fruit flavored tea

In a fast changing (web) world, it's not appropriate to say that Mobile Multiply is still a new feature. Multiply provided this new service weeks ago.

Basbang (basi banget) deh, some may say.

But this is my first time trying to publish a post from the mobile Multiply, accessible from multiply.com/m. So please forgive my basbangness.

A nice service, especially for those who use multiply for selling purposes. While working or studying at their nice offices or classrooms, they can perform transactions via cellphones. "Time is money" now has new meanings!

Lighter multiply (so you don't have to worry much about your cell's remaining credit), and so to the point for those who uses the service to read friends posts . Turn off your "view images" setting for cheaper browsing.

This is a screenshot of the former president Soeharto's handwriting. He wrote it himself as an addition to a speech, prepared by Yusril Ihza Mahendra, read on Thursday, May 21st, 1998.

It was his "resignation speech" from his 32-year presidential position. It was the day when people cried and smiled for so many reasons.

The screenshot and attachments are from Mr Yusril Ihza Mahendra's blog.

Q: WHAT'S THE MEANING OF JONI?

...

A: JONI IS KANDAR.




What an answer..!
(heard it from a friend)

A month ago, our baby daughter was born. A story there.

Some pictures in my picasaweb album, too.

So, maybe some of you have bought Rowling's finale edition of Harry Potter. It's sold at a price around Rp 300K here. Quite expensive for a book.

Very very especially when you can read it for free. Like me. In this certain mailing list, a member sent the book's portable document (a .PDF file) of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I considered sharing the file here. But, on second thought, it would not show appreciation to Multiply's TOS's, I think.

So I decided just to brag it here. In a relatively short time, it might also reach you.

This reminds me to the sixth book, which first chapters I read on a .pdf too. But then the real book came, and I switched to a more comfort way of reading.

Of course!

On Monday morning, thousands of Nike Indonesia labors "invaded" the Jakarta Stock Exchange building in Sudirman Central Business District, Jakarta.

I uploaded some photos here.

Are you a customer of Indonesian XL's cellular service? And are you tired of receiving SMS's you don't want nor need? Yes, I'm talking about those promo SMS's from 818 and 1818.

Read it here. It's in Indonesian, by the way.

Been sometimes with no writings!

So, on Sunday (22/4), i visited Mangga Dua Square. Just another mall, surely. Built on an area at west of Kali Gunung Sahari, the structure looks like a big ship with round-shaped windows.

When I entered the same floor where Carrefour opens their just-another-branch to kill small grocery stores, i noticed DVD stands. So I came to one of them, and buy some worth-watching DVD movies. Pirated versions. Sold only Rp 5000 each. Well, the DVD guy has marked me as a loyal customer.

Because the mall is not far from home, I usually buy household stuff there. At Carrefour --where Andrew Given Suoth, a three-year-old boy, was killed on an accident. A full loaded rack fell on the poor boy, while the innocent kid climbed it. He said goodbye to this cruel world at a near hospital.

Based on the reason that I usually go there, I asked the DVD guy why he had closed his stand for the whole previous week. "All DVD stands in Jakarta were closed for a week," he said. Apparently, those pirated-DVD-sellers were informed about a police's DVD-raid plan.

I don't know whether the raid was held, or not, then. But if it were, it would be useless. There were no DVD stands open to raid!

So, there's this strong economic bond among the DVD sellers. They might bribe a mole --or someone inside (or has access to) the police institution, to tell the cops' raid plans. Even worse, that someone could be approaching the DVD sellers, and offered his (or her, or their) "intel" info. Not for free of course. A sack of (Vietnam?) rice is bought with money.

In the end, the war against piracy is a big bullshit. More precisely, there's no such war, here! On the buyers side, who would foolishly buy an original disc priced more than 15 times higher? Let's say an original DVD is sold at Rp 80K rate. With four DVDs, you can buy a DVD player!

Well, China-made. But who really cares? Well, the law of demand and supply applied. We need it, they sell it. (Or, they sell it, then we think we need it.)

One good thing is, it's hard to look for pirated versions of Indonesian movies. Well, what for? These days, there're not many satisfying local movies such as "Nagabonar Jadi 2".

On this March's first Sunday, I received several phone calls informing a bomb threat. It was on Mall Artha Gading, and sent via SMS. The mall is located in one of Jakarta's well-developed housing sites. You know, expensive houses owned by people with some money :). *Let me remind you once again. The area was flooded last February-- but not the mall.*

Cops --the Antibomb Team, Gegana-- soon "raided" the mall. None was found. "It's like no one knows about the bomb threat. People are still here," said a friend whom was on location.

