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The Alchemist: Quest for What We Really Are

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Three 'Santiago' in Odaiba, still unsure which path to choose...
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(Written after read Nia's blog. For Nia, thanks for the idea... - hope you don't mind I composed this based on some of your thoughts)

Last week, Dito (uptown-girl from Sendai :-) ) visited Tokyo, and as good hosts, Nia and I showed her the way around. After our trip to Akihabara (standard place for Indonesian who visits Tokyo), we started to talk about The Alchemist. (The talk actually began with some ‘hiks’ that will be too long to be written here. Moreover, I only know little about those ‘hiks’ and I think Dito and Nia will skin me alive if I write it anyway :-) ).

Back to the alchemist - the story itself tells about a Spanish boy called Santiago (If you haven’t read the book and think that some of the funs of reading it will be lost if you know some of the events beforehand, you better skip these two paragraphs and start reading the third paragraph from here, or even better if you can get a copy of the book, read it, and back to this page. Finish it? Good, and back to the story...). From his childhood Santiago always wanted to travel and see new places other than his homeland, which led him to choose to become a shepherd, so he can go from place to place bringing his flocks to a new pasture. The story started when Santiago finally decided to ask for the hand of one girl that he liked and probably give up his nomadic way of life. At that time, when he was sleeping inside a ruin of church, he got a dream about treasure that he supposed to find. Unsure about the meaning of his dream, he asked a gypsy to read his dream. The gypsy told him (which cost him half of the treasure that he had not found yet) that there is treasure wait for him near the pyramids. Didn’t know what to do for quite sometimes, Santiago finally sold all of his sheep and set his quest for the treasure.

The road that he took was not at all an easy path. Got swindled to lost all of his money, caught between war in desert, it took months for Santiago to finally reach the pyramids. During his journey, he also made some new friends (one of it was the alchemist that became the title of the story), and also met Fatima, his (supposedly :-) ) true love. His journey went on, and to his surprise, once he got to the pyramids, he did not find any treasure. He even nearly beat up to death by a group of thieves. Did Santiago take his journey in vain and the story ended just like that? Of course not. Santiago got a hint from one of the thieves that there is a treasure buried under the ruin of church where he had slept and got his dream about the treasure before. The story ended with Santiago set his journey back to the ruins to claim his treasure, made the payment to the gypsy, and headed back to the desert village where Fatima waiting for him.

Well, it just a story, but we can always learn something from almost anything (even the pearl from the bottom of the sea has her own glow to be shared with us). The story told us (or at least I and other fans of Coelho – the author of the alchemist), that each of us has our own role living in this world (beside the religious aims that is identical for all). It is called ‘personal legend’ in this story. Although some roles seem to be bigger (or ‘cooler’) comparing to others, every single role is of the same importance. Personally, I sometimes envy some of my friends that seems to be luckier than me (having bigger/cooler role than me), when finally I realize that may be some other people envy me for what I’ve got. There is no need to envy others, because we have our own path, which will lead us to our own ‘treasure’ (well, inevitably I still cannot help envying others sometimes...).

Other thing that I like from this story is the spirit to always follow where the path that we like took us, to fight for it, and to be patient with it (for God always be with those who are patient). Like the Santiago story, he relentlessly fought his way to the pyramids and be patient with all the hard time that he had. It is right that he didn’t find his treasure near the pyramids, but it is from his journey that he got the revelation about the actual place of the treasure. Had he decided to abandon his quest to the pyramid, he would not found his treasure (although literally he had slept on it). And equally important, he will not meet Fatima, his true love.

From personal experience: I was nearly not coming to the Panasonic scholarship’s final selection when I got the invitation. I decided to come in the final moment because I thought there would be no harm if I follow the process. When I finally got the scholarship (even only as a substitute) and it is proven that I cannot found full scholarship in other places :-), I took the offer. May be it is really my path to come here in Japan and find my ‘personal legend’. And even if I cannot find it here, it is no big deal. I had learnt a lot from the past two years here, made new friends, chanced adventures, and I believe that there are still more new things to learn, new faces to meet, and new events to taste. Anyway, much much more important, may be I am supposed to meet my Fatima here... :-)

Sakura: Beginning of New Hope

Monday, April 11, 2005

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My third spring in Japan, and also my third time to see my campus be filled with blooming sakura (, cherry blossom, prunus). Before ‘our’ first encounter two years ago, I thought I will soon get used to the flowers and become not too excited of having the chance to see them again in the next spring (one of it because I’m not too fancy with pink). However, it proved that I was wrong. Those fine-looking flowers still could take my breath away, even now. When winter comes close to an end and the south wind starts to blow the scent of spring (in Japan, the beginning of spring is marked with the wind from the Pacific), I always look forward to see the blooming sakura again, to simply stroll below the pinkish stalks even long after the sun has set, and to have party underneath the branches with my friends and let the petal falling on us like a wedding confetti (without bride and groom :-) ). And lucky me, this time nobody (at least here in Japan) would think of me as a lunatic stranger for doing so. Lots of people hold party underneath sakura tree at these time, and it is called hanami (花見; literal meaning would be ‘flower viewing’ - hana(): flower, mi(): see/view; dictionarial meaning is a picnic under the cherry blossom). In early spring you can get bunch of hanami invitations (last week I had hanami in almost every single day - and one of it lasted way until close midnight, and even one of my friends got three hanami invitations in the same day).

