Toastmasters Invitation

The King and His Loyal Servant

By Vina Tan, Family Consultant in Jakarta, blog: sangkudaapi.blogspot.com

"What happen if your children don't want to listen to your advice?"
"Do you get angry and keep on criticizing them for not obeying you?"
If yes, you are probably on the brink of making them stay away from you. You think your advice is good for them and if they don't listen, you are getting upset. It is not easy to become parents nowadays, isn't it? And, we need to become a better communicator in order that our children would listen to us. So, even when we have to criticize them, they still could accept. In other words, how we talk to our children is important to make them pay attention to what we say.

For people who don't want to be criticized, there is a famous Chinese saying:
"liang(2) yao(4) ku(3) kou(3)" or "good medicine tastes bitter" (please note that each number inside the bracket represents the phonetics used to distinguish different meanings in Chinese language). And, this proverb was gracefully explained in a story as follows:

Once upon a time in China, there lived a king who couldn't accept any critique. Everybody in the kingdom should follow what he said. As a result, he was surrounded by people who got used to praise him and high ranking officials who were incompetent to help the king run the empire. One day, when the enemy came to attack this kingdom, no one was able to protect and defend their country. Everybody flew away like a bird. Fortunately, the king, accompanied by his loyal servant was able to escape using a horse-drawn carriage. When the king was hungry and thirsty after hours fleeing his palace, the servant gave him delicious food to eat.

"How could you have this?" asked the King.
"I always prepare things for you, Your Highness to anticipate if one day when we have to flee this country, you can still survive." answered the loyal servant
"How did you know that one day I have to leave my kingdom?"
"I predicted long before it happened today."
"Why didn't anybody tell me?"
"You only wanted to hear admiration, adulation and adoration, Your Highness. If I told you before, I believe you would send me to the gallows. And, if I were dead, no one would accompany you today."

When the servant finished his words, the King lost his temper and his face was swollen from an outburst of anger. All of a sudden, he blamed and condemned his servant. The loyal servant was very upset and realized that the King would never ever change. He thought that even in this kind of difficult situation, the king was still heartless and ruthless. In order to avoid further conflict, the servant rephrased his words, "Your highness, I'm deeply sorry for what I've said. It's all my fault. Please forgive me."

Both of them remained silent till the King started the conversation again.
"Tell me, why do I have to leave my beloved kingdom and its people?"
"Cause you are very kind, Your Highness."
"But, why a good king like me could not enjoy his life in the palace and have to go into exile instead?"
"Unfortunately, as a kind-hearted king, you were not supported by good people. They all envy your wisdom and indirectly they forced you to leave your country."

Feeling dazzled, the king laid down his head on the servant's lap and felt asleep. Looking at the king, the servant thought that it was time for him to leave this silly and stupid emperor who didn't have the ability to run and rule his own kingdom. The servant then moved the king's head from his lap slowly and carefully and then walked away. After being left alone, the King who didn't know how to take care of himself was found dead.

Moral of the story: It's impossible to make progress in any aspect of your life if you don't want to be criticized. Criticism is just like a good medicine that tastes bitter. However, it has the power to penetrate deep into your inner organs and cure the disease.

Next time, please don't be upset if your children ignore what you've said to them. You can use the story I've just shared with you to remind them how important an advice or critique to make progress in life. I believe if you use this approach, you will be surprised to witness the power of storytelling to enhance your message to your beloved children.

Source: A Chinese book called 'Ren(2) Sheng(1)' - Making Your Choice in Life.

Brave Corruption Fighters

" The Gecko is now brave enough to fight against the Crocodile!! "

That's what I thought when I read on Kompas newspaper today about the refusal of the Commission for Eradication of Corruption (KPK) to fulfill the Police's request to come to the Police headquarters last Friday.

Those words came to my mind because I once read a posting on the blog of Attorney Anggara about a statement made by the Chief of the Police Criminal Investigation Agency (Bareskrim) in an interview with Tempo magazine during which he dubbed KPK as a Cicak: Indonesian for Gecko and the Police and the Prosecutor as Buaya: Indonesian for Crocodile. This statement has become a controversial issue for bloggers. A polling has been conducted to know the importance of a strong KPK compared to the Police and the Prosecutors.

According to KPK spokesman Johan Budi, the National Police has summons KPK's 4 Vice Chairmen and 4 staffs to come to their headquarters last Friday to be questioned as Witnesses in a Crime of Corruption. But the summons letter did not clearly mention what the case was, and who was the Suspect, therefore they cannot as yet fulfil the Police's said request.

Considering that corruption is crime that has caused great problems for our country, and KPK has shown that it is serious in fighting corruption, I hope that KPK would remain as strong as it used to be.

What's wrong with Bank Century?

On November 2008 the Indonesian government took over Bank Century, a private bank jointly owned by Indonesian and Pakistani shareholders, which has suffered a loss of Rp. 7.3 Trillion.

According to Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, the decision was made because at that time the national economy was not stable and the bank was too big to fail that its collapse would have great impact on Indonesia's entire banking system.

Due to this condition, the People's Representative Council (DPR) permitted the government to inject Rp 1.3 Trillion to the bank.
However, by the end of the first half of 2009, the government-run Deposit Insurance Agency (LPS) had injected into the bank a total of Rp 6.76 trillion ($669 million) to shore up liquidity and pay off liabilities, therefore almost 4 times than the amount agreed by the DPR.
As a result, in the first half of 2009 Bank Century was able to have a net profit of Rp 140 billion during the period.

