Care Too Much

He sent me his profile to convince me about this company who did the profiling. I was rather surprised because he didnt have to do that after all I sort of work with him. For all its worth, it profiled him as I know him plus a bit more. Normally he's cool with a bit of temperament every now and then.

What surprised me was his reaction on my client's attic. He was genuinely annoyed that I was treated that way. He told anyone at the table the other day how he sort of surprised I didnt tell my client off and commended me for handling it.

At least I have an ally in him.

Losing Weight?

I dont get this. I weighted myself both home and at the hospital this week and it was about the same weight all this year. But two of my cousins said I'm losing my weight and told me to eat/rest more. While another cousin thought I was putting on weight last month.

Earlier this month I went to my dressmaker as I needed to make a frock, ok I needed two, she said most of my measurements are the same as two years ago, some are slightly bigger.

So, how come I look like I'm losing weight?

Feverish

I've been feverish every night since Saturday. That, or I've been feeling really hot that I was sweating like mad. I just know that my "internal thermostat" is out of whack. Just as at the moment: no airco, without blanket I am shivering, but as soon as I use blanket I feel too hot that I become nauseated. I'm sick. Again. I think I get sick almost in monthly basis ever since I moved back to Jakarta.

My doc said this evening that I have infection & ulcer. By the dosage of antibiotic he gave me, it's respiratory infection. SIGH!

Hopefully the meds help because I cant wait for Friday to go up to the mountain for the weekend and (trying to) recuperate. Although, meditating 10 hours a day is not really what I called relaxing. But, I need to do it to recharge and it's the only time I'm available and not feeling like being home/connected this weekend.

Some Kind of Talent

I showed mom this, and she was "what's so special about it?"
Then I explained to her how they did it, and she was "good heavens!"

Getting To The University

A nephew of mine is accepted by invitation to Universitas Indonesia. From what I understand it means he had an excellent track record while in High school. He's a smart kid who joined moot UN debates, always in the top 5 in his class, while still had time to entered modeling competitions and won several times.

We were all happy and proud about his invitation as it is one of the most prestigious universities in Indonesia and also alma mater of a lot of us in the family.

However there is a big obstacle on his road to join the university. He needs to pay Rp. 100 millions (almost USD 12000) up front. Sadly his family doesnt have that much money lying around. So now, he needs to study even harder, aces the entrance exam to the University and beats thousands of other students from all over Indonesia.

Education is getting more and more expensive nowadays, and sometimes the quality is not up to par. Unless you are on scholarship, or have a wealthy parents, your chance of getting into prestigious university is pretty slim.

How Was It?

Did you survive the Rapture? Did the world population decline by 200 millions?

On Harryvanyogya

me:You need to follow this guy: twitter.com/harryvanyogya
him:who's that?
me:a becak driver
him:huh?
me:isnt it great? he was in this movie and wrote a book.
him:seriously?
me: yupe, his Dutch is not bad, his English is better than the average Indonesian. he studied math for 4 semester at the uni
him: hahaha his description is in Dutch. He's great!
me:told ya. He conducts tours with becaks and gets his customers via twitter. You can do reservation via twitter.
him: hahaha
me: I knew you like it. check out his followers, around 800s
him:what 800s? his followers is 2985
me:what? it was only 800s around 9pm.

I have a mission of getting his book and watch the indie movie he was in. He is more articulate that some of our politicians, and more internet savvy.

mas Harry, you got yourself a fan.

If Only My Dad Could See This

I bought:
Biologi reproduksi kehamilan dan persalinan (pregnancy & labor)
Ilmu Kebidanan: patologi & fisiologi persalinan (Human labor & birth)
Kamus kedokteran (medical dictionary)

He wouldve been smiling seeing me devouring them..

Wilders' Revenge On Indonesia

It is an old interview from Sept 2010. Too bad I cant find the English subtitle for it. Basically Wilders said that anyone from Indonesia is forbidden to immigrate to NL unless as an asylum seeker because Indonesia is a "Moslem country" based on his definition that Moslem country is any country with a Moslem majority of its inhabitants. However, a Moslem from USA is allowed to immigrate to NL. What gives?

If he was afraid of moslem terrorist, so far Indonesian terrorists only operate within Indonesia. The 9/11 hijackers were mostly Saudis living in the USA. UK moslem terrorists operate not only in the UK. It is more logical to ban Moslem British passport holders than the Indonesian ones.

If he was afraid of integration problem in NL, for the best of my knowledge Indonesian (descendants) who count as the biggest foreigner group in NL integrated well into the society unlike Moroccan, Turkish, or even Polish people.

