on New Movies, New Cinema and a New Book

Just saw the Kingdom. Nice one. Saw it at the new Blitz in Pacific Place, which wasn’t very good at all. But maybe because it’s really brand new, it’s not a week old yet. There’s also a totally useless KemChicks in the basement that stocks nothing that I wanted. Candi wanted me to pick up a few things – only none of them was available in Kemchick so I ended up doing a circle run to (what was) ClubStore in the CBD, grabbed the shopping, then came back to Pacific Place. Dinner was at the Ritz Carlton, a little self indulgence, but I kinda needing it a little. It was okay, I guess.

Back to the film, it was great. Sometimes it gets a bit mellow, but I think that’s the case with all Jamie Foxx films. He’s always a little mellow.

I like it better than American Gangster. Denzel tried too much to be De Niro/Pacino, it ain’t fun anymore. For gangster movies, there was the Godfather, Scarface and the Goodfellas. If you only tried your best to follow in their paths, I don’t think you could really do a better version of any of them. I’m sure there will be some good gangster films made someday, but it will be entirely different (think Pulp Fiction).

The new book of the month is Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland that Candi bought for me two weeks ago. Very Coupland – if you read any of his previous book, then you’d like this one a lot.

In any event, I’ve to get up in 5 hours to run for the airport. Then I’ve meetings all day which is kinda sucks. I need some sleep. I need to sleep sometime this week. For real.

Drop me mails people. I love email. Make me happy. I’m not very happy right now.

Happy Friday.

on Ralph Steadman & Tony Blair

A word to the wise is infuriating.
~Hunter S. Thompson

Was going around googling Ralph Steadman – work research. He is most famous for the illustration on the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but he does many other things. We need some illustration works and I want someone that could do his style of doodles.

Then I found this illustration by the great artist, done for New Statesman magazine last May. The magazine asked him to illustrate what Tony Blair reign means.

PS: I'll be airport hopping all day tomorrow, updates might arrive late. Have a good Friday. Pray for good weather.

on Short Thoughts

Chances are, I won’t be able to write anything useful. My days are getting pretty hectic these days. JenJen is apparently down with some typhoid so I don’t even have a luscious chat partner for my cocktail hours these days.

Not fun, hey?

Jakarta saw the first of its annual flood a few days ago, the toll for the airport was blocked and flights were cancelled. This time the minister blamed global warming.

Global warming, can you believe that? I blame Al Gore for all this.

I actually planned to write something about the Rainbow Warrior. That’s the Greenpeace boat. I spent the entire Sunday onboard, lounging and going thru the rooms and cabins and all. It’s a cool ship. Old, but very well taken care of. You could tell she was loved.

The mess is a mini lounge with red couches with large pictures all over the place. Books and atlases. On one panel, there were three framed black and whites of three people who died on board, one of them died on the original ship when it was bombed by the French commandoes. I sat there and let someone took a picture of me.

The tight hallways also have pictures. Artic Sunrise, Moby Dick, Esperanza and all the other ships in the fleet. People in floaters along side nuclear aircraft carrier and coast guard choppers hovering close to keep them away, one place or another. Each frame has a story.

I have always been wanting to get on board of the ship. Save probably for the Maltese Falcon, I can’t think of any other ship I really would want to see. I wasn’t the only one as most of Sunday was full of random people getting on and off the deck, the different volunteers being shown the myths and legends of the Rainbow Warrior.

It’s pretty cool story and I swear, I could’ve (and would’ve) told the story better had I have the time. Maybe sometime next week.

I’m flying out to Singapore again this weekend. Friday and Saturday will be full with meetings and catching up with people I have to see to pay the bill. Sunday will be for me and my girl.
Do you guys look forward to Sunday as much as I do?

ʎɐpsǝupǝʍ uo

˙llɐ unɟ ǝʌɐɥ

˙ʍoɥǝɯos ˙ǝɹǝɥʍǝɯos ˙ʇı pɐǝɹ oʇ pos ɹood ǝɯos sʎɐʍlɐ s,ǝɹǝɥʇ ˙ʎɐʍʎuɐ ʇıɥs pɹıǝʍ ɟo sʇɹos llɐ ƃolq ǝldoǝd ʇnq ˙ʇɐɥʇ ʍouʞ oʇ pǝǝu ʎllɐǝɹ ʇ,uop noʎ 'ǝsɹnoɔ ɟo ˙ʎɯɯnʇ ʎuunɟ oslɐ

˙ʎuunɟ ƃuılǝǝɟ ˙ʞǝǝʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝɯǝɥʇ ǝɥʇ ʇsnɾ ǝq oslɐ plnoɔ ʇı ʇnq 'ƃuıɥʇ ʎɐpsǝupǝʍ ɐ s,ʇı ǝqʎɐɯ ˙ʎɐpoʇ ʎuunɟ ʇıq ɐ ƃuılǝǝɟ ɯ,ı ¿lɐǝɹ ɹoɟ ǝʞıl ¿sıɥʇ ƃuıpɐǝɹ noʎ ǝɹɐ

on the Highway in Ohio: a Lion

Pet story of the month is of course, Lambert. This cat got out of its cage and ran onto the highway, attacking cars. Lambert is a 250kg full adult lion. The owner later chased and managed to coax him back into the cage without anyone getting hurt, though there were 911 calls from drivers.

Apparently, this guy raises two lions to help his depression. Obviously, you're depressed, then you let your lions loose on highway attacking cars, then you go chase them while dodging police calls and local chapter of humane society, you get pretty excited. It helps. Positively.

The lions are apparently very tame, except for the random act of attacking moving mechanical objects.

