Not a Drill!!

This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!!

Zing!

Once again a great piece of thought has been swept away by the stupidity that surrounds me.

As I was about to type my commentary on civil liberties, its merits and problems I was asked by a male student filling in a medical check-up form "what does it mean by 'are you pergnant'?"

What's the point?

Conversation between me and a colleague who was reading a newspaper:

Me: What's The Point?
Not me: What?
Me: What's the point?
NM: of what?
Me: Nothing, I'm asking you what's the point?
NM: you're not making any sense
Me: I'm not trying to, I'm asking what is the point (as I pointed at his newspaper)
NM: ..........

Apparently The Point is a Jakarta Based English language newspaper.

EAT FISH!

"Recent studies have shown that the combination of a nutritious diet, daily fish oil supplements and/or three oily fish meals, like salmon, sardines or fresh tuna, a week can help alleviate depression symptoms."

So all you emo people EAT MORE OILY FISH!

of Knights and fire breathing dragons

Come and witness the horrible paper waster viewable in my office! The paper waster or as is commonly known to the punlic as the Xerox Phaser 3210 PCL 6 occasionally prints paper like anyother printer but more than often it would gobble 3 to 5 pages at once before it chockes on it, once chocked it requires a considerable amount of force to dislodge the paper, rarely the paper goes unscathed but more often it would ruin the paper making it unpresentable due to the excessive force applied in an attempt to dislodge it, sometimes causing sever damage to the paper (ripping it to pieces). Dislodging the paper requires extra caution as the heat inside may reach up to 180 degrees centigrade, enough to scald human skin..... or bake cookies

Request for removal and replacement of this abomination have been submited but is currently meeting heavy resistance from the finance division.

Expansion pack

Following my recent acquisition of a new filing cabinet I was required to expand my work area to accomodate the filing cabinet, expanding my overall work area (and leg swinging space) by approximately 0.5 meters square. I have also acquired a white table cloth to put on my new filing cabinet so the color will not clash when I decide to position my iBook on top of the cabinet, the table cloth also has the effect of preventing the bottom part of my iBook to be in direct contact with the cold hard steel cabinet.

The position of my new cabinet is next to my old wooden cabinet that I use to store my personal effects, the positioning of these two cabinets can be defined as a cabinet meeting.

confused and bewildered

I know this isn't my usual funny blog since I set up my LJ account but since that one is firewalled by my office server I'll just have to post it here.

It's Staurday, I'm working....again and 5 years from now on this exact same date it would be one of the funniest date in History (provided you go by the Gregorian standard and go with dd/mm/yy). I can't wait to be the first person to type PWND!!!11/11/11/11/11/11/11 on the day

After supervising an English test for almost 2 hours while reading "On sovereignty" (selected writings from Hobbes' Leviathan and Locke's Second Treatise of Government) I sat back behind my desk to do some browsing on the net (because I couldn't do what I was supposed to do), naturaly I went to uncyclopedia to waste my time as always, as ths internet god would have it Xenu was one of the first links I saw, yes, Xenu, those things from scientology. Naturaly I clicked it, the article itself was quite funny and retarded as all uncyclopedia articles are what was different was it had a direct link to wikipedia's entry on the same subject. After a thorough reading of both articles I am now confused, I thought uncyclopedia was supposed to be the retarded one.

but don't make my judgement cloud you, which one's more ridiculous, Wikipedia's xenu or the Wilde version


To be fair I'm never a big fan of religion but this just proves how far a person would go to simply avoid paying tax.

Quote of the day

"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."

-Carl Bernstein-

Just another day at the office

It's a quiet late morning (10 am ish) all my colleagues called in sick and I'm alone in my office sitting on my desk with a slice of tiramisu and a mug of hot lemon tea while the sweet sound of a piano melody playing in the background courtesy of Iwashiro Taro.

the best part is I'm getting paid doing this

Back on the job

Hmmm...seems like it's been a while since my last update, naibly because the office computer just firewalled all my blogsite including this one, I couldn't view or update anything. So that's one of the reason, the other being the hard drive on my iBook just sort of died, good thing I backed up most of the things I need with the exception of my adium and iChat buddy list no biggie though since I never did have a lot on it anyway.

First things first, as I mentioned some time ago I applied for a another job sometime ago before the holidays well I wasn’t accepted, I wasn’t really hopeful in the beginning but it would have been nice to get it, same old story as always they told me I was under experienced, which for this one I actually agree with, but that’s that.

During the break I was reminded of a time when I was unemployed I managed to finish reading 3 books and do almost nothing else but sit and play games or watch TV which to be honest was quite relaxing. On the other hand it was a forced holiday taken under protest, by me, simply because I had a whole pile of paper work to do and not a lot of time to do it, but nonetheless I stayed home and did nothing. The break was meant for the Moslem majority to celebrate "eid", giving them a chance to visit out of town relatives, although the majority of my family members are Moslem we didn't have that many relatives outside Jakarta that and I’m really not fond of tradition so I stayed at home, occasionally having some guests over. I have no problem with it in principle but I do have a problem with being forced to take a holiday on a highly inappropriate time other wise known as "last minute University intake period".

Now that one holiday period is over I'm here sitting back on my office chair typing this blog after 3 mugs of tea and a long day of filing, data sorting, counseling and a particularly troubling predicament which was caused by negligence on my part resulting in a situation which I can only describe as "Oh shi...", I have a feeling I'll be having a very long break if doesn't get sorted soon.



That was longer than I expected.

How many people does it take to cut down a tree in the Korean DMZ?

Some time ago in the Korean DMZ, "the UN Command determined to cut down the tree using an overwhelming force. The operation was conceived as a US/South Korean show of force, but was also carefully managed to prevent further escalation.

Operation Paul Bunyan was carried out on August 21 at 7 a.m., just 3 days after the killings. A convoy of 23 American and South Korean vehicles ('Task Force Vierra') drove into the JSA without any warning to the North Koreans, who only had one observation post manned at the early hour. In the vehicles was a 16 man U.S. engineering team with axes and chainsaws who immediately started cutting down the tree, while one of the trucks was positioned to block the Bridge of No Return. The engineering team was accompanied by a 30 man security platoon armed with pistols and axe handles. In addition, a 64 man ROK special forces team accompanied them, armed with clubs and trained in Tae Kwon Do.

A U.S. infantry company in 20 utility helicopters and 7 Cobra attack helicopters circled behind them. Behind these helicopters B-52 bombers, escorted by U.S. F-4 fighters and R.O.K F-5 fighters were visible flying across the sky at high altitude. At Osan Air Base, F-111 fighters had been armed and fueled, ready to take off at short notice. The Midway aircraft carrier task force had also been moved to be stationed just off-shore. In addition, near the edges of the DMZ, many more heavily armed U.S. and ROK infantry, artillery, and armor were waiting to back up the special operations team. The bases near the DMZ were prepared for demolition in the case of a military response.

North Korea mobilized about 150 troops armed with assault rifles who watched in silence as the tree was felled in 42 minutes, and a violent confrontation was avoided. Also removed were two road barriers illegally installed by the North Koreans, while the South Korean troops also overzealously vandalized two North Korean watch posts. The stump of the tree was left as a deliberate reminder."


Source wikipedia

blurry light in the middle of the road

I'm currently stuck at a crossroad with one heading straight forward and the other to an uncertain path. I've been given an oportunity to apply for a job where my skills and knowldege in my field may improve although I am clearly underqualified but that's the least of my concern (my experience in the field is merely academic) I may not be that fast of a learner but I can adapt quickly, having to work in one of the country's major hotspot is also not a concern, in fact I find it exciting.

My primary concern is much like everyone else, stepping out of my comfort zone, I currently have a stable job with little responsibilities, the pay is not much but it gets me by so far and that my current working environment is very friendly and relaxing in fact some people may be envious of it but I know that my current job won't get me anywhere if I stay.

I have only thought about it in less than 12 hours and it is highly unlikely that they will hire me considering my limited qualification but I've decided to apply for the new job anyway if I'm accepted I will start sometime mid October (it said "starting date:immidiately").

Is This The World We Created...?

Just look at all those hungry mouths we have to feed
Take a look at all the suffering we breed
So many lonely faces scattered all around
Searching for what they need

Is this the world we created...?
We made it all our own
Is this the world we invaded
Against the law
So it seems in the end
Is this what we're all living for today
The world that we created

You know that everyday a helpless child is born
Who needs some loving care inside a happy home
Somewhere a wealthy man is sitting on his throne
Waiting for life to go by

Wooh, is this the world we created...?
We made it all our own
Is this the world we devastated
Right to the bone
If there's a God up in the sky looking down
What must he think of what we've done
To the world that he created

The Internet

The most awesomely powerfull tool ever founded by God, some people may have claimed to invent it but is it was already there to begin with, that's how God looked for information and bought the materials to create the entire galaxy.

