proudweirdo

Thoughts on Wedding #4 - Honeymoon Where?

2011-12-02T01:02:00.000+07:00

Our wedding is in less than three months and I don't know where on this earth to go for the honeymoon. Should I be freaking out by now? Oh I don't know. I think I'm easily freaked out about so many things at this moment.

Initially I had this idea of going to Europe. Yes, everybody is going to Europe for their honeymoon. I don't care. I still want to go there. I've been dreaming about going to Italy for so long. Well, actually since last year. Since the day I read The Broker by John Grisham (a thriller novel but Grisham really painted a really beautiful imagery on this book about Italy) and I was mad about Italian football on last World Cup (yes, the one and only Fabio Cannavaro! RAWR). I was so in love with Italy and learned a little of Italian. Now the books are already covered in dust. But still, I want to go to Italy.

I've been dreaming of being greeted "Buon giorno!" every morning by the locals, conversing with them a little, well you know, putting my Italian into practice. Then we'll be having a really good croissant alla cremma con un caffe. The weather would be cloudy and a bit cold, I and my new husband would be hand in hand, staring at each others' eyes, all smiles - just like those happy commercials on TV. I want to go to Le Cinque Terre, Piazza del Duomo, The Capri Island, Venice, Milan, Il Colosseo in Rome and so many more. We'll be having the greatest pastas and pizzas there - I don't care if I gain weight. Oh and the gelato too! The dream I had was so beautiful.

Until several friends of mine told different stories about Italy - that it was full of pickpocketing, scammers, rude people, etc. The city is dirty and it's really unsafe to go there. Going there with a group is safer, even though there's no guarantee. The thing is, there is no group going there in early March. I don't want to delay the honeymoon just in case I get knocked up early.
One of my best friends just came back from her honeymoon. She went to Spain, Italy and France. Well she wouldn't recommend me going there for the honeymoon. The crisis in Europe had begun to rise and the unemployment is expected to rise. Thus, the criminal rates also is. Puff! and jut like that Europe was crossed off of the honeymoon list. *sobs*

Andry wants to go to Maldives or Japan.

I want to go to Germany, Switzerland or UK.

How are we going to decide?

Rest in Peace: Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T00:21:00.006+07:00

It was a weird day. Steve Job passed away.

I woke up in the morning around 6am. My iPod's dead. It ran out of the battery. Huh. So I played around with my Blackberry. I was so surprised to read the tweets from CNN : Apple confirms Steve Job's death. What?! It was just a few days ago that I read people were talking about the new upcoming iPhone 4s. I didn't really care about the phone anyway.

So I turned on the TV and found out that he was really dead. Well I'm not a gadget freak. But I love Apple products. Currently I'm typing this blog entry with my Macbook which I bought two years ago. It was one of the best decision I've ever made : switching to Mac. At that time I just bought a Sony Vaio and it was okay. It was until I tried Eka's Macbook then I fell in love with it. I bought it later on.

I loved it back then and I still love it now.

Anyway it was really a shocking news. I didn't know Steve Jobs was battling with pancreatic cancer for the last eight years.

There was this video on YouTube where Jobs was giving a commencement speech in Stanford. It was really inspiring. What I love particularly about the speech was when he said about the connecting dots and about the death.

Here's the speech :

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades.

Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

For everytime I'm using Apple products, I'll remember Steve Jobs. Thank God for him. Thank God for Apple!

Thoughts on Wedding #3 - Prewed Worries

2011-10-04T00:12:00.000+07:00

I should really have gone to bed by now. I can't.
The thoughts wander and it's making me uptight.

What if the prewedding photo session turned sour?
I know as well I don't have that knock-out body.
Can they photoshop my arms so they look smaller?
What about the boobs? My round face?
Oh I know I still have a couple of weeks left so maybe I could go on a diet program.
Well I want a toned body and diet program isn't the answer.
Exercise? Wouldn't it be too late? 6 weeks?
What if our expressions were fucked up?
What if our smiles looked fake?
What if we looked weird?
What if it rained on the photo session day? Geez.
We only have one day there. Uh-oh and it's gonna be a wet season during that time.
I got a very bad feeling about the weather.
Now, where can I get that kind of dresses? Mine are kinda lame.
Do I still have time to make some new dresses?
If I do, what kind of dresses I would like to make?
Is there such thing as dress rentals? It would be helpful.
Oh, I hate that look on that pictures.
No, I'm definitely not going to have my photos edited in that kind of way - too bright!
I want them just like that. Oh wait, but are they good?
To me they're good. I don't know what everyone would think.
Well, bright is also good. Oh I don't know.
Oh my God, what to do, what to do, what to do?
I've got to think about what he's gonna wear for the photo shoots.

I'm way over thinking everything. I'll be singing "Que Sera Sera" to sleep tonight.

