We Hide Behind Ideas

Because sometimes.. maybe just sometimes, what writer do with their essay (mostly essay or article I think) was to turn small irritating things into a more complete work with proper reasoning and logic in which basically is to justify oneself from feeling irritated or attacked by making connection with as much variable as possible. Sometimes what you write is not what you believe, because it might change as soon as the situation change, or simply the mood changes. What we write might be simply only rooted on slight irritation done to us. Not keen to confront, the grunts were poured out and improved with reasoning and knowledge-based language, to become something more profound. Boom, a new opinion on certain subject is on the air. But once the situation switched into the opposite point of view and one feel attacked, one might change the opinion completely even to the contrary, and oddly, it equally makes sense.

You know what I mean? sometimes our positions or our take on something is only based on how much it annoys, irritates, attacks us, and how much we can relate to the attacked party rather than how much we actually care. But as soon as we are put in a total different situation, we will change our take on that particular thing and move on to oppose what has irritated us.

To illustrate, a businessman  once traveled to the most reviewed nature sighting on a countryside, yet he was made disappointed by what he found : a stack of rubbish! As soon as he was connected to the internet, he made a whole new post of how bad this earth has gotten and how selfish "those" ignorant people are. But once he got back to the city, he himself rejected the suggestion of plastic reduction from a peer for his grocery company for the sake of cost efficiency since his company had a little breakdown recently. Having his staff unexpectedly disgraced him in front of everyone, he wrote about how terrible society has become for not listening and understanding each other. You see, sometimes what you see around is only rooted on small thing that needs acceptance, but ideas and knowledge got into the play and made it more heavy, profound, comedic, or artsy. No matter how small was the cause, intelligence can make it sound bigger and heavier than it was, for the sake of.. either others' higher approval or one's own personal satisfaction. We hide behind the ideas, because you can not hurt ideas.

Come to think of it, I think I should not just say writer with their essay or article.. It is pretty broad actually, in fact any artist with any type of artworks. WAIT, in fact it is a monologue spoken inside produced by your mind, which means it applies to anybody with functioning mind regardless what you do for living. To certain extent of course, varies on the people.


Ahdini

Review : Sidney Sheldon, Master of the Game

Having ever read two of Sydney Sheldon's book and
thought it was worth it, it got me less hesitant in picking another one by him. This time it is titled Master of the Game. Being more picky I am than I ever was back then, I checked on its rating and review and made even more sure to purchase it. With so much time in hands during holiday as well as getting absorbed with the story itself, I managed to (almost) finish it within two or three days. By (almost), what I mean was that I just could not manage to finish it yet because.. well I'd tell you later about that.
spoiler allert, guys.

The story is about a poor guy named Jamie which was portrayed with naive dream yet great will, went through a journey to find diamonds all the way across the sea to the land of Africa. After all the hardship, almost eaten by vulture, he made it to his destination and returned with lots of diamond that could turn him into millionaire in a day yet he ended up being lied to by his boss or business partner. With all the dreams and expectation being crushed to bits, he set a revenge by impregnating the boss's daughter, a girl who naively thought he was true lover. Such a thing was deemed immoral that it brought shame for the father, considering that he is a devoted church member every Sunday. So with that, born a baby boy in which Jamie was reluctant taking care of. But as time went by and the bonding unexpectedly grow stronger between them, he decided to keep the baby with a given condition by the girl that he will have to marry her. So there they were, married but totally disconnected because it has never been love for Jamie. Not long after, a second baby girl was born, named Kate. This little rebel Kate is soon to be the next head for their already grown big corporation. The next focus now has turned to Kate, as the previous main character (Kate's dad) has passed away.

This Kate was ambitious and passed on a lot of her dad's trait. With her, the corporation has grown  bigger than ever. A little shortly after awhile, she gave birth and named the baby boy as Tony. With all the luxury he was born into, Tony was grown anxious. He felt intimidated around his mom, because he felt like he could not live up to her expectation. He wanted to be an artist which to her mom is not a serious profession compared to passing on  future and there is no one else she would let having more than her only son. But her son felt like a puppet so he decided to live far off the house to pursue his art career. But turned out her mother Kate was still creeping in behind his decision, planning an encounter of his son and Art dealer, negative art review from a famous art critic, as well as paying a model to be his girlfriend to watch him over. All goes to her wish to have her son working for the company. After a marriage her son had with a girl that his mother secretly arranged, they were blessed with two daughters, a pair of twin. But the mother died. Tony's wife died after giving birth. This is where things get a little bit unsettling for me.

Knowing about her mother's intervene on his artistic journey as well as her crazy idea of risking his wife for the sake of reproduction, he went total mad and shot her mother Kate. Kate did not die but Tony was put into an asylum due to his mental health.

Turned out Kate's twin grandaughters consist of one that dies to kill another one, while the other one is a naive innocent, and a stupid one if I might add due to her incapability of standing up for herself. I started to not really into the plot since this twinnies took over.

I think that the plot was quite strong at first, the character, in spite of the fool he had made of himself for being too naive, was somewhat inspiring. Kate's period was alright, I think the author was intentionally draws the reader a hate and love relationship with Kate. I tended to dislike her most of the times but it is still pretty acceptable. Tony's period was somehow quite interesting either due to our common interest in arts and its journey depicted there or because he was the only one with different mind set and life goal than the rest of the character. But when the twin sarts to take over the story, I started to get less fond of where it is going. It was clearly made who is evil and who is kind but the evil sister was made as a very cliche character. The motive was cliche, her monologue is a boring evil thought that you would find quite frequently on Indonesian's soap opera. I like villain if it shows how complicated and conflicted our interests are, moved by particular motive. But this one is a mere plain hatred.

The thing about Sydney Sheldon's story is that sometimes it does not quite clearly show the depth of thought and feeling by the character instead it shows more of their action or the chronological events without getting too deep on how and why. Say, on the whole book it was explained how Kate has ben crazily in love with David since she was young but David always has always been reluctant about that. Til one day, with less than one page it was said that David finally realized and they finally got married and having a kid. Or another sample, Kate thought producing guns are a good business, shortly after in the book it was said that their company has improved much on their newly expanded products, gun and war ammunition. It is not necessarily bad to me in fact it is what made it unique of his works but sometimes you feel like there is a too much to take in. As in you're not connected enough with one yet  another shocking news fill in the story. The change of character was a little too fast on this book, as in the focus almost completely turn from one to another, taking the wheel of the story. I am used to few characters at once but I'd rather have it to show different point of view instead of a complete story of one's character, passed on another.  I think it is common on action based stories to show more action rather than feeling and thoughts, as long as it is kept up with right balance of consistency.

in conclusion, I definitely did not regret picking up this one and honestly the first few parts were rather inspiring and I will always carry with me. Only that I am a little disappointed with the direction it is going. I like Sydney's book titled The Sands of Time much better.

Surprise surprise

I had a little more to go to finish this book in other word I have not completely finished it while writing about it because I want to see if there is any change after completing one. I will edit this post to have it updated.