I so want to move to Ohio. I want a lion. Here's a link to the news sites in Ohio.

on Diamonds

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here
~Creep, Radiohead

Office has new policy and now firefox is banned. This is going from hard to ridiculous. I could potentially be aggravated to insanity, but I chose not to. Radiohead’s cheaper than therapy. They fucking take my FIREFOX! My newly upgraded and nicely tuned and set FIREFOX. This is going from ridiculous to impossible.

We went to a diamond dealer last night. BestGirlfriend is getting engaged and she’s on the lookout for a ‘reasonably priced’ 2 carat glitter. We had dinner in Kemang (hot fish with lots of mossies) then head off to Bintaro to find this Diamond Girl.

Nice house in the suburbs with four cars in the driveway, we pulled over somewhere around 9. Diamond Girl looked a little tipsy. We barely set our asses down when our host came with this really swanky crystal bottle with Chinese writing on it. The bottle looks very expensive. Then again, it could’ve been a lamp. The clear drink taste like fuel.

Then she presented a box of Godiva chocolate and a bottle of very nice 1991 Bordeux something. Then we chatted randomly about things none of us really care about while staring at some US$300,000 worth of diamonds. Some are too yellow, others are too small, few are too expensive and so it went on.

The whole thing does sound right, does it?

It was fun tho.

There’s a story somewhere in there that I will tell. But not now. Work is in the way. I need to kill people.

I Hate Tuesday More Than Monday

I hate Tuesday more than I hate Monday.

While Monday has a I-hate-this-but-i-have-to-do-it feel to it, Tuesday, is more like, I-hate-this-but-i-have-to-do-it-again.

Crap.

Wizard Off Oz

Time to walk down the memory lane, whistling tunefully to bad 80s ballad of one kind or another. here are from those precious moments where Mr. Howie was with us.

- Howie and Oz: Good Manners Count!
- Treespotter sends a letter for Mr. Howie.
- John Howard made the list.
- Srilankan refugees, anyone?
- John Howard on Barack Obama, via the Treespotter.
- Boat People, again (i didn't realise i cared about them that much!)
- John Howard and Australian Penis Art (for real. Seriously)


Last i heard, Mr Howie's flying to Dartmouth to join Mr. Blair in running the newly founded Poodle Academy.

hi hi hi...





Bye-bye, miss american pie,
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Byeeeeeeeeeeee, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

on Sambal and Indonesian Food

I been accused of Jakarta bashing, Indonesia bashing, not patriotic enough etc. People are never happy.

Let me be nice today.

One of the best things about Indonesia is the food. There are just so many different foods from all over the place. When we were little, mom used to do us food, different food every day. Each has a name and all with their peculiar histories. Manado has my vote for the best food, but then again, I grew up with them.

Dabu-dabu is a strange dish with all sorts of fresh green stuff thrown into some oil and lots of chili and onion. It has a very distinct smell, a certain fresh flavor that works out its magic in dining tables. Most of the time it’s served as a garnish with some fish, but with properly made ones, I could do dabu-dabu with rice alone. It’s that good.

(While you’re at it, Manado girls are also known as the best in bed, so be sure the adventure further from the dining table.)

Their Javanese equivalent is called ‘Sambal’. While they appear to have the same purpose The Javanese use chili paste and use them exclusively as garnish. The ingredients almost always consist of onion, tomatoes, lime and lots of chili. The variations include deep fried, fried and oily, fresh and bare, oil and soy sauce, funny herbs and extra oil. They do just about every possible method with those four things and the result is all the different kinds of sambal from each and every single town across Java and indeed, Indonesia: each have their own uniquely tailored main dish. The better trained taste buds will know the difference.

Sambal Mangga (the four magic ingredients + green mango) is always served with fish. Similar to the thai equivalent except that we use more chili here. This is the most delicious of them all.

Sambal Kecap (magic 4 + soy sauce), is always with red meat. You have them with satay (mutton only, chicken satay is served with peanut butter) or you have them with roast lamb or any other barbecue dishes.

Sambal Terasi (magic 4 + terasi, prawn paste with horrible smell) is probably the most common one. You find them with almost everything as the paste brings out the flavors of all the other delicious dishes. The big thing here is that ‘terasi’ has really terrible smell during the cooking process (almost always fried. It doesn’t smell as much anymore after deep fry). This is probably the most common dish of all Indonesian households except you rarely find them in restaurants. Most expat maids also choose to stay away from this dish for fear of their future employment. Sambal Terasi is served with seafood and always with some tempe in Java.

Tempe is the most delicious and versatile appetizer known to mankind.

Soy beans, fermented and banged into a cake, then deep fried, you’ve Tempe. I’ve always think it is strange for Indonesia to import soy from the US, considering that tempe is inseparable from the Javanese culture.
An increase in soy bean market price incites tremors in our economist planners and considered a threat by our political authorities. It is strange for Indonesian to have such an affinity for a dish that might as well be stamped with a “Made in America” label.

Sambal Tomat (magic 4 + lots and lots of tomato, all fresh) is always served with other veggies: soups and salads and its kind. If it’s a clear soup (not oily or curry-ish or anyting), then all the ingredients are served fresh (the wetter the main dish, the lesser tomatoes, salad would have very little tomato and ones with soups are always more watery). When served with oily soups (soup, semur, etc.) then it’s fried or mixed with a little hot oil.

When you order food in Indonesian, you’re always requested to indicate your preference of sambals (hot, really hot, medium, oily, extra onion, etc.). My best recommendation of good Indonesian restaurant in South Jakarta would be Warung Daun (one in Monginsidi, right hand side, great for large family and office outings), Payon (in Kemang Raya, just before Kemang Festival. Great interior and no aircon room but very classy and casual at the same time. Great for family) and Mbah Gendeng (or something of that sort, in Bulungan, across from the youth center). All three serve proper sambals acceptable to Indonesian tongues.

