WTF!

My sister is still studying in high school (note : It is a boarding school quite remote from civilization, though once was distinguished as the best multiracial and national school in the entire Indonesia –I didn’t say that school is a hasbeen, though I want to-). She’s always asking for iPod Nano, latest Digicam, most recent cell phone, as well as up-to-date laptop when I am home, and keeps saying that most of her friends already have it thus bringing it easily to school.

I was like… WTH.. WTF… **&*^&%^%^E$%#$#$!!!!!

Did teenager nowadays have even a little bit sense of crisis? Did they really need a super advance laptop while they probably only require Ms. Office or Adobe Photoshop as their most necessity? I just don’t get the point. When I was on high school, I always went to the nearest internet café in order to do a project or homework, coz I didn’t see any urgent need to own a Notebook, or digicam while I was still on High School, especially on a boarding school that I mentioned above in particular.

Numbers... Money... But they're not yours XD

I realize that it must be hard being parents in today’s era, whereby cost of having the kids is skyrocketing (hence some people prefer to be a single or married without kids). I mean, what is the normal wage for a medium income family in Indonesia, minus the monthly household expenditure, minus the tuition fee of kids, minus income tax, minus transportation, minus recreation fee, minus this and that, and how much will we get as a monthly saving? Oh, did I mention the cost of e-goods and clothes? And now, kids / teenagers are sometimes brainlessly spending money out of nothing, and it doesn’t even worth to be called ‘an investment’ (I didn’t point out bluntly to all teenagers, just some, though still that many).

Having been working in a consultancy firm, sometimes I was wondering with the Indonesia’s statistical economic data above the paper, depicting the middle to high purchasing power of Indonesian consumers, for any branded or luxurious good. Some random data from a research firm (citation needed, but I forgot :S), Indonesian citizens are ranking the 2^nd in terms of likelihood to shop (the 1^st rank is Hongkong people, I left with no wonderment :p), it shows that Indonesians ARE affluent. In fact, when I was going back to Jakarta, I realized that things didn’t look that smooth. There’s still countless of people living under poverty line, and they’re outnumbered the percentage of middle-high income for certain.

And this was my conclusion why there’s no flawless research methods, as the data cannot tell you the 360 degrees of truth : the discrepancy of the affluent and the poor are getting wider and wider as time counts. The rich is getting richer, and the poor is becoming poorer, thus the soaring high earnings from the affluent party have constructed the National Income to be higher in number (but less representing the real welfare condition of the citizens, as the economic gap is so high). From the time being, I do believe that we can’t easily depend on qualitative approach, but also quantitative study at the same time, in order to get a better understanding of both macro and micro insight out of everything.

Anyway, I should have read over spoilers in Narutofan forum, why did i even bother to write things like these :S?