Sometime earlier this week someone stole my Internet, the office server was somehow infected by a virus or perhaps it wa a whole host of virae so my Internet was taken away from me automatically caused me to lose m ability to do any form of work, that's where I discovered another part of Hell, it was none other than endless session of solitaire and mind sweeper combined with auto shutdowns, it was scarrier than Dante ever imagined.

In recent news

The Thai Prime Minister declared a state of emergency yesterday while attending a UN general assembly in New York after hearing that the Thai armed force enterd the Thai capital of Bangkok and occupied government buildings and media stations. The coup is one of many attempts the Thai Military have done to take over the government but it never succeded simply because nobody cares. The Military apparently also didn't give a flying fuck and declared the state of emergency void.
In Thailand's long modern political history the Military have done perhaps more than a dozen attempts in taking over the government since the 1930's but because nobody cared it hardly ever changes anything.

New resident new problems

Just with everything in life adding a new element to the household will cause problems. It's sad looking at an animal that's used to living in a large room with a predominantly cool temprature having to be locked up in a small cage with warm temprature, it's sad me to see her in that state I wish I could realy understand what she wants.

Ichi go Ichi E

Often translated as "One encounter, One chance", a common phrase in the world of Japanese martial arts meaning that you only have one chance in in making a strike, similar to the Latin phrase "carpe diem". It is usually used to encourage a person to strike at an opening as soon as it presents itself without delay. This is the same concept that I use when making a snappy comeback when a person say or do something stupid in my presence.

Much of the same concepts I practice in martial arts are applicable in the art of a snappy comebacks. The 3 "sen" mentioned in Miyamoto Musashi's famous Book of Five Rings are also applicable.

The first "Go no sen" is an attack performed after the opponent makes a move, generally known as a "counter" is the most common practice in snappy comebacks.

The second, "Sen no Sen" is to attack at the same time as the opponent but for it to be successful the "comeback" must be better than your opponent so that theirs will be rendered useless/worthless.

Finally "Go no sen", to attack an opponent even before he can makes a move, generally known as a "pre-emptive attack", perhaps the most difficult to practice well as it requires the ability to detect an opening before the oponent realize he/she has an opening.

Much of my comebacks are done in the state of "Mushin", roughly translated as "no mind" that is they are mostly done naturaly without the need to think although I still have some difficuty when asked to demonstrate my skills out of context.


I wish my Kendo is as good as my comebacks, I'd probably be a 5th dan by now.

Now that's over with.....

After the the cheers fade and the dust have long since settled we can see the truth to Apple's real target market. It's none other than next generation hip ninja! seriously with iPod shuffle's size being reduced small enough to be swallowed or taped/clipped behind your ears who else would be buying these things!?

With Apple dropping the word "Music" in iTunes Music Store (iTMS) will people start calling iTS? Anyway I think I'm going to get some some music and a few episodes of "The Daily Show" From the iT Store.
I think I just came up with a new term, Techccessorize!

Loosing my Way

It has been more than a year since I moved back to Jakarta, it's not strange how moving to a different environment can change people but it doesn't stop it from being interesting. Since then I have gained several things and lost many things both positive and negative things, those who know me would probably find small differences yet when I look at myself the small things that have changed made a huge difference, what was then serenity became carelessness and confidence became borderline arrogance.

I never made an issue of people's perception towards me but when I look at myself and I don't like what I see things will have to change, now is probably a good time for me to take a few steps back and move forward differently.

>_>

There are many reasons why people do the things they do mainly it's devided into necessity and wants the other can be classified as accidents. The forst two things are usually very distinct to each other yet at other times they overlap each other and when they do things starts to get rather confusing then you'll loose perspective of what you had to do. The third catagory are mostly done subconsciously one example is where your wants are constantly suppressed by the lack of necessity to do so or maybe because you know it's a stupid thing to do but in the end you do it anyway. Resutls coming from an accident varies depending on the current and future variables and in accidents the laws of cause and effect are more evident usually supported by your mind or someone else saying "see I told you so" whatever the outcome may be. The laws of cause and effect however also applies with things done out of necessity but it is not as evident as accidents or wants.

Interupted thought

I was about to post something deep and meaningful (for me anyway) about wealth, power and knowledge and how we're all addicted to it, it all fell apart when I heard my manager and former manager arguing about whether his watch was chronological....and the mentions about his watch being an old timer.....I just couldn't hold myself, all previous thought just disapeared.

Yes I won't certainly not do it

sentence of the day:

"Improper misuse of office facilities will not be tolerated"

cosmic confusion

I find it strange when good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. In times like this people usually tell others to have faith, funny concept that, faith, beleiving in something that is uncertain. I'm curious to know what the concept of justice really is in the eye of the Beholder, those who steal, rob and kill gets away without reprocussion while those who are trying to do some good to the world are cut down in their prime.

FIREWALLED!!!!!

As it turns out my access to LJ and other website's been firewalled, good thing I brought a can of Compressed CO2 and a sledgehammer so no more fire and no more wall!

"The system is down"

Hard drive Irrepairable (according to Disk Utilities, I wonder if Disk Warrior would help), inactive modem (probably something to do with the former), clock's a bit wonky (again most likely related), can't access LJ (all I see is a whole bunch of strange lines of texts)so I have to post my game related blogs here for now.

Things to do, back up all files, Erase disk, reinstall everything, this is going to be a long and busy week.

To quote Aozaki Aoko (from Melty Blood: Act Cadenza) "Nya nya nya nya nya nya na!!"

someone's up to something

As I was reading through the University of New South Wales's list of Undergraduate Courses I came across a very interesting undergraduate program called Bachelor of Planning. I am sure it's a very good degree to take but I couldn't help myself thinking whether or not they also offer a Bachelor of Scheming so students can take a double degree in Bachelor of Planning and Scheming, it'd be a great start for your political career.

A matter of linguistics

As I was sitting in a cafe last weekend sipping my cup of tea I overheard a conversation about how governments in a democracy should act in the best interest of its people and government officials and public officials in effect should be working for the people and not enriching themselves with public funds. While do agree with what this person was saying the entire conversation was conducted in Indonesians so there were a few words which I found strange and unfitting in a democratic government.

The word "pemerintah" in the Indonesian language bears the inherent conotation of superiority over others as the word itself may be translated to "the one who orders" as oppose to the one's who regulate.

Then again it may just be the mentality of most Indonesians that they do not wish to be govern but to be ordered around.

.....

Either the Aircon isn't "working as intended" or I'm just not feeling very well today....I think I'm going to make some tea.....should I go for herbal lemon fusion, black, black chinese or jasmine tea?

U Mad retards?

How do you say tire?

During the cold war two of the most powerful nations stood on opposite sides of an ideological conflict. The USA and USSR began competing for influences in smaller states through economic and military strength, it is also in this period that both countries competed for nuclear dominance. Some have argued that through this unchecked nuclear arms build up that relative peace was able to be achieved between the two great states, the mutual awareness that both countries are able to reduce each other and the rest of the world within minutes through nuclear destruction was to be later understood to as the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction or M.A.D, an acronym befitting for the time.

After the Soviet Union lost control of their Warsaw pact allies and smaller states under its influence which led to the eventual collapse of Communist Russia the level of nuclear proliferation became higher than it had been during the Cold War. With the increase in availability of weapons grade plutonium in the weapons black market it meant that smaller states and non governmental "organizations" and various paramilitary groups were able to obtain nuclear weapons with relative ease.

It is arguable that even with the United States being the sole remaining super power the world have been kept in a relative peace in the years after the cold war. However it had been made clear at the end of the 20th Century that the world is facing a new a different type of war, this was made evident on with events of September 11, 2001. International extremist groups, unlike countries have no homeland in the traditional sense, it spreads through ideologies that transcends borders, generations and race. Although it can be argued that terrorism have existed long before the 20th Century began organized international terrorism in such a large scale was only evident in the closing of the 20th Century.

With the increase in availability of nuclear weapons in the weapons black market and the more organized extreme politico-religious group it is feared that such group may have obtained and developed its own nuclear weapons, unlike the relative comfort the world had during the cold war with the Understanding of Mutual Assured Destruction (U-MAD)to assure that no nuclear weapons were used and without a single physical target it is much more difficult for governments to eliminate such threats, on the other hand, infiltrations to countries and government by such organized groups have become more plausible due to the mobility and fluidity that is inherent to these groups.