Best Indonesian dishes, however, are served at home. Chili is a natural aphrodisiac and known to have ‘magical’ properties. It sets your sex life like no other vegetable. You can tell a lot about a Javanese husband by knowing what sambal his wive served with dinner last night. A dutiful wife would carve the individual sambal dish, or at the very least, supervise. A queen with four maids leave the cooking of all the other dishes to her minions, but go to the kitchen and to pay a personal attention for the sambal.
A wise husband would appreciate it.

Put too much salt or too much chilli and you’re in trouble. You’re probably not getting laid. She needs more attention. Too little of anything else and she is taking you for granted. She puts too much soy sauce, most likely she is craving for gifts.

Each of the magic ingredients are composed to perfection for the romance of the night. It is her present for him and he better recognize the wrap.

Boys are men only when they eat the hottest of them all. Dishes where lots of sambal are not served as garnishes but poured over as a sauce. Beautifully roasted lamb soaked in thick red chili sauce is your farewell to adolescence.

Which is why it is better to live with an Indonesian family rather than an army of household staff. My maids are one very nice small family and in weekends I eat their food (other nights I almost always eat outside). I kinda miss home.

bit of wisdom #34

When back stabbing your colleagues, aim for the heart.
Slice the arteries. Pour some lemonade and honey and puncture ticklish area with blunt and rusty needles. Leave and simmer in cubicle til dry.
Remember to steal all his post it notes.

Now, go to your corner and masturbate.

Bit of Wisdom #24

The reason large corporations are so large is because they have so many things running around doing nothing.

on Cheese

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.
~And Because Love Battles, Pablo Neruda

I was just going to do one of them short post that speaks of whole load of bullshit as I was going to sleep. You know, the ones I usually do with bullet points and all.

Then I thought of her.

She writes in short sentences. Abrupt. Usually direct and occasionally vague. Perhaps they were intentionally so. Sometimes I think she was intentionally so. Most times, I could get into her head and understand precisely why she did that way, but I think she’s just not a writing person.

Most times, she’s the muse. She was my muse on all the good days. Occasionally, she brings down the house and everything in it. With a loud bang.

It makes you think of things you wouldn’t otherwise think. People you love. People you miss. They stand by you and stick by you throughout all sorts of crazy shit. Nobody else in their right mind would ever go through things with me the way she generally did. Sometimes, I think she would just walk out and leave. Shut the lights.

She has a smile. Twinkle little things, sweet bubbly floating things that goes around the head and makes Jakarta less grey. I wish I’d cameras and I could capture Kodak moments for prosperity. To show you guys. To keep in a wallet in my pocket. To keep in mind so they’re to be mind. Just so I won’t forget.

I have those. Moments. Flashes and pictures of smiles and laughs and stories and cuddles. Songs and lines, weekends and other livable rhymes. Makes life worthwhile.

Riots of flowers.

I’m getting cheesy.

I rule my own world. This is my blog.

on Flashbacks (Part II)

This life is shining more forever in the sun
Now let us check our heads
And let us check the surf
Staying high and dry's
More trouble than it's worth
In the sun

Just a mirror for the sun
~Road Trippin, Red Hot Chili Peppers

(continued from yday)

I left Mowgli in the music room – the dog was interested in a collection of Cezzane’s letters. Una was there, half his arm covered with tattoos, he wore an OK Computer t-shirt I bought in SF a while ago and gave me a big hug. Some six years ago, the man went thru a revolution, shaved his hair and had all his tattoos lasered off. He added new once since and the smile was much more recognizable. The hair down to shoulder in tousled mess.

Gareng had a glass of JD without ice and was listening to something on a very large headphone. He was working and we’re all there to keep him company. Some high school kids were about to make it thru the big league. The vocalist gave good blowjobs and he was onto something. Or so he tried to convince us. Gareng stopped for a minute and told me about the new revealing information about Bob Marley’s death.

Lenny was there, dreadlocked and an acoustic Ibanez in hand, he stayed on the solo for Tesla’s Love Song. He just finished doing a soundtrack with the Ex and passed me a new lyric for a new album. I wondered if I had any thought but I didn’t. He said the Ex said hi but she was unavailable. This isn’t news.

In one of the seats, holding a wine glass was the beaut herself. She was there without her eight years long boyfriend and obviously not getting married anytime soon. Prettier than the last time I saw her, she politely inquired about my girlfriend. She was there to work on another soundtrack for valentine release and didn’t take my advice to have Last Kiss included in the song list. She wasn’t educated enough in Pearl Jam. I told her I once bought a beer for Eddie Vedder but she’d heard that story a thousand times. We pecked cheeks and I smell her still hours later. I dialed the phone for Krispy Crème and Jakarta was to discover its first Doughnut delivery. There were flashes of ruined wardrobes and I struggled to pick an adjective, settling instead with ‘disastrous’.

Anda sat in the furthest corner tending after the veggies. He’s in love.

Andre occupied an entire couch with a laptop uploading something to YouTube while updating his Friendster page. The entire place is now wified. They were downloading porn in terra bytes.

The same fridge in the corner has orange juice and vodka and whiskeys and guava mixes and melting bowls of frozen margaritas. A guy in Nirvana t-shirt appeared to offer me drinks. Orange juice is good. Thick, fresh and orange with just a dollop of Smirnoff.

Sade did No Ordinary Love and nobody said a word for exactly three minutes and 21 seconds during which one big fat roll was passed for everybody. The rest was a chatter.