Back in April, at the anniversary of RMS, Wilders twitted supporting RMS to freed themselves from Islamic Indonesia.

All of these, is it because the government refused to let him enter Indonesia, the land of his ancestor?

I Wish I Could Say This

Some people just a jerk. Luckily, most of the time, I could avoid/ignore such people. Today I am this close in cursing this client of ours. I havent this annoyed of anyone since last year. Seriously I wish I could just say "Go eff yourself!" He's pushy and from what I heard is into backstabbing you if he didnt get what he wants. Even the guy who referred him to us told me not to take any notice because he is so pushy.

I've spent more time dealing with his case than in any other case. It really irritants me when he emailed with an emoticon of sad face after I hadnt replied to his email. When I did, he was very patronizing. I'm so not looking forward to next week when I have to meet him. I hope he wont ruined my week.

I pity whoever works for him, I bet he is such a slave driver.

End of The World

The end of the world is near. So near that on Saturday it's the Rapture of Christian believers and the end of the world is on Oct 21 this year, not in 2012 like the Mayan calendar.

In case you want to prepare for it or for zombie apocalypse for that matter, you can check on CDC's website.

Go on, I kid you not, the US government is spending money on preparing us for zombie apocalypse. Wait until they prepare us for the vampire invasion... what? They are already here? Damn Twilight!

When One Windows Closes..

.. other OS is working!

When Microsoft bought Skype, start looking for other voip. Any suggestion? At the moment the only application that fails on me is MS Office, then again it's the only microsoft software I have installed. At one point, my firefox hang because I tried to do something on microsoft website. So, not looking forward to skype failing on me, too.

Something Wrong With Our Education

They just announced the result of this year's final exam for the senior high schools. Apparently it's better than last year with 99% passing the exam. Sounds great, right?

However, it means that if you scored at least 4 in the scale of 10 in your final exam and as long as you scored at least 8 in every subject at school, you passed the final exam. It is also said that the government still uses the same cut off point of 5.5 of the average of those two scores.

Perhaps it is just me thinking that with score as low as 4, you cant really survived going to the university, assuming you want to go to any higher education. If you have the money to enroll abroad, it is even tougher to compete studying in other language. If you compare average Indonesia high school leavers to their European counterpart, honestly I dont think they can compete eventhough in some European countries the level of education is also declining according to the media. How could you compete with those with higher standard of passing if you are not used to a higher standard? You dont have a good enough basic to begin with.

You cant say that the children are stupider (some is due to their lack of good nutrition in early years) than their European counterpart, because with proper guidance, there are Indonesian kids who won gold medals at international scientific olympiads. Some of these kids are from under privilege background, like these kids from rural Papua, who had bad marks for their subjects. They were selected to get special tutoring, and within months they could compete in an international competition with a great result. It's a proof that the quality of our education and its support is rather patchy. It is getting better, but still not up there. I would love to see that the average Indonesian children could pass their exam with score of at least 5.5 in the scale of 10 easy.

Happy Waisak

Bhavatu sabba mangalam - May all beings be happy

Israel Day in Indonesia? Fat Chance

Indonesia has no diplomatic tie with Israel. That doesnt stop Indonesian going to Israel, tho. The holy land tourism is a big business in Indonesia, that include Christian and some Moslem going to Israel/Palestine area.

Last week, prior to Israel Independence day, Mr Unggun Dahana asked for permission to celebrate the day in Jakarta, citing the aim is to acknowledge the Israel sovereignty. It is rather interesting considering even in the USA, the second biggest Jewish community in the world and the biggest outside Israel, they dont celebrate it. Plus, as a staunch Palestine supporter, most of Indonesian Moslem would get upset by the sight of anything to do with Israel.

It is understandable that Indonesian government banned such celebration.

One thing though, Indonesia needs to have diplomatic tie with Israel. I think it's easier to help Palestine if we have contact with Israel, just like Egypt has a tie with Israel. With the tourism and volunteering in Palestine, should there be any problem with Indonesian in the area, it would be easier to help them if we have an embassy on the ground.

There is also a side note on it, rumour has is that wealthy (corrupt) Indonesian is now putting their money in Israel instead of in Swiss because Indonesian government wont have any power to trace the money in Israel. If it was true, the more reason for us to have that diplomatic tie. Then again, if it was true those guys wouldve paid for the fanatics to make a fuss about not having a diplomatic tie.

Monday is a Free day?

Next Tuesday being Waisak is a holiday in Indonesia. Waisak is the day Buddha was born, was enlightened and died. That makes Monday a 'sandwich' between two days off, known as HARPITNAS, hari kejepit nasional, national ditch day.