With the world's only super power state leading the assault it seems that governments have done nothing but strike blindly at an enemy that can not be seen causing destruction at random places. As terrorist groups attack a specified target with a very visible enemy and The US attacks a country that may or may not be the enemy we have entered a new self imposing doctrine of Totally Assured Random Destruction or T.A.R.D and as the war continues with the world's only super power constantly selecting targets at random this war will fall into a doctrine of Random Endless Assured Reoccurring Destructions or R.E.T.A.R.Ds

In conclusion, during the cold war the world was kept at a relative peace with the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction the M.A.D doctrine. However with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new kind of warfare against a new kind of enemy the world will soon fall under the doctrine of Random Endless Assured Reoccurring Destructions or R.E.T.A.R.Ds

Dude, wtf? seriously......

I don't get it, where do all these rumors about how bad an education institution is when they are clearly considered as one of the best in the world? It's always "I've heard XY Uni is bad" or "if my child have to go there he might as well not go to university", for one thing it's really not my business whether their kids go to uni or not but it becomes my problem when they defame a uni just because they heard it was bad but can't give a reason why.


Fuckin 'tards.........

"I told you so!"

There are times where ethics becomes a major dilema in the work place, the majority of people I know seems to often mistake being nice for being ethical and sometimes prioritizing being nice to being ethical to satisfy the client.

There are clear cases of breach in work ethics, there's always the regular lying and stealing in all of its form but there are cases where it is seemingly much more complex than that, like putting the interest of a third party who is the financeer of the primary client ahead of the said client and a middle ground is not in the best interest of your client, then there are cases where nice and ethical are in oppposition to another, in this case for most of the times clients couldn't care less about ethics and wants to be treated nicely despite how inethical it may be.

The majority of people would be conflicted when faced with this sort of problem, some would prefer to be nice, others would do what is ethical and a few others call their managers/supervisor, which is probably the safest thing to do, so if anything goes wrong after that it wouldn't be your fault.

To me I prefer to do the ethical thing even if I loose one or two clients, however it's not a matter of integrity, it's not a matter of profit, it's a matter of doing things the right way so they can't blame you for not doing it right.

Maybe its just me but I enjoy telling people that their failure is due to their own stupidity.

Actual Weekend round up, part 2

It's nearing sundown and so far I have done nothing particularly productive in the last 5 days (including today) and I like it. Well it's been one heck of a weekend, cancelled dates, game hunting, gaming, no phone calls. It was almost perfect I was close to doing what I aimed to do this entire weekend which was doing absolutely nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not lazy, lazy is not wanting to do something, I on the other hand wanted to do nothing which was something I couldn't manage to do, I ended up doing nothing productive but I still did something. It is my way of reaching that spiritual enlightenment.

Weekend round up, PART 2!

more like prediction really,

O.K so technically it's not a weekend yet but might as well be since starting today I'll be on a very long 5 day weekend, neat huh? well not really since someone cancelled on me again but that's ok, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a Psychologist with massive emotional issues because it's her "赤日" and since I can't cancel my Friday leave I guess I'll just have to go somewhere else.

Now, where can I spend half a day outside without spending a lot of money in this town? ah yes.....

weekend round up

---Friday night---
*after a lengthy phone call*
M: "So...tomorrow then"
Me: "O.K, just pick the time and place and I'll see you there"
M: "let's meet up at that place after lunch...about 2ish"
Me: "Sure thing, ok then bye"
M: "bye"
---Saturday Morning---
Message on my phone from M: "I'm so sorry, I can't make it today, something came up"
Me: .........this is oddly familiar......well at least I can finish a few things early........
---The entire Sunday---
Me: Man....Chronicles of the sword is annoying! *continues playing* HA! finally full maid costume and a Hitler mustache!


Well there you go, that's my entire weekend.

"Doodles"

Not a lot of things to at the office today, for once, just cleaned up my tables did a doodle of a character that me and my younger brother made sometime ago called "the writer" modeled after well....me, with what supposed to be my fedora and my old coat, maybe some posting is required but not now.

"You wouldn't like it when I'm angry"

I don't hate a lot of things, I do however greatly execrate and detest GODDAMN STUPID COMPUTERS THAT DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY!!!!

I'M A MILLONAIRE!!!

I checked my bank account the other day and thought "hey I could retire now and not have to work for money EVER again!" then I realized it wasn't in US$, it was all in worthless Rupiah, stupid worthless money......

Bored to petrification

Wow, this must be the lowest point in human excitement, in fact excitement or productive activity equates to practically minus infinity at this point. I never imagined that you can actually go to work and near nothing to do, I've posted at least 4 blogs by about now since about 7am, my thumbs have been fiddled to a point where it went to auto-fiddle for a moment I've done practically almost everything I can think of in an office environment including attaching any loose paper clips I found lying around, all files have been sorted and re-sorted, all sendable document have been sent and I'm done searching for strangely related things in wikipedia.

I bet a stone statue would have more fun than this.

When planing to start a new non democratic country

1. Make sure you have nuclear weapons, don't just plan on having it.
2. Try to make your country the a central port for the region.
3. When holding a pro democratic activist prisoner make sure you have a stable economy.
4. Your country must be the worlds centre for manufacturing and cheap labor.
5. Have one of the best public health system.

and last but not least

6. A strong (or seemingly strong) Military

There are other points but basically these are the 6 major points if you don't want to be screwed over/invaded/harrased by hegemonic states.

Hello emo*

Wow that was a close match, just when I thought Captain Rational was loosing too bad the match was inconclusive, Mr. Indifference stepped in and everything just stopped.



Oh well, I guess it's back to life as usual for me.



*From motorola's "Hello Moto"

Damn leapforg....

This blog is now 365 days old.....or was it 364.....how many days were there in last February again?

hmm......

Something strange happened today........

Time for Captain Rational and Emotion Man to do battle once again!!

So far the score has been 382629324-510, respectively.

Cross postage

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... (continued here)

Long post 2: the rant returns

ah....there we go I think I just shat a whole essay, now let me just pick out the relevant crap.

More frequently and more obvious however was media bias on their favored/unfavored policies, slander became a common term when describing news interviews no matter which side you're on, it's even more depressing that the networks doesn't even hide the fact that they take sides.

Watching the Iraqi war coverage on multiple news channels was a fun activity, you have BBC international reporting with a flat, monotonous, unexciting yet gave nothing but reports, CNN international tried to be a little more neutral than their local American version by having less opinionated interviews and only giving out some reports and figures, the local Australian networks doesn't seem to care until an Australian soldier shot himself on the leg or got killed by friendly fire, then there was the Fox, it hardly featured the torture of "enemy combatants" done by the Americans, all I heard from them was "go go go!! serves those towel heads right", that apparently was the American version of journalistic professionalism.

The print media wasn't doing any better it was all left or right but since 990% of the print media was owned by the same bunch of old bastards who owned the rest of the news network I wasn't surprised. News articles talking about the evils of gay marriages, spotlighting stereotype muslim terrorist, pointing out the possibilities of small no name towns becomes a target for terrorist attacks and the evils of video games. Journalism now is disastrous, speaking of disasters....

Not long after the whole US "election", Iraqi war and all that sort became an everyday news a small tremor in the base of the Indian Ocean caused the destruction of entire cities and death of more than half a million people in Indonesia and a significant number in neighboring (and not so neighboring) areas. I can't forget the date it was the 26th of December, it was boxing day, while people I know were boxing their presents these people were boxing their relatives. On the spot reports came in a matter of minutes from local and international news networks, it was probably the biggest natural disaster in this decade, almost every major news network were there to cover it, almost, someone was missing and when they reported it was only snippets, not even a major interview. Sometime after, a sweet little whirlwind called Katrina (or as I like to call it Katty) came down to New Orleans to play some music, and play she did. Just when you think you can't go wrong with reporting natural disasters the media managed to make this a political issue, especially after that "Bush hates black people" comment. On one side of the news the reports were all about how fast the US government reacted and praising the efforts and speed of federal emergency workers in handling the situation, on the other side as always was the ugly fact.

The main thing is if the media isn't too busy chucking shit at each other they're busy scaring the readers and audiences and this isn't just in western media, in fact local Indonesian news are doing it much worse than the Americans when it comes to scare tactics, most people I know here have become desensitized by it but they keep on watching, the Japanese media aren't any different either, but at least scaring people with things that happened can still be counted as news rather than reporting on opinions, and yes I'm more than aware that opinions may be helpful or may give further insight to a situation but repeating the same opinions every day looks way too much like a propagation of an ideology.

