Things I Like in 2012 : Movies

It needs to be said that I probably didn't go to the cinema more than ten times the whole year, and I don't even remember which movie came out when. I can recall whether they are good or not though. It's not in order :

 
Wreck-It-Ralph

"I am bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad."

Surprisingly, one of my favorite movies this year is a 3D animation movie made by Disney. A lot of people, myself included seemed to miss it out during its screening time due to lack of "hype". I am glad I ended up checking it out. 

It's a movie about a "bad guy" who wants to be a "good guy". It's a story about an anti-hero trying to discover himself. The movie is colourful, modern and yet at the same time will appeal to older generations (again, myself included) who grew up spending their afternoons at arcades. Vanellope Von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) has to be one of the most adorable characters in western animation, ever. I just want to hug her. 

Dredd 

 "Judgement time"

Sounds familiar? Well, in the 90's there was a movie called Judge Dredd which has Sylvester Stallone in it. It was a shithouse. Even though both movies are based on the same comic, they are unrelated. 

Dredd is an action-packed futuristic science fiction movie with a lot of violence in it. The movie also showcases a lot of stunning visual effects used during slow-motion scenes, giving them dream-like quality. 

The main character, Judge Dredd is a bad ass throughout the entire movie, not showing one ounce of self-doubt and stay true to his idea of justice. I found it amusing how the actor that plays Judge Dredd had to be able to convey different emotions throughout the movie just using his mouth and chin (his face is covered by his helmet, leaving only his mouth and chin visible).

Prometheus

"Sometimes to create, one must destroy"

Let me get this out of the way : I have watched Alien movies, but i'm not a big fan of them or anything. I had known Prometheus was a prequel to Alien before seeing it. However, it was a pleasant surprise to see that Prometheus chose to explore its own ideas and plots instead of just serve a purpose as a set-up for Alien movies.

Prometheus takes place in its own fictional, other-wordly epic universe with breath-taking sceneries. There are plenty of actions and science fiction nerdery for everyone. Highlights of the movie for me are : The Engineers and David, the androit. The concept of Engineers in the movie is wildly fascinating and it reminds me of stories of Gods in Greek mythologies, albeit more modern and grandiose.

Kudos to brilliant acting of the actor who plays David, the android who stole the show for me. David was supposed to be a flawless perfect replica of man that it ironically starts to develop its own human-like characteristics. The character David reminds me of HAL 9000 of Kubrick's 2001 : A Space Odyssey a lot. 

The Adjustment Bureau 

"All I have are the choices I make."

Alright, so wikipedia says that this movie came out in 2011, but I don't care. I just saw it recently and it's going into my list.

The Adjustment Bureau is an action/thriller movie with romance thrown in, or maybe the other way around. It is not in any way a religious movie, but it does touch on the subject of "higher power" and human's free will. And they manage to do this in a way that everyone can relate to.

The Adjustment Bureau might raise some questions out of you regarding your concept of God and free will but it is definitely a love story that involves something bigger in the equation, thus making it complicated. If you like Stranger Than Fiction, you will love this.

Forgive Not Forget

Time doesn’t heal anything but it helps us to forget. It helps us to bury certain memories far deeper and distant in our consciousness. Most importanly, the right amount of time can help us to move on. To bury the hatchet. To make peace and forgive ourself. More often than not, forgiving ourself is more demanding than forgiving other people or the circumstances themselves. Distance can be made, relationships can be severed and things or places can be avoided but our younger,foolish,naive-self who made those mistakes will always be with us. 

It’s funny when i try to recall my childhood memories, the ones that pop up are the less pleasant ones. Without trying to sound ungrateful (because i do realise how lucky i was/am), my childhood still up to this day isn’t a part of my life that I can be proud of. I was a difficult child, struggling with self-denial, race discrimination and excessive insecurities. My parents are part of the older generations where they had to deal with entirely different problems altogether. This big generation gap caused me to feel disconnected with my parents from early age. I felt like it would be a waste of time to go to my parents for advices because i knew all the cliche phrases they were going to throw at me. 

Unfortunately, I was also not a social person. I didn’t have many friends. My insecurity problems caused me to loath a lot of people. People with things I didn’t have. Money, things, talents, popularity. I was a very angsty kid with severe inferiority complex. I felt so inferior to a lot of my peers that i had to take drastic measures at times just so i could feel better about myself. 