Thoughts on Wedding #2

2011-09-23T00:53:00.005+07:00

Ellen and Portia said no to prenup

The other day I was asked by a friend of mine about my thoughts on prenuptial agreement. Complete honest - I was strongly against it. I think it was offensive and a sign of distrust. Signing prenuptial agreement was like acknowledging the potential of failure in the marriage. To me it was a gesture of bad faith in each other. It was like admitting defeat before you have even started. Maybe it was just me. I always thought that marriage is for life and divorce is not an option. The way I see it is that prenup only comes into effect when we are divorced. Why would you get married in the first place when you already expect the possibility of a divorce? It really is not a good start of a marriage. Maybe I was not intelligent or financially smart. Call me old fashioned or naive but the thought of signing a prenup bode ill feelings.

If I was asked to sign one, it was going to be hard to swallow. I would feel hurt. Well in the end I would sign the prenup but I would omit the part in the wedding vow to be together until death do us part. It only makes sense.

Or maybe I should learn to change my view on prenup.

Maybe we will have it but never plan on needing it.

Maybe all the couples who got married and got divorced really wanted to be with each other for life. And we are no different. We do not know what the future holds.

I should learn to be more realistic.

Pulau Pramuka - Ending with the Nightmare

2011-09-13T13:02:00.001+07:00

We were all dreading another two hours trip back to Jakarta. The night before we looked for another option to go back. We searched for some boat rentals which were going to Marina instead of Muara Angke but we had no luck. So here we were, having to endure another two and a half hours trip back to Jakarta. It was much worse than the first. It was hell.

The boat was delayed and when she arrived, the boat was already packed with passengers. There were shitload of other passengers, including us, ready to get onboard. Some of us had to be in the roof of the boat, while I and some other friends ended up at the back of the boat just between the two toilets. Sitting was painful, there was hardly enough space for us to sit and we had our luggage with us too! We were occasionally showered with water, drenched in sweat, hot with the sun and we had to switch places every time there were passengers who needed to go to the toilets. I tried hard to suppress the emotion not to slap those people, really. I was feeling unwell in the morning and I started to get dizzy. I thought I was going to puke so I asked my friends for a plastic bag - and they had none. Tried very hard to sleep, tried very hard to concentrate on the water so I didn't puke, I tried everything. The only thing that worked was when I laughed so hard to see Ivan and Andry in the toilet and Hariman closed the door. It was hilarious. It wasn't funny for you when you read this - you just had to be there to find it funny. Yes, they were hiding in the toilet to make some more rooms. I did that too with my boyfriend. Then suddenly I couldn't resist anymore. I puked. I got seasick. Two and a half hours seemed like forever, the clock had never seemed so alive. There were times when we had to move to the left because the boat was too heavy on the right side. I prayed the boat wasn't going to sink. I read so many stories about sinking boats due to overload passengers. I wished to hell we're not going to be like them.

And thank GOD we finally arrived at Muara Angke. The shit didn't end though. We had to climb four other boats just to touch the ground. Well it was a nightmare but looking back now, it was an unforgettable and funny trip. Now we had some funny stories to tell to others in the future.

Pulau Pramuka - The Fun Snorkeling

2011-09-13T12:10:00.003+07:00

We took a rest after lunch for about half an hour and we went to get our snorkeling set. Our feet were measured, the life jackets were tightened and the sun block was poured to our skins. We all looked white as ghosts, which were funny to me in some way. All geared up and we headed to the shore, there was a small boat waiting for us.

whitened

the joker of the trip

the whole team

two best friends with the best expressions

delyn on holiday yay!

I've got to say that it was nothing like my friends told us the night before. The beach was so clean, the water so clear we got to see what's underneath. It was brilliant. I was starting to get in the mood and it was a happy feeling. The scenery that we witnessed with our own eyes were exactly like those we saw in the pictures on Google.

First stop was at this empty island where we were given instructions and learned how to snorkel. We mastered it within seconds - cause there were not much to learn. After that we went aboard and stopped at another spot in the middle of the sea and snorkel for real! I was amazed at the beauty of the coral reefs. Damn I wish I had those water resistant casing for the cameras so I could show you some of the pictures down under the water. We got to feed the fishes with some bread - the fishes would gather around you and it was really cute. This was my first time snorkeling and I was really into it. It felt like I was in some other world. For a moment I wished I was a fish, but then the thought of sharks crossed my mind and no, I do not wish I was a fish anymore. There was a thing that freaked me out when I was down under the water - the "Bulu Babi". I hated anything dangerous in the water but I was told that they're not dangerous as long as we don't make any jerking movements - but still I freaked out when I saw them.

