As a fan of X-Men comics (I read this comics since 1979, and the first characters I knew was Cyclops and Wolverine), I would like to welcome the first Muslim X-Men member, Dust or Sooraya Qadir.

From Wikipedia : 

Dust is an adolescent Sunni Muslim girl who possesses the mutant power to turn herself into a sand-like substance. Born in Afghanistan, Sooraya is kidnapped by a slave-trading ring after she is separated from her mother. While one of her slavers tries to remove her niqab, she instinctively lashes out with her powers and flays them all alive with her dust form before passing out. She is subsequently discovered and rescued by Wolverine and Fantomex. 

        

Dust is shown praying to Allah before being teleported with the other students to Limbo where she is held captive by Belasco and his demons. In #39, X-23 breaks free and urges Dust and Mercury to join her in fighting Belasco. Dust is too afraid of Belasco, believing him to be the Devil, but when X-23 is seemingly killed, Dust breaks free and attacks Belasco, saying that if she is to die in battle against “the Devil”, she would make Allah proud. Dust and Mercury fight with Belasco and manage to hold their own due to the fact that their transient forms give them limited resistance to Belasco’s magic. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, me and my family watched the movie “Iron Man“ at Cibubur Junction. Frankly speaking, I am the fans of Iron Man since I was elementary school students, and it was about in 1981. I read the Iron man comics for the first time that year. But Iron Man was not my top favorites superhero, and Batman and Superman were the ones that time. It seems that my son Raihan also like the movie, specially when Iron Man had a dog fight with two fighters F-22 Raptor in the sky. Raihan is a fans of fighter aeroplanes. He could identify a fighter, wether it is F-14, F-16, F-22, etc.

Anyway, today I am really impressed with Iron Man, because he is not a superhero. Iron Man or Tony Stark is just an ordinary man, like Batman or Bruce Wayne, but the advanced or high end technology made them as super hero. They are so different compare to Superman, for example, which as a super-human power and ability.

But today’s Iron Man was so different compare to his first performance in comics. There was a kind of technology revolutionary for Iron Man.

Well, I vote a good rating for this film. The character of Iron man is more human and more realistic, like Batman, and that’s make the film more realistic and more enjoyable …

Today, I got 2 more book directly from the author. The author is Prof. Sjafri Mangkuprawira, my doctoral dissertation advisor and my teacher at Doctor of Business Management programat Bogor Agriculture University (IPB). The first book titled “Horison Bisnis, Manajemen, dan SDM” is a compilations of his articles posted on his blog “Rona Wajah”. These articles comprised of current issues in business, organizations, management, education, and human resource management. As a compilation of articles, this is a popular book, easy to read, and easy to understand, and of course, so many lessons learned as it meant.

The second book is kind of tribute to Prof. Sjafri, although there are 3 articles from him in this book, but other parts comprised of tributes to his dedication in education at Bogor Agriculture University for more than 35 years (almost the same as my age !). Prof. Sjafri rises 3 issues here, (1) the Indonesian national agriculture issue, (2) the human resource management issue in Indonesia, and (3) the new paradigm of management education in Indonesia. These 3 articles are very interesting, because they reflect Prof. Sjafri’s focus of attention, agriculture world (since he is a lecturer at IPB, a leading agriculture university in Indonesia), the human resource management issue (his main focus), and management education (since he is a management lecturer).

If I should explain his thoughs in his 2 books here, of course, would not sufficient enough. And I recommend everyone to go directly to his blog here … Happy reading …

Yesterday, I got another book from a friend, and this time was Michell Suharli. The book title is “Mind Set”, comprised of 10 strategies to achieve success by managing your mindset. Michell Suharli is a businessman, owner of a consulting firm that focused on self development, and also an academician in management. He was my student at Master of Accounting program, Trisakti University, a few years ago, and he was a brilliant one. I am very sure of that. I still remember, he has a critical way of thinking and made him different compare to others in the class.

Michell also asked some comments from me about this book a few months ago, before it is published. I gave comments on his book, that it was observed that there are 3 components that determine the success of business, or life in more general, (1) the brain, (2) the heart, and (3) the guts. So, Michell contributions in this book would be significant for the last two components, the heart and the guts. It is true that this book is lack of scientific argument, but I guess that is the strength of this book, easy to read and understand. People will gain benefits from that style of writing.

So, good luck Michell … we are waiting for your next book !