Imagine my surprised when I got home on Friday around 9pm, I saw the ticker running: BEJ closes on Monday due to join statement by 3 ministers. BEJ being Jakarta stock exchange. I texted one of my bosses, and was told that he's going to consult his partner on that. So, I still dont know if our office is open or not on Monday.

Apparently on Friday 3 ministers issued a join statement that Monday is a collective vacation. Seriously. Why didnt they issue it at least a week earlier. Now I have a problem, since Monday we supposed to send out important letters to 2 ministries, we have to wait until Wednesday. Grr...

Had I known about the vacation on Monday, I wouldve sent it on Friday before lunch. Instead I was working on a proposal that had to be received by our client via email before Monday and after lunch drafting that letters for the ministries. I shouldve done it the other way.

I dont get why the government do this? Normally they issued join statement about collective vacation (cuti bersama) of the year before January. For 2011 there was no collective vacation in May, now there is. Even if I want to go out of town, it's a bit too late or the price is too steep. Why couldnt the government do it timely?

update: Bank Indonesia is closed on Monday, but the RTGS and clearing are still operational, meaning BEJ is now open on Monday.

Effendi oh Ependi

I had to ask someone by phone about the correct spelling of this nob's name to whom I need to send a letter. Now, at my office almost everyone has connection with Bandung (except for yours truly) and we have this running joke about people, by people I mean Sundanese, who has trouble using F, P and V. They keep jumble it up like Pesva for Vespa.

Me: Would you mind telling me his full name, sir?

Guy: Bla bla Ependi bla

Me: So it would be Bla bla Effendi... do you spell it with P or with F?

Guy: Ependi

Me: With double F or P?

Guy: Just the normal one (I was almost laughing at this point)

Me: OK, so Bla bla Effendi bla. thank you, sir. I'll send the letter right away.

I googled the name: Bla bla EFFEDI bla

Free Doctor Consultation on May 20th

Indonesian Doctor Association (IDI) is doing their public service by not charging anything for doctor consultation on May 20th, the national awakening day, across Indonesia. There will be two ways of doing it on that day:

1. Free consultation fee for the have not

2. Normal fee for the haves and the proceed of the day is donated to IDI for the next social services, such as free cleft lip surgery for those who needed.

It's an awesome thing to do, as doctors in Indonesia are a bit like taxi drivers, if they are not working at their private practices, they dont earn anything that day. Unlike their European counterparts who dont need to have their own practices because their salary is high enough, the salary of Indonesian doctors is very low for that kind of expertise & responsibility so they need to supplemented their earning by having private practices. Mind you, not many people in other profession is willing to forsake their earning for a day like that. Imagine if you are a GP, I think in Jakarta you charged about Rp 100,000 per patient, and if you are working for a clinic/hospital, you still need to give them their cut up to 20%. If you have about 40 patients for the whole day, your opportunity cost is Rp 3,200,000. However, if you are a well known specialist who charged at least Rp 250,000, then your opportunity costs is Rp. 8,000,000.

Yes, you might say that they are doctors who supposed to help people and expected to help people. Sure, doctors are supposed to be more altruistic than other profession, but it doesnt mean other profession couldnt help other people as well. Say, tax advisor, they could've given 1 day of their fees and use the proceed to set up an foundation funding students learning to become a tax advisors or something like that. Imagine the amount of fund we could generate in days like this, and if the disbursement of it accurate, how many things could improve.

Anyway, please spread the news, so that those who need to see a doctor but cant afford it know about this service.

Things I Missed Out This Week

Monday I missed out part of Sentilan Sentilun program. It was sooooo incredibly funny & witty. Too bad I missed the beginning of it and I couldnt find it at youtube.

Come Wednesday, I missed out that it was Star wars day, the only day I could've said: may4thbewithyou! Gosh I'm such a geek.

And I missed out Cinco de mayo. Well, at least I remember it was my friend's birthday.

Ok, need to go to sleep.. before I miss out my appointment in the morning..

Internet Access of Parliamentarian

A couple of days ago I found out that during their visit to Australia to study about how Australian government handles the poor, our esteemed parliamentarians of Commission VIII (portfolio: social, women empowerment and religious relationship) met with Indonesian community over there. There was a Q&A session where people asked what was the official email address of commission VIII. After a commotion, a lady yelled 'Commission VIII at Yahoo dot com'.

Armed with smartphones, the address and variation of it was checked immediately and they found nothing.

Later on I found out that the costs of internet access at the Parliament is more than Rp. 300Billion annually. Now, I think that amount is outrageously high for internet access for a connection that from I could gather from my friends who work(ed) over there was pretty slow. And to hear that the commissions have no official email address, let alone the individual esteemed MPs is just mind boggling.