We stopped at this island, which I can't recall the name of it. I had my hot drink : Energen and the other had the Coconut drinks. We also had some instant noodles. It was the best instant noodles I've ever had - I was cold from the water, I was feeling starved again after all the snorkeling we did. We bought some fishes and had them grilled. We ate them with sweet soy sauce and it was good. The sun was starting to set in the west and the view was really beautiful. Suddenly it hit me that I was really happy. I was happy to be there with my boyfriend and amazing friends who kept us laughing most of the times. Gee, I was so blessed :)

the love

Pulau Pramuka - Arriving

2011-09-13T11:06:00.003+07:00

Welcome to the Scouting Island

The cart and the porter

It was a relief to finally have arrived at the Pulau Pramuka. The butt was sore and I had a growling stomach - we hadn't really had a proper breakfast since morning. We were provided with a very traditional cart with a porter to bring our luggage. The sun was bright it was really hot. We were ushered to our rooms and some of us were delighted to see that we had air conditioners installed. The delight didn't last long though, it ended when I reminded them that there was no electricity until 5pm. In Pramuka Island, the electricity only runs between 5pm until 7am. The rooms only have one bed each - no bed frames, no wardrobes and no bedside tables. The room was cleaned okay.

the lunch

a cat joined our lunch - we got to see lots of cats in this island

We were then provided with our lunch : clear soup (my fave) - fried fishes - prawn crackers - i can't remember what else. The friends loved the sambal so much. I am not a fan of it so I didn't get it. The lunch was pretty good since I was starving.

Pulau Pramuka - The Beginning

2011-09-13T10:50:00.005+07:00

Pulau Pramuka is part of the Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands - not really a thousand islands, approximately only a hundred islands [Googled!]). It is located in the north thousand islands - takes about two and a half hours by boat from Muara Angke Jakarta to get there.

Last weekend we took a trip to this island. We were not excited as the night before we met some friends who had actually been there - the review was dreadful. Thus, the expectation was very low.
On Saturday morning, we woke up just before dawn. We departed from our hotel by taxi and arrived at Muara Angke at 6 in the morning. As soon as we opened the taxi door, we were greeted by the foul sickening smell of the fish market. Yes, Muara Angke is some kind of a fish market in Jakarta. I couldn't really make out if it was the smell of rotten fishes or some horse manure. Not to worry, the smell will be gone after you get used to it - you wouldn't smell a thing as your nose went numb. There were a lot of other people gathering there, I assumed they were also going to the Pramuka Island. We waited there for about half an hour until the ten of us was complete then the tour guide came and met us. The name was Mr. Pilun. He was rather small and thin with a balding hair. The face was friendly.

us at Muara Angke

our boat

ticket to pramuka island

the boys

the girls

The clock hit 7:00 and we boarded the boat. The boat looked a bit shabby, the ceiling was low I accidentally hit my head once. There were no seats. We tried our best to make ourselves comfortable. We were provided with the life jackets but no one onboard was actually wearing it. We used them for pillows - and for me, blanket too. The boat was supposed to depart at exactly 7am but it got delayed for half an hour. There were not much to do, so some of us took a nap, played with iPads and for me : taking pictures of those who slept - fun thing to do for me - HA! But I was bored within ten minutes and we had two and a half hour to kill.

nominated as best sleep expression

the feet are smelling good, eh?

the organiser and the cousin

the boyfriend and his sexy butt

shake the bonbon

Thoughts on Wedding #1

2011-08-26T11:35:00.001+07:00

My very own wedding.

Oh boy, how I wish I could skip it. Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with commitment or marriage. I'd love to get married, settle down with the one I love, have plenty of children and bake cakes for them everyday.

I don't know how it started. When I was a kid, I used to play roles with my cousins as the bride and groom. The girls took turns to be the bride and we were so excited about it. We wore any fabric we could find as the veil, grabbed any flowers in the neighbourhood and sang to the wedding tunes while acting like we're walking down the aisle. In our minds, or at least mine, wedding was something amazing to be excited about.

Well not anymore.

As I grew up, I've always thought that if I could, I would never have a wedding party thrown for me. I'd just finish the marriage paperworks and exchange vows at the church. Ta-da! We are now then husband and wife.

I don't like the idea of me having a wedding reception and being the center of attention all day long. No matter how awesome I think my wedding is, I'm sure there are always people who think it's lame. They always have something to be criticized about. I've heard many stories like that. "Oh you know that guy named A, he's so rich, invited almost everyone in town but guess what? The wedding is lame. The bride's make up was so plain and the dress was way too simple. The food was not good.".

It's not that I think about all that stuff when I attend others' wedding. I just know the way people talk and that scares me. I wonder why they can't think this way: a wedding is a celebration of their uniting love in a marriage, they invite the guests to share the joy - so whatever is there, we should be happy and honored to be one of the witnesses of their precious moment.

always look on the bright side of life

2011-06-16T09:59:00.002+07:00

Some things in life are bad they can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewin' on life's gristle, don't grumble give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best

And always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life

If life seems jolly rotten there's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing

And always look on the bright side of life
Come on, always look on the bright side of life

For life is quite absurd and death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow
Forget about your sin, give the audience a grin
Enjoy it it's your last chance anyhow

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath

Life's a piece of shit when you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true
You'll see it's all a show keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you

And always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the right side of life
Come on Brian, cheer up

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the bright side of life
Worse things happen at sea you know

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the bright side of life

- Monty Python -

pakuwon douche

2011-06-13T13:43:00.005+07:00

One of the reasons I hate living in this Waterplace Apartment Surabaya is the lack of transparency between the tenants and the management, especially the electricity.

