Occupational Hazard

I was at this public oration of an oral and maxillofacial surgeon the other day. There were a lot of oral surgeons, orthodontists, and some other specialist in the field that has connection with oral and maxillofacial attending the lecture. I've noticed, each time my friend Sita who was with me at that time speaks or smiles, those oral surgeons and orthodontists checked her out. They were literally checking her braces-mouth out before asking about her surgery.

I know my boss remembers the teeth more than the face of his patients, so does my dentist uncle. My other doctor remembers the kids more than the parents. My surgeon remembers my breast and not my face. I guess that's occupational hazard for you.

It makes me wonder about ObGyn... euwwwwwwww

Translasi bahasa

Kadang saya bingung dan sebal membaca berita koran di Indonesia yang hasil terjemahan. Apa tidak ada yg koreksi? Apa gunanya ada editor? Bukankah surat kabar punya tanggung jawab memberikan informasi yang benar?

Contoh yang paling anyar adalah berita tentang bunuh diri di Cina yang terbit kemaren di situs BBC dan muncul hari ini di situs Kompas. Mari disimak:

BBC	Kompas
In China, one woman kills herself every four minutes.	Tiap menit 4 Wanita bunuh diri di China
According to World Health Organisation statistics, China is the only country in the world where more women commit suicide than men. Every year, 1.5 million women attempt to take their own lives, and a further 150,000 succeed in doing so.	Menurut data yang dimiliki WHO (organsasi kesehatan dunia), China adalah satu-satunya negara di dunia yang wanitanya paling banyak melakukan bunuh diri. Setiap tahunnya 1,5 juta wanita mencoba bunuh diri dan sekitar 150 ribu wanita "berhasil" bunuh diri.
Suicide attempts may often be impulsive, but they are the result of burdens that weigh heavily on the shoulders of rural women. Marriage is a big issue where traditional attitudes still prevail. Many marriages are arranged and operate like business deals in which the groom's parents "buy" the bride, and she becomes part of their family.	Hasrat bunuh diri mungkin bersifat impulsif, tetapi sebenarnya hal itu adalah akumulasi beban yang selama ini dirasakan wanita pedesaan. Di pedesaan, orangtua memiliki hak untuk menjodohkan anaknya. Pernikahan di sana seperti "usaha dagang", di mana pihak laki-laki membeli mempelai perempuan untuk menjadi anggota keluarganya.
For every one hundred baby girls born in China, 117 boys are born, according to the official figures. By 2020, China could be short of around 40 million women, leaving many young men unable to find wives. Xie Lihua is worried about the consequences of this imbalance.	Menurut data resmi, dari setiap kelahiran 100 bayi perempuan, ada 117 bayi laki-laki yang lahir. Diperkirakan tahun 2020, jumlah wanita di China hanya sekitar 40 juta dan membuat para pria kesulitan mencari istri.

Warna ditambahkan untuk memperjelas.

Isi artikel itu sudah berubah jauh kan? Padahal bahasa Inggris yang digunakan menurut saya cukup sederhana dan mudah dicerna. Bukan bahasa yang dipakai membahas masalah pelik di suatu jurnal ilmiah. Tujuan memajang artikel diatas adalah menunjukkan kesalahan yang sering terjadi di media Indonesia.

Saya bukan ingin sok tau seakan-akan saya tidak pernah membuat salah dalam berbahasa. Saya masih sering membuat kesalahan dalam tulisan saya, baik dalam bahasa Indonesia, Inggris maupun Belanda. Saya juga mengerti kesulitan menerjemahkan istilah bahasa asing ke bahasa Indonesia, karena dalam kehidupan sehari-hari saya pun harus seringkali menerjemahkan dari bahasa yang satu ke yang lain. Tapi kesalahan saya tidak sampai membuat arti yang jauh sekali seperti contoh kalimat² di atas, padahal saya tidak mempunyai editor.

Apakah saya meminta terlalu banyak bila menginginkan agar dapat membaca berita yang benar?

Nyontek

Siapa yang tidak pernah nyontek? Salut saya kalau anda tidak pernah nyontek!

Jujur saja, saya pernah. Tidak sering, biasanya pas ulangan harian dan hanya satu dua pertanyaan dan caranya pun masih low tech. Apa karena jarang, sedikit jadi tidak masalah? Tidak juga. Malu sih iya, koq ngga mau usaha sendiri dan kalaupun usahanya kurang tidak cukup lapang dada menerima kekurangan. Karir contek-menyontek saya hanya sampai SMA, setelah itu tobat. Lagian lama² saya pikir kalau lulus karena hasil contekan, saya tidak yakin sendiri akan kualitas saya. Di kuliah paling banter saya melihat di sekitar (di sini jarak tiap meja hampir 1 meter ke meja yg lain) apa kira² yang lain sama bermasalahnya dengan saya atau tidak, alias banyak kosongnya dalam ujian esai, atau distribusi pilihannya kurang lebih sama pada ujian pilihan ganda. Kalau sepertinya sama bermasalahnya, jadi tenang... bisa buang bodi, soalnya susah. :)

Pernah ketahuan? Ngga. Walaupun pernah ada insiden, teman yg sudah saya kasih contekan beberapa soal dan sempat saya contek 1 soal tapi ternyata nilai dia lebih rendah dari saya, lapor ke bu guru. Kocaknya pas si ibu tau dia juga nyontek ketawa aja, dan komentar, "Makanya jangan ngasih contekan." Kejadian itu contoh, nyontek itu ada seninya. Biar dikasih jawaban benar, kalau salah contek jadinya ya tetap aja kita salah. Kalau diberi jawaban salah, tapi kita tidak main jiplak, siapa tau malah jadi jawaban kita benar.

