His Name is Khan

“I wanted to optimize my life for happiness and satisfaction.” With that Sal Khan of Khan Academy gave up millions as a financial trader and becoming a creator of educational institution. It doesnt hurt that Bill Gates and Google Foundation are his fans and supporters. Khan uses youtube to disseminate his lectures on maths.

It's a great idea.

Anyone can use his lectures in their own pace. You can skip the part you already understand and repeat the part that you dont. Even Bill Gates is using it with his own kids.

It would be fantastic if we had his lectures in Bahasa Indonesia and perhaps disseminate the lectures in DVD instead of online because our internet is v.e.r.y-v.e.r.y-s.l.o.w. Mind you, he actually put the lectures on Bittorrent too. I know some guys are in contact with the academy for translating the lectures already.

Mr Khan, I salute you!

One Indian Family

Now I know why India is so overpopulated. It's a record.

Our Neighborhood's Library

Since January our neighborhood has twice-weekly-free-library in cooperation with all neighborhood's chiefs and Pustaka Kelana. Every Tuesdays and Fridays a car comes to our RW's office bringing 3 boxes of books for the children to peruse. The two volunteers are there teaching them reading, arts and crafts and even simple science and maths. I thought the whole thing is superb.

Most days we see about 80 to 100 kids.

Typically, we start with reading a book, then we do things such as how to inflate ballon with out any pump. After that, they are doing math puzzle (and coloring) according to their education level. Each kids has to collect their works because at the end of the school year, the one who has the most work done gets a present.

Our Pak RT also promised to give present to those who excel at school.

In order to attract kids to come, we sort of bribe them by giving out snack and water at the end of the day. The most active RTs are my own RT (06) and RT 02. The mothers also show up each time, to read and help out the volunteers.

One funny thing: Since it's a communal hall, it is also function as neighborhood crèche and health clinic on certain day of the month. Kids are reading under posters of condom campaign and the volunteers didnt even notice until I pointed that out.

Any way, I heard AIA was very impressed by our neighborhood interest in this project and are coming to visit early next month. I was told we have the most kids and the most involvement of the neighborhood.

We had our down to0, actually. A week and a half ago, we caught one of the kids stole one of the volunteers' handphones. We also found out that the same kid is abused by her mom. At the moment we choose not to get the police involved but will monitor the kid because we have no evidence of child abuse at this moment. If the police is involve, we are afraid that hell will break loose in her house. It's a very sad story. I do hope the kid turns out alright in the end. For the time being, she's afraid to show up again at the library.

I Have This Tune in My Mind for Days

Lawless...

I was going to post a translation of what our esteemed head of the national police said about FPI, but I'm going to tell you a story about what happened to my nephew this morning which made me angry and even more frustrated.

My nephew drove from Pluit area toward the airport. At one point, he needed to turn right so he gave sign and starting to turn right. This being in Indonesia, there was this cart coming on his right from the opposite direction, so he stepped on the break to avoid it. While this happening, this kid on, what else, a motorcycle tried to cut him from behind and hit my nephew's car.

If this happening in the West, the motorcycle was at fault. That kid called up his father who happened to be a preman (some sort of gangster) in the area and friends with the police.

The next thing what happened was, my nephew was getting hit from 4 guys and a policeman before being detained by the police. He then called up my cousin but before relaying information on his whereabout the phone was disconnected because my cousin's mobile's battery ran out. We tried to call him back but was unable to reach him for a while.

While we were panicking, I called up my lawyer friend asking his advise while my cousin called her friend at other police station. After we were able to contact my nephew again and I told him to take pictures of the bruises, my cousin's friend called that station where they held my nephew and told the guy over there that my nephew is the nephew of some high-rank police officer and should my nephew had any scar from the beating some heads will roll. In the end the police who did the beating confess and said about the beating,"I didnt know who he was at that time."

Meanwhile some guys from my nephew's office came to the station and demanded explanation of the beating and detaining. Since all the evidence pointing out that my nephew is innocent, they are demanding compensation for my nephew's suffering. At the moment, to my understanding the other party is willing to give compensation. We'll see if they are really doing it.