My parents bought this apartment back in 2006 and I've been living here since the last four months. The first electricity bill that arrived left me surprised. It was Rp. 740,334 and I live alone. Back in our house in Malang, the electricity bill range usually 500k something. There are four people in the house. At first I thought maybe that the electricity here is rather expensive and you can't compare this with Malang. Anyway I started asking around other tenants how much they'd been paying for electricity. It was quite confusing. There was this one family living in a 3-bedroom apartment and they paid 700k each month. My aunt who spends roughly two nights in a month got a bill of 400k. A friend of mine living in the same tower paid for 400k monthly. So I thought maybe it was my fridge or the air conditioner that took a lot of energy. I tried to save more energy since then.

Second bill I got was Rp. 817,621. Without asking much I just paid it and tried to save more energy by using just one aircon when I was home. I turned off all lights if it's not necessary.

Third bill I received left me jaw-dropped. It was Rp. 1,398,621. I felt like it was so unfair so I had to get it checked with the electrician.

We went through the electricity panel to see the meter. It was true that the meter labeled as mine showed the correct figure. Then I started to ask him how much my daily usage was. So I turned on all of the 3 air conditioners, oven and all lights in my apartment. It was strange that it was my neighbour's meter that's changing, mine was not showing any changes at all. We were suspicious that it was actually not my meter. So we turned off all the electricity of what's supposed to be mine and I checked that the electricity was still on. So there you are, the meter was mixed up with the tenant next door. In short, it wasn't my meter after all. That means that I have been paying for the wrong fucking meter. The electrician himself didn't know how long I'd been paying for the wrong meter. This is where it started to get frustrating. So the label was corrected and we did the math, if I turned on everything all day and night long, my bill shouldn't be more than 600k. If the bill turns out to be 600k that would be weird since I don't turn everything on all day and night long. The electrician said that he would do some follow up with the management. I confirmed this with the management downstairs and they said they'd be in touch with me. Two weeks had passed and I didn't hear anything from them so I tried to ask them again and they said that they're still waiting on the electrician to get back with them. The electrician blamed it on the management and the management said they didn't know anything, it was all the electrician's responsibilities. Oh wow, they're really being so professional, aren't they? That was last month.

This morning I got the bill for 900k and I told her about the wrong meter and she said for sure that it was corrected and it was truly my usage. Now how can I believe in what she said? So I decided to meet the electrician chief, we'll do the test again this afternoon.

I delayed last electricity payment because it was not mine and was waiting for the right bill. The cashier said I had to pay for the late penalty fee. Oh now tell me how I wouldn't feel like burning down the apartment.

Catcher in the Rye - Quotes

2010-06-19T10:10:00.004+07:00

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1951)

"What I was really hanging for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse"

"I don't know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it"

"... and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."

"'Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.'

'Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.'

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shits, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."

"It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true."

"People never notice anything."

"That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times."

"The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

"I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking, or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills."

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

"That's something else that gives me royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place."

"When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go."

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

"You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is."

"The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don't want it to be."

"The only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood. If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right."

"I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway."

"There isn't any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out."

"He's so good he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning his goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of a guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot."

"The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying 'Glad to've met you' to somebody I'm not all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though."

"When you're feeling depressed, you can't even think."

"If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voices. They sound so phony when they talk."

"The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs - if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine."

"I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee."

"The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed - especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all - and it's somebody else's fault."

"Catholic are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic."

"Catholic are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name."

"He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all."

"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

"That's what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going to anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway."

"The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute."

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

"I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it."

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."

"You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were."

"The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it."

"You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding."

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery."

"People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

"It rained on his lousy tombstones, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn't there. You didn't know him. If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean."

"It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out."

"You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look all right. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look all right."

"But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody - you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door - that's all you have to do."

"Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

"But what I mean it, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most."

"I hated them once in a while - I admit it - but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them."

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

"Something else and academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

"But this damn article I started reading made me feel almost worse. It was all about hormones. It described how you should look, your face and eyes and all, if your hormones were in good shape, and I didn't look that way at all. I looked exactly like the guy in the article with lousy hormones. So I started getting worried about my hormones. Then I read this other article about how you can tell if you have cancer or not. It said if you had any sores in your mouth that didn't heal pretty quickly, it was a sign that you probably had cancer. I'd had this sore on the inside of my lip for about two weeks. So figured I was getting cancer. That magazine was some little cheerer upper. I finally quit reading it and went outside for a walk. I figured I'd be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer. I really did. I was even positive I would be. It certainly didn't make me feel to gorgeous."

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves."

"I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed."

"I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

South of the Border, West of the Sun - Quotes

2010-06-16T18:46:00.005+07:00

South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami (1999)

"But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair"

"If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost for ever - something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen."