You gotta love a Sunday.

Quote of the Day

"I didn't lose, I just didn't get enough vote."
Megawati Soekarnoputri on the 2004 presidential election result (via detik.com).


Learn more of Indonesian politics,

...and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

on Flashbacks

Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber
Why I'm here, I can't quite remember
The surgeon general says it's hazardous to breathe
I'd have another cigarette
But I can't see
Tell me who you're gonna believe
~Paradise City, GN'R

It’s a small house, build in the early fifties with colonial style and old money. It shows the age from the minute you entered the gate. A huge yard with a badminton court and overgrown orchid bushes, it’s totally isolated from the main road and you’ve a distinct feeling of a getaway. The far side lined with palm trees and the other has a canopy for the cars. I pulled into the slot next to two classic Mercedez in prime condition and a Hummer. There were a few other cars, an old Panther and a brand new Alphard with a driver and some sort of hatchback that I suspected was a Honda. Everybody’s here.

Ozzy Ousbourne greets me at the door as he always does for more than 20 years. The poster’s been there forever. I was a toddler the first time I met him. We were.

The furniture were the same, it could’ve been an old general house with the furniture seized from the Dutch. Fajar and two other guys I didn’t recognize feed the fish. Large aquarium with different coloured fish with blue neons looked out of place in this place but the house always had that feel. Out of place.

The entire rear end of the house was converted into a studio with black carpet soundproofing, you could hear the Cure’s Lovesong thumbing even as you approached the kitchen. There’s a small hallway separating the kitchen and the studio, the walls are Kiss, Twisted Sisters, Van Halen, White Snake, Pink Floyd and Aerosmith. The doors are covered in handwriting, graffiti and poetries of poets dead and alive. Chairil Anwar to Kahlil Gibran, Sting to Alan Gilmour, The Clash to Morrisey, Iwan Fals lyrics to Dylan quotes, crayons and markers, phone numbers of half the people in the Jakarta’s forgotten lives done in green. Moldy panels prop an altar for Jim Morisson on one end and a Che Guevara flag covers the only window. There are jars and candles, dead snakes and spider webs among piles and piles of National Geographic and stacks of old LPs. Joan Baez, Miles Davis and God only knows what else. One entire section of the wall was a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and another sings Lucy in the Sky repletes with a badly coloured illustration by someone who was probably absolutely stoned.

The music room has a big grand piano in the middle with empty bottles of just about anything on top. The bass trembles and it creates a distinct clutter of beer bottles every time but nobody ever thought to move them away. Occasionally, you find bottle of old drinkable piss in the crowd, or so says the old wiseman.

Black thick carpet with cigarette burns reeks of bad dreams and broken hearts, the room keeps to itself. There’s a small sunroof that lets light in, directly on top one of the drum sets in the room. There’s a velvety couch in the middle where random drunkards have sex and a large picture of Slash on one side, Eric Clapton on top of a guitar rack on the other. One was a classic Les Paul worth several thousand dollars on eBay.

Green Day, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, Guns N Roses, Iron Maiden and more Jim Morissons pose on one side anarchically while Social Distortion, Pearl Jam, Salvador Dali, Soekarno, Kurt Cobain, Lenny Kravitz, Jack Daniel and a stuffed vampire bat watch your back menacingly.

The guys are sitting in the monitor behind the large glass, a bank of LCD monitors working digital mixes and more rows of analogue buttons. Behind them, an elevated hydroponics vegetable rows.

...to be continued

on a Spoon

There is no spoon.
~Kiddo in the matrix

Girls. I don’t understand girls, I won’t ever. Tell them to wear black, bet your small penises they’ll turn up with all white outfits by Monday. It pisses you off. Every time. It’s not like they didn’t know this, they understood this well.
They do it precisely because you keep expecting them to wear black. Fuck with your head.

Might as well. If they all do as we tell them to do, we all be humping penguins.

I closed two major projects today. Everyone was happy. They all went out to dinner and I chose to stay in the office and worked the next one. I know I’m good at what I do. Good, like, I know nobody better in Jakarta. I’m that good.

Trouble is, I’m not sure what it is that I’m really good at.

Definitely not singing.

Big Hairy Guy was annoyed at Best Girlfriend and Best Girlfriend was annoyed at Me for being annoyed at MyExBestfriend. And I was annoyed at Girlfriend. Put everybody in one room and another in a tiny dot on the map and it made for a real good cocktail hangover.
So I didn’t stay, I left home. So then everybody went home and I felt really bad. So now I am home and having my special mix with Eddie Vedder. I'm expecting neighbors to complain but they're asleep.

I was supposed to be in Blowfish for the Heineken party, bunch of my buddies are there. But I didn’t go. I’m staying home instead. The Cure and Pearl Jam.

I’m not too crazy about that shit anymore, pretty people and all. I’ve the girl I want. The one I love, I think. She drives me nuts, but they all do. The difference being I am actually a willing accomplice in being driven nuts. She’s very pretty, super hot, sweetest girl on the planet and I am so totally in love with her in a weird way that I’d never manage to hail properly.

Did I break your hearts?


I did?

You can still love me. I am lovable.

I have been coming into the office before nine every single day this week. The other morning, I was leaving and the maid reminded me to say good bye to Mowgli. I asked why and he told me that just the day before, Mowgli cried and scratched (dogspeak for begged) to get into my bedroom. I forgot to say bye to him and he thought I was still in bed. So I said good bye to him.

You see, I love them all. They all drive me nuts. The curse of love.

Someone smart would’ve said something about it.

I blogged.