The DPR was very surprised with the very large increase in the amount of money injected to the bank, so its members requested the State Audit Agency (BPK) to conduct special audit on the bank.

This case is extremely interesting because the flow of taxpayer's money was done not long before the Parliamentary election (April) and Presidential election (July), but the news about it was widely exposed afterwards.
Further, the state authority that supervise banking, Bank Indonesia, at that time was headed by Boediono, the running mate of Presidential candidate i.e. incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono.
Furthermore, the foreign major shareholders are not available for questioning because they have runaway.

Due to which facts, many people have requested the government to give transparent explanation, some even suspected political motives behind the flow of money, especially after Vice President Jusuf Kalla described the flow of money would implicate many important people in this country. And the Commission for Eradication of Corruption(KPK) has been urged to investigate the case.

For details on the above, please click here, here, here, here, here and here.

It is very sad that the non transparent flow of large amount of tax payers' money could take place at a time when Indonesia's economic and financial conditions are not good. I hope that the case would be revealed to the public as soon as possible and anyone involved should be responsible.

Photo: Courtesy of Detik.

Jakarta Trembled by Earthquake

I used to think that the city where I lived Jakarta and neighboring province of West Java are places in Indonesia which are free from earthquakes.

However, yesterday afternoon I realized that I have been wrong, after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale stroked the town of Tasikmalaya, southern part of West Java. The tremors were strongly felt in all parts of Jakarta, causing panic not only to those who are working and living in high rise buildings but almost everyone in the city.

According to a spokesman of the Disaster Management Agency, 57 people died, at least 110 people were hospitalized 10 of them were in critical condition. 10,000 buildings collapsed, which includes houses, schools, offices and places of worship, most of them located in 10 regencies in West Java, including Tasikmalaya itself, Sukabumi, Cianjur, and one in Central Java.

For details on the above, please click here, here, here, here, here and here.

The above earthquake has made me and many other people living in Jakarta and vicinity that we are not free from earthquakes which could cause tsunami. Therefore, from now on we should always prepare ourselves for possibility of other earthquakes in the future.


Photo: Courtesy of The Jakarta Globe.

The song "Terang Bulan"

Recently, the Indonesian media reported that the Malaysian national anthem "Negaraku" is similar to an Indonesian song "Terang Bulan"(Bright Moon) written by Syamsul Bachri in the '30s & recorded in Solo, Central Java, in 1956 by state owned company Lokananta.

According to the report, when Malaysia became independent on 31 August 1957they changed the song's title & lyric into "Negaraku" and declared it as national anthem. Afterwards, our late President Soekarno asked the Indonesian people to stop singing Terang Bulan.

In spite of the above fact, Lokananta refused to claim Malaysia for taking the said music, and leave it up to the government to decide what to do about it.

However, there were other reports that mentioned that the song Terang Bulan was actually composed by a Frenchman in the 19th century.

In order to clarify this matter, Minister of Tourism & Culture Jero Wacik plan to check the controversial song with the National Archieve.

For details, please click here, here, here, here and here.

Considering that it has been more than 50 years since Malaysia declared "Negaraku" as national anthem, and Indonesia has accepted this when late President Soekarno requested Indonesians not to sing Terang Bulan, I think that it is too late to start claiming that song now. Rather than wasting time, money and energy on that matter, much better if we focus on promoting our traditional culture products such as Batik, Pendet Dance etc. and provide them with Copyright protection in Indonesia and other countries.

Photo: Courtesy of Noscadgie

Anti Beggars by-law

One of the purposes of fasting during the month of Ramadhan is to enable Muslims feel the suffering of poor people and show sympathy by giving charity.
For which purpose, several institutions have been given authority to collect the charities and to channel them to the poor people.

However, there are some people who want to give their charity directly to the poor among others to beggars. That is why, there are so many beggars on the streets of Jakarta during Ramadhan, most of them are organized by certain people who arrange the travel of those beggars from their homeland in other provinces among others Central Java.

In order to prevent those beggars from coming to Jakarta, two years ago the municipalty government and Parliament of Jakarta have passed a by-law in 2007 which forbid people from giving money to beggars, which carries a punishment of Rp 20 million (US$ 2,000) fine or 60 days in jail.
During the first ten days of Ramadhan, 12 Jakarta citizens have been arrested for giving money to beggars. Besides, the Jakarta Social Agency has gathered 850 beggars, including 83 infants.

The enforcement of this by-law is supported by the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) on one condition i.e. its enforcement should be carried selectively in the sense that people who donate to others who are really in need should not be arrested. MUI has even issued a Fatwa Haram for Beggars.

Meanwhile, a civil rights movement i.e. Urban Poor Consortium rejected this by-law, they said that such law can only be applied when there is no more poverty in Jakarta.

For details on the above, please click here, here, here and here.

Considering the above, I felt that the timing for enforcement of above by-law is inappropriate, because during Ramadhan people are supposed to be more tolerant and forgiving toward others. However, considering the by-law has already exists its enforcement should inevitably be carried outn step by step.
Firstly, it should be accompanied by taking firm action against those responsible for bringing those beggars to Jakarta. Afterwards, there should be integrated efforts between the central government, the Jakarta government and government of the provincce where those beggars orginated, to prevent the beggars from leaving their villages i.e. by providing more job and/or money making opportunities for them.

Photo: Courtesy of Weelinx