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Sikap yang paling bijak . . . . baca email ini,

renungkan, moga-moga bermanfaat

NGGAK USAH IKUT2AN ATAUPUN ISENG-ISENG

WALAUPUN SMS PREMIUM HANYA Rp 2000

benar tidaknya cerita ini tolong ambil hikmah yang tersurat dan tersirat didalamnya

siapa yang sukses . . . . siapa yang ketiban rezeki atas prestasinya

siapa yang untung . . . . . siapa yang buntung . . .

karena adu nasib siapa tahu dapat doorprize ???????







DONGENG - DONGENG

Dua hari yan g lalu gw ketemu dengan salah seorang AFI (Akademi Fantasi Indosiar).

Selain lepas kangen (he..he) gw juga dapat cerita seru dari kehidupan mereka.

Di balik image mereka yan g gemerlap saat manggung atau ketika nongol di teve ,

kehidupan artis AFI sangat memprihatinkan.

Banyak di antara mereka yan g hidup terlilit utang ratusan juta rupiah.

Pasalnya , orang tua mereka ngutang ke sana-sini buat menggenjot sms

putera-puteri mereka. Bisa dipastikan tidak ada satu pun kemenangan AFI itu

yan g berasal dari pilihan publik. Kemenangan mereka ditentukan seberapa besar

orang tua mereka anggup menghabiskan uang untuk sms.

Orang tua Alfin dan Bojes abis 1 M. Namun mereka orang kaya , biarin aja.

Yang kasian mah , yan g kaga punya duit. Fibri (AFI 005) yan g tereliminasi di minggu-minggu awal

kini punya utang 250 juta. Dia sekarang hidup di sebuah kos sederhana di depan Indosiar.

Kosnya emang sedikit mahal RP 500..000. Namun itu dipilih karena

pertimbangan hemat ongkos transportasi. Kos itu sederhana (masih bagusan kos gw gitu loh) ,

bahkan kamar mandi pun di luar. Makannya sekali sehari.

Makan dua kali sehari sudah mewah buat Fibri.

Kaga ada dugem dan kehidupan glamor , lha makan aja susah.
>
Ada banyak yan g seperti Fibri. Sebut saja intan , Nana , Yuke , Eki , dll.
>
Mereka teikat kontrak ekslusif dengan manajemen Indosiar. Jadi , kaga bisa cari job di luar

Indosiar. Bayaran di Indonesiar sangat kecil. Lagian pembagian job manggung sangat tidak adil.

Beberapa artis AFI seperti Jovita dan Pasya kebanjiran job ,

sementara yan g lain kaga dapat/jarang dapat job. Maklum artisnya sudah kebanyakan.

Makanya buat makan aja mereka susah. Temen gw malah sering dijadiin tempat buat

minjem duit. Minjemnya bahkan cuma Rp 100.000. Buat makan gitu loh.

Mereka ga berani minjem banyak karena takut ga bisa bayar.
>
Ini benar-benar proyek yan g tidak manusiawi.
Para orang tua dan anak Indonesia dijanjikan
ketenaran dan kekayaan lewat sebuah ajang adu bakat di televisi.
Mereka dikontrak ekslusif selama dua tahun
oleh Indosiar. Namun tidak ada jaminan hidup sama sekali.
Mereka hanya dibayar kalo ada manggung. Itu
pun kecil sekali , dan tidak menentu. Buruh pabrik
yan g gajinya Rp 900.000 jauh lebih sejahtera daripada mereka.

Nah acara ini dan acara sejenis masih banyak ,
Pildacil juga begitu. Kasian orang tua dan anak yan g
rela antre berjam-jam untuk sebuah penipuan seperti ini.
Seorang anak pernah menangis tersedu-sedu saat
Tidak lolos dalam audisi AFI. Padahal dia beruntung.
Kalau dia sampai masuk , bisa diba yan gkan betapa dia akan
membuat orang tuanya punya utang yan g melilit
pinggang , yan g tidak akan terbayar sampai kontraknya habis.
mungkin ada yan g tertarik buat ngangkat cerita
itu ke media anda? Gw punya nomer kontak mereka.
Gaya hidup mereka yan g kontras dengan image publik
ka yan ya menarik untuk diangkat. Ini juga penting
agar anak-anak dan orang tua di Indonesia kaga
tertipu lebih banyak lagi.