"... 'Did you see that Disney film in elementary school - The Living Desert?'

'Yes', I answered.

'Our world's exactly the same. Rainfalls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.'

'Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things just vanish, as if they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.'"

"'You're here,' I continued.

'At least you look as if you're here. But maybe you aren't. Maybe it's just your shadow. The real you may be somewhere else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you've hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys.'"

"'I read this somewhere a long time ago. Maybe in junior high - I can't for the life of me recall what book I read it in. Anyway, it affects farmers living in Siberia. Try to imagine this. You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plough your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep.

... And then one day something inside you dies.'

'What do you mean?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Something. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You throw you plough aside and your head completely empty of thought. You begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun, like someone possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana.'"

"Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality - call it an alternate reality - to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is really on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?"

"Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it. The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining."

Norwegian Wood - Quotes

2010-06-16T18:07:00.005+07:00

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (1987)

"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life"

"What makes us most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal"

"I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me."

"People are strange when you're a stranger"

"Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go somewhere where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really, really want to do it sometimes. Like, suppose you whisked me somewhere far, far away, I'd make lots of babies for you as tough as little bulls. And we'd all live happily ever after, rolling on the floor."

Who's Your Catcher in the Rye?

2010-05-04T00:48:00.007+07:00

Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
(1951)

By the time I am writing this, it is simply the best book I have ever read. How I got to know this book was actually from a song titled "Who Wrote Holden Caufield?". It was inspired by this book. So the very next day I stopped by at Borders, picked up one copy from the shelf and headed to the register. I didn't even know that it was a very popular book at all. Let alone the fact that it was the book that inspired Chapman to kill Lennon and many other killings.

When I finished reading the book, I was left in tears. For weeks.

This is new because I don't usually cry over movies or TV series. Let alone books. I had never cried over books.

The book is about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who was developing a nervous breakdown. Got expelled from a school, he impulsively decided to 'take a vacation' before going back to his home in New York. The book was about those few days, told from Holden's point of view, describing the activities and the minds of Holden - a confused mind of a youth who seemed to despise phonies, perverts, adult society and all - well basically he bitterly hated everything.

I found the book depressing yet entertaining at the same time. At some point Holden's sarcastic and humorous attitude made me laugh. There was just too much honesty that made Holden believable that sometimes I think of him as a real person, not just fictional. As I kept reading, I couldn't help but think of me as Holden Caulfield himself. I could relate to him on every level. It just felt like reading my own biography. Throughout the book, it was obvious to see that Holden was still struggling with the loss of his younger brother Allie, who died from leukemia.

As Holden continued heading to a helpless downward spiral, I felt incredibly depressed just to think about him. It felt like he desperately wanted to hold on to his innocence for as long as he could just as he was becoming an adult, one of the phonies that he had been loathing. Thus, he also felt responsible to protect younger children, especially his own sister named Phoebe, from the adult world where all the innocence is lost.
When Phoebe asked what he wanted to be, Holden stated his desire to catch the children falling off from the cliff into the corrupt world.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be a catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy"

My favorite part of the book was Holden's visit to a museum where he reflected his own fear of any changes, as much as I do.

At the end of the book, Holden refused to mention much about the present day which made me worrying about Holden to an extent that you wouldn't understand. I wonder if he would make it, I was genuinely hoping that he would be okay. There was some urge of desire to assure him that everything was going to be okay. That bothered me the most. He wanted to be a catcher in the rye to all those innocent children, but would he find his? It depressed the hell out of me.

Lately I made some discovery about the ending, in which I hope it could provide some comfort to myself. It seemed that I had failed to see that Phoebe was after all the one who saved Holden from his deep fall and set him straight. It was when Holden watched Phoebe riding a carousel. It was just almost adorable.

"... I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth, I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there".

I keep coming back to this book from time to time. I re-read the whole book or just several chapters. I am frequently amazed of how different my reaction is. I do and always will cherish this book. Well as strange as it sounds, Holden had become a part of my life.

I personally think that this book is a timeless classic. For as long as the society is as sick as it is today or even worse, Catcher in the Rye will always be relevant. We got to admit that there are times when we all need a catcher in the rye. And as for me, I am actually blessed to have "catchers in the rye" during those sick times. Yes, I am referring to my family and beloved best friends which I can't name one by one here. I am just one hell of a lucky person to have them all :)

Jamie Cullum in Melbourne - 16.04.2010

2010-04-18T12:33:00.007+07:00

Been a fan of him for years and now I got the chance to actually see him live. I got nervous just when buying the tickets. It brought out the "kiasu" in me. Well I didn't get the first row but I was quite happy with the 4th row.

