True Martyrdom (Part 1)

Hey guys, and welcome back to Jason's blog. To those of you who are wondering how far some people would go to defend God's name, you have come to the right post. Why? Well, this post tells you about the levels of faith in the Almighty God some people will go to. Just in case you were wondering, I got the idea for this post after today's church ceremony, where this time the priest tells about some people's loyalty to the Lord. So here we go...

The priest explained that in this world there are three levels of "goodness" that defend God's name. Here they are:

ACT I: TYPICAL "GOOD"

All of us humans do good deeds from time to time. For example we'd help a guy with his/her groceries, help an elderly citizen cross a busy road, help another person with his homework, etc. Act I are just the common-or-garden good actions that are done every day by you and me. Obviously these aren't so hard to do, but they do shape up the majority of the good deeds we do from day to day, and is by far the easiest way to receive a one-way ticket to heaven. Sure, these may help give a good, clean visage on the Him, but it's not really as big a religious act compared to...

ACT II: OUT-OF-YOUR-COMFORT-ZONE "GOOD"

Requires a bit more guts to do than Act I, but it'll count more when you get to the afterlife. If you're feeling a bit brave, you might as well step out of your comfort zone and do some even crazier, gut-full acts. For example, if you're a timid and cowardly person (no offense if you are), you could try standing up to the school bully (who always punches your face in unless you give him something ranging from a few bucks to all your school lunch money), even if you might end up with a "few" bruises. After all, God would agree it was the right thing to do (don't do this unless you're feeling very brave or very stupid. After all, this isn't as easy as it sounds). Or, if you're the kind of guy who doesn't really like to smile or have some fun, you could actually TRY to cheer up a bit, therefore encouraging your other gloomy pals to be a wee bit more positive. Or, if you don't really mind about passing out in front of hundreds of people (this is for all you readers out there, as most of you people might all have this same fear), you could take up public speaking. The possibilities are limitless and they count more than those (seemingly) insignificant deeds mentioned in the first act (although they are also harder to do). God will appreciate your new, positive habits that makes you step out of the warm shelter of your old, boring habits.

I'm sorry if I caused you readers any inconvenience, but for the dramatic effect, Act 3 will be continued on another post. I want you to wait until the WAITED MOMENT COMES! (that is, tomorrow) It will tell about stories of holy people such as priests, prophets and other holy ambassadors of heaven who went into unspeakably insane acts for the sake of their God!

Okay, enough of the spoilers. See you in the next post. Peace out!

A crucifix (a miniature model of the cross Jesus was nailed on)

Shame Part 2

(You might want to read the post Shame Part 1 before reading this) Hey guys, I promised you a few days ago that I would complete my post about the embarrassing events that happened to me (e.g. the swimming incident), and here it is. The wanted post's sequel has returned. So I can hear many of you asking, "So what was the second event that happened?". Well, you're about to find out...

On Monday (the same day as the swimming incident), my school has a kind of assembly that gives important announcements and today, speeches were given about the election of vice captain. Candidates stood up and gave amazing speeches with great expressions. But it was after the speeches when the embarrassment started...

In the school there is a policy that you must wear black shoes. And when I say "black shoes", I mean TOTALLY, fully black sneakers without any markings of any other color. They're quite strict about their "shoe policy", too. If you can't manage to get totally black shoes, you must put black paint or a black marker to cover those revealing marks. If you don't, the consequences can be dire. I once heard that a kid in school didn't follow the rules by rebelliously NOT trying to cover up the other-than-black colored markings on his shoes. Eventually a teacher took his shoes and painted the markings (messily) for the kid. It wasn't very tidy, but what do you expect from a maddened teacher who's sick of looking at your unlawful greaves? So remember this sentence: "Teacher can turn fantastic footwear into ink-smeared sabatons".

Alright, let's get straight to it. The embarrassing moment started when a superior teacher marched up onto the stage after the vice captain election speeches. He made a few compliments about the growing discipline of the school, and went straight to the shoes. Here's the shoe bit:
"-but I'm still noticing many of you still having other-than-black markings on your shoes...". I noticed that as he said this, his eyes were directed at my fellow classmate (who was obviously not following the shoe rule) who was wearing black shoes with VERY REVEALING white "decals".

