Running is Never about Running...

I just came back from an evening run. I haven't been running for almost two years, unless you count running after the bus or running to department office for a last-minute submission.

Why has it been so long, I wondered, but I knew the answer. To me, running has never been about running. It was never about keeping fit, losing weight, getting stronger or getting faster. Never. 

To me, running has always been about something else.

The Flood Series Part 1 - Patna, the Temporal Dimension of Space and a Little Lesson

It has been quite sometime. Everybody had been talking about the big flood in Jakarta. Firstly, I have to apologize that I had to skip on the topic. Why? It would be unfair for me, who has neither experienced the flood first hand nor lived in Jakarta to write as if I knew anything on the matter. There are many experts out there, activists who have lots to say. There are even more out there, people who are directly affected by the flood and its repercussions. They have things to say too. I don't.

However, I do have a few things to say about flood, because floods have been a part of my life. I was born in the very city that inspired the song "Semarang Kaline Banjir" (Semarang, the flooding river). It was never as big as the recent one in Jakarta, though. The last big flood in Semarang happened when I was a baby, so I would not have remembered a thing. Nonetheless, big or small, flood is a yearly agenda in Semarang.

After living in Singapore for 8 years, flood becomes something more distant. It is only when I was able to distance myself from the everyday reality of flood was I able to offer a different perspective on flood:

Flood, or an invasion of water into dry land, forces the urban space and urban dynamics to change in an instant. 

Highlighting Presence through Absence

"Spring for Nobody". Jan 2011.

"Not the Same Place". May 2011.

The Beginning of The Affair

"We treat space somewhat the way we treat sex. It is there but we don’t talk about it." 

~Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language

My fascination with the notion of space began when I was a freshman in university, attending a lecture on Geographic Information System. Yes, you got that right. It was a pretty technical module about recording and processing spatial information using computer software like ArcGIS and stuff, but that is not what I want to talk about. On our first lecture, the lecturer asked the class a question, "Who can tell me what is the difference between space and place?"

Silence befell the class.