Someday, the nuttiness will recede. Life and love return to their normal states and I will still love them just as much. Life’s crazy.

Most times, it doesn’t even make sense.

She’d call. She doesn’t call very often, not these days, but she still does call at all the wrong time. Makes me wonder coz I don’t really give a shit anymore. I just wonder how she figures out the whole timing thing. It’s weird. Somehow it doesn't ring the right tune anymore. It used to be fun.

John wants to play and he played once. He played three songs and it was good. Like, better than good, he could be great. You can tell he loves to do it. Guitar and music and the crowd and all. We gave him a night to play and you can tell he needed a lot of vodka to go thru with it. Comes Wednesday and we stayed waiting. John came with strained throat and admitted that he lost his voice rehearsing.

He wants more than he can chew.

He got free drinks coz I think he was kinda nice.

Live and learn. Some people don’t do that. Some people spend lives trying to do that. You live and learn dude, you don’t try to learn. You just do.

Antoine or whoever the fuck his name was thought nobody used drugs in jakarta.

I’ve a bottle of Martin Miller hidden somewhere. You just gotta find it. It goes down well with jazz. Not Pearl Jam. Jazz.

Spent night arguing with Andre if Pearl Jam was best with Once or with Alive. I think Pearl Jam was when they let out and screamed Once. They did it Once. Ten was a great album.

Then like all the other great people. They fucked it up.

I wonder if my time is due.

Have a good weekend all.


Once, upon a time, i can control myself....
Once, upon a time, i could lose myself...
Once...

Yahoo Failed in Geo

And i failed at grammar. yes. don't rub it in.

Check out this map from Yahoo International. Did someone move Sumatra recently?


Treespotter is away checking Google Map.

Have a good weekend, all!

Mr Brightside's Riddle: if you don't pick up your phone, how would i know what you're up to?

Let's Make IndCoup Happy! (and cricket and Garcia Marquez and everybody else, too)

This picture doesn't look like Jakarta, but i won't be too surprised if it was, really.




I'm stuck with money making obligation, blogging and other smutty pleasures will have to wait til later.


Flash Update: I was reading this article about Lohan's jail stint, and the bottom part mentioned Angelina Jolie's Love in the Time of Cholera. The MSNBC writer says, "The book that inspired the film was a recent Oprah book club selection. If the power of Oprah extends to the silver screen, you can’t rule this film out, either."

Duh! These days, if something isn't on Oprah, i guess it's just not good enough. I love the book and where i can remember, i love most of Garcia Marquez stuff (100 years of solitude is still a fave), and i think he's probably one of the greatest contemporary authors (Spanish have a way with words). Even he needs Oprah, it seems.

just as well. I haven't seen the movie, but current reviews says it's not that impressive.

PS: Jakarta has a cricket league!!

PSS: I am now a slave trader (in addition to smut peddler)

at work

i'm still at work.

not happy.

tired.

zzz.

Internet Recap and STDs

Oh, you know where, now I cant see, I just stare...

I, I'm still alive
Hey I, but, I'm still alive
Hey I, boy, I'm still alive
Hey I, I, I, I'm still alive, yeah
Ooh yeah...yeah yeah yeah...oh...oh...
~Alive, Pearl Jam

Wednesdays are for long distance relationships, lustful longings and other parasitic affairs. Except that today is Thursday and not Wednesday.

Let’s do an internet recap instead, I’m feeling nettish today.

New SimCity is out. SimCity Societies include some environmental modeling and other green stuff. Anything to make Mr. Gore happy. the game also was sponsored by BP (with their logos on the wind turbines).

There’s an international horror film festival in Blitz, go check it out if you’re into that sort of stuff.

On Youtube, there’s a Lego Frankenstein movie. It’s almost spooky.

Singapore bans Microsoft video game for a sex scene. The game apparently depicts a kiss scene – a girl and an alien. Singapore also bans homosexual activities and porn in general.

More Americans have stds. Lots and lots and lots of them. Who's counting?

Someone had already predicted the death of email. I don’t share the opinion, but I do think that things are going to that general direction. Facebook mail is so much better: you only get mail from people you know! We’ll pick this one up again, soon.

The EU blocked Google’s purchase of DoubleClick. I find it strange, but Europeans are always strange, unlike the Javanese. This one deal is significance because it put together the largest company in search (who knows what you’re looking for) with the largest company serving online ads (who knows what you clicked on). Twist the model and serve it on a social network (who knows who you are) then all that’s left is your sex habit (unless you ordered brides online before).

Do you know that the Nokia mobile site gets more hit from Indonesian than China?
I just found out, I thought that was pretty amazing, too.

I miss my girl. Playing scrabble on facebook is just not that much fun.

And, oh, I’ve a stalker. Please just drop me a mail, I don’t bite.

PS: This is for you guys who were looking for the post “Seribu Kunang Kunang di Manhattan” Go get the book proper and learn your Indonesian.

For the Lack of Penguins

Still in the spirit of bloggers getting physical...



PS: I'm still waiting for Dilli to do the Penguin Codex for the official PengFest.
PSS: I actually have work to do today and can't update properly.

Facebook Musing #24

I debated with Abdul Rahman – CEO and founder of Detik.com on whether Indonesians prefer to put their real ID online. Checking the registers of PestaBloggers ’07, most of them registered with their real names online. I was probably the only one that didn’t on the invite list.

Abdul didn’t think Indonesians like to have their online personae presented. I disagreed.

It doesn’t matter, the man is entitled to his opinion. The bigger picture is, I think facebook changed the equation for most of us. I for one, never used real ID online, despite the fact that I been online since the days when the internet was a couple of daily download thru mail servers in Australia for indo.net.