JUDI SMS MENGGILAAAA

Tiap stasiun televisi di Indonesia mempunyai acara kontes-kontesan.
Tengok saja misalnya AFI , Indonesian Idol , Penghuni Terakhir , KDI , Putri Cantrik , dsb.
Sejatinya , tujuan dari acara ini bukan mencari bibit pen yan yi terbaik.
Acara ini hanya sebagai kedok. Bisnis sebenarnya adalah SMS premium.

Bisnis ini sangat menggiurkan , lagi pula aman dari jeratan hukum -- setidaknya
sampai saat ini. Mari kita hitung. Satu kali kirim SMS bia yan ya --anggaplah- - Rp 2000.
Uang dua ribu rupiah ini sekitar 60% untuk penyelenggara SMS Center (Satelindo , Telkomsel , dsb).
Sisanya yan g 40% untuk "bandar" (penyelenggara) SMS.
Siapa saja bisa jadi bandar , asal punya modal untuk sewa server yan g terhubung ke
Internet nonstop 24 jam per hari dan membuat program aplikasinya.
Jika dari satu SMS ini "bandar" mendapat 40% (artinya sekitar Rp 800) , maka jika yan g Kirim
sebanyak 5% saja dari total penduduk Indonesia
Coba hitung , dari 100 orang kawan anda , berapa yan g punya handphone?
Saya yakin lebih dari 40% , maka bandar ini bisa meraup uang sebanyak

Rp 80.000.000.000
(Delapan puluh milyar rupiah).

Jika hadiah yan g diiming-imingkan adalah ? rumah senilai 1 milyar , itu artinya bandar hanya
perlu menyisihkan 1 , 25% dari keuntungan yan g diraupnya sebagai "biaya promosi"!
Dan ingat , satu orang biasanya tidak mengirimkan SMS hanya sekali.
Masyarakat diminta mengirimkan SMS sebanyak-banyaknya agar jagoannya tidak tersisih ,
dan "siapa tahu" mendapat hadiah. Kata "siapa tahu" adalah untung-untungan , yan g
mempertaruhkan pulsa handphone. Pulsa ini dibeli pakai uang.
Artinya : Kuis SMS adalah 100% judi
.
>
Begitu menggiurkannya bisnis ini , sampai-sampai Nutrisari membuat iklan yan g saya
pikir menyesatkan. Pemirsa televisi diminta menebak , "buka" atau
"sahur" , lalu jawabannya dikirim via SMS. Ada embel-embel gratis.
Ada kata , "dapatkan handphone... " Saya bilang ini menyesatkan , karena pemirsa
televisi bisa men yan gka : "Dengan mengirimkan SMS ke nomor sekian yan g
gratis (toll free) , saya bisa mendapat handphone gratis".

Kondisi ini sudah sangat menyedihkan. Bahkan sangat gawat.
Lebih parah daripada zaman Porkas atau SDSB.
Jika dulu , orang untuk bisa berjudi harus mendatangi agen , jika dulu zaman jahiliyah orang
berjudi dengan anak panah , sekarang orang bisa berjudi , hanya dengan beberapa
ketukan jari di pesawat handphone!

Tolong bantu sebarkan kampanye anti judi SMS ini.
Tanpa bantuan anda , kampanye ini akan meredup dan sia-sia belakan
Ingat Peluang anda Menang quiz SMS cuma 0,001 %
Yang lebih perlu diingat siappun dari anda yang menang
termasuk bintang2 realty show yang juara
bandarlah pemenang sebenarnya.



Rice, death and the dollar
By Spengler


The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.

Months ago, I offered that China, Russia and other cash-rich nations held the antidote to the incipient credit crisis: "If the US wants to remain the magnet for world capital flows it became during the 1990s, it will have to allow the savers of the world to become partners in the US economy, that is, to buy into its first-rank companies."(Western grasshoppers and Chinese ants, Asia Times Online, September 5, 2007.)

No such thing occurred, of course, as Washington has made it clear that it would not allow sovereign funds to own the likes of Citicorp. What are the world's investors doing with the trillion dollars a year they used to invest in American securities, including subprime derivatives and various forms of collateralized obligations that turned out to have more obligation than collateral? They aren't buying American companies because they are not permitted to. They are buying food and other stores of value instead.

Washington has weakened the value of the dollar as a palliative for the credit crisis, so much so that "nobody seems to doubt that the US dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency", as journalist Amity Shlaes wrote in an April 9 Bloomberg News column entitled "Monks may hold clue to dollar's future".

