The importance of physics and the inexplicability of chemistry

I should probably be apologizing, that the first post after such a long purgatory *smirk* has to be a rant. But if I just promise that this will be just once (in a while :p), will it be OK? ;-) Anyway, I just thought that in a positive way, it might be healthy to be honest about being shallow and physical once in a while.
I've been more or less watching movies the whole days of these (supposedly) stormy days when I wrote this. Well, in between I was editing an article, revising a paper, and (unsuccessfully) sketching.
Billy Elliot made in to my favorite movie list. Other than that, there was my complaining, allegedly a superficial one, about how not interesting to watch Meg Ryan these days. I am trying to convince myself I am not that physical, but perhaps I must admit I actually am. Meg Ryan is probably a different case though, I mean it's not purely physical. Because I used to like her, a lot, circa Sleepless in Seattle, that later led me to become a When Harry Met Sally worshiper. Then came that awful affair and divorce, and that disastrous plastic surgery. Now watching her in movies becomes annoying. The voice, a child-like that apparently sounded cute before, just don't suit her anymore. And no matter how hard I try not to be too judging about her misguided surgery, it just disturbed me to watch her being pursued by a younger love interest (Adam Brody, he's too cute) in In The Land of Women. The only nice scenes in this movie were the ones where Olympia Dukakis was in, the rest is pretty much insignificant.
The second complain, purely physical this time, is concerning Shia Lebouf. How I could be led into watching him requires an own explanation. I mean, transformer, hello, we must know what kind of movie is that, right? It's something too obvious not to try, without even trying. I am quite judgmental aren't I, when it comes to movies, or books. Remember my rants on the likes of titanic and twilight series. Anyway, it was Carey Mulligan that brought me to him. I was watching An Education, and instantly attracted to her. Her resemblance to Katie Holmes, but without that irksome 'sneer', wouldn't it be irresistible?! And in that particular movie, her haircut reminded me of the much-loved Ginnifer Goodwin's in the recent Something Borrowed. So, I did some googling and ended up to this Shia. That they were dating. OK, then apparently this guy has a more significant movie, the sequel of Wall Street with Michael Douglas so be it, where he met Mulligan. So, I tried watching and prepared to be smitten. So, it's got to be either his acting is extraordinary or he possesses a chick-magnetic aura that he became this hype, which I, with my mere mortal eyes, just failed to see. Well, his appearance failed to glue my eyes on the screen, or even rather eluded my appetite to continue watching, that in the end, I could not be conclusive about his acting quality. Narrow-droopy shoulders, round-small face, where is the charm? Am I too demanding? I mean this is the guy, who perhaps, I don't know, everybody seems to think is hot. How he could swoon Megan Fox slightly off her then nuptial track, the current transformer's whoever girl, and this great talent and beauty of Carey Mulligan, is to me perplexing. Oh well I suppose chemistry is the most inexplicable branch of "science". My little comfort on such seemingly cruel resentment is how he seems to be too well confident on the existence of such charm, yet negligent in terms of its consequence, as implied by his tactless confession on the Foxy affair.

My personal note induced by the terrorist bombing

I miss the old Indonesian way

I remember I used to secretely admire my mother when she was fixing herself in front of the mirror getting ready for a wedding reception. She would be wearing a set of kebaya[1], with the old fashion traditional hair do of gelungan[2]. That was like 20 years ago, nobody I know is doing that now.

I was born in Kediri, a middle size town in East Java, with cool breeze and delicious food specialties. In our nearby mosque I had my afternoon religion school after morning public school. Houses from where one could clearly hear adzan[3] would all be gravitated towards this mosque for a lot more activities than just for prayers. Especially, Ramadhan was really fun. People would organize themselves to bring foods in turn for ta’jilan[4]. I don’t know why the ta’jilan foods always tasted better than foods at home. My mother joined pengajian[5], which seemed to be fun with art-related activities, such as qasidah and barzanzi.

Then we moved to Solo, bigger city where my father was born. A unique city later I know is full of contradictions. I still continued the old habit of going to ordinary public school in the morning and religion school in the afternoon for some times. But the teacher and the teaching are different. My citing for prayers would then become different than that of my parents’. Other things changed too. We are not allowed to celebrate weton[6], nyewu[7], and so on, because that would be bid’ah[8] some said.

When I was in my high school, religious student group in school was getting more influencing. So I refrained from participating in sport class when they scheduled swimming. I stopped greeting Christmas to my Christian friends, because the Islamic student group launched boycott against those things. Following these I felt like I was doing something "right" according to the religion. Religion equals God I thought, so I felt the "ghirah", spirit/enthusiasm.

My aunt on the other hand, was another kind of Solonese. I lived with her for one year or so, so I noticed she was not doing 5 times a day prayers. She was a Batik painter, and she wore kebaya and jarit[9] on daily basis. She referred God as the one who’s painting red to chilies (and I thought it was amazingly true). She was fasting in different way, not necessarily during Ramadhan like us, and she hung a calendar from Pangestu[10]. She was a really kind, gentle and loving person. But still, since we thought she was not like us, we used to feel sad about her.

Last year my big family went to Taman Mini[11], and we watched a 3-dimensional movie in Keong Mas made in 80’s. There I could not help but thinking how different we had become. We have changed so much from the 80's Indonesia. Not only the development in the infrastructure, thank God we do have it some, but we also changed the way we dress, and the way we see people around us. Nobody wears traditional clothes anymore, we even criticize about school keeping in the backward culture when they insist children to wear kebaya during Kartini day[12].

Year by year this nation is changing. I was hoping that the change somehow would lead to something more substantial, the behavior. Yet I am seeing only changing in physicality, in clothes. We still rank top in corruption, we are still consumer and not producer, not even a smart follower, of world’s culture. If we used to complain against blind "westernization", I wonder why we should feel differently for the same thing of "middle-easternization" we are having now. We used to learn in elementary school how beautiful and rich Indonesia is. A country of friendly society and a unity in diversity. I want to be able to live in that beautiful notion again.

[1] Traditional Javanese style costume
[2] Traditional Javanese style of hair do
[3] Calling for 5 times-a-day prayer
[4] Food served in mosque for breaking Fast
[5] Religious study group/Quran reading group
[6] Birthday in Javanese calendar system
[7] 1000th day commemoration after one’s passed away
[8] Syncretism (?)
[9] A traditional batik cloth usually worn as bottom pair of kebaya.
[10] A Javanese spiritualism group, who practice monotheism but is not referred to any modern/mainstream religion
[11] Miniature Park of Indonesia
[12] A commemoration of Kartini birthday, who pioneered women emancipation in Java. A Muslim, dresses in traditional Javanese costume. On Kartini day, students used to hold festival and dress in various Indonesian ethnic clothes.