This went on for several years until i went to university. I stayed in Brisbane, Australia for 3.5 years to do my Bachelor Degree. I didn’t know anyone when I moved there. I had no family nor friends. Being a foreigner in a country with entirely different culture and values, there were a lot of things to adjust to. And i had to do it in a short amount of time.

I had to start over from ground zero. It was tough. But it was something I desperately needed. A chance to start fresh. I was lucky enough to meet some of the most wonderful people over there. After started going alone to music shows for a while, i eventually made some friends in the local scene. Some of these people were my inspirations and they sort of put my faith back in humanity and friendships. They laughed with me, not at me.

I left Australia feeling lucky and I knew something was different. I was not filled with hate anymore. I didn’t avoid people. And I accepted a lot of things about me that i had refused to accept in my younger days. The pains from my childhood memories are still there and I doubt they will ever go away. Everytime I looked at any memorabilia from my younger days, I can feel my body flinching a bit, acknowledging the painful memories. But for the first time in my life, I knew what it meant to forgive yourself. I moved on. 

"I was the champion of forgive forget  

But I haven't found a way 

To forgive you yet  

And though I know 

you and I are through  

All my thoughts are lines converging in on you"

- Rites of Spring -

Past is The Language

I happen to work for a company that provides English enrichment program to kids. And one of the motivational phrases that we use a lot is this :

"The past doesn't equal the future"

The idea is to implant the notion that whatever failures or shortcomings that we went through in the past will not happen again in the future IF we don't let them to. It's about taking responsibility of our own actions at present for a better future. While I believe this phrase rings true, sometimes i can't help but feel that during certain circumstances or moments in my life, the past is the only thing i can hold onto. 

Let's clear a few things up. I am somewhat a typical average 25-year-old male. I work full time as an English teacher. I also "sing" and write for a rock band. And my lyrics have always been heavily associated with feelings that come with adolescence and youth. I'm also into movies, books or anything that involves time-travel or manipulation of time. 

There have been a lot of instances where I cling to my adolescence and feelings that i went through in my younger days quite strongly. Sometimes I don't really know why. I'd like to think that maybe it's because the future is simply unpredictable and unstable while the past is a safe place to run to. The past doesn't change and it will not change. All the good memories will still be there no matter what.

Of course there is always the other side of the coin. Scars and painful memories are also not going anywhere. They are right there in one part of our brain just waiting to be recalled. I deliberately choose to simply forget some things from my memory and most of the time it works. You will only remember things you want to remember.

The level of intensity of these memories also dictate how ofen they come up to our consciousness. Some memories are simply too strong to be forgotten and more often than not, they creeped up and made their way into our daily conversations without us noticing. They have become a part of our language.

Childhood dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, bitterness of past relationships are some of the things that somehow have managed to become a part of my language. It's not good nor bad, considering it's never clear how or to what direction these things affect you. Some of my strongest self-motivations stem out from these factors. Other times, they are my biggest obstacles, my biggest hurdles, and worst of all my self-made limitations. 

The past represents different things for different people. More than anything, it represents innocence. It's a time when things were simpler, and we were allowed to make mistakes. It reminds us of what kind of person we wanted to become or how things were "supposed" to turn out. Letting go of the past can be daunting. Especially when it has become a part of your language without you realizing it.

Well, that was a rather depressing post. Maybe this video will cheer you up :

Less is More : Travelling, Jogjakarta and Life

It has almost been a year since i wrote anything for this blog. It was also around the time i made one of the biggest decisions in my life : I ditched my bachelor degree-supported accounting job for a chance to teach English to kids and teenagers. Between juggling my new found challenges in teaching and writing music for Vague and performing with Jirapah, i simply didn't have enough time to inspire myself to write.

Teaching and playing music was complementing each other nicely and i was pretty content with my life. However, In a matter of months slowly but surely teaching had become nothing but a job and playing music was simply a routine. It was clear to me that I simply needed to get away from everything. June/July school break was approaching and before long, I found myself getting train tickets to Jogjakarta. It was spur-of-the-moment kinda thing and it also turned out to be one of the holidays i've had. 

The train trip was quite fascinating in a boring-kinda way. I was in the business class, which basically means no air conditioner. The heat in the afternoon combined with the amount of hawkers going up and down the aisle, from car to car selling anything and everything from food to toothbrush everytime the train would pass through a stop was enough to shatter any romantic fantasies i had about gazing at green rice fields and farms through the window, with a paper and a pen on my hand moving automatically taken in inspirations. Instead, i found myself falling asleep constantly in awkward positions only to be awaken by the shouts of said hawkers.  