"Perhaps the dollar won't surrender its anchor role so soon," Shlaes continued. "And perhaps that loss, if it comes, will happen because of events that take place nowhere near men in suits at a central bank. Maybe the answer to the dollar's riddle can be found in the cellphone photo image of a Tibetan monk in crimson and orange squaring off with a Chinese soldier ... China might recede into years of ethnic chaos. In any of these cases, the new Chinese government won't be forced to deliver the same growth, and therefore won't spend commensurate energy tending the dollar ... The flash of orange in the robe of the monk is important enough to change the picture for the greenback."

Misguided is not the word for this sort of thinking. However unlikely it might be, one cannot exclude the possibility that "ethnic chaos" will afflict China at some future point. The one thing that can be stated with certainty is that long before chaos reaches China, it will have shattered a great deal of the rest of the world.

China is exchanging its depreciating reserves of US dollars for things of value, notably rice, with frightening consequences for dependent countries, and deadly consequences for American foreign policy.

The chart below shows the price of 100 pounds of rice against the euro's parity against the US dollar during the past 12 months. The regression fit is 90%. There is an even tighter relationship between the price of rice and the price of oil, another store of value against dollar depreciation.

Rice price vs Euro/US$ rate, April 15, 2007 to April 15, 2008

As the chart makes clear, the ascent of the cost of rice to $24 from $10 per hundredweight over the past year tracks the declining value of the American dollar. The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable. China has bid aggressively for rice all year, and last week banned rice exports, along with Vietnam and several other producers.

Euro/US$ rate vs rice and oil, April 16, 2007 to April 16, 2008


For developing countries whose currencies track the American dollar and whose purchasing power declines along with the American unit, this is a catastrophe, as World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned the Group of Seven industrial nations in Washington last week. Food security suddenly has become the top item on the strategic agenda.

Never before in history has hunger become a global threat in a period of plentiful harvests. Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world's rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price.

It is not only rice, of course, that the cash-rich countries of the world are buying as a store of value; the price of wheat, soy and other grains has risen almost as fast. This might deal the death-blow to America's hapless efforts to stabilize the Middle East, where a higher proportion of impoverished people eat off state subsidies than in any other part of the world. Egypt has been the anchor for American diplomacy in the Arab world since the Jimmy Carter administration (1977 to 1981), and is most susceptible to hunger. Food prices have risen by 145% in Lebanon and by 20% in Syria this year. Iraqis depend on food subsidies financed by American aid.

Reduced to essentials, America's foreign policy sought two unattainable objectives: to stabilize the Middle East and destabilize China. That is an exaggeration, of course, for Washington hoped not to sow instability, but only to put China in its place over the Tibetan affair.

The George W Bush administration might as well have used the State Department as a set for the Jackass reality show. American arrogance has eroded the ground under many of the governments on which its foreign policy depends. It is hard to characterize what will come next, except, like the stunts on Jackass, that it is going to hurt.

Obama's women reveal his secret
By Spengler

"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America.

We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama. No man - least of all one abandoned in infancy by his father - can conceal the imprint of an impassioned mother, or the influence of a brilliant wife.

America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.

Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised.

Ann Dunham died in 1995, and her character emerges piecemeal from the historical record, to which I will return below. But Michelle Obama is a living witness. Her February 18 comment that she felt proud of her country for the first time caused a minor scandal, and was hastily qualified. But she meant it, and more. The video footage of her remarks shows eyes hooded with rage as she declares:

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.

The desperation, frustration and disappointment visible on Michelle Obama's face are not new to the candidate's wife; as Steve Sailer, Rod Dreher and other commentators have noted, they were the theme of her undergraduate thesis, on the subject of "blackness" at Princeton University. No matter what the good intentions of Princeton, which founded her fortunes as a well-paid corporate lawyer, she wrote, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong."

Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007.

"For some reason this guy still can't manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn't get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, "She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she'd like to meet him sometime." Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.

"Frustration" and "disappointment" have dogged Michelle Obama these past 20 years, despite her US$300,000 a year salary and corporate board memberships. It is hard for the descendants of slaves not to resent America. They were not voluntary immigrants but kidnap victims, subjected to a century of second-class citizenship even after the Civil War ended slavery. Blackness is not the issue; General Colin Powell, whose parents chose to immigrate to America from the West Indies, saw America just as other immigrants do, as a land of opportunity. Obama's choice of wife is a failsafe indicator of his own sentiments. Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common. Obama imbibed this hatred with his mother's milk.

