Ilmu merubah perilaku manusia adalah bidang ilmu yang saya pilih untuk studi Master. Banyak alasan saya memilihnya. Tapi, saya ingin mengemukakan alasan yang relevan dengan kondisi saya saat ini. Alasan saya itu adalah karena kebanyakan masalah termasuk masalah kesehatan adalah karena perilaku manusia itu sendiri. Ilmu pengetahuan dan tekhnologi yang ada sekarang semestinya cukuplah untuk membuat manusia hidup lebih mudah dan bahagia. Namun, kita lihat kenyataannya tidaklah demikian.

Setelah saya mempelajari ilmu ini selama setahun terakhir, saya banyak mendapat pengetahuan baru termasuk bagaimana orang - orang di Amerika ini mengkonstruksi teori cara merubah perilaku. Banyak keberhasilan yang mereka tunjukkan dengan usaha mereka ini. Tentu keberhasilan itu mereka tunjukkan dengan cara yang paling mereka percaya, angka - angka statistik. Apakah saya setuju pembuktian semacam itu? Saya hanya bisa menjawab belum ada cara saya bisa membantah kebenaran yang mereka paparkan.

Namun usaha mereka itu bukan berarti tidak ada kelemahan. Mereka masih kesulitan untuk mengkonstruksi bagaimana bisa memelihara perilaku yang sudah berhasil dirubah. Studi tentang masalah ini baru dimulai kurang lebih satu dasawarsa terakhir. Jadi, masih banyak misteri yang mesti diungkap.

Teori ilmu perilaku yang sekarang berkembang masih fokus terhadap merubah perilaku itu sendiri. Padahal semestinya, merubah perilaku seharusnya juga merubah perilaku untuk menjadi pribadi yg senantiasa berusaha memaintance perilakunya itu. Jangan pernah berpikir bahwa perilaku yang telah berubah itu akan berlangsung selamanya. Allah berfirman bahwa iman seseorang itu naik turun. Nah sama dengan iman, perilaku juga bisa naik turun konsistensinya. Maka berbuatlah semestinya saat iman atau perilaku itu saat naik agar ketika ia turun, tidaklah ia turun terlalu dalam. Dan berbuat semestinyalah juga saat masa ia turun agar ia lebih cepat menuju masa – masa naiknya kembali.

Banyak hal yang bisa mungkin dilakukan untuk menjaga masa naik atau masa turun itu. Untuk saya, senantiasa berupaya ikhlas, syukur dan sabar dalam usaha, pencapaian dan dan kegagalan adalah cara yang terbaik.

This triangle has nothing to do with Bermuda Triangle or another Triangle that made so many superstitious stories in it, but this triangle is the derivation from The Triangle of Epidemiology. I am not sure that many of you would know about this triangle, or even the epidemiology. Okay, I will start from what on earth is epidemiology.

Epidemiology is the mother of Public Health. The field I am studying now. This word was originated from a Greek language that means "study upon people". It is emphasized on health and disease related factors among populations. John Snow, an anesthesiologist from England is person who constructed the modern epidemiology. This fact actually makes me have a nice answer when somebody asked me why I choose Public Health. I might say, "Did you know that the predecessor of Public Health is a doctor?"

So, at later time as the science had progressed, the people from epidemiology acknowledged how the factors of related disease could make a person sick. They describe the factors in a triangle, named epidemiology triangle. In each corner of this triangle stand host (a person), agent (of the disease) and environment. As you can see in the picture, those three factors are interrelated. What happened to a person (that could be me or you) whether getting sick or not, depend on those balanced interrelation. This interrelation explains that a host or let say us, could get sick because of the influence the factors from itself, environmental factors and something else that can cause a disease (it could be a virus, bacteria or anything else). Each one of us could not get sick not only because of our own willingness. Yes a host has a portion to make itself become sick, but isn’t it only small portion compared to two external factors? This interrelation of this triangle,

I would like to have the triangle presumably be as the triangle of life; because those interrelations could describe for what happened in a person life. Take a look at again to the triangle, instead of having agent in one of the corners; let’s say we have temptation here in the triangle of life. I defined the temptation is whatever in life that come into it. I would say if you get or loss something, it’s what I define as the temptation. I define The environment is where you live your life is. It’s pretty much the same for what happened in life, is it? You become as you are now, despite of your own will (as I said before, it’s just a small portion), there are also temptation and environment factor that made you as you are now. You become a successful person now, not only because you wanted and tried for that, you have your parents, friends, facilities and moreover there is God that unavoidably always gives the temptation on us.