It made you wonder what kind of internet access do they get for that amount of money? Surely an official email address for all the commissions should be part of the deal. According to an article at kompas the general secretary of the parliament, Nining Indrasaleh, said that each member has a dpr.go.id account eventho all the MPs including Marzuki Alie who were interviewed for the article use free email accounts from gmail or yahoo.

It's just one of the expenses by the MPs that we, the people, could not understand the legitimacy of it in the midst of problems such as malnutrition, crumbling schools, lack of libraries and he list goes on and on.

I wish we could de-seat MPs from their office. sigh..

On Dalai Lama's Approval on Killing Osama

After the death of Osama there was an article on LA Times suggesting that Dalai Lama found that the killing of Osama is justified. Talk about sensational reportage.

This is the man who tries to avoid harming other being, how on earth could he find a killing of a human being is justified. So very uncharacteristic of Dalai Lama.

In the article itself and also in His Holiness website we could see that when asked about Osama's death and the celebration of it by some, Dalai Lama was quoted saying "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." According to His Holiness website, Dalai Lama then emphasized the need to find a distinction between the action and the actor. He said in the case of Bin Laden, his action was of course destructive and the September 11 events killed thousands of people. … So his action must be brought to justice... But with the actor we must have compassion and a sense of concern... His Holiness said therefore the counter measure, no matter what form it takes, has to be compassionate action.

I wasnt there, so I had no idea what really happened since to the best of my knowledge there is no recording of the event. However, from what I understand of Buddhism, it is true that Buddhism doesnt mean that you are passively accepting being push around. Unlike Jesus who gave the other cheek upon being slapped, Buddhist is told to stop the action of slapping with compassion. Because letting someone slap you means you dont have compassion for that person by letting his/her creates new bad karma. With that in mind, I dont think Dalai Lama meant that the killing is justified because it was without any compassion at all, but there should be a counter measure to all the wrong doing by Osama. Then again, it's just my take on this with limited information available.

update: According to USC (the university who invited him) website this is what Dalai Lama said:

Earlier at the Galen Center, he was asked about people celebrating the recent killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Where does compassion and ethics fit into that?” asked moderator James Doty, clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University, chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation and a board member of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute.

“There must be a distinction between actor and action,” the Dalai Lama said. “Bin Laden was a force of destruction so his action needed justice. But as a human being, we must have compassion. He committed a destructive action so actions had to be taken to stop it.”

Forgiveness doesn’t mean to forget what happened, he said.

“Remember what they have done,” he said. “Look at what they have done and determine what the appropriate action will have to be. But always have compassion.”

On Osama

Osama is dead. However Indonesian tv kept broadcasting: OBAMA is dead. Where's an editor when you need them?

Do you know why Bush couldnt kill Osama? Because Osama hid behind the bush...

You can get huge number of followers by tweeting unknowingly about Osama's bombing by US Navy like @ReallyVirtual

Btw, is there any conclusive DNA evidence that he was really Osama??

On Dreams

I start to dream again. I havent been dreaming for a while. I used to have lucid dreams every now and then. When I was a kid I had several precognitive dreams. Like I dreamed about this class room that I didnt recognize when I was in high school, several years later I went to this classroom at the university that look exactly as that dream. Déjà vu. I dont have it anymore, but when I can recall my dream I pay more attention.

There were several recurring dream themes which I dont know why I have them or what's the meaning behind it. Back in lowland I used to dream walking hand in hand in silence with my late grandpa on several occasions. I've never had that kind of dream anymore. Since I am back here, I've dreamed on several occasions about a certain friend of mine who always wanting to go down the stairs or the lift and I always trying to make him go up stairs instead. Somehow in the dream I felt like going downstairs wont end up good for him, and I couldnt let him do that. Speaking about staircase, years ago I had this dream where Bill Clinton asked me to help him getting up the stairs and he was using a walking stick. Now, I didnt think/read/heard anything about him at least in that week prior to the dream. The next day I found out that on the day I had that dream he had a heart surgery.

I dream about snakes too. Some culture interprets dream about snake as a sensual one or it means you are meeting your soulmate, but I agree with my grandma that it's a warning of something sinister, at least in my case there were. So each time I had a dream about snake I am more vigilant in my real life.

The weirdest dream happened I think two years ago when mom told me the night before she had this dream that there was a party and my late dad was there. She had no idea what kind of party was it but there were a lot of people. I said to mom that it was a birthday party because at the same night I dream about seeing dad at a big birthday party. No idea whose birthday tho, I just remember the cake and candles. Weird huh?

Do you remember your dreams too?