But that wasn't it. It's not just the "shoe rule" that made some people want to hide under their chairs. The teacher also dropped this little bomb:
"-and it's also amazing that ALMOST everyone didn't bring their bags or water bottles into the theater (there is also another rule that it's not legal to bring water or bags into the theater). Compared to the results in the previous year, this start is amazingly rule-obedient.". This is a very huge praise, but not to the very few people who DID bring their bags and water bottles into the theater. I noticed that every time the "shoe rule" and the "no water bottles and bags" statements were fired away, people in the place started looking around for the rule-breaking (supposedly) outlaws.

This brings me to the end of my small summary of my first embarrassing day at the school. I might make other posts like this if possible.

Shame (Part I)

Embarrassment is a very weird thing. People laugh at other people's pain and embarrassment, while when the teasers THEMSELVES get laughed at because of a shameful fault, they try to defend themselves. You might be wondering why I brought this topic up today instead of some other psychological problem or a book report. Well, it's because my day at school today was revolving on this post's topic: Embarrassment. It's what made my day in school, well, exciting and at the same time embarrassing. Here are the horrible highlights of today's shameful screw-up:
(Disclaimer: There's only one shameful happening today, so this post will be divided into tow parts. It might not be as hilarious as anticipated, but nonetheless still spine-busting-ly funny.

-Today I expected it to be a chance to impress my friends (and my coach) with my supernaturally incredible athletic ability in swimming (It's not such a big surprise that I'm significantly more skilled at swimming than my friends, seeing as my brother and I have been taking swimming practices from a very young age. Our practices started in the morning from Monday to Saturday from 4-6 a.m. with occasional evening practices from 4-6 p.m.), and I prepared to dazzle my friends (despite the fact that they hardly pay attention to me. Anyway, read on). But that practice was more of an embarrassment than a display of pure talent when I discovered that I WAS THE ONLY GUY IN THE CLASS WHO WORE SWIMMING SHORTS. The rest of the class were wearing swimsuits. You could imagine the looks on their faces as they looked at my revealing swim gear. The rest of the practice went downhill after that. At least one of my friends tried to console me by saying: "It's OK Jason. At least it was swimming shorts. It could've been worse. You could imagine if it was a THONG." (This was actually quite comforting, because I've ever worn one of those extremely skimpy swim trunks.

Since this post is continued, I'll continue with the afterword on the next post. Sorry for the brief afterword, But I promise I'll make up for it.

Overseas Vacation Without a Family

Everyone I know loves vacation as much as the next guy, but although I've went to quite a lot of places on vacation, there's one rule that exists in all my vacations: I always go with my family. So I've never went on some kind of trip out of the city (let alone out of the country) without my family. So that sparks quite a problem between me and my family when I received a letter from my school to go to a camp in Jogjakarta (for those of you who don't know, Jogjakarta is a long way away from my home in Jakarta you will have to take a plane there). Today my family was quite excited (and a bit unsure) about their son going out to some camp out of the city. The next paragraph will tell you about their responses to this never-before accomplished trip:

My mom was the first one to read the letter. She was quite doubtful about me going to camp, but she was quite fine with my new experience. She questioned my dad about the camp and if I should go to it or not. My dad had a totally different response. "If you ask me, it's going to be quite an exciting journey for Jason! He gets to socialize more, make more friends!" My dad cheerfully responded. He kept on explaining the upsides of this camp until my mom told me to break the ice. "Tell Papa the price of the camp." She said. And so I told my dad that for five days in the camp, it will take up Rp.7.000.000 (approximately US $700). His reactions went downhill from there. Let me tell you something about my family: They love to express their feelings in a hilarious way, so if we're showing our jealousy, we 'mock' each other.

It was one of the longest comparisons between privileges of my parents and me. My dad 'jealously' exclaimed, "Rp.7.000.000! And look at this! You get to fly in Garuda Indonesia! Even I didn't get to fly in Garuda! (That's quite true, because if we fly, we usually fly in either Lion Air, Air Asia or Citilink Airlines) And look at this! You get to stay in FOUR STAR HOTELS!!! When I went with MY school overseas, we had to stay in a small, cramped INN! Look at this! You have breakfast at KFC before you go! (Shortly after this statement, he slapped me on the knee) And look at this! You visit the SULTAN'S PALACE! (Another knee slap) CANDI BOROBUDUR! (I managed to dodge his deadly strike this time) Rafting in the Elo River! (No physical attacks. Phew) He jokingly expressed his jealousy on and on. He was joking, so I didn't take his ranting seriously. After he finished debriefing me, he noticed a 'parental agreement' at the end of the letter. "Oh HO! So both parents have to sign the agreement, eh? I won't have to sign the agreement if I don't want you to come! I never thought of that!" (For a moment there I thought he was really thinking of not enlisting, but luckily he was also joking about that bit) he exclaimed jokingly. But the punchline of the whole thing was the money issue. My parents found a part in the letter that stated that parents who had issues may contact the school 'treasurers' about how the money should be handled.