The threat was sent via SMS to 1717, the Jakarta Police (Polda Metro Jaya) number for public compliance. It's stupid enough to send a bomb threat there. Your cell number will soon be tracked, of course. Jakarta Police owns a device called "direction finder". It tracks a cell's location from its SIM and/or IMEI number.

And on Wednesday (7/3), a 20-year-old girl was brougt to jail. The girl's cell number, the police said, was used to send the threat. She was caught at her home-sweet-home in Brebes, somewhere in Java.

What the heck the girl was thinking, somehow, remains a question. Does she hate the mall's toilets? I don't know. Her SMS was the fourth in two weeks sending bomb threats to 1717. At least, the girl's not alone in being in a status of "stupid enough to send such SMS to 1717".

There are three other smart guys. One aged 29, another is 25, and the last one, shockingly, is a 10-year-old boy. Sen. Comr. Carlo Brix Tewu, the Jakarta Police Head of General Crime Directorate, said, the SMS threats are not serious ones.

Ranged from February 19th to March 9th, 1717 received 16 bomb threat SMS'! None proved their genuinities, Thank God. Among them, threats were on National Monument, the candle-like monument on Central Jakarta; the state's central bank, Bank Indonesia headquarter; and the British Embassy. The embassy's hoax-threat was sent by a cendol seller!

All the four suspects caught, police said, sent the hoax threats merely on the basis of "iseng". I don't know what its equal word in English is. But, "iseng" is something you do when you've got nothing else worth doing. Something not serious.

And telling that there's a bomb exploding in a few hours somewhere, to 1717, is one good example of stupid "iseng"-ity.

Why? Because after Yusril's fingerprint project, ships accidents, airplanes fell, cracked, burnt, and the news about government account used for pulling Tommy Soeharto's money from a land far far away, another bomb terror is something we don't want to know, hear nor see explode anywhere in the city and the country.

Enough with bombs, please.

Not all wore life jackets. Three boats came closer to a ship wreck. From afar, she looked just black, and dead. Alone in the middle of the sea.

But someone was standing on her deck. He was a TV journalist, with a camera. Good lobby brought him there first. The rest of the journalists, still on their boats, wanted to take shoots on the ship, too. Permission, which was not given before, was theirs. The ship wreck was considered safe.

Then they were helped climb up the ship.

The disaster started an hour later. She --the ship-- suddenly moved. Not balanced. In minutes count, she sank. People --journalists, polices, investigators from National Commission for Safety of Transportation-- jumped to the sea.

But not all were saved. Four died: two policemen, two journalists. Levina fire killed around 50 lives, but that was not all. Some civil officials are to be kicked from their positions, too.

Hmph. Lessons, again, must be learned.

*condolence to all victims and their families*

It was years ago. I was going somewhere, when a friend of my father reminded me to bring a camera with. For recording the moments, he said.

Yes. Time is always running. It gets even faster and faster! There are moments in our precious life that we may want to keep in our memories. The best times. Or the worst ones. It could be the time when we visit some nice places with our close friends. Or when we graduate ourselves from school, college, whatever.

A picture reminds us of a certain moment, and everything around it. That is why people are taking pictures when rainstorms flooded Jakarta. Five years from now, we will look to the picture and think, "I can't believe it happened. Not a good way to get a reason not going to the office." Wait a second! Five years from now? Oh, 2012. The next big flood?

There is a picture in my collection that I always like. A picture taken in Jimbaran, Bali. The sun was setting, and we were just sitting there, enjoying the view. Ships on the sea. Laughter of people around. And the good feeling about running away from Jakarta, with someone very special.

A picture that reminds me to the dinner we had that night. The taste of baked fish. The wind and the warmth of the sand.

A moment that stays in my heart. Maybe until I loose my memory. Or vanish, buried six feet under. The time when the picture would be just a picture of a sunset, with ships on a sea.

In the end, what lasts forever?

It was a quiet evening in Sunter area, North Jakarta. The sky was dark, no rain, even in the southern and eastern parts of the city were already wet, some even flooded.

I visited Vihara Dharma Jaya. Located around Senen triangle since 1826, it was moved to Sunter Agung Utara on 1990. The previous location was then replaced by Atrium Senen, a shopping mall.