To me objectivity in the media died, it died when the media owners thought they should do more than report the news, it died when these people decided to play a dangerously addictive game called politics. I don't expect a happy news every time I switched on my TV, in fact I'd rather not see "happy news" everyday because we all know when that happens something is wrong with the media, when I watch or read news I want to know what happened and why it happened from a neutral angle but that's probably as likely seeing ex-dictator Suharto arrested, tried and sentenced to cleaning mall toilets for life.

Looooooong post

Before I begin I have to say that I have done no research whatsoever with regards to the history of news and journalism, views expressed bellow are of my own personal view of how news are being presented, O.K, now that's out of the way let's begin.

Much like almost everyone else I never found the news to be exciting, on television it was nothing but one or two people speaking monotonously with a video montage while on the papers it was nothing but a bunch of words with some pictures on it, it's no wonder that most people don't like following the news it's boring. It was not until junior high I find myself being drawn to these texts and pictures and not because they changed how it was presented, although it did help make the news more palatable, I was actually drawn to the news, I started to read more newspapers and magazines, particularly 'Time' and 'The Jakarta Post' (local newspapers gave me headaches) when I moved to Singapore to do my O-levels I was almost always the first person in the dormitory to wake up to read the morning papers before it was shredded to pieces by some ignorant kids who had no respect for other people who wants to read the papers. There I expanded my sources, I read the local Strait Times, Newsweek, I even read USA Today, Ok I admit they weren't the best news source bit it gave me different perspectives about the world and particularly about people, right then I had an idea what field of study I wanted to do.

Several years later I sat down in one of my lectures listening to my lecturers explaining about the media control and sociological effect of the media, coming from a place where media were practically state run it didn't come to me as a surprise that propaganda is prominent in ANY country, whether it was state "sponsored" or driven by a bunch of rich old bastards with an agenda. What caught me was the idea of smear campaign, before I became a university student I pretty much took what ever was on the news as fact, with a grain of salt, by the time I finished my 1st year I realized that it was more than just a grain, the salt came in by the truckload, there were so much salt in the news finding facts in the news was like looking for a needle in truckload of salt, there probably was a point where I thought "a cat was rescued by firefighters from a tree" meant something completely different.

Up to this point I've never really seen the notorious Fox news channel only parts of it, then it happened, after a few years my apartment finally had cable, of course the first thing I looked for was the History Channel (I'd be lying if it was a news channel) then I went and looked the news channel, CNN (international) was confirmed and so was BBC, then saw it, Fox new channel, out of morbid curiosity I switched to that channel, lucky for me it was a slow news day it wasn't until a few days later that I was introduced to Sean, Anne and Bill, I watched these three with amusement, the same amusement most people get when they see a freak car accident. All it was was a bunch of angry highly opinionated white people who loves to speak in front of cameras, the scary part was when I found out that the majority of America loved these guys, how did I found out you ask? the simple fact that these people have stayed on air for that long and one of them has published a book that was bought and read by millions. I couldn't go to any of my classes that week due to excessive vomiting.

Then there was the State of the Union Address by none other than the 43rd POTUS. Personally I love hearing the Union address from any president, it's like listening to a person making multiple new years resolution, in fact I think all State of the Union Address needs to be done on the 1st of January. Anyway, it was hilarious seeing how one news channel reported just the major points made by the president and how will it effect the country in the future and the other praising and glorifying every single sentence in the speech, I'd let you decided which channels did what but it was clear that the media no longer reports news objectively.



more on this after I pull more words out of my ass.....

It's a bird, it's a plane it's.....

One of the best Superman movie ever!! as far as Superman movies go anyway

Before I say anything else I have to say that I was never a big fan of the comic book itself or Superman as a super hero character I'm more of a Batman person when it comes to DC characters, but still, to me Superman is THE iconic symbol for an American super hero image, heck he practically started the whole thing.

Moving right along. I do find somethings in it somewhat disappointing (Superman in Gotham? some cave-dwelling multibillionaire playboy is not going to like it very much) but the bulk of it is just like your good old Superman movies (not including Superman 4) when I first watched it way back when I was still in elementary school, on laser disc (I'm not THAT old) but with much better special effects.

In terms of the actors and actresses Brandon Routh fits very well into the Superman/Clark Kent role, Lois Lane was ok-ish, good but while pretty and played her role well she just didn't stand out that much, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor on the other hand was....... Lex Luthor, or maybe I just like Spacey better than Hackman as Luthor. I just find it odd that Luthor was able to get out of jail since back in Superman 2 he was practically imprisoned in another dimension, like I said one of the few things that I find disappointing.

some personal points I need to make,

First, I'm just glad they decided not to make a movie about the Super "blue electric eel" man, that and they decided against casting Nicolas Cage as Superman.

Second, we all know that Supes is significantly stronger than every other human being but how strong is he supposed to be really? lifting planes and truck are one thing but uprooting a whole island?

Third and final point, how long does Superman's power supply last? if he stayed away from the earth's sun for 5 years wouldn't that mean his supply would be out by then?

HA HA HA!!!

I like the Footbal World Cup for one reason, people stay up late to watch it until early in the morning causing them to wake up later after the usual peak traffic hours., I on the other hand go to work at the regular time as always....so no heavy morning traffic for this past few weeks for me!

Busy busy busy

What a week, handling documents and complaining parents all week and slow response from some institutions over the weekdays, foundation year students "graduation" ceremony on Friday night, whirlwind tour of Jakarta on Satrurday and on the 7th day I rested. I don't think this week will be any slower.

すごくがっかり....

何だよ今年の日本代表は、そんな弱いチームは勝ってる訳ないじゃないシューとも一度でもないしはずれパスも多いし、やる気でもあるか、次の試合はクロアチアその後はブラジル、こんな試合は遊び場じゃないぞ遊びたいなら Jーリーグへ戻れ！もう帰ればいいじゃん、いや、さっさと帰れ！！どせ最初から勝ちたくないでしょう？

Ancora imparo

As they say "life is a learning experience", we never stop learning from the day we are born until the last day we draw breath. We learn that being pinched causes a degree pain, then we learn to walk on two legs but it would be false to assume that everyone would learn the same things from the same experience. We learn to preceive things in our own way and from this we learn that some of our views are in contrast with others. Some of us learn from past mistakes whether it'd be our own or from others, there are those who have learned to immortalize themselves through different ways but mainly through legacies and memories while those who follow learns from such people. Strange how two simple words can define a persons entire existence.

Undertones

I watched X Men 3 sometime ago, the move itself was ok-ish, in fact I've completely forgoten that I watched it after hanging out in a cafe so it wasn't that impressive, I guess Hollywood & most audience are satisfied with mediocrity these days, but that's not my main point here. X men have always been about how people are different and that people should accept others for what they are and not be affraid of it, that and endless emo, adultery, lies and all other everyday things for the last 30+ years, then I wonder had such mutants really existed as they are depicted will they be held in reverence like how the audience or readers see these fictional characters or will they be casted away and ridiculed like the non caucasian community in the US back in the 50s or homosexuals or transexuals of today? like how the mutants are treated in the comic books.


on a different note, DIE BOY SCOUT DIE!!!! AND STAY DEAD!!!

Inventions out of laziness

And once again scientists have proven themselves to the the hardest working people when it comes to not working, behold the self cleaning surface. Lazy bastards! The lot of them!

Now if we apply this technology to paper to make dustproof paper like in Back to the Future 2 my room can be significantly cleaner


*link is from last February

To be human....

What does this actually mean? to be human....many philosophers have pondered upon the nature of human beings, some of the ideas have become integrated to different belief system, some say humans are born pure like a blank sheet of paper, some contradicted this and have concluded that humans are born evil or have sinned (which are two different things) or at least basically primal, while others deduced that deep down all humans are good but some are too confused.

These ideas may be right or wrong or both in the end we are really to dumb to figure out simply because this question has been asked by billions of people for over thousands of years and we have not really found the answer to it, either that or we just couldn't agree to a single thought, which arguably is also a human thing, the ability to draw it's own conclusion through it's experience, this is perhaps what most people call wisdom.

However as we all have learned, and perhaps the one thing that we can all agree on, that opposing views causes conflict and this can be materialized into physical violence which ironically is a primal solution to a disagreement and is not considered to be the wisest course of action yet such solution is also considered as a human reaction.

I find the nature of human to be both amusing and preplexing, in fact it is probably safe for me to assume that to be human is to be preplexing and perhaps even inquisituve as this sample have proven so by simply asking a question.