Tapi rupanya jaman makin maju, orang makin 'kreatif' menggunakan tehnologi untuk menyontek. Sekarang kita bisa membeli karya tulis atau cut and paste paragraf dari Internet. Bila diberi tugas membuat program pun bisa kita outsourcing ke programer di India atau di Rumania misalnya. Ujian pun sekarang banyak yang menyontek menggunakan telepon genggam. Pertama kali saya mendengarnya dari teman saya yang sedang mengambil spesialisasi kedokteran di Universitas terkenal di tanah air bingung. Koq boleh sih membawa telepon genggam ke ruang ujian? Di sini, semua telepon genggam harus dimatikan dan masih juga dipasang alat untuk menghalangi signalnya. Lebih bingung lagi bagi saya yang gagap ber-sms, membayangkan harus menulis jawaban satu² via sms.

Kalau dipikir konsekuensi menyontek itu ngeri juga, kasarnya bila insinyur sipil salah hitung, jembatan bisa ambruk; arsitek salah hitung, bangunan ambruk; dokter salah diagnosa, pasien bisa mati. Apalagi dilakukan di negeri yang nilai batas lulusnya amat rendah seperti di Indonesia. Kalau tidak salah batas lulus ujian SMU tahun ini hanya 4,25, yang artinya mungkin cukup menjawab benar tak sampai 40% dari seluruh soal untuk lulus karena adanya konversi nilai. Apakah nilai/angka sedemikian pentingnya dibanding kualitas sehingga menyontek merupakan jalan keluar? Apa masalahnya terletak di manusia Indonesia yang cenderung bodoh dan malas berusaha, atau sistem pendidikannya yang kurang baik, atau dua-duanya sehingga orang menyontek? Apa konsekuensinya bagi kualitas sumber daya manusia kita?

Our first...

... foods shaped our taste buds.

Cancer Research UK found that we inherit our taste for high-protein food, but our environments influence our preferences for fruit, vegetables, and wait for it... puddings. Another study carried out at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia , USA found that eating preferences may even develop long before you introduce solid food to your child. These findings suggested the power that parents have in shaping their children's dietary preferences, good or bad.

If you talk to my parents, especially my dad, about how to feed your baby, you will hear the story of how they took me to Chinese restaurants when I was a baby, fed me with shark fin soup and regretted it. No, not because it is considered as not PC to eat shark fin, you know, the whole Greenpeace talk. But because those experience for ever changed my taste buds. :)

Here's the thing, our family comes from Javanese background, though I'd like to think that my heritage was from all over Indonesia, but the Javanese part has the greatest influence. However, when it comes to eating, I am more Chinese or Western than Javanese. To my father's frustration, each time we have Sayur Lodeh at home, which is according to him a dish fit for a king, I have several option to eat: a) rice with some Kraft cheddar cheese (the one that I couldn't find in NL) and a piece of chocolate as dessert, b) if it's for lunch and I am not that hungry at the time, I drink a glass of chocolate milk before and after I took a nap, c) rice with our family recipe of scramble egg or d) Nutricia's baby cereal with 4 fruits (Yes, I am that weird) . Give me macaroni schotel any time of a day, or dim sum for that matter and I'd be a happy camper.

Sure, there are some Indonesian foods that I love, like my mom's signature pepes daun singkong (Steamed cassava leaves), sate bandeng and rabek from Banten, my aunt's gulai with no coconut milk that I still couldn't replicate despite having the same spices from her (I might have been using the wrong tomatoes), I also miss this dish called kaldu kokot that Yuk Nur, my mom's grocer, made us when I was a kid. Notice the trend here?;)

Learning from my parents' mistake, if you can call it that, I know that I won't give my child any Sayur Lodeh so I won't get in to trouble of having to cook them. Yes, we have to introduce a lot of foods to tastes, but I draw the line in Sayur Lodeh. As they say, first cut is the deepest....

Pee-o-meter

It's (almost) summer. In fact, as the temperature reach 30 degrees in some parts of Holland today, it means we are having our first (unofficial) heatwave this year in the Netherlands. A heatwave means five consecutive days with temperature above 25 degrees and three days with the temperature above 30 degrees. To make it official, the temperature at De Bilt must register those values, which is not in the case this time. According to the KNMI record, June heatwave is unusual, only 8 heatwaves happened in June in the last 100 years. The last one was last year.

It is said there were 10 to 20 percent more elderly and sickly people die during heatwave. A lot of them were due to dehydration. You might think you drink enough fizzy drink, cold beer, or whatever nice cold beverage you can find. You can't be sure that you have enough liquid in your body as you sweat a lot under the heat and some of those drinks can act as diuretic.

So how do you know that you are dehydrated? Yorkshire Water a drink water company in -where else- Yorkshire, has developed a device to help people gauge their bodily fluid's color. The yellower the fluid means you need to drink more. You are dehydrated.

The company came up with three designs, for children, for female and for male. It is interesting to note, that on the flip side of the men's pee-o-meter they included a ruler for those who need reassurance in something else ;)