It's not all bad, however. I managed to do one thing i haven't been able to do ever since i came back to Jakarta three years ago : having a decent, normal conversation with a total stranger in regards to the possibility of sharing nothing in common whatsoever. On my trip to Jogja, sitting next to me was a Muslim woman who was making the trip to visit her ill mother in the hospital. She told me this incredible story of a woman in her family who had a sex change and how 'he' would go to a wedding wearing traditional Javanese-style cap and how it freaked out 'his' religious families. On my return trip, my companion was a man in his late-20's traveling with his cousin's family on a  holiday. I somehow ended up having to explain to him about punk, independent music scenes, straight edge and everything in between. Fortunately, he was a good sport and he was always polite about it. 

But let's get back to the main topic : Jogjakarta was all it's cracked up to be. I don't know which part of my stay I should share that wouldn't make me sound like I work for their tourism department. It's a beautiful city with just enough art/music events to keep you excited and yet it doesn't suffocate you by having 823782387283 gigs on the same night. Jogjakarta is full of knowledge-hungry college kids and intellectually stimulating museums but every corner of the city also screams out Indonesian culture and tradition. Jogja is smart but humble.  It's a city that evolves with time and yet never loses it's identity.  

I was lucky enough to come to the city at the right time. It was the start of holiday season so there were quite a few music shows to keep me entertained. During my 6 days of stay, i witnessed events ranging from a studio hardcore/punk show at Antrax, indie rock show at second floor of a pool hall, weird pop-punk show at a university auditorium, an open-air rave party with a DJ booth right on a newly built bridge right in the middle of the city on Sunday night (you heard that right), a MIDI-based karaoke black metal band playing in a night club. My mind was blown.

One thing that struck me the most was how some of these bands had never made their way into my radar. They were really good and i had no clue they even existed. According to a few local  journalists and net label owners that i talked to Jogjakarta simply didn't receive the same amount of coverage by "big" media and publications as Jakarta and Bandung. This explains the close-knit nature and comradeship spirit that i felt as i was attending said music gigs. Although of course i could easily over-romantized the whole thing as i was only there for a few days. 

In the end, it was a perfect get away holiday. I ate amazing food and met a few old friends and made some new ones. Bike riding around Jogja with a piece of map in my hand was definitely my favorite part. It was the most liberating feeling i had felt in years. And being there by myself made me think a lot of what kind of a person i was and what i actually wanted from life. Sometimes I wish Jakarta had the modesty, simplicity and sincerity that Jogja had.

Vague

We're lacking presence on the internet at the moment. This is as existential as we get : Vague's last fm page

The idea of promoting your own band always seem weird to me. Is it? or Is it not? But since no one knows who Vague is, nor do people read this blog, I find it perfectly justifiable to do a little write-up about Vague, the band I'm in.

Vague started sometime in August 2010, when Adit who is also the bass player for Obsesif Kompulsif (and tons of hardcore bands in the past) joined us. Before that, It was just I and Jan, who also sing for the hardcore band Raincoat, jamming around by ourselves and having fun. When Adit joined us, i started to write songs. I only had been playing guitar properly for about 6 months by then, and i had never written a song in my life. I found the process of songwriting to be challenging and somewhat frustrating. It would take me hours to write a simple riff. Don't even get me started on writing lyrics, which i found to be equally hard.

Combination of my inability to write songs quickly, our limited skill at music instrument (none of us are proper musicians, except maybe Adit) and a lot of other things caused the band to go at a really slow pace. We had our first gig in February 2011 when i was organizing Bekasi show for punk outfits Circuits (Melbourne) and Daighila (Kuala Lumpur). The show went well, but our performance was a mess. My guitar was way too quiet, lyrics were forgotten, my left leg was shaking uncontrollably, and i somehow managed to pull out the cord while playing not once, but three times. It was really bad.

Fast forward a few months, Vague has just put out our demo. It's far from perfect, and there are lot of things that i wish i knew back when we were recording, but what done is done. I'm sure the next recording will be a lot better. We've been a band for about a year now, but we've only played three shows. We're definitely lacking in this department and i hope that will change soon.

Vague started because of our mutual love for music, especially for bands within the punk/rock umbrella. We love Revolution Summer bands, 80's hardcore punk, as well as more traditional rock bands such as Dinosaur Jr. Those are our main influences although we never limit ourselves to certain styles.

I'm happy that the feelings i had when I started writing for Vague is still there. And i hope they will stay for a long time.

Vague Demo :
1. 23
2. The Road
3. Endless Summer

Download Here