel so disillusion with all these things. To decide the perfect time schedule for the Ramadhan, I preferred to have it like in Indonesia. But then, the changes was making alot of husle bussle like the feeling of being accused to be cheating - start according to the latest and end according to earlist. Though, I was not sure continuing to fast while some people celebrating it on the expected day. Will my fasting be acceptted or even haram? Wallohu a’lam.

Some insignificant things were planned and made for the big day but those insignificant was quite meaningful to create an atmospher of Iedul Fitri. Without those, my daughter wouldn’t know what the Iedul Fitri is. I felt sorry when she didn’t care or even understood what it meant. When I was kid Iedul Fitri was a very long-waited day as the most special day in every year. However it didn’t happened to my daughter. Well, this is the other side of living in the non-moslem majority country.

By the way, here is the pics of my friends who have lots of guilt, conflict, gossip and many unpleasant thinngs but now we free ourselves from those hell-things and now welcoming a new life of harmony, tolerant and sensitivity among these girls. Forget those hell things and forgive each other.