I was excited when Jamie Cullum appeared with his latest cover "Don't Stop The Music" by Rihanna. Jamie had successfully taken this song to a whole new level. I love his version much better than the original. For the first time in my life, I was blown away with a jazz show like this. Well it was also the first time I went to a jazz show anyway. We were sitting. Most of my friends thought that the show was going to be boring. But they were so wrong. The whole thing was mesmerizing. The best part was that there was this song titled "Frontin'". I didn't like it much before but when he played it, things changed. I love it! He showcased his talent by beatboxing, recording and looping the track live. It was my highlight of the show. He was playing alone without the band yet he was creating the most amazing show that night.

It was nothing like I had ever seen before. He would literally beat on the piano, ran to the drumset and beat on it or even jumping off from the piano with the energy that was so infectious to the audience. It was the kind of thing that you would never have expected from a jazz performer like him. With beers in hand, he surely had a great time as much as the audience that night.

Between the songs, he told funny stories about how he tried to smash up an old keyboard as he was trying to imitate Jimi Hendrix destroying his guitar which ended up making the stage covered in blood since Michael Franti didn't wear any shoes.

Also at one point he and the band ventured down off the stage, joined the crowd, set their instruments there and started playing. He danced with the crowd and it was such a really great time.

During "Gran Torino" everything was silent and I was all caught up with the song. I didn't know how but the song totally had me.

Some friends told me that there was something about Jamie that reminded them of Billie Joe but I didn't see it. Jamie is one of the performers who could bring genuine joy to the audience. And so I guess maybe that was what reminds my friends of Billie Joe. They are both great performers.

The show was absolutely amazing. Bravo, Jamie!

Jamie Cullum Setlist :

1. Don't Stop The Music

2. Get Your Way

3. Just One of Those Things

4. I'm All Over It

5. If I Ruled The World

6. Frontin'

7. Photograph

8. Twentysomething

9. Love Ain't Gonna Let You Down

10. You and Me Are Gone

11. I Got A Woman

12. These Are The Days

13. I Get A Kick Out of You

14. Wheels

15. High and Dry

16. Cry Me A River

17. Mixtape

18. All at Sea

Soundwave Festival - 26.02.2010

2010-02-27T09:57:00.001+07:00

I was and still am disappointed that My Chemical Romance had to pull out from the lineups. It was said that Gerard had a problem with his voice or something. Jimmy Eat World took over MCR place. Well I personally would much prefer MCR to JEW.

Line-ups : Jimmy Eat World, Placebo, Paramore, AFI, Taking Back Sunday, Faith No More, HIM, Alexisonfire, Shinedown, Jane's Addiction, Motion City Soundtrack, Reel Big Fish, Eagles of Death Metal, Trivium, Anti-Flag, All Time Low, Anthrax, The Get Up Kids, Enter Shikari, A Day to Remember, Escape The Fate, Isis, Meshuggah, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Weakerthans, It Dies Today, Glassjaw, Comeback Kid, The Almost, The Aquabats, Clutch, Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong, RX Bandits, Gallows, Dance Gavin Dance, You Me at Six, A Wilhelm Scream, Emarosa, Whitechapel, Baroness, Architects, This Is Hell, The Creepshow, Anvil, Rolo Tomassi and Death Audio.

It was scorching hot at that day. I was only interested in Jimmy Eat World so I arrived there at around 2pm when some bands had already played. JEW was scheduled sometime in the evening, so we just wandered around from one stage to another. They were great though, but the highlights for me was Jimmy Eat World (of course) and Shinedown. Shinedown put an amazing show even though the stage was not big. There were just a bunch of people and I gotta say that it was my favorite performance amongst all the bands at Soundwave this year.

Jimmy Eat World Setlist :

1. Sweetness

2. A Praise Chorus

3. Let It Happen

4. Always Be

5. Lucky Denver Mint

6. 23

7. Get It Faster

8. Work

9. Futures

10. Big Casino

11. Blister

12. Hear You Me

13. Bleed American

14. Pain

15. The Middle

Overeat No More

2010-02-09T17:02:00.023+07:00

Once a friend of mine asked me, "Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?". I quickly replied "Of course I live to eat!" and I was smiling widely and beaming with pride even though I didn't know what the hell I was proud of. I love eating so much that I was assured that I was born to eat. Eating makes me happy. Food adds color to my days. I was proudly claiming myself as a food addict and I thought it was sort of cute. Food lover. Food addict. Foodie. That's me. Little did I know that the word "food addict" could be destructive.

One night everything was changed. The thought of food drove me crazy. I was constantly thinking about food, food and more food. I was binge eating. I went through the kitchen cupboards to find something to eat even when I wasn't hungry at all. It was like I was in a battle with food, more like "attack your food or it will attack you". In this case the food was "attacking" me in the mind. You won't believe what I did. I could eat a Nestle's Cooking Chocolate, which was supposed to be cooked first. Well it was supposed to be my baking supply. I could eat a jar of Nuttela. If you think that's not weird enough, I could eat a jar of peanut butter too! I could eat a box of cereal in one night. I could eat everything edible I saw. Believe me. I ate without tasting them. I just ate and ate. The only thing that could stop me was when there was no food left. My trick was I always dump the rest of the food I was eating in the bin so that I don't finish the whole thing. Before chucking them in the trash bin, I always made sure that I trashed them by putting some tissues or papers in the food so that I wouldn't pick it up again from the bin. Refer to the scene of Miranda from Sex And The City where she was obsessed with eating brownies! She did take the brownies from the bin. It was so bad that I was so depressed. I couldn't stop even when I felt so sick from eating too much.