DEROB

When one is bored what is there to do? climbing a tree is only good for several hours, it's not exactly a favored activity and besides people are usually sick by it after they've done it seven times but you reall shouldn't do it after you just ate something although a lot of people have a tendency to do that.

I'm with.....

I hate stupid people especially stupid people who have a lot of money, well maybe they're not that stupid since they do have a lot of money but they're still stupid, I guess they're more ignorant than stupid but I think ignorant people are stupid because they choose not to know things. Rich ignorant people are the worst because they can get what they want with money and in this country they usually do. Stupid people should go back to school.

I think stupid people are dumb.

"Dearly beloved...."

Weddings, I never really liked them, they're a long overdrawn and costly procession and a complete waste of my time, you go to a gathering of people of whom you've never met and are unable to strike a conversation with a stranger, much more so in weddings of a family member that you never knew nor cared they ever existed. I do however have always made myself well acquainted with the buffet table, probably the only reason for me to go to weddings really even that can be a bad experience.

It has to be noted that Indonesian weddings are different than weddings in "western" countries, they are dull, stale and boring.

meme |mēm|

The term meme, is not a commonly used term in modern physical societies, while the term may have originated in the field of biology it's implementation is much more evident in psychological and sociological field.

According to the Oxford American Dictionary meme is defined as "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation". While it emphasized on imitation it is not limited to it many aspect of an individuals life consist of meme. Cultures will not have survived without meme as culture is essentially a collection of stories, behavior, practices and ideas passed on from one person to the other which then passed down to the next group of people.

I'm only writing this because last Friday everyone in the office was eating pop mie (a local version of cup noodles) because one person ate it prior, causing the entire office to go and buy it, I call a viral reaction to an action.

Introducing the new Blackbook....

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side in my office work space, oh lord, why dont we?

We all know no notebooks are the same where ever we go
Some are glossy and some are not
We learn to live, we learn to choose
which notebooks what we need to survive together alive.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side in my office work space, oh lord why dont we?

Ebony, ivory living in perfect harmony
Ebony, ivory, ooh

We all know that no notebooks are the same where ever we go
some have integrated graphic chips and some have graphics card,
We learn to live, we learn to choose
which notebooks what we need to survive together alive.

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side in my office workspace, oh lord why dont we?

winding down

application dates have passed, most documents have been submited students are having their exams, now it's time to wait.

It's a small world after all....

For some reason I felt like I just had a long weekend, which isn't true since it was 2 days as always, 2 days of Ace combat 0!.....yeah anyway, I intended to go into the office this morning only to find myself in Disneyland, the walls were pastel colored, green, blue, red and yellow, I half excepcted a guy in a Micky Mouse costume to pop out and greet me. I think they were going for the "relaxing" feel to the office but to me it's more of a "wtf?" feeling.

Business trip Part Tres! (because DOS sucks!)

I woke up at around 6:00 in the morning (28/04/2006), 30 minutes after the alarm rang, after a nice long sleep on a king-sized bed, I waited for my colleague until about 7:15 and went to breakfast. Typical of an mid range Indonesian hotel they had fried rice, fried noodles and chicken porridge, I had 2 out of 3 and a cup of milk tea. We checked out from the hotel at 7:45 and I went to my school/international exhibition while my colleagues went to the office.

The exhibition was a little less than organized and when I thought it couldn't get any worse a representative of the Croatian embassy was scheduled to speak about the importance of Indonesian and Croatian economic and relationship for the next half an hour, the person couldn't speak English very well not like it matters since most people in the exhibition weren't listening anyway. An hour later they had a talk show about "Asian fashionism" the way the MC pronounced it it sounded like "Asian fascism", the topic was good some of the speakers were right on the money when they talk about fashion habits in Indonesia and how most Indonesian teenagers follows overseas trend I found the whole topic rather interesting but since our booth was as crowded as a graveyard on a rainy day I decided to pack up and leave at 13:00 which we did. We had lunch half an hour later and went back to the office to pick mine and my colleague's bag it wasn't long after we left when the office called to inform us that someone had left a bag, I knew it wasn't mine nor the GM's so we had to double back, pick the bag up go back out, unsurprisingly the driver asked for some money for petrol, we got out of Bandung at 14:30 and arrive in Jakarta at 17:30....with no pictures of Gedung Sate.

Business trip, Part Uno!

I'm in Bandung right now on a business trip, the day began as usual, I got in the office at the usual time the driver was supposed to come to at 10:00, unsurprisingly he came at 10:30 fair enough since we were planning to leave at 11:00 since there was an extra 30 minutes I had him wait in the parking lot because I still have to wait for our GM to to arrive, I had a little chat with the driver and he told me he hardly goes to Bandung, right then I knew this was going to be a bad day. 10 minutes later the GM arrived at the front office and was ready to go so I called the car again, I still refuse to believe it took 30 minutes to go to the front of the office from the parking lot .

By the time we were all ready to go the driver informed us that the car had an almost empty tank (1/4) despite the fact that we specifically requested for the car to come with a full tank so we have to go and look for a petrol station with a lower grade petrol commonly known here as "solar" oddly enough it doesn't use energy taken from the sun, confused? I am, we were officially ready to go, with a full tank, at 11:45 and we needed to be in Bandung before 14:00.

By the time we got to the toll road heading to Bandung it was around 12:30, I was not happy the GM was not happy and my colleague was asleep. the toll road was empty so I expected the ride to be nice and smooth and maybe even faster than usual, but I guess it had to be one of my unlucky days because the car can't run over 100kph, in an almost empty toll road (or as most people call it, highway), simply because it was one of those older mid 90's Toyota "Kijang" models with a busted aircon in the back seat, so it really felt like a long trip.

We arrived at Bandung at about 13:40, we had 10 minutes left to our first stop, the first thing we did was check the map, the map looked easy, the actual road wasn't. Bandung is perhaps the only city that I have ever been to in the last 15 years that has one of it's main roads blocked by shoe hawkers (the term salesmen is unbefitting for these people) so we had to go by the small roads around it. On the way to our first destination we had to go through at least 4 missed turns and a blocked main road, the traffic itself wasn't the problem here but missing a turn in Bandung isn't a very good way to get somewhere quick we went pass gedung sate twice trying to get to one place..

Eventually we arrived in our first stop at 14:30 and the even organizers weren't very amused. I was supposed to help another colleague based in Bandung for an exhibition but I was informed that the exhibition will finish at 16:00 so it didn't make much sense to go there anyway instead we went to the branch office where I met with the onsite manager. At 16:15 she left to pick up the GM from the hotel he was presenting since he has another activity scheduled at 17:00 so for the next half an hour or so I did what I do back in the home office, I sat behind a table and wait for people to walk in, I never knew an office could be so small I was even more bemused when I was informed the original office was around 1 x 2m square for 2 people so it was only natural for me to ask whether the office was about 6 feet below ground.

By the time the GM arrived we didn't do much until about 17:00 when client began to walk in, despite that we only had 5 people coming in from 17:00 we finished at 19:30 the good news was we got one applicant, bad news was we were all too tired to do anything else so we dropped the GM at the hotel he's staying in while the rest of us had dinner I got back to my hotel at about 21:00. The first thing I did was fill up the tub with hot water and took a nice long and perhaps over extended overdue bath. I set my alarm on 5:30 and went to bed at 00:00

I have yet to take a photo of kebab building (gedung sate).

Just like Sunday Morning

....except it's Saturday and I'm in the office waiting for students with saturday consultation appointments and I'm in front of my office computer rather than in playing FF12. The good thing was Saturday morning traffic aren't as bad in fact it's almost empty in comparison to weekday traffic or later this afternoon so I got here within 15 minutes, Jakarta isn't such a bad place....if there were some sort of legitimate city planning in the city construction, reasonable public transport, safe drinkable tap water, cheap fast Internet, integrated infrastructure that works, cold weather, fair amount of plantations and about 80% less people.

It's.......

......EASTER MONDAY!!!! and I'm working...... Blah!

70/100

70%, 70 bloody percent of our foundation year program students are bellow 18 years old, that means more work for me taking care of the damn guardianship issues that means more whiny parents will whine about guardianship issues, that means more forged documents regarding guardianship issues, oh did I say forged? I meant adjusted, documents that will be dismissed in a matter of seconds after a carefull glance.

what is the obsession with sending people to work earlier in life? it won't be long until I'll see a drove of 15 year olds applying for a place in the university.

Accelerated education....BAH!! more like accelerated unemployment!

Why hello thar!