In general, Japanese consider this season of sakura as a special one. May be this is because sakura has special meaning to them. Blooming sakura are so fragile and ephemeral (the blossom only last for about a week, and it is easily destroyed by rain or wind), and Japanese think that it is resembles life and beauty (so delicate and fleeting). Beside that symbolism, sakura also closely associated with new beginning or new hope, for they marked the beginning of a new cycle of the year. The sakura blooms after the tree seems to ‘sleep’ during the winter, and the new buds bring out new hopes for the new season. (This part reminds me of the A-bomb story in Hiroshima. It was believed that for about 5 years after the bombing nothing would ever grow in the land nearby the hypocenter of A-bomb. However, in the next spring, the grass started to grow on the site, and so did the hope of Hiroshima people to build their city again. It was not sakura back then though, but the moral of the story is quite the same).

It is the second symbolism that comes to my mind whenever I see the flowers now. I came to Japan 2 years ago with a mix of feeling. Happy, for I finally could continue ‘my quest’; Sad, for the problem in my ‘love story’; Worried and relieved, since my parents had just recovered from traffic accident. I came to Japan when all my hope started to surface, and I was ready to restart my life again and made up for the mistakes I had committed in the past. And on that very day, I walked my first steps on my campus and got astonished by the view of sakura trees in front of main building. Since then sakura always bring the meaning of new hopes to me.

Now and then during the year, I like to take my time walking past those trees, recalling the moment, and feeling my spirit rise again. When the spring comes like now, it really brings me back to the time, and reminds me that there is almost always enough hope left in this world to restart life all over again. Sometimes the path is not easy, but it’s always good to give a try, for God never forsakes any good effort that we make.

Anyway, I feel that this song always fits my feeling when I stroll below the sakura tree…

...I, I'm a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky that hangs stars upon tonight...

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again...

Goukon - Survival Japanese for Bonggo

Monday, April 04, 2005


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(Partially dedicated for Bonggo :-) )

Whenever I hear this word, it always reminds me of Bonggo, and that’s why I write this (you can call this “Survival Japanese for Bonggo” if you wish).

Actually this word is among the earliest words that I knew after my arrival in Japan. The first time I heard this word was on my Japanese class (it was a great class to have a lecture on this word :-) ). Prof. Yoshizawa was trying to explain us about ‘。。。なきゃよかった’ phrase (it’s a phrase to express repentance - I will not explain it here, though). She was giving example about inviting her friends to a goukon and then regretting for her friends were so beautiful that the counterpart group gave more attention to them. Half way through her explanation she realized that most of us (her students) just came to Japan and thus did not know about this goukon she was talking about.

So, what is goukon? (合コンって何?). From small hint mentioned above, you should have been able to make at least a close guess. Goukon is an occasion where a group of boys and a group of girls (with same number of members) meet and have party together (this is not a dictionarial definition, I can’t find the word in my dictionary). The Japanese character of this word consists of gou ( – kanji, means fit), and kon (コン – katakana, abbreviation of kompa (コンパ), which means party). Thus, it can be easily inferred that this goukon main objective is to find a ‘special someone’ that fit you (and here is where the word ‘Bonggo’ fits in :-) ).

Goukon can be said as one of the current Japan’s pop culture and I think most of Japanese today’s generation have experience with this goukon. Some of my lab friends have goukon sometimes (they never invite me to goukon, for they think that I still have girlfriend in Indonesia, and I still want to keep them think so). My friend from other lab even has friends that have goukon almost every week. There are also handbooks (that being sold in 100 yen shop) on how to have a smashing goukon (not so surprising since Japanese are known as one of the best to create manuals) – one edition for boys and one editions for girls, each mentions what are the things that need extra attention when having goukon with a particular types of boys or girls (our laboratory have one, and Yanagita told me to read it just in case I need it one day :-) ).

And even though this goukon is a well-known term, like any other terms, there are lots of different opinions about it. One of my friends hints me that goukon can end up into something that I better not mention here (for I don't want this sites of thing to be rated unsuitable for kids :-) ), while my other friend told me that the boldest step that you may ever do when you like someone in your goukon is asking his/her phone number.

For the closing of this “Survival Japanese for Bonggo”, here are sentences for asking to be invited in a goukon.

  • Will you invite me to a goukon?
  • 合コンに誘ってくれませんか(Goukon ni sasotte kuremasen ka?) – Polite/textbook sentence (if there is ever a textbook explaining about goukon)
  • 合コンに誘ってくれない(Goukon ni sasotte kurenai?) – Normal conversational sentence (recommended one)

And again, for Bonggo: ganbatte (頑張って), he he he…