Desperate, I typed "How to stop eating" and "How to stop thinking about food" in the Google search box. I was relieved when I found out that I wasn't the only one. I found lots of forums with the same questions and there were many of them! Soon the feeling of relieved was gone when I read further about the matter. It all boiled down to this: "Compulsive Overeating Disorder" and "Binge Eating Disorder". It was said in Wikipedia that they're different but I can't see how different since they all come hand in hand. All of the symptoms stated (taken from Wikipedia) were describing what I had been experiencing :
1. Binge eating, or eating uncontrollably even when not physically hungry.
2. Eating much more rapidly than normal.
3. Eating alone due to shame and embarrassment.
4. Feelings of guilt due to overeating.
5. Preoccupation with body weight.
6. Depression or mood swing.
7. Awareness that eating patterns are abnormal.
8. Rapid weight gain or sudden onset of obesity.
9. Significantly decreased mobility due to weight gain.
10. History of weight fluctuation.
11. Withdrawal from activities due to embarrassment about weight.
12. History of many different unsuccessful diets.
13. Eating little in public, but maintaining a high body weight.
14. Very low self-esteem and feeling need to eat greater and greater amounts.

I had a quick read for an article in Wikipedia of what triggers overeating. I even bought a boring book called "The End of Overeating". I didn't get it really clear of what causes it since I hate things related to Biology. For all I know, it has something to do with the reward system in the brain and the abnormality of endorphin metabolism. Some also argues it is due to excessive neurological sensitivity in taste and/or smell.

The bad news is: in some way, food addicts are much more difficult to recover compared to drug addicts. There is a saying in "Overeaters Anonymous": "when you are addicted to drugs, you put the tiger in the cage to recover; when you are addicted to food you put the tiger in the cage but take it out three times a day for a walk"

"Overeaters Anonymous" is a twelve-step program designed to help people dealing with the food problem. It observes compulsive eating as a three-fold illness: physical, mental and spiritual. It states that in the mental dimension a compulsive eater is expressing an "inner hunger". In the recovery process, there is a need for changes of view to all members of OA. On the very first thing, OA always states, "... we are not a diet and calories club". The beliefs that needs to be altered are:
1. "It is bad to eat" to "One must eat to stay alive and should not feel guilty about it"
2. "One is simply overweight and needs to lose weight" to "One has underlying psychological and interpersonal problems"
3. "One must deprecate oneself, deprive oneself and take care of one's needs" to "It is okay to express positive feelings about oneself and take care others' needs"
4. "Food is the answer to all problems, the source of solace" to "Psychological and emotional needs should be fulfilled in relationships with people".
5. "I am a person who eats uncontrollably" to "I am someone who has limitations and does not eat what is harmful for me"

My weight scale had been one hell of a roller coaster ride. People constantly tell me I'm fat, I'm slim, or I'm too thin from time to time. Even during some period when I am able in keeping my weight stable, people always label me differently: "you're fat" or "you're thin". No wonder that the ideal body image in my mind is distorted. How fat is too fat? How thin is too thin?" I never get it clear.

That fluctuation on my weight scale is due to the constant battle against my own weight. I tried so many diet programs. Some failed and some succeeded. I deprived myself from eating. I starved myself until I became dumb and couldn't think properly. I was hardly satisfied with my own body.
When I'm on a diet, I deprive myself from eating. The deprivation leads me into thinking more about food excessively. Whenever I see food, I always think of how that would taste like in my mouth. I spent way a lot of time being on a diet, thus I spent way a lot of time too thinking about food. So when I finished the diet programs successfully, I did not just lose the unwanted kilos. I've lost control over food unconsciously.

It's true that after successful diet programs, I was happy with myself in a new body. But just like the joy of food, the feeling was ephemeral. Once I saw food, I couldn't stop thinking about it until the food was gone. I kept eating much more uncontrollably. I had much less control over food than before. I hated myself for having no self-control. I tried to make myself believe that I still had self-control by trying to compensate the calories consumed with drinking diuretic slimming tea. It went on and on just like a downward spiral to self-destruction. I loathed myself, especially when I was binge eating with a mouthful of Domino's Pizzas and the TV showed "20 Sexiest Bikini Bodies". It was one of the worst feelings in the world.

I know this has got to end. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a fierce losing battle with food. If this goes on like this, I've got a bad feeling I'd be dying from this illness. I know I'd rather be making peace with food and build a healthy relationship with it. You know "War is over... if you want it" (Lennon) and I've decided to end it. Just like cleaning up the mess of any war, it is not easy for me to make peace with food either.

