Good bye
[She] was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
- W. H. Auden
Twenty something and start to think that life should be taken more seriously yet have fun doing it.
[She] was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
- W. H. Auden
Let's talk about gold.
What is the true value of gold? Does this so-called precious metal have real use? What if the world (God forbid) experience food shortage? Will people still prefer gold over food? Gold has no real use. You can't eat it, you can't light it to warm you. You can do nothing with it except to impress your neighbor. The value of gold simply based on the human assumption that it's precious, not because its practical usefulness.
So what about the sudden increase in gold value right now? Experts have many opinions. Some say because the US goverment has a very big budget deficit that feared will hurt the value of US dollar, some say because many companies still struggling after the economic meltdown that will affect the stock performance. Whatever the reasons, one common cause is people buy gold when they fear.
And everytime there is fear, there is speculation.
The speculation of gold became hysteria. You can overhear worker, teacher, even housewife talk about investment in gold. What annoy me is, it reachs the point where people believe there is no way gold value will decrease. "It's gold! In history, gold value never decrease!". Sounds familiar? Yup, that's what they say about housing before the housing bubble burst and cause the greatest economic crisis in our era.
To make it worse, people start buying gold by borrowing money from bank, they even have seminars to talk about it. You must have hear once, you know, this so-called "Berkebun emas". The principe is simple : You buy gold and mortgaged to bank or 'Pegadaian' and use the money plus extra cash to buy another gold. If you still have extra cash, mortgage the later gold and use it to buy yet another gold, and the cycle continues. When your gold value increase 30 percent, that is the time you'll harvest your profit. Easy money, eh? And of course the author feel there is no need to mention that the "30 percent" is an assumption and there is slight chance gold value will decrease. "Why have to? It is gold for God sake! In history, gold value never decrease!"
Again, sounds familiar right? Yup, it's the same method that happen when the housing bubble burst. People buy house, mortgaged it, use the money, mortgage the house again, use the money again, untill one morning they wake up and found the value of their house decrease. When they want to mortgage their house again, they can't. Simply because the value of their house is lower than their debt. What happen if there are millions homeowners like this? It brings the world's biggest economy to its knee, and pull the rest of the world with it.
So, if the value of house can decrease, why can't gold? At least house has real function than gold. What will happen to thousand of housewifes that follow the path of "berkebun emas" when gold value decrease? They will find their lifetime savings decreace and burden with a very huge debt. Don't get me wrong, I do not oppose the gold investment. In fact, I think we need to invest in gold to diversified our portfolio as insurance to guard our investment value. But don't invest in gold because crazy speculation that gold value will increase all the time.
The point is, if you want to invest in gold, make sure it's not at the peek of bubble before it burst. Because like every good event organizers know, the last man to leave the party will have to pay all the bills.
At my first day in Jogja I left my wallet in the taxi. I cursed my stupidity because I lost all my money and my ATM in a city that I barely know. But you know what? The taxi driver voluntarily turned around and gave my wallet back. For a first impression, Jogja gave me a nice one, and so the rest of all of my experiences in this gorgeous city.
Jogja is not a perfect city though. At first, I bitched about how hot the weather, the foods were too sweet for my taste, and how bad was the public transportation system in this city. But all the grumbling and complain I had, yet can't stop me to fall to Jogja's charm. There are so many things to love in this city than to be hated. I glad I had spent some times and collected many unforgettable memories. I won't forget all the 'kaki - lima' along the Kaliurang street and its street singers. I won't forget the 7pm-hustle when people hit the street to find dinner. I won't forget all the small coffee shop and the buzzing conversations in it. I won't forget anything.
I will forget nothing.
In the end Jogja is the kind of city which you think you know every corner of it, yet you don't. Jogja is the city you want to leave as soon as possible, yet you won't. It's pretty crazy when sometimes you think about home, you think about Jogja.
But for now, it's a goodbye then.
Finally I signed up (again) at posterous. But right now I don't feel like writing anything, so I'll just repost stuffs from the last posterous, simply because I don't like this empty page. Enjoy!
Signing up for Posterous . . . again.
