Adam Noto Hakarsa / Logs

It is not that I am a defeatist when I wrote that life is about accumulating pain. There is no denying in that. What we do instead, is to lessen such a pain. We invented medicine, technology, and even cured the meats and add that tomato cheese flavor to that pizza so we can be less in pain. That’s something special about us humans.

And yet here we are. Here we are afraid to say: Israel, could you help lessen the pain felt by the Palestinians? …if you self-consider an ally to Israel. Here we are, afraid to say: Russia, would you stop making them in pain? …if Russia and you are best friend. And no, I am (trying to be) neutral. I don’t think I can solve, or help solve, any problem without being neutral. I would love to have Israeli friends (I used to work with a Jewish colleague of mine from NYC). I’d love to have Russian friends (one of my neighbors is from Russia). I’d love to have you, Americans, Africans, other Asians as a friend. Europeans too. Anyone.

Sometimes, when we consider ourselves an ally or a close friend to someone; we will defend that someone to a point we won’t do if they are not our close, best friend. In that case, would it be naive if I imagine a world where everyone is everyone else’s best friend? I guess so? At least Mr. Lennon assured I am not the only one.

The world doesn’t work that way! (Does it?) Then perhaps, I should have renamed the title of this blog post to 5,000 years in a message. Maybe, our children 5,000 years from now could prove me wrong.

But no! no! I urgently in need to title this post specifically 5 years in a message.

Because, I want to imagine what 5 years from now will be like, where the war is over.

Where the war is over, but not because we turn this ancestral home of Homo sapiens, wasted.

Hi there! Hi, WordPress. Hi, the World. And Hi, Harvard.

First of all, my name is Adam Notodikromo. Actually, that’s my nom de plume, although, really, I have been hoping that to be my real name. But, “what’s in a name?” right? Juliet rhetorically asked Romeo. She argued further, “that which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.”

I have a book written under my current-tho-not-legal name. It’s a book about web programming using Rails 6, which I had published in the year COVID-19 was still a fresh thing. It’s still fresh. I used the time otherwise used for commuting, to write a book I hope would be of value to new web engineers interested to learn about Rails. Fortunately, the publisher allowed me to have the book hit the shelf with the name I wanted to be associated the most with.

It seems like, someday, I will have to legally change my name.

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