Mobile phone was once a luxury, too. I have one of those brick sized Nokia that you lugged around like a marine backpack. Back when Michael Jackson was cool, my car had a mobile phone. Trust me, I got laid just because of them gadgety shit.

Nowadays, if you don’t have a mobile phone, then you’re stuck in one story state of affair.

Cellphone – connectivity – is quickly becoming a part of urban life. No longer a luxurious extension no more, your cell number is a presence as much as your business card.

For the internet – data - facebook tilts the balance in much in the same way. For the first time ever, your online ‘you’ is about to be part of you as a whole. Mark Cuban thinks the same. Bill gates agreed and hedged $260m on this.

Facebook ushers in an era where your life online is no longer peripheral. Orwell is dead. The late McLuhan would love to come back. You won’t need them for the pearls of wisdom. You need an internet connection.

If anything at all, this is why I think facebook is the future. Not for the company, some other smartarse drop outs will take care of it and facebook might soon just be another fad. Google were quick to realize this and they were in for a lot of money. Facebook could be dead tomorrow and someone will no sooner take their place. It’s the idea which time has come.

The one day when I finally put my contacts online and I realized there is no turning back. They’re here. My digital life’s here. It’s part of me and it will always be. Once you put your out there, someone out there is keeping them in digital data mine cubes.

Privacy redefined. For all practical purposes, life in the digital lane is one false sense of security. You live forever in digital caches.

It will soon be irrelevant what name you use. You’re there. We’re here.

Why Bloggers Should Never Meet (Part 2)

My previous post leads to so many wrong conclusions. You can still insist to meet if:

- You're going to cook me nice dinner and stuff (pavlovas earn bonus points)
- You're going to marry me (or your sister. legoland wedding is every man's dream)
- You're going to take me for a drink (getting me laid also earns bonus points)
- You're going to send me nice cookies, funny postcards and any other interesting curio items (no dead cats)

Why Bloggers Should Never Meet (Facebook Musing #11)

Mozart have had a pretty head. It’s amazing what random epileptic, syphilitic, whoremongering geniuses could come up with sometimes. Darwinian anomalies?

I recently went on facebook. For the first time ever, I actually put my real contacts etc. online. Apparently Mark Cuban did the same. It’s never really for the fear of stalkers or anything – I been online since before the days of CompuServe. More like, I never saw the need to put all that stuff online. Plus I hate my own pictures.

I have always been an internet addict. Back in Braunschweig, I had the most logged hours on the X Windows terminal. Those things would’ve been museum worthy at this point. It was an extension to my ‘real’ life. Internet was practical and soon evolved into an essential. I used to send pages of misguided rants to my friends. The ex wife has bagfuls of cheesy love bites. Internet saves me the postage stamps.

I made friends online. We relate thru whatever stuff we were doing – BBS, email, forums, IM, blogs – then occasionally, we clicked enough to need an offline follow up. Some people got laid thru this amazing medium, I totally buy that. Never miss the train.

The thing is, I never think of my online presence as me. My online ‘me’ is not me. It’s never me. I’ve none of the sophistication nor the high brow intellect (I use thesaurus extensively). Without Google, I’m an idiot with trust issues.

The online me, is just the part of me to channel whatever fetishes I failed to comprehend in my daily life. Nobody I know read my writing, but random strangers read my shit regularly online (17 people and bunch of penguins are rabid fans of this particular blog).
Nobody had the time nor the inclination to listen to my midnight rants, I could just write and post it on the blog.
Few people share my Lego fetish, I found companions on the web.

One lucky guess would be to assume that if you were to know me, then you would have to read my blog. You would also have to cook me lunch and dinner and laugh at my jokes - told at all the wrong moments.
You would have to sit thru my work day and experience my random tantrums.
You would have to drill thru pages of my writing and discover my flashes of brilliance. By chance, it would be there.

You would have to stay up with me and endure my lost causes.
You would have to press your lips close and have lots of sex with me at ridiculous hours.
You would have to agree that Appetite for Destruction was one of the best albums of all time.

You would have to love the dog.

There were just too many things. In fact, there were so many things about me, that I am not sure anyone could ever find the time, nor the inclination to get to really know me. Even I got sick of me sometimes.

To tell you the truth, like other great geniuses, I have been spending inconsiderate amount of time pondering, wondering and venturing, about myself.

I don’t think I will finally get to know me tomorrow, I doubt that you would.

Which is why I don’t think bloggers should ever meet. It’s just a bad idea. On the blog, I am a supreme being, a blog deity with horny ladies to boot. Trust issues and carcasses in the closet, but all the more appealing since I am, at the very least, well articulated.
Sexy and witty, most of you are more than willing to have sex with me, I’m sure.

You’re being led away by unfounded expectations.

I don’t blog for a higher purpose. None of this getting ‘Indonesia’ out there or bridging cultural difficulties or getting Hillary elected. I don’t care about global warming or breast cancer or Iran or if I would ever earn thousands of dollars peddling lowbrow arts. I blog for me and for my very own selfish reasons. It has nothing to do with any of you. It’s the beauty of it.

I honestly don’t think blog could ever do them things anyway. Blogging is the equivalent of random chatters in a crowded pub: you make it loud enough, it drowns the ambiance. Make everyone sing the same song, then you should go and chant with Bono. You’d end up being one of them.

I regret the day I signed up for facebook.

PS: Norman Mailer passed away. I was just reading an interview with him this morning.

on Laws of Lovers

When the shit hits the fan, it won’t be evenly distributed.
~Law of Probability

Science works like this: you see things, you line things up. If things keep lining up all the time, then it would be the same thing.