Michelle Obama speaks with greater warmth of her mother-in-law than of her husband. "She was kind of a dreamer, his mother," Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. "She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don't pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don't in this country." How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.

"Naivete" is a euphemism for Ann Dunham's motivation. Friends describe her as a "fellow traveler", that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero's student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation.

Soetero had been sponsored as a graduate student by one of the most radical of all Third World governments. Sukarno had founded the so-called Non-Aligned Movement as an anti-colonialist turn at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Before deposing him in 1967, Indonesia's military slaughtered 500,000 communists (or unfortunates who were mistaken for communists). When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediate following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history.

Dunham's experience in Indonesia provided the material for a doctoral dissertation celebrating the hardiness of local cultures against the encroaching metropolis. It was entitled, "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds". In this respect Dunham remained within the mainstream of her discipline. Anthropology broke into popular awareness with Margaret Mead's long-discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which offered a falsified ideal of sexual liberation in the South Pacific as an alternative to the supposedly repressive West. Mead's work was one of the founding documents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and anthropology faculties stood at the left-wing fringe of American universities.

In the Global South, anthropologists went into the field and took matters a step further. Peru's brutal Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla movement was the brainchild of the anthropologistEfrai n Morote Best, who headed the University of San Cristobal of Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, between 1962 and 1968. Dunham's radicalism was more vicarious; she ended her career as an employee of international organizations.

Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. In the Muslim world of the 1960s, nationalism rather than radical Islam was the ideology of choice among the enraged. Radical Islam did not emerge as a major political force until the nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser or a Sukarno failed.

Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently [1].

Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion's Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.

This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer are poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

The George W Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America's standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America's standing. It might take the country another generation to recover.

"Evil will oft evil mars", J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama. As he recalled in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama idealized the Kenyan economist who had married and dumped his mother, and was saddened to learn that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a sullen, drunken polygamist. The elder Obama became a senior official of the government of Kenya after earning a PhD at Harvard. He was an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career.

The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals - and nothing can be more terrible for the system. Even those who despise America for its blunders of the past few years should ask themselves whether the world will be a safer place if America retreats into a self-pitying shell.

Note
1. Obama bin lottery Asia Times Online, January 29, 2008.


Lebih Baik?
Satu hal penting yang saya ambil dari hari ketiga bersama Bandler adalah makna 'bertumbuh' atau 'lebih baik'. Tidak sedikit orang yang hanya ingin memahami 'lebih baik' sebagai menjadi lebih baik dari orang lain atau menjadi yang terbaik dari siapapun, dan sejenisnya. Bandler secara sederhana menggambarkan 'lebih baik' sebagai 'lebih baik dari diri kita yang sebelumnya'. Karena kita berlomba-lomba menjadi lebih baik dari orang lain, menyamai orang lain, menjadi yang terbaik, dan lain-lain, tapi tidak punya gambaran sama sekali apakah kita sudah lebih baik dari diri kita sebelumnya. Dan tidak sedikit yang kehilangan motivasi saat kita tahu tidak bisa menjadi sebaik orang yang kita jadikan model atau menjadi lebih baik dari orang lain.
Punya model untuk memacu kita adalah bagus. Punya tujuan adalah hebat. Menjadi lebih baik dari sebelumnya juga tidak kalah hebatnya, walaupun belum lebih hebat dari yang lain!
So? PILIHAN sederhananya adalah di setiap langkah kita, tidak saja FOKUS pada apakah kita sudah lebih baik dari orang lain, apakah kita sudah jadi yang terbaik, tapi juga apakah kita sudah lebih baik dari diri kita kemarin, minggu lalu, bulan lalu, tahun lalu. Menjadi lebih baik dari orang lain tidak secara otomatis menjadikan diri kita lebih baik dari sebelumnya, apalagi apabila kita memang sudah dalam posisi lebih baik dari orang tersebut.
JADILAH LEBIH BAIK DARI DIRI KITA SEBELUMNYA, SETIAP HARI, DALAM SETIAP HAL.

'Utang' Ronaldo kepada MU

Barcelona - Tak bisa dibantah kalau Cristiano Ronaldo sudah jadi inspirator permainan Manchester United sehingga jadi kesayangan fans timnya. Namun pasti tak sedikit yang kini menyesali kegagalannya mencetak gol dari titik putih ke gawang Barcelona.