My mom saw the part of the letter about the money issues and joked, "If it's possible for the money to be paid as instalments, tell Jason to dress up as a beggar and start working on the streets as a homeless boy! That's bound to get us enough money for the camp!Haw haw haw!" (At this, I could picture myself in ripped clothes out on the streets carrying a sign, "PAY ME AT LEAST RP.7.000.000 TO GET ME OFF THE STREETS"). Luckily, my dad 'protected' me from getting owned by my mom ("Just do it like this: Ask for a 7-month instalment, and every month we take it off Mama's shopping money! HA HA!).

But despite their sarcastic and hilarious arguments, my parents were still happy to send me off to the camp. Although they said that they were less fortunate when it came to THEIR overseas journeys, they were happy that I finally got the chance to see what was it like to survive out there without mommy and daddy. I'll be going on the 23th of September and I'll be back on the 27th. I'll probably write about the journey when I get back. Wish me luck guys!

Bad Jobs: Army Infantry

In my previous post I explained about my (almost) foolproof plan to get a job when I'm all grown up. This post is mainly focused on the jobs I definitely don't want to sign up for. (unless there's no other job to sign up for) One of them is the army. If any of you reading this post doesn't know the dangers of enlisting in the army, let me explain: War is not like a game of Call of Duty. The difference between a first-person shooter video game and a real-time, deadly experience in the battlefield is as follows:
Death
Game: Everytime your video game character dies, you can always choose to respawn either from your spawn point (in multiplayer) or from your last checkpoint. (in a singleplayer mission)
Real life: Everytime you die, you'll wake up playing a golden harp.
Difficulty
Game: Choose the difficulty yourself: Private, Commander or General.
Real life: Your superiors choose the mission AND the difficulty for you.

And the most frightening thing in the battlefield:
Deadly Surprises
Game:  You can die multiple times, so when you encounter an unexpected enemy monster (big bad tank, snipers, artillery strikes, land mines, etc) you can easily anticipate the enemy's next surprise attack after you respawn.
Real life: You need to stay alert. If a big fat vehicle equipped with a cannon and a machine gun rampages out of a building, you'd better hope it doesn't see you, or you're as good as dead. Its wild cannon can turn you into worm food with a single pull of its trigger, while the machine gun can mow multiple soldiers down faster than a kid stomping on ants. If you didn't know a team of hostile snipers were in the same area as you were cluelessly wandering, they would put a bullet in your head and that's it. But out of all these deadly surprises, I hate surprises that make you die before you even know it, such as land mines, which can be accidentally stepped on while cautiously trudging through the fight. Artillery strikes and mortar team assaults are particularly nasty, since at the time of the sudden bombing you might be admiring your survival a few seconds before the whole area you're in goes boom boom pow.

Obviously you already know how much I hate being in the infantry. If you're wondering why I don't hate being in the army, just the infantry, it's because these standard, low-armored, under-armed, typical ground units are dispatched with ease. There are lots of other places in the army I'd rather be than the infantry, such as the general (I get to watch the battle in a Real-Time-Strategy camera view) or a vehicle driver (unless in a tank, where I'll DEFINITELY be the tank's gunner, with the sweet cannon and the big guns. I won't be in a vehicle with less protection than a tank, like a truck. Too risky to be either the driver or gunner) or even an aircraft pilot. (the only downside is that being a pilot takes truckloads of flying practice, and if I actually FLY the plane in battle, it's easy for me to be taken down, but at least it's better than infantry)

So that's why if I had a job, I wouldn't want to be part of the land troops if I could be something else. I hope that this post can be used to help prevent other young souls commiting suicide in the army when they grow up to get a decent job.