Economists took a different approach. They first look at why things are lined up in the way they are. Then they work backward to break things in smaller things and the order of which they should be lined up. Once they figured what things are there and the sequential order of them things, they got excited and won a Nobel prize and masturbate.

Math took a simpler approach. The invented things so we don’t even have to go and figure out each of them one by one. One apple is one apple. Never mind that we never really know what ‘one’ apple really is – it could be the Californian overpriced ones, or it could be one poor malnourished tropical home grown, they regard it as ‘one’ apple. You just gotta trust math. It’s there. Socrates went silly over this shit.

Lawyers don’t care. They just insist that things are put in one particular order.

Coders and programmers make sure things in any particular order spits out the same shit every time. They dance on routines and twists on exceptions.

Nobody like exceptions.

Things on one particular order are likely to always spit out the same stuff. The simplest of them all are likely to be right. The simplest of them is the likeliest to be right.

Alexander was a great man. I used to want to be him until Oliver Stone convinced me otherwise. Walked right up there and did that whole full swing.

Quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, shoot the fucking thing.

Except for lovers.

Lovers would want them orders to be in them particular orders because they need it to be in that particular order.

Which make them, really, the poorest sod of them all.


PS: Tomas commented on the post about Maids in Indonesia from last year. I couldn't help to respond. just posted.

on Wednesday Musings

Now, what we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothing but you're telling me everything.
~True Romance

So what’s this I keep hearing about the special discounts at Alexis?

Dilli suggested a Pengfest 2007. I wonder if the discounts are applicable, it’ll be fun. Definitely more fun.

I was out last night, just the usual gang, back of the pub and I was bouncing around on the internet trying to be productive (not). I thought I wasn’t very happy with my life.

An old friend from school called out of the blue and dropped by. He looked upset and distraught and was drinking his beer hastily while staring at the air condition unit. He said he was dumped. His girlfriend dumped him. The man is one merry manager at an investment bank, lovely wife of five years. Yet, some random girl managed to tug him the wrong way and his life seemed to end on a Wednesday.

Then another guy dropped by. He had a tv show cancelled or something. I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t listening. The man thought he was underappreciated. He said he could write, everything was in his head but he had problems putting it down alphabetically. Asked if I’d ghostwrite him a script, I said I just might. He wanted to be sure that he didn’t die. I didn’t plan him to die, I would just make sure that he was utterly devastated.

Then another guy dropped by, he said vodka and orange juice was his favorite drink except that I didn’t care that much. He’s doing a gig next Sunday for the Greenpeace in Monas and he needed a drink on Wednesday. We thought he's been doing one too many sappy soundtracks.

The clincher was when the internet announces Pat Robertson endorsement for Giuliani. At last, somebody that will get things done. Together they will part the Red Sea and will hopefully rid of that red bearded thug in the Caribbean.

Is anybody ever really happy in this town or is it just my social circle that seemed particularly fucked up?

I ended up logging into facebook and start poking people. No, my life’s not at all bad. I just need more friends poking me back.

Or maybe I’ll go and grab a copy of Assasin’s Creed.

on the Internet, Traffic and Work Ethics

Wyatt Earp: How are you?
Doc Holliday: I'm dying, how are you?
~Tombstone


I’d like to say something smart. Or at least important. I swear I had something great to say. Google’s OpenSocial and Facebook Social Ad, for example, are two things that should bring a profound and sweeping changes to our future lives. Notice i am not saying ‘digital lives’. Android is just the icing on the cake.

Then there’s the exploding Indonesian internet market. I been in this market for 10 years (on and off, of sorts), this is as hot as I’ve ever seen it. I met everyone from Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Friendster, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, DoubleClick, WPP, Euro RSCG, Fox/News Corp, Hutch, Orange and even Fauzi Bowo: just about everybody else in the market and nobody was less than brimming with excitement. This time around, they’re putting their money where their mouth is. Now if only the rest of us will follow. People, are you there?

There’s always bloggers. Bloggers just take themselves too damn seriously. The whole damn fucking thing about blogging: you write or do whatever it is the weird things that you do online, to your heart content. There’s no higher ground to it, no significance, except that when a few hundred million people are doing this shamelessly selfish and useless thing, it could potentially mean something. Imagine the entire Chinese population picking their nose, together, all at the same time, that gotta mean something, right? Green earth and all…

Then there was that whole thing about Britney Spears ordered to pay FedEx legal bills, wtf? Poor girl, somebody gotta get there and help her. Then all this about Rahma Azhari, too. I used to go to school with Rauf (the poor husband) and the others and really, it’s hard to NOT bounce into the Azharis’ within Jakarta’s social life. Sumthin' bout those pointy breasts.

Can we just get back to talking about the traffic? Someone really ought to do it. Like, fix the fucking traffic. Seriously. It deserves the expletives.

Is it professionally acceptable to put a fork in a client’s eye? Left eye. Not the right one.

Is Paul McCartney really dead?

PS: checking my log and search terms, to the poor bastard in Jakarta who search for "Make Love to Indonesain Maid" : GET A FUCKING LIFE.

on an Evolution Slide Show

I've nothing good to write right now. Maybe later. Here's an excellent slide show from the NY Times. Couldn't find one for penguins.

on Losing Patterns

Some people refused to believe things they don’t understand. We call them scientific. They like science and they want scientific answers. I’m not sure exactly why this is, many other smarter people have gone a long way trying to explain this phenomenon. Anyone from Kant to Dawkins, from Plato to Einstein. We want to explain what we want to believe. Or something like that.

Maybe we need to explain what we believe. Or something like that.

It’s all too confusing.