Today is my first day back in the office, apparently yesterday was a public holiday so we had a 3 day long weekend which is always good if we didn't have any deadlines on university placements blech stupid students. Anyway for the last three days I played FF12, Sengoku Musou 2, MGS 3: subsistance, ikusagami and "finished" we love Katamari well mostly that anyway, I did go out for a bit though but it was much less interesting than staying in and playing games, too bad my other job doesn't pay as much or else I'd drop this one and just translate comics for a living, that way it cuts down the time gap between being at work and game time, no wasted time getting caught in traffic.

FF12 was fun as always, ground about 6 levels up between 6 characters, the gambit system makes it easier though since you don't really do much but walk now and no random encounters just good old mob hunting, the bad (or good depending on how you lok at it) thing about FF12 is by the end of the game your characters will be able to do pretty much the same things, while the license board gves you freedom to shape how each cahacter will be in the end you'll be filling that board and everyone can an all powerfull entity.

Sengoku musou 2 is actually betetr than the last one, more releveant historical characters so bye bye kunoichi, bye bye fatass Goemon, Hello Mitsunari Ishida. Everyone who studies Japanese history knows that when you have Mitsunari and Tokugawa you get....Sekigahara so I was happy but the Kotaro Fuuma and Hattori Hanzou face off was weak, do they really need to put these ninjas in? and ofcourse to not upset the female audience they added more female characters like nene (Toyotomi's wife) why not, they had ina and noh there before. as for teh story, it seems like koei is going for the "slightly more historicaly accurate" since DW5 (in DW5 Zhuge liang ended up dead but not ater whooping Yi's ass) unless you chose the "loosing" side and won, like itsunari winning Sekigahara and everyone received the compulsory facelift. Almost forgot they revamp the whole charater growth system and you can actually buy 15 horses, yeah it's all buy or upgrade at the shop now even "get better weapons easier" skill is buyable and teh weapons are upgradeable at the shop, I just wonder of Lu Bu still lives on the 100th floor.

MGS3, still good, better actually, and I still suck.

Ikusagami is actually a pretty good game but like everything by Genki, the FMV is awful. the game itself is actuallly fun but gets harder than koei's musou series.

But that was that, from now to the next few weeks, maybe even a month or more I'll be really busy wiith student counseling and handling university placements. To be honset I'd rather be doing proper student counseling rather than giving advice on which university these kids will go to, too bad I don't have the psyc Phd to do it.

BBBOOOONNNNGG!!!!

My notebook just died on me....I was working on photoshop 7 when I heard a rather loud tone from it then about 2 hours later the loading beachball kept spinning forever and the finder is not responding so restarted the computer only to find a picture of a folder with a question mark on it.....GAH!! oh ell I gues I'll just turn it off and check again in an hour or so, I'm going to do a systems check once I get back home

Going

going......going.... GONE!!!!

see you all tomorrow!!

??!!HUH!!??

here's something I don't hear or get asked every day...my boss wants to buy a Darkie tootpaste, yep you heard it right, a darkie, not darlie, toothpaste. Where the heck am I supposed to get one...the one on ebay is only available for the US...BAH!

things to do today.....

-Drink Tea
-Meeting with people from SIBT (Sydney Institute of Business and Technology)
-Meeting with Bradford College representative (possibly resechedueld)
-Finish comic translation
-Buy Ace combat (high chance of being delayed)

looks like it's going to be "one of those days"....

Stop thief!!

Thief! dirty lying thiefing scoundrels I say!! I received my payslip today detailing all the addition and deduction to my wage and saw Rp 1, one whole Rupiah missing in the total!! that's US$ 0.000111161!!! This great injustice shall not go unpunished! I shall reclaim that whole Rupiah that is rightfully mine!! they shall rue the day they took that one rupiah away from me!!

"The grey dawn"

As I went to the bathroom after lunch in the office to wash my hands I noticed strands of grey hair on my head, first I wasn't sure if it was due to the lighting of the room or something else but after I plucked a strand, which caused a small amount of pain, true enough it was a strand of grey hair from my head....I'm getting old.

mutli-brake drifting

After an 18 hour overtime over the whole weekend (12hr sat+ 6hr sun) I'm now back in the office...completely stuffed and my working shoes only had a one day break last Thursday thanks to a public holiday but that's pretty much all the rest I get since last Monday, the good thing is I only have a 3 day working day on he 2nd week of April, again due to public holiday, and my plan is to just stay at home and.......sit all day and do close to nothing or maybe call up an old friend and hang for a while......maybe.......if I can be bothered.......and not playing games......or sleeping.......all day.

that was surprisingly expected

One of the business associate (from a different company) I work with decided to give me a "cut" from the price mark up for providing them with customers, in comparison to how much they're getting from each customer it's not even 1% but the actual ammount is not that small either, returning the cut while probably the most ethical thing to do is not an option so I'm stuck with either giving the clients this amount back as change for the excess they've paid or keeping it for myself.

to put things in perspective US$1 is around Rp. 9000 and the average wage is around Rp. 1.5 million, so US$ 50 is quite a large ammount around here.

If I was to look at it exclusively from the financial side I'd take the money.......tempting, victimless and I would probably sleep better because I couldn't care less about other people, no one's going to know I took the money right? unless you're a religious person in which you'll say "God will know and you'll go to hell for that" but I'm not so there!

On the other side if I took it I'll be doing what everyone else is doing.

so which one shall it be.....financial gain? or what is left of my moral integrity?

I'm not going to say here whether or not I took the money, I'll leave that for you to ponder and to question what kind of person I am.

Spreading the word

There are alway more than one side of a story, you hear about Hansel and Gretel escaping the evil witch but you'll never hear about why the evil witch became evil, much like the news really.

anyway enough about the Evil Witch, I was scanning the news today and found a link to a very interesting blog written by an obviously educated Iraqi women in Iraq, nothing special about it, it's just another blog with personal entry logs with persoal views I just happen to find her entries amusing, the only difference is it shows a side of the whole Iraqi conflict that is hardly shown on TV aside from that it reads like any other personal blogs, go on, read it I'll guarantee it'll give you'll laugh maybe even cry a little while understanding a little more about Iraq and Iraqis beyond the smoke screen.

Zero reduction in productivity

They call it cyber-slacking, sure if you have a heavy workload and neglecting it by constant non-work related browsing halting your productivity I guess you can be called a cyber slacker but if you have very little or near zero workload and you spend your time at the office browsing after you have finished the work you wouldn't be slacking now would you? since going home early isn't an option when working in an office environment what else can you do but surf teh eent4rw3bz?

back to work....again

Well I did go to work on monday but I had a run in with some bad chicken sate (Indonesian version of a kebab) for dinner and within hours my stomach decided to throuw it all out or at least it felt like it was going to, bottom line is I couldn't go to work yesterday an instead I just sat my ass all day playing we love damacy and kingdom hearts 2 with a more than frequent toilet breaks and did my other job which was translating comics, surprisingly staying at home was more productive than if I had gone to work an oddity which does not come around very often for me.

While I'm not fully recovered from my encounter with that food extending my sick leave for another day may be asking for too much so here I am back at the office, ok-ish but I'd rather be home.

AAAAAHHH!!!

It's St. Paddy's day and I completely forgot about it! I've got nothing green to wear! NOOOooo!!!!!!

Reduction in life expextancy due to economic pressure

2 New translations orders just got in and I have to finish 1 book (about 180 pages each) in a week, let's see I can squeeze my gaming time to about 2 hours and do about 40-50 pages in a day with approximately 10-20 pages an hour and finish it in approximately 5 days (not including hammering in on the weekends), considering I usually get home from work at about 6pm if I'm lucky so I'll probably be sleeping at around 12 or 1 am maybe even later and wake up at about 4:30 to catch up with my gaming time before going to work at 6:30 am.

Who needs friends when you have a game console?

I HAVE ZA POWA!!!!!

I HAVE ADMIN POWA!!!! I have godlike powers surging through my veins! no, seriously, after a extended argument regarding my network access I finally persuaded the techie (there's only one in the entire office) to bestow me with the awesome power of a network administrator to its fullest extent, now I can shut down the network on every computer in every department if I wanted to. Let's see them dissmissing me for gross negligence now!

Honestly though I'm not gonna do that...... <_<>_>

larger than life

Using a projector as a computer screen can really put things in a different perspective. There I was sitting in Intercontinental Hotel (Jakarta) convention room waiting for the Education expo to start, with no one else around but the security details and I have 2 hours to spare I did the only sensible thing to do for a guy with a notebook and a projector, I plugged the projector in and played Warcraft 3. Imagine 60% of the wall section of a hotel convention hall wall as your screen and the units you see on screen are bigger than the teacup you're holding and chatting online with a screen that big gives a whole different experience, I'm liking the television as a projection medium for interactive entertainment lesser now, I can imagine how uncomfortable playing an FPS on such a big screen can be but an MMO may actually be fun. Despite the huge screen however I still I had to use my earphones to get the a good audio.