So my friend, where are those arrogance come from? Did you think that all those you have now is because of the only you? You played just a small portion. Even you your self is not you fully could control it. There is also temptation and environment that made you even before you were born. You have the genetic inheritance (this genetic inheritance could be defined as agent) from your parents and you were raised in a certain environment. Moreover my friend, the genetic research recently stats revealing that whatever your behaviors now are very much influenced by those genetic inheritance. Those behaviors could be also you willingness right? Because willingness is part of your behavior that most persons think they have full control in it. I said, no you don’t have full control in it. There are so many people that might have harder attempts to reach something, but because their temptation and environment didn’t allow them to become success, they didn’t get it. Again, where those arrogance could come from, if even if you yourself could not control it.

Once my father said, “Don’t hate a bad person, just hate his bad behavior and avoid the behavior”. Then I said, “Why? I hate them, they are bad. They made people miserable”. I remembered he couldn’t answer that stubborn question. He just said, “Just don’t hate them personally”. I also remember he never upset of me being stubborn. Maybe he realized, once he used to be a stubborn person also. Hahaha…. Thank you for participating in making me a stubborn person Dad… (Hehehe… No I don’t call him Daddy my friend).

I just found an interesting fact. Despite its controversies of doing war in two countries in Middle East, The United States is the biggest country as the place for refugees’ resettlement. It means that this country has accepted the biggest number of refugees compared to any other countries in the world. You could see the lists where those refugees came from in http://www.migrationinformation.org/Usfocus/display.cfm?ID=585. We could see that there are many of them came from countries that this country had and has been doing war with. Pretty weird, huh...

Atlanta is on the number nine of the list of cities in The US that has accepted refugees. This city has been as the resettlement place for around 40.000 refugees since 1984. It makes no wonder that if I could see so many races here in Atlanta every day. Even I joked with my friend, and said to her, "are we in United States?”. And it won't be a surprise anymore if someone says to us a "salam", because my friend wears a hijab on her hair. I hope you know what I mean.

In the coming of days, Atlanta will accept more refugees of Haiti earthquake victims. It is because Georgia, the state where Atlanta is its city capital, is one of the states that will be the place for the refugees. I just want to let you know guys, the efforts of rising funding for helping Haiti has been enormously huge here. We can see many ads on rising funding awareness for Haiti are on Television or internet radio. The latest ad that I saw today is there are more than 80 artists made the cover version of “we are the world”. The one interesting fact about this song is Will-I-Am, the singer from the black eyed peas” mentioned Indonesia in his hip hop style lyric. You could see the video here



This article was not intended to persuade anybody to agree on whatever this country has done to other countries. I just want to let you know that if we want to find complexity, this is the country where you can get for more than just enough. I remember while I was on a flight from Atlanta to Denver, I met a nice lady who talked to me about so many things. Her first question was, “what do you think of America after you came here?” I told her, “I thought I already knew about this country after I watched so many news and movies of it. But I was wrong”. She replied, “It is because we have a freedom of speech”. Yes, she was right, in this country there is no one will be in jail because of his speech. At least until now, I never heard that kind of news. I think because of that freedom, any Americans can do whatever they want to do. But it is not only it. The government will give them a bunch or rules before they do it. I think, this is the starting point that made this country has a lot of facts to talk about.

So guys, if you want to find so many confusing facts as well as lessons to be learnt, come here. Or if you think that our country (Indonesia) already has so many things to be confused of, you might change your mind.