Di Premiership musim ini, Ronaldo memuncaki papan topskorer sementara dengan 28 golnya. Pun demikian di Liga Champions, di mana winger Portugal itu masih jadi pemain tertajam dengan raihan tujuh buah gol. Buat fans "Setan Merah", dirinya tak pelak jadi pujaan.

Menjelang laga semifinal Liga Champions melawan Barcelona di Nou Camp, Kamis (24/4/2008) dinihari WIB, Ronaldo --atau kini acap disebut CR7-- pun digadang bakal jadi salah satu bintang pertandingan.

Dalam pertandingan, meski dikawal ketat lawan praktis selama 90 menit, Ronaldo masih bisa menebar ancaman sehingga memaksa lawan kerap menjatuhkannya. Namun yang fatal, dia malah gagal menuntaskan peluang emas bagi timnya untuk menang.

Di menit-menit awal pertandingan, pemain yang pada 5 Februari lalu genap berusia 23 tahun itu menjadi algojo penalti usai bek lawan, Gabriel Milito, menyentuh bola. Tinggal berhadapan dengan kiper Victor Valdes dari titik 12 pas, sontekan Ronaldo gagal menggetarkan gawang lawan.

Sebelumnya, dia relatif tak kesulitan menuntaskan tugas dari titik putih. Apa ada yang berbeda dari biasanya, misalnya, caranya mengambil tembakan penalti? "Saya tak berubah. Saya mencetak beberapa penalti dari sisi itu tapi hari ini saya tak mencetak gol, tak masalah," jawabnya dalam wawancara dengan Sky Sports.

Dengan kegagalan Ronaldo mencetak gol ke-39-nya musim ini, pertandingan pun berakhir imbang tanpa gol. Akan tetapi, hasil serupa diyakininya tak bakal kembali terulang pada leg kedua di Old Trafford pekan depan. "Nanti kami akan bermain di rumah. Saya pikir kami akan menang," tegas dia.

Kegagalannya mencetak gol dari titik putih sepertinya tak membuat Ronaldo patah arang. Dia tetap optimistis dan misi lain kini diusungnya. "Sekarang saya akan mencetak gol di Manchester," pungkas pemain bernomor punggung tujuh itu.

Ronaldo memang harus berupaya keras untuk membayar lunas kegagalannya di Nou Camp. Jika MU nantinya sampai tersingkir, yang langsung teringat pertama kali oleh fans "Red Devils" pasti adalah kegagalannya menuntaskan tendangan penalti ke gawang Valdes.


Fergie: Ronaldo Tak Beruntung

Barcelona - Kegagalan Cristiano Ronaldo menjaringkan bola ke gawang Barcelona dari titik penalti membuat Manchester United hanya bisa mengimbangi tuan rumah tanpa bikin gol. Sir Alex Ferguson yang tak kecewa menilai kalau Ronaldo sekadar sial.

MU memiliki peluang untuk membawa pulang kemenangan dari lawatannya ke Nou Camp, Kamis (24/4/2008) dinihari WIB. Jika itu yang terjadi, bisa dibilang satu kaki "Setan Merah" sudah di final.

Namun demikian, Ronaldo yang memiliki peluang emas tersebut justru menyia-nyiakannya. Sepakannya dari titik putih di menit-menit awal tak menemukan sasaran.

"Cristiano Ronaldo sedikit tak beruntung dengan penalti itu. Mungkin (karena) terlalu dini di menit-menit awal pertandingan. Dia sedikit bersandar ke belakang... mengecewakan," tukas Fergie seperti dilansir Yahoosport.

Meski kecewa terhadap urungnya kesempatan itu jadi gol, manajer asal Skotlandia tersebut tak merasakan hal serupa terhadap penampilan Ronaldo secara umum. Dia malah melayangkan pujian. "Apapun juga, malam ini dia luar biasa."

Dengan hasil dalam pertandingan tersebut, Fergie juga optimistis kalau timnya akan melangkah ke final karena pada returning leg mereka akan jadi tuan rumah di Old Trafford. "Dengan rekor kami di Old Trafford, dengan dukungan penonton, saya pikir kami punya peluang besar," optimistis Fergie.

Terkait dengan itu, dia pun turut melayangkan pujian kepada lini bertahan MU yang mampu menahan serangan gencar para pemain Barca. "Saya pikir itu sangat profesional. Kami mampu menutup area yang biasanya tidak bisa dilakukan tim lain saat melawan Barcelona." (krs/key)