Last strech

Another chapter in my life is closely coming to an end. As I sit in front of my office computer logging into my Monash University student account for the last time memories of the past 5 years of my academic life suddenly came rushing to my head, both good and bad, thoughts of what I could have done better and the things that I have accomplished during my tenure as a university student.

I remember about 5 years ago when a young 18 year old student set my foot in Melbourne embarking in an adventure that is tertiary education, he was sure where I wanted to be but unsure on how to get there. he knew it was not going to be an easy road to take but nonetheless a road that must be taken.

So there I was, standing in line in Monash University for the first time waiting to sign up for my subjects of choice, although I knew I was applying for a course called bachelors of arts I had no idea what was in it, all I knew was that at that time it had a GPA requirement that I could achieve realistically, advanced methematics is not part of the course nor the course requirement and that it had nothing to do with studying fine arts specifically, as I sat there looking at my options I was stunned by the amount of options they had for me ranging from languages to social studies to history, my choices were clear I wanted to know more about society and I wanted to study politics so I took sociology as major and politics as my minor, later I realized that they weren't offering the politics subject I wanted so I switched to history. Once that was done I had to wait in another line to get my photo taken for my student ID card, the photo was black and white and the card was made out of laminated paper and my face was veritcally compressed to fit the frame, in short it was cheap, really cheap but for some reason I was proud of it, I finally made it, I was a student in one of Australia's more prestigious university but more importantly I was academic.

It was not long until I became the president of the Monash University kendo club, while my skill were not comparable to some of my peers the coach saw that I was fit the manage the clubs administration. Personally I thought I did a decent job handling most of the administrative work in running the club however there are other things that I wish I could have done better, it was by convenience that I was also picked as the club delegate, a position I held for almost 3 years since nobody else wanted to do it. On the academic side being active in the club cost my academic performance to a small degree while other factors cause the decline of my overall performance and before I realized I had spent 5 years in a 3 year course but nevertheless I made it, I refused to take the easy way out and I finished my course, I've reached the end of another stage in a persons academic life I am a Monash University graduate.

So here I am now, much less of an academic, reading the last reminder of the 90 day limited access notification in my student e-mail account reminding me that after today I will no longer have access to the student account, soon I will be a bachelor in almost every sense of the word but before that I wait for the finale, the last curtain call, the last train stop, the last page in my academic life or what ever euphemism you can come up with, the day I will receive that damned piece of paper that every academic or crazy delusional individuals who are under the presumption that a university degree will guarantee a better job worked for years to obtain, once that is done I can finally close the book for good......that is until I decide whether or not to take a Masters degree.

Goliath online....

After the long grueling process of moving heavy objects to pulling cables from the ceiling my work area is finally set up, I've got a new office computer which I aquired by going over my managers head,and teh int4rw3bz works.

The good thing about my new space is it's right in the corner where I can see people coming in but nobody can know what I'm doing on the computer unless they come around behind me but I'm pretty sure they won't do that simply because it's very cramped, I am the king of my own realm and the the only access to he office toilet is right behind my desk so I'm going to start charging peple for that.

I still don't get the wi-fi coverage as I would hope but I can always hassle the people in the office room nearby for that.

....Meanwhile back at the office

Like I mentioned sometime ago, my office is being renovated, being beause it's still not done yet, al the furniture are on top of the other, none of the computers are plugged in and only one phone line is connected well at least the fax machine is still operating. I'm just wondering how I'm supposed to work today, from the looks of it I'm going to e doing a lot of lifting.

Re-sorting over 2000 songs

I've finally some time to time to sort out my iTunes list since I've got some more music from my trip to Melbourne, I thought it was a good idea until I realized I have more music files than I can handle and a limited drive space in my notebook.

Sorting out my music files needs at least more than just a few hours, there's the clone tracking and deletion then the re-catagorizing followed by the moving of the files from the external drive to the internal drive, renaming the file names, transferring the songs to iTunes then the re-naming some of the songs in the song info menu since some of them were incorrect, too long or just plain old gibberish and finishing with reallocating the songs in the proper list or re-re categorizing but within iTunes as oppose to the previous re-catagorizing which was in the file folders.

Now that I'm almost finished I can see my choice in music in my notebook is much more limited than last time but that's good since I'd have less songs to pick for my regular listening......then there's my iPod but that's a diferent story.


.....now I just realized out of all that I forgot to get one song from Melbourne and I have no way of getting it soon, sucks just doesn't quite capture my current predicament.

Post script

Now that the exhibition is over I just realized something, I'm stranded here in my old school, none of the office drivers are available to pick me up, my brother's using the family car, a friend of mine who I thought lived in this area is currently overseas and I hardly have any cash to grab a cab home. I wish I still have that house just behind this school like we used to. On the positive side I'm stuck in a familiar place so I decided to go for a little unsupervised no-safety wall climbing on the old wall they have here, also I met one of my old teacher and one of my younger brother's old teacher (if you're reading this Mr. Pujo sent his regards) so it's not all that bad.

....and there she was.....the big black horse that kicked me years ago....old but still alive and kicking.

Going old school

It's about 12 years since I've seen my old junior high school. funny how things turn out, I'm working in a place that helped my university application years ago, I'm working in conjuncture with the place where I used to study and now I'm in my old Junior high school grounds in a building that didn't exist when I was studying here I wonder if I'll be dealing with my old elementary school sometime soon.

Well I'm currently here in my old junior high offering students here an option to go to a small and not very famous university (UNSW) and for once the school offered me free lunch AND SNACKS!! never in my time here as a student have they ever offered me a free lunch or free anything for that matter and it wasn't bad either. While most students are looking to get into a more prestigious and lucrative yet painfully impossible to gain entry and not promoted in this exhibition such as Harvard, Princeton and Berkley, I'm dealing with students who have their feet on the ground but still want to study in a university but with a different experience. Yes that's how I'm promoting studying overseas to people now, not the academic prestige or credentials, not because some local universities have questionable reputation and definitely not because overseas graduate are guaranteed a job, it's the experience, I'm offering them to have a different experience in life to have them living a somewhat different life than the ones they are used to and explore other possibilities.....great marketing pitch eh?

The university I'm representing now may not be as famous as the previously mentioned American education Institutions but it doesn't mean it's crap either, but that's besides the point, the point is I'm now on the other end, the non studying but not teaching end either but it still feels kind of wierd.

moving day

It's moving day in may office today, from one side of the room to the other side since they're going to move the wall forward meaning I'll loose my old workspace. From what I can see I'll be working in a very cramped space as oppose to my current spacy one. I'll also be loosing my free Wi-Fi connection for my notebook so I can't keep in touch some people via the net while at work, probably my only real gripe about the whole re-arrangement, well that and the claustrophobic workspace.

I hope I can get some stray wireless feed at my new workspace.

Faking it

If you earn your Phd or graduated from the medical faculty (majoring in anything other than nursing) can you say that your degree is doctored?

LFS! (looking for songs)

anyone know where I can swipe some good quiet lounge music?

T3h W33k3ndz

Ah....weekend, sweet sweet weekend, the time that most people look forward to and what better way for a single guy to spend his weekend other than sitting...in front of the TV....playing video games and watching Red VS Blue all day. I'm pretty sure there's more to life than this but right now I really don't care, for now it's just me, my PS2 and a whole lot of time to spend.

I think I've reached that point in a person's life where all his needs and wants have been fulfilled....well not really all, I'm still lacking my cheap high speed internet connection, once I have that my life's goal is fulfilled.

1 billion songs

Well there you go iTMS just sold 1,000,000,000 songs, now Apple can say iSold 1,000,000,000 songs!

Deadline

They call it a deadline, today the meaning of this word has been toned down severly for a reason, when you pass the line you're dead, at least you should be. Requesting for a deadline extension is fine if a proper reason is given.

On that note What the hell is up with Indonesian and deadlines? when the onus is on them they ALWAYS request for a deadline extention but if the onus is on the other party they always demand the burdened party to meet the deadline.

Hmmm.....

Funny, I can't seem to backlog with this blog for the last few days I wonder what's wrong with this blog?

BLAH!

Looking for my red stapler......and my report sheet

Online In Flight

Here I am Now in-flight and since I am currently on international waters I'm somewhat confused with the time I guess I should be using GMT, anyway, Boeing's got a really neat deal for now, they have a 30 minute free wireless connection! neat!

