The Awful Odor

About a week ago I stumbled across SMAN 5 Pekanbaru during my assignment of promoting Politeknik Caltex Riau to 3rd year students. When I got out of the car, my immediate response was, "What is this smell? So awful!." A friend of mine explained that the smell came from rubber. There a rubber processing factory near SMAN 5.

A few things came out of my mind, "How can they study in this kind of environment? How can they concentrate? Why can't we just sue the factory for polluting the air?"
After a few moment I realize that the students and the teacher there didn't even bothered with the odor. Apparently, we get used to the odor after a while and didn't smell th odor anymore.
That's exactly our smell sensor works. After a while their sensitivity to a specific odor is decreasing. In a few minutes, we are no longer smell the same odor. This is why we almost cannot smell our own scent. We get used to it! We also can't smell our perfume (after few minutes) while other people can.

Here is a quote from familyfun.go.com:
Our sense of smell begins when we inhale, bringing chemical particles into your nasal cavity. Here, millions of smell sensors are packed into a patch smaller than a postage stamp. These chemicals have to be dissolved to be sensed, so our nose produces sticky mucus. When these dissolved chemicals come into contact with smell receptors, nerve impulses are sent to the brain.
When we first inhale the scents of the forest--pine needles, musty leaves, split wood--we smell everything at first. But after a while, strong scents begin to fade. That's because smell sensors get used to the scents and stop sending new signals to your brain. This helps us become aware of newer smells, like the odor of a skunk.

Parallel to this phenomenon, our sensitivity towards many event in our country (or our environment) is decreasing through time. We easily forget an event after another event. We easily forget the fuel price increase after The Ambalat affair. Just like perfume covering our body scent.

***

Back to SMAN 5. Afetr a while getting used to the smell, my sensors begun to be insensitive. Yet, about ten minutes later, to my slight disbelieve, I smell those awful odor again! What happened then? Apparently the wind has changed its direction. When the wind changed direction (again) towards SMAN 5, I smell the odor once again.

The Americans built the 911 Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. This memorial would keep people remembering the tragedy of September 11 and the Vietnam War. We Indonesian also have many memorial from the colonial era, independence war, and the revolution era. These memorials would make the wind blow in the right direction. So people would forever smell the odor.

The problem is that many government want people to remember only their bright side. The dark side should be forgotten. There is no memorial for the super invlation or the increase of the fuel price for example. Maybe it’s the nature of humanity. We all want to remember the good things and forget the bad.

Rumbai 15 March 2005 0744