Digital Life?

Firstly, sing me a happy birthday! I’m the birthday boy today J. Celebrating the first day I breathed the open air of the world. Thanks to facebook for making the remembering other’s birthday easier, and thanks for giving me the things everybody always have these days on their birthday, the birthday greetings….on the wall, or now they call it timeline. Thank you for all the timeline writers, I do appreciate your wishes and greetings!! You rock!!

So here it came, once the facebook did its job…the greetings flooded my days. People faraway, wrote on my timeline, people near me, congratulated me..shook my hand…with their loveliest smiles I saw today, some did both…congratulate me offline and online. Not saying it on facebook is not “afdol” they said, and I was like…uummmm it works the other way around for me. I know, it was meant to be a joke, but let’s see from the “nynyir” point of view :D ….I mean if you have done the greeting offline (directly by meeting in the real world) then why would you need to say it in the online world? The thing is, for me, the one does matter most is letting the person to whom you want to congratulate your feeling, not letting everyone on facebook knows that you have congratulated someone on his birthday. It’s not like I don’t like them post the greeting on my timeline, and it’s not that saying happy birthday twice, offline and online, is bad…but yeah…saying it is not “afdol” really surprised me…. One thing crossed my mind is, has the digital world become that important? Some said facebook brings the far ones closer, and the close ones farther, and yeah…sadly it is true. Frankly, I was there…I used to be at the time when I communicate with the person about 3 meters away from me using facebook J. If  that is bad enough, I tell you what’s worse….the public display of affection in the social media…like saying I love you, oh I need you, oh I want to be always be with you…and other creepy things on social media when they have more private means of communicating like messaging or telephone. I mean, yeah, once a while..it is okay…but repeating it every minute and every day is like shouting to everybody you are eating donuts while everybody has already known/seen you are eating… it is not necessary. Then maybe you will say “I write what I want to write, it is my space, my account” yes you are right…and in the other side “I respond to what I want to, to what I see, to what is responsible of making me feel certain 

feeling”…..indeed, it is called SOCIAL media for a reason. Social means you, like it or not, will have too deal with others, communicate with others, interact with other, thus what you do will, more or less, have effect to others.

The digital life really gets more and more “important”…..even sometimes the real life gets less important than that. How many times I see people say certain things in facebook or twitter at certain occasions like “happy mother’s day/father’s day” for example…when they know, neither the father nor mother has facebook/twitter account… ridiculous isn’t it? What do they want? Show the love to the father/mother, or show other that they love the father/mother? If they mean the former, why don’t they just tell them directly…posting something on facebook for someone that doesn’t have facebook account is just not making any sense. Once, I got a chain message that said “send it to 10 (or..umm I don’t really remember the amount), if you don’t then you don’t love your parents” ---- that was just outrageous…how can you measure the love to parents just by how much you care to send a silly message to certain number of people. Come on……it is okay to have a digital life…but live it responsibly, and remember….no digital friendship better than the real one.


PS: My birthday is yesterday, June 18....I wrote it yesterday, and posted it just now...so yeah, when you read the first paragraph, pretend you are on June 18 ya hehehe  

Give glory to God and love the people (Raden Saleh, Maxen 1848)

Yesterday, my boss asked “does anybody have the interest in painting?” to the people at my office, “who wants to come with me to Raden Saleh’s painting exhibition?” she added, then I said “I don’t know much about painting Ma’am, but I would like to go to the exhibition.” And then today I with my boss and one of my office mate escape the office hour to go to the exhibition (I know, this is not a good thing…ssshhhh don’t say anything to anybody..okay? :D ). All I know about Raden Saleh is that he was a painter, and couple days ago I saw his painting at the internet…and I was like….hmmmm this painting is quite nice (and that was one of my reason I went to the exhibition).

The walls beside the door show two large red poster, written “Give glory to God and love the people (Raden Saleh, Maxen 1848)” on the right wall and the letter as well as the picture of Raden Saleh or Raden Saleh Syarief Bustaman on the left wall, from which I later learned that Raden Saleh once lived in Europe and as he was very talented, the government offer him to choose to be European or Indonesian….he chose to be the later.  The first painting I saw was the one titled “Winter” (or Winter in Netherlands…I was not very sure hehehe), as I overheard from an organizer staff who was explaining the painting to a group of junior high students that this painting was sketched by Raden Saleh’s mentor, A.J. Payen,  from Netherlands who had Raden Saleh finished the sketch. 

I like the painting, the detail amazes me given it was painted on 1830, gives me a chill of winter breeze. 

There were a lot of paintings exhibited, but you know, I went with my boss, and most definitely I have to be her assistant in taking her picture....since she is very fond of taking picture wherever and whenever (and the first thing she does is uploading them to facebook :D). My boss is a very...what we call it....cultural..uummmm I mean she like the exotic things ....like antiques etc. She also loves paintings, she knows a lot about them. From her, I learned that the most famous painting of Raden Saleh is the Arrest of Diponegoro, a historical painting about the arrest of one of Indonesian heroes, Pangeran Diponegoro which was painted on 1857.

Okay, sorry for the distraction...just focus on the painting, okay :D. They also exhibit Raden Saleh's sketches that were published in the books about painting for children. For a novice like me, the paintings were extraordinary, the details are amazing, some paintings really present the ambiance, certain feelings......as I see in these paintings...

 these are my favourites....I forgot the name, I think they have to do with "Mega Mendung". The feeling of fresh, bright, and calm illuminate me. I really love the exhibition, even though I don't really understand paintings hehehehehe. So if you like, spare some time to visit Musium Nasional (in front of Gambir Station) to see this exhibition before it is closed on 17 June.