Awesome, isn't it? Well, you're the ground troops, not the tank. (Sorry)

Working My Way Up In Life

There is one question I constantly ask myself: "What am I going to do when I grow up?". I've seen many other people experience either the beauty or torture of being adult: To be independent: To survive on their own. I have lots of worries about being an adult. I have seen lots of people who weren't ready for their adulthood and suffer fearsome fates when they grow up and possibly, die. Here's what I think about being self-dependent, about being the master of my own fate:

I've always dreaded having to feed my own family, to provide shelter and supplies for a whole group of people. Judging from my parents' observations, a too-spoiled kid, who's given anything he wants and never spares a thought about the less fortunate people than him, won't be exactly the richest guy around. Quite the contrary, if he's lucky, he'll manage to find a job application as a common-or-garden office worker with low wages to feed his wife and brood. (that is, if he does have a family) If he's not that lucky, someday you might find this guy out on the street begging for money and probably using some kind of beggar trick to persuade passersby to "donate" him extra cash.

My parents were quite good when it came to surviving adulthood, as it was proven through this computer I'm currently using to type this post. Fortunately, I've got a plan on how to (almost) guarantee survival for my later years.

Jason's (Almost) Foolproof Plan to Surviving Adulthood

 The first and hardest part of my plan is to study my way through school until I'm old enough to get a decent job. (way easier said than done) Than I plan to fill in for a minor job (possibly as a dishwasher or some other employee in a restaurant or some office) and while I'm at it, I'll go sign up for journalism at the college. (this is where my plan starts to fall down) Hopefully through my experience in writing, I'll be able to work as a better kind of worker, like a newspaper journalist or if I'm really lucky, an author. So far I'm only at step one, (Surviving School) but I'm sure I'll survive and have a good life. You readers out there can also use my plan for your own ends, as that is the main point of this post.

Book Report 2: The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

(Reading Book Report 1 will help define the first paragraph)

Other than reading way-too-hard books such as Angels & Demons, I started to read less adventurous books by sixth grade. Now this post is another book I have managed to complete in a single day: (Not such a big surprise there, considering I was already in sixth grade and the book looked like it belonged in the "young adult" section of the bookstore. Anyway, read on) The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson. At first I never knew that James Patterson was famous for creating other such mind-numbing books such as Cat & Mouse, Along Came a Spider and other adult literature. But since I didn't know that yet, I thought that this guy was an expert young-adult book creator and had hardly any experience in adult literature. So anyway, here's how the book goes.

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X reminded me of Superman. (come to think of it, more to Man of Steel than Superman, one of the only differences being that the main antagonist isn't fighting for the survival of his planet and the main character is a more of a teenager than an adult) Why? Well, here's a short synopsis: Daniel X thinks he is a normal kid, but as a toddler he's definitely surpassed the intellect of other kids years above him. Then one day when he was around six, his parents got killed by an intergalactical alien terrorist who was apparently so evil and skilful he's probably received death sentences in a few star systems. Anyway, after this ruthless murderer finished killing Daniel's parents, it proceeded to attempt to pound the boy into oblivion. But amazingly Daniel used his newfound powers to evade the psychotic killer.

A few years later he found the reason why his parents were killed. They were like bounty hunters (only without pay) who were given a list of the most ruthless aliens in the universe to kill. They were dispatched by the number 1 alien on their list (the one who came to Daniel's house) before they could finish the job. Daniel proceeded to finish his parents' duty and the main antagonist was the next alien on Daniel's list. To make a VERY LONG story short, Daniel managed to subdue the alien and the antagonist's underlings surrendered after seeing what Daniel did to their leader.

There is a very interesting thing in the story: Just like I told you before, the story was a lot like Man of Steel (or Superman) because of the following reasons: (in the brackets you will see what that part of the story reminds me of)

-Before the final confrontation, Daniel X meets the inhabitants of the original planet he came from. (Superman)

-The main antagonist is hell-bent on destroying Earth. (Man of Steel, except the bit about "hell-bent on destroying Earth". In Man of Steel, General Zod wants to destroy Earth for Krypton's survival)

-Daniel X is the weirdo of his school. (Both Man of Steel and Superman)

-Daniel's parents die. (Again, both Man of Steel and Superman, except that Superman's dad got stabbed by General Zod while Superman's mom died with Krypton)

There are thousands of other similarities, but God knows how long it'll take for you to read this post if I put in EVERY SINGLE similarity between this book and the Superman saga. I hope this post helps in some way. Thank you for reading and see you until the next post.