Bad thing is I have a fuckin retard sitting next to me

Ah....games.....

Ah....a day off work, public holiday honestly I dont like them that much, only mean I eaither stay at home doing nothing or going out and spend cash....I did the latter....I bought a PS2, which one you ask? the thin one ARRRRR, I thought in the long run it'd be better for me since I wouldn't be as bored the next time I have to be at home, besides what's a gamer without a gaming console? it was a hard choice between that and a DS but being in Indonesia PS 2 games are actually cheaper for some reason *wink* *wink* so that was pretty much the deciding factor. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have as much time as I did wehn I was still a student which is a good thing in a way since now I can't abuse the machine as much but I should be able to keep myself in the game.

Goin' Over land and Overseas

So that's it, I'll be leaving for Melbourne on the 7th and I'll be back in Jakarta on the 20th of February.


.llew seog gnihtyreve epoh I

.ojod dlo eht tisiv ot emit emos ekam ll'I ,nac kniht t'nod I em htiw ugob ym gnirb ot ekil d'I sa hcum sa dna gnol oot neeb s'ti ,sdneirf dlo ym teem ot ecnahc eht teg yllanif I eton evitisop a nO

.yraurbef fo keew driht eht no keew a tof enroubleM ni eb lliw I. t'nsi yllaer ti tub saw ti hsiw I, yadiloh a rof ton s'ti dna ot evah I esuaceb tub ot tnaw I esuaceb ton ,evael a ekat ot evah ydaerla I boj wen ym ni shtnom flah a dna eno

Bloody Monday....

I got into the office about 15 minutes later than usual. It' 7:45 now and no one's here yet, granted that half of my co-workers won't be here today since tomorrow is a public holiday and since yesterday was Sunday most people opted not to come today, me I'm just crazy. Anyway, as I got into the office the things I noticed are, one, the rat trap is still there and no rat on it so my guess is the rat's still running around my office, crap. Second, as I was about to make my tea, I noticed everything seems to be in place, sugar, tea, and cream except for the water.....how the hell am I supposed to make tea without water? so here I am sitting on my chair keeping an eye out for that rat with a mug of powdered cream woth sugar and a tea bag with no water in it. and now It's only 7:55 AM

As the day comes to a close...

...I have to do data entry, I know data entry is boring but I never knew it was going to be this boring...augh I'm only doing it faster so I don't have to do it tomorrow......I hope I can finish it today and hopefully without hitting OT.

FUCKIN' RAT!

I can't beleive there's a rat in my office! a goddamn rat, not a mouse, a fuckin' rat! son of a bitch rat, I'll kill it the next time is see that bastard! stupid tables blocking my swings.....

Ah finally

hey guess what? Tea is here!! finally and about time too...

later than usual.....and no tea

I left for work at my regular time (around 6:30 am) and arrived an hour later than usual, I'm guessing last night's rain has something to do with but the disfunctional traffic light near my house is definitely a major factor there, along with crazy drivers and loco bikers...

Now I'm in my office, tea is still empty and the wifi is still not on yet, I'm not happy.

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

I told you it was going to be one hell of a day, after all that comotion my office was flooded. It rained very heavily this evening with strong winds, I mean really strong winds and having your office bellow ground floor is not a good thing when it rains heavily, good thing it was near 5pm so I didnt have to sit in the office for long.

gone shrimping

Finally, 4 hours after its supposed to be connected the wifi is finally on, now I can start casting my net.

*grumble* *grumble*

Heavy rain, no tea and no Wifi, and parents are calling about offer letters and accomodations this is going to be one hell of a day.

I guess I have to hold off shrimp fishing for another day since I can't cast a net.

another day

Ah the creamer's here, now I can make a proper milk tea WITH MILK!!!

No representation without tax

"No tax without representation", anyone who have some knowledge of American history should be familiar with this phrase, it is in fact one of the main reason why the United states of America exists now, they fought against the British not because they refuse to pay taxes but the were considered "British" citizens yet were not represented in the British parliament and still they have to pay taxes.

However as time goes on, in a different country, many years later, the issue is reversed where the so called citizens and certain businesses with sufficient financial capability refuses to pay taxes yet still demand services from the state, some in fact demand "special consideration" regarding payment of taxes. In this case the state should be able to refuses such individuals the basic rights of a citizen such as voting rights, civil and military protection and other public services that are maintained by taxpayers.

However the citizen/resident should also have the right to refuse to pay taxes if, and only if the government, who are responsible to and payed by taxpayers, is not acting in the best interest of its citizens.

Responsible government can only be achieved through responsible citizens

OK, I've finished my tea and the day hasn't really started yet.....that's odd....

The fresh smell of smog

Ah, another working day, yesterday I found a job opening in Melbourne University, it's got decent pay and not so far from where I lived, now I'm kicking myself for not applying for an Australian permanent residency but that was yesterday now is today, and as always I start my day by making myself a mug of milk tea (milk first then tea) but today I found out that the office ran out of milk/cream and no one else is here yet so I guess I'll just settle with tea sans milk.

Now I wait for the day to really start.

OMG WINNARZ!!!!

on the 13th of January the the OMG winner has been announced....why am I posting this? I can't help myself....

"The OMG Cup was created to recognize the need for Original Mac Games as well as to highlight the bright future of Mac gaming," said Carlos Camacho, Editor-in-Chief of iDevGames. "They, along with many talented independent game developers in our community, are advancing the state of Mac gaming at a grass-roots level."

taken from Freeverse

On this date....

1535 - Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro.

1778 - James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".

1861 - Georgia joins the Confederacy.

1871 - Wilhelm I of Germany becomes the first German Emperor.

1884 - Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK.

1884 - Dr William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the UK.

1919 - World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.

1975 - The Jeffersons debuts on CBS.

1978 - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.

1993 - For the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is officially observed in all 50 United States states.

1998 - Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky affair story on his website The Drudge Report.

2003 - Canberra firestorm, kills 4 and destroys 491 homes

2005 - A U.N. World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan begins

バカ人間は大嫌い！

In my line of work I deal with various types of people, dumb, clueless, smart, confused, annoying, cheerful and then some. The majority of them being teenagers and their parents, what I find interesting is the parents who wants to send their sons and daughters, who are under 18, overseas to study in university but still not being able to treat them as an adult individual, most of the parents I've dealt with wants a special treatment for their child, most people find this natural I find it annoying.

They have to learn that they can't have the best of both worlds, I can't guarantee that these children will be with the "right" crowd nor can I guarantee what they study will be useful in their future jobs. When it comes to advising teenagers about what they want to do I tend to ignore the parents because they're not going to live the child's life. My job is to counsel the students about their options and see they get to study where they want and what they want.

Parents may think they know what's best for their children but it's the children who have the right to decide what they want to do.

7 Figure salary

Saying you earn a 7 figure salary per month (local currency) just doesn't feel the same when you live in a backwater country where your regular groceries cost about 300k-500k in average.

Going to the office on a Saturday

Some people say it's part of the job, others say it's to improve productivity, I say it's bull crap. Having to come to the office to attend a company "productivity workshop" on a saturday will only be wasting the employees well deserved brake and it certainly won't increase work productivity. Making employees sit and listen to one or two people talking at length about "productivity" is not a good way to boost office morale. The only reason why everyone will come to such things is because they're either well compensated for the attendance or afraid to be issued a warning, gets a pay cut, or loose their jobs for not attending, my proof, if such activities are not made compulsory without a reasonable compensation NOBODY will come, particularly because it's a Weekend and no, cheap door prizes will not increase employee enthusiasm to attend.

Making employees unhappy is the worst thing ANY company can ever do, we may need the job but they won't run without us wanting to do our jobs, only second to making an employee with a psychotic homicidal tendency unhappy about the working condition.

Like Gonzales

After using the free wireless connection for more than a week I realized how fast the connection actually is, it's like having broadband back but with half the regular speed, not that fast but fast enough for me to do what I "need" to do in the office.

The only catch is I have to start using it early before everyone else arrives.

Time to play the waiting game again

Ah yes it's come to that time again, the possible release date of another game console, the Nintendo revolution to be exact,while I am enthausiastic about the console itself actually buying one for myself is another matter (something to do with financial capacity). While previews of it have been widely released I can't wait to see what it can really offer the gaming community aside from industry's "new exciting gameplay" and "better graphics".

Tiny little corner of joy

Hey hey hey! I found a hotspot in a small corner in my office but with a very weak signal. Oh well at least it's faster than the actual wired office connection.


Ok, now this is awkward, I got a free wireless connection in the office but don't really feel like browsing anything....