Facts and patterns and all. Fallacies of deductions. Leadership of reasons. Some might just call it lucky guess.

Or even divine enlightenment. Light at the end of the tunnel.

Same things repeat itself. Do they always end where they did?

How would you ever know until you did?

Some call it unlucky. Fallacies of deductions.

Others call it stupid

Or lost.

Or bullshit, even.

on Lift Etiquette

Was in a lift with some Oz dude that stopped on the other floor. His idea of polite chit chat was an optimism that oil will reach $200 by the end of the year.

How's that for lift etiquette?

on a Jakarta Post Article - and the Pain of the City

Just as I was ranting about Jakarta traffic, there’s an op-ed piece on Jakarta Post today about the newly announced 19 initiatives for the first 100 days of the new governor.

I didn’t vote for Fauzi Bowo. I didn’t vote for anyone: neither candidate seems to have much to offer in improving my Jakarta life. Me, like many others, held high hopes for the Jakarta election earlier in the year. Like many others, too, I was positively disappointed when the election turned into a mock political child play. The orange posters were creepy.

The author of the op-ed piece, Mr. Wilmar Salim (obviously an expert of some sort since he holds PhDs in Urban Planning, from Hawaii) pondered and discussed the problems of this growing metropolis. The highlight was mostly immigration: the fact that Jakarta is strained beyond capacity with the net migration (the city has some 20m+ population when you take into account the Greater Jakarta commuters).

Frankly, I was not impressed. This quality pseudo op-ed advice comes on regular basis on Jakarta Post (and the venerable paper continue to publish them). They dwindle on the ‘bigger picture’, smart jargons of migration and population, environmental damages and sanitation etc. Everybody know this is a problem, merely pointing them out don’t equate with being an expert anymore at this point. Anybody can tell you the same stuff: it’s dirty, polluted, flooded, grey and generally unsuitable for hygienic living being. It sucks.

One interesting point raised by Mr. Salim suggested that the city administration stop issuing business and location permit in Jakarta. He argued that this wouldn’t harm economic activities in Jakarta, but merely relocate them elsewhere (to the urban centers in greater Jakarta).
Can someone please tell me how this makes any sense at all?

What he neglected to mention in his expert opinion – most probably due to the collective overwhelming frustrations of all Jakarta citizens alike – is the city administration simply lacked the leadership to reign control over this city.

True, there are over population and there aren’t enough roads to carry the cars and all that, but many of the specific problems in the city are simply discipline issue of its beloved citizens, and this is where the Governor – Soetiyoso and Fauzi Bowo alike – are failing.

Had these officials some true sense of leadership and commitment to actually address the problems, then the initial approach is obvious to all of us: road discipline. Bus drivers shouldn’t be allowed to stop at any random corners on the main road. The stop in front of Plasa Semanggi, for example, is reaching some ridiculous level. It blocked the entire traffic going to four corners of the city and yet the police never did anything to move them. This is despite the fact that it takes place right across from the Jakarta police headquarter. The same with the buses and taxis in front of Ratu Plasa, and I’m only talking about the South of Jakarta, which is probably the least problematic compared to the rest of the city.

City officials should take steps to control idiot taxi drivers from going around in their cars and cause pain for everyone else. My taxi driver this morning just arrived in the city for two months and have only had his driving license for less than four weeks. He has a wobbly car and one messed up meter.

Motorbikes. I won’t even go there. There are some 8m+ motorbikes in the city and obviously they need some special attention in order to get around the city and NOT inciting any vehicular homicide tendencies from the rest of us road users.

These are basic issues that any mere mortal could easily identify and I am sure, all of us share on daily basis. Smart talk and jargon filled urban population theories cannot and will not help this city at this point, nobody even realistically expect that any of those officials could absorb smart ideas. It takes real action and commitment to solve the problems. Ideas don’t get us anywhere. 10 years of Soetiyoso and each of the time he had another brilliant idea, I shiver in dread.

It’s time to stop soliciting ideas for this government. Just get them to work their job.


PS: And please, Jakarta Post, i beg you...

I Hate Monday

Jakarta’s so grey. It’s the first thing you noticed about the city when you get back. And the traffic is really getting stupidly out of control. Anybody that voted for Sutiyoso and his minions to keep their job obviously need to have their heads checked.

Maybe I’m just getting sick of this town. It was really nice to meet Candi in Singapore, I been missing her too much. Never realized it was that much distraction not to have her around here. We need to be in the same time zone.

Somebody on facebook had this discussion going, if long distance relationship could ever work. Well, I’m not sure. I think I been pretty much gorging in long distance relationship for too long. It could probably work, but it sucks. That’s certain.

Candi didn’t seem to be very happy with her job, but she is liking Singapore and I could tell she would prefer to stay there if she could. For the first time in my life, I’m beginning to have thoughts about moving to Singapore. Maybe it could be good. Throw some structure into life, get some order into chaos. Dunno, I just know I need to be in the same time zone. This whole flying around stuff is exhausting.

We didn’t do much at all, dinner at the food court near Newton circus, which was walking distance to her apartment, then stayed up by the pool playing scrabble and facebook with gin n tonic. She was so pretty.

Blah. You can tell I’m hating Monday.

In any event, she’s flying back next week and will be here for a few days. We’ll see.

Gotta get back to work now…

on Stray Signals

Me and candi sitting by the pool at the moment playing scrabble with gin and tonic. You gotta love singapore for the stray signals.


and they're fast too.

like, real fast.

T.G.I.F.

Bugged, knackered and facebooked. I'm off to Singapore, you guys have a good weekend.

PS: that applies to you, too OS Xers, welcome to the real world.