Some buddhists were praying, some were just chatting outside the vihara's building. Inside, at the main altar, three bronze statues of Buddha sat silently. And smell of hios; sounds of fireworks from the vihara's neighbourhood.

The vihara was waiting a new year ceremony. On 11 PM that night, they would read 'parita', taken from the holy verses of Tripitaka. After the parita reading, together the buddhists would pray. "For goodness to all living creatures, not merely human kind," said Djaya Gunawan, head of the vihara.

The time period from February 18th of 2007, to February 6th of 2008, is marked on the Chinese calendar as the Year of the Fire Swine. Or, Tahun Babi Api. How the year's going to be, if you believe in fortune telling, can be watched on your TV. It's the TVs' theme, lately. Mainly in those gossip shows.

So, now let me congratulate all of us a new year, a good year ahead. Even though personally I don't celebrate Imlek. Pray, and work, for your own hopes. Like Liana, 22, whom I met in the vihara. The cute college girl prayed for the minithesis she's working on this year.

Gong Xi Fa Chai!

On Valentine's Day, at the office. I met a senior, when passing through a corridor heading one of our meeting rooms. I said hi. He smiled. And then there was the warmest conversation between us.

That was, as long as I could remember, the FIRST conversation I had with him. I've been here for two years, but we've never really talked each other. I know him, of course. Most everyone in the Indonesian blogosphere know him, at least his name and his blogs. He is one of the nation's famous bloggers.

At that short conversation, I asked him about the news I've been hearing around the office. He's going out, resigning. And he confirmed it. "Yes," he said. "On March."

We, once again, are losing one good man. He told me that he's planning on being a "full time blogger". "But I will still write," he said. I wondered what it would be like. A full time blogger.

I wondered because I've never really heard something like that, here. Maybe he has reached a level where being a blogger while, at the same time, a journalist, is hard to do.

I can understand. Sometimes there's this tension between the two status. A blogging journalist is often faced to a confusion between writing as a blogger (whom is free in many ways), or as a journalist. The problem is ethical. A journalist is provided with nearly unlimited access --thanks to the company-- to sources.

The "ingredients" he or she collected, as a journalist, should belong to the media company. Ethically, a journalist should not post a writing as a blogger, while the ingredients were based on his or her previleges as a media worker.

Or maybe he has another reasons? Well, we'll hear from him. As for now, so long, Mas. You're making history.

(to Mr. Budi Putra)

About weeks ago, Jakarta was like a drowning pool (well, not quite like that). Coffee-with-cream-like water was all over the megapolitan city. Even in Kelapa Gading, a well known area of expensive houses. Trash, of course, was included in the flood package. More to come: the recovery processes, diseases, etc.

Administrators said, there's this five years cycle of flood. Two rainy season, each 1996 and 2002, had shown the proofs of the cycle. Water was all over the city. In 2002, our First Lady whom also sat on the president's chair, Megawati Soekarnoputri, was forced to see almost knee-high water in Istana Merdeka's yard. I think his husband (The First Gentleman? errr...), Taufik Kiemas, was with her, too.

And last night, on RCTI, Sutiyoso blamed the deforestration on the hills at south of Jakarta. He, the city's governor, said that there are not enough trees and soil to keep water from flooding to the lower land.

He acted like he had no role in the exhausting situation his citizens had to live in. But sir, YOU are the governor! All these malls, plazas, squares, trade centers, apartments, housing complexes, or whatever more, had been there because of your heart's kindness! You permit the developers, and then.. voila. Swamp turned to nice houses.

Well, not just your fault of course. Let's not forget the governors before you, Sir. You have just been the governor for nearly ten years. Let's not forget what development Sutiyoso had brought here in ten years. Transjakarta, maybe? And traffic jams everywhere?

But one BIG question remain. Why does the five years cycle of flood have to happen NEAR the end of the governor's period of administration? Well I don't have the answer. But what we have in store is, after the flood, more packages of budget are coming. With the amount of trillions of Rupiah.

JAKARTA - It was only because Ghani's invitation, I joined Multiply. At last! I have some accounts on some (free) blog machines, namely blogger.com, blogdrive.com, etc. They are all NOT active.

Because, I believe in Single Blog Policy. Hehe. On a beautiful sunshiny day, gravity.web.id was born. Unfortunately, the hosting caught into unexplained trouble. Hosting: down.

Well, that should be a priceless experience for me. If it's too cheap while it's so big, then don't believe it. One simple conclusion: hosthink.com sucks.