Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Overspent Snobs

http://www2.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/12/24/imo-view-the-overspent-snobs.html

Can you hear the bells chime? It’s Christmas soon! New Year is approaching! Jakarta’s malls are in full swing with sparkling decorations and ready for the year-end shopping spree. These malls will undoubtedly provide special prices and discounts to add to the exuberance of year-end sales! Midnight sales! Shop till you drop! The mirthless shops attendants wearing silly red Santa hats are in every corner of the malls to attract shoppers. It is the time for every shopping mall to turn into a huge arena for the overspent snobs!


Such frenzy doesn’t even spare my colleagues. It is addicted like drug! Some of my colleagues love to buy things they don’t even need. Without doubts, additional huge discounts will make all the glittering blinking branded items the more alluring. Sometimes, they don’t care if they have to pay that bit extra and go for a prestige brand. As with any modern shoppers, they tend to buy things to make a statement, to show off their status. They don’t even listen to my whinnies and protests.

“C’mon! We have worked so hard, honey! It’s time to spoil ourselves!” They would argue.

Well, what can I say? It’s their money. They have every right to spend them on whatever they want! It’s not my problem if they purchase more than they simply need to demonstrate a base materialism, to gain a certain status! By the end of the day, they simply try to live the lifestyle of their – two paycheck friends. They spend more than is fiscally prudent! It’s all about consumerism!

It is not surprising if many of us trapped into the so-called modern consumerism. We watch the how our idols live in what seem to be ‘fairy tale on television. We see advertising and commercials prescribe what’s fashionable and what’s not, what’s elegant and what’s not, what’s important and what’s not, and so forth. We read about lifestyle of celebrities and other public figures. We scrutinize how they live, what they wear, where they go. We admire their ‘classy’ life. They become our ‘reference group.’

Consciously and unconsciously, such shows find their way to transform us. They affect us. We assimilate the information and try to build a twin image of what we see in the media over and over again. Wearing particular brands, living in a certain kind of home and going to fancy restaurants emphasize support for a particular image. It’s an image in the world as we know portrayed in those Medias. Living the reference group’s lifestyle will upgrade our status! Classy and fancy! The result is that many of us have become participants in an upscale spending of consumerism.

As for me, I try always to buy things that I need, and not things that I want. I don’t want to fall into the consumption culture, a movement of people who are downshifting – by working less, earning less, and living their consumer lives much more deliberately. Living such a life would be suffocating. I can’t imagine live from paycheck to another paycheck.

But I still love to go with my colleagues to the shopping malls. To annoy them I would say “spend less than you earn” otherwise “earn more than you spend!

In response, they would purse their lips and left in a hurry, lol.

Monday, December 10, 2012

The Forgotten

As if an annual ritual in the closing year, some of my colleagues send me emails and messages questioning the fate of our anomaly group. A new year relates to salary increase approved by The House of Representatives. It always brings a bitter sweet feeling. Every fiber of our core hopes it will bring changes to our current state. Yet, deep down, we somehow know that it will only bring a sad premonition, a taste of hopelessness. No matter how much digit IPK (working performance index) we get, our salary will remain staying as an anomaly that will always have a domino effect on other facilities we receive. With higher grade, higher IPK, we receive less and less every year. We are the forgotten, lost inside the collective memory of the policy makers.


As always, words of wisdom are left as our soothsayer. It stands as a remedy to our broken spirit. Yet, this year, perhaps, I no longer have such comforting words for my colleagues sharing the same boat with me. That would be asking them to swallow a hot iron down their throat. It would be just cruel.

All I can offer now is an encouragement of not to give up. My Dear fellow anomaly group, great moments are born from great opportunity. Let's prove it right! We have bled, cried, and fell; over and over again these past three years. We have seen how high ranking officials always try to save their own neck first. We have witnessed how we are sacrificed as the poor lambs. We have been cut, scarred, and trampled over and over again. We have suffered losses. We have endured too many.


Yet, we refuse to back down. We refuse to give up. We refuse to go down without a fight. We may tumble and crumble. We seal the wound, then heal. Someday, we will see a wind of change. Someday, we will witness that even a voice from a commoner can make a diiference.



As in life, it is all just a game of inches. We have a thorny bridge to cross, a hellish road to conquer. We put one foot in front of the other and keep on moving inch by inch, yard by yard. That's what makes it different. Winning or losing doesn't matter because we have given our best.



People will say we will lose the battle. But I can assure you that we are the winners so long we pay our dues. So long we hold our head high and complete our job satisfactorily. This misfortune will not break our character. This will make us stronger. We will prove them that we are so much better!