There are uncountable moments in every day of our life. We might not be a small portion of people who can remember the every detail of those moments. But, everyone of us will need to remember what our best moments are. Because, those moments could be the only way to remind us that we are alive. And we might have our own ways to remember those moments.

One of the common ways to remember those moments are storing pictures or other stuffs that we might think they could bring those best moment's memories. We will look at those stuffs when we think we need them. But, have you ever compared how many times you did that while you were sad or when you were happy? I bet you mostly did that when you were sad.

So what's the problem then? Hahaha... no there's no problem at all for those kind of things. We are not supposed to be more sad while we were sad, right? If you are a kind of person who will be more sad, you should reconsider on what you will do while you were sad. I know how it felt like. Because I am that kind of persons. Hahaha... Do you get my points? No? I will tell you then.

Each one of us is a very unique person. We are the same as human, but we are different in personality. No one knows better your personality than yourself. You have to understand how your emotion works. And even more, you have to know the best way on how you will treat it. We already saw how many people out there who feel depress every time. Let's try not to put our self into it. It is a hard work my friends. There are so many efforts to reach it. But still, we always have to try. Because my friends, we will really find our best moment in our life, if we finally know who we are in life.

Most of people in the world always ask about life. Some of them will say that they already had the answer but some others won't. Among those who have the answer we might never find the same answer. Yes, it is the same question with different answer. And it is more interesting, because none of the answers is wrong.

I used to be angry to myself or to other people, when I found that we still did something that we already know it will give bad consequences. For instance, smoking. How many people know who already know about its bad consequences but they are still doing it. For me asking this questions is one of my questions about life. I have my own answer, and you might have it also. But for me, having this question made me have a whole new direction in my life.

Or, I used to have a question that I asked over and over again every night, why some people seem to always have bad luck and some others always have good luck. I know that so many verses explain about this thing. But when it doesn't hit my rationality, I always want some more explanation. Because I believe that God always asks us to think. Until I found the thing that is called probability. Yeah the probability that is came from statistic science. What make me interested in this probability is that even it is come from uncertainty, but it has a certain pattern. Those people in statistic call it normal distribution. Even the normality itself is disputable, but I like to have that pattern as my answer. If you know how the pattern the normal distribution is, you will see the small proportion in the right and left of curve in the normal distribution. I believe that those small proportion represents how many people who always have a bad luck, and on the other tail represents people with bad luck. The most proportion of people who are represented by the center of the curve, are the people who lies in between.

You can be disagree with me, but it is my answer. What is yours?

This article is for continuing the previous article about Obama and 2010 state of the union address.

Every culture has its own ways to raise their child. It is indisputable that the way of the parents raise their child will determine how the child's personality in their adulthood is. I will not talk about the psychological aspects of nurturing the Children. I will only focus on how the American children are treated by their parents.

The first experience that shocked me about this nurturing the children in the US was when I saw " a just born baby" that was carried by her mother (I assume) in a mall. The mother carried the children by putting him in front of her chest (I don't know how to call the name of the tools that the mother was used. You can see the picture to have the sense how the tool looks alike). It is very different with how a just born baby will be treated in Indonesia. The baby will be kept in home at least until 1 week of age. Yes, the babies in the US will face the world earlier than the babies in Indonesia.

To be continued...

To all my friends and colleges, embedding the President of the United States speeches doesn't mean that I adore him excessively. But it is worth to watch and learn.

In his speech, (you can't see the speech if you read this note in my facebook, unless you go to my blog), he didn't use any text read helper. I don't quite know if this is the standard for a president in The US. Because The no text is just the start for the lesson learn, then the content is the next.

I never have seen a speaker like Obama since the late Soekarno from my country. I know, maybe there are more speaker like those man, but I am more a fan of pop culture than the fan of old fashion's time. My point is there is too difficult to find the Obama looked alike in a country with the culture such as Indonesia. Why should I bring this cultural thing into an ability to give non text speech?

to be continued...