It may sound bizarrely stupid but I hope that writing this can help me too:

I will try not to be affected when people say I am fat and need to lose weight.
I will try not to be affected when people say I am thin and need to gain weight.
For I will have my own healthy body image in which I am comfortable with.

When those who think I am fat offering me some food and I decline, I will try not to get sick of all the people asking, "Are you on a diet?", "What kind of a diet are you on?", or "Are you trying to lose weight?".
I will try not to get sick of answering, "No, thanks, I've had my lunch".
And when they started to shove me with more food, I will not cave in.
And if they still keep provoking me to eat, I will try not to feel like biting their faces.
When they say "Geez, you're on a diet, are you? You're always on a diet" and shaking their heads, I will try not to feel like eating up their heads.
And I will say to them, "No, I'm not on a diet. I am CHANGING my lifestyle, I am trying to liberate myself from the food slavery".

When I go eating and they see my portion of meal, I know they'll comment differently.
For one would say "Gosh you eat so little, are you on a diet?"
I would answer, "Hell no, I'm not, it's just enough to make me full".
For one would say, "Gosh, you eat to much, don't you feel fat?"
I would answer, "Hell no, I'm not, it's enough to feed my hunger away".
You know how we are created in different shapes and sizes? We too have different metabolism! A piece of cake may not make a lucky bastard gain one kilo, but it may make one unfortunate person gain one kilo.

I will try not to say "I am on a diet" anymore. Instead, I am going to say, "I am changing my lifestyle". For the word "diet" itself has been all the roots to all this mess I've created. Yes, my friend, say "diet" no more for it starts with "D-I-E".
I will learn to distinguish the feeling of full or hungry. It may sound stupid but I'm losing the ability to sense them.

When I go hitting the gym, that's because I want to be healthy, not to lose weight.

To cut it short, I am changing my focus on "being skinny" to "being healthy". I know there are going to be some setbacks await me in the future. And when they come, I'll try my best not to hate myself for I still believe that there will be days when I am healthy and free from all these chains. For I believe that there will be days when I eat to live. Amen!

Lucky or Freaky? It All Lies In The Eye of The Beholder

2009-12-18T07:27:00.021+07:00

I went to six Green Day shows in Australia. Some might think I am out of my mind, crazy or a freak or whatever but I consider myself as lucky for being able to have the times of my life six times! The last two weeks were the happiest times of my life. I can't remember when the last time I felt that happy. I slept and woke up smiling. I was so damn excited to see them performing live. I traveled from Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and back again to Melbourne. I spent so much money and I didn't regret it at all. There were times I threw away some of my seating tickets and bought floor tickets instead and I swore to God that was the best thing I had ever done! When in fact some people thought it was just a foolish thing to do. I didn't care about money. I was having the best time of my life indeed! Not that I am rich or I don't have any other idea to blow my money on, I am just one very happy person.

Having gone to six shows in Australia, I gotta say that Melbourne's last show was the best of all. I didn't go to Brisbane though. Actually I already had the seated ticket for the second show. I got the very front row and it was really near to the stage. But I had decided to find the floor standing tickets, having experienced AWESOME times being on the floor in Sydney's last show. I gave my ticket to my sister. So on the 15th I and Bobby had been lining up four hours before the gate was opened. We were burning under the sunlight. But just 30 minutes before the gate was supposed to be opened, I got a phone call from Tika telling me that she heard in the radio that the show was canceled because Billie Joe was sick. I didn't believe it. I thought maybe it was some kind of a joke that Hamish and Andy made. But then the tour manager came and told us that the second show was postponed to the next day due to Billie Joe had some food poisoning. We were really disappointed. But I totally understood the situation. All GD fans there too. You know Green Day wouldn't cancel or postpone any show if it was not anything serious. It reminded me the times when Mike Dirnt was sick and had to go back and forth on the stage just to shit on the bucket. I got worried about Billie Joe though. Negative thoughts barged into my mind "What if Green Day break up just like Oasis did?" or "What if Billie Joe dies?" I know it's ridiculous. Bobby was having a dilemma because he was supposed to attend his brother's graduation ceremony on the 16th, in which in the end he chose to go to the Green Day show! YEAY! Good choice!*grins*

The next day I lined up earlier. It was getting way hotter than the day before. The mercury hit 39 degrees! Yet I stood strong under the heat. I'd do anything for Green Day. I got my survival kit bag filled with umbrella, sunscreen, food and water. Thank God Bobby was also willing to wait under the scorching hot sunlight without any complaints. The faces I saw on the second day was the same faces I saw on the first day. They were die-hard fans. You know I felt like I am really normal compared to those fans. I think some of them may have camped out there! They got all their arms or legs written with words from the Green Day songs like "Cast Away", "Viva La Gloria" or "Rage and Love" from "Jesus of Suburbia". Most of them were teenagers but there were also some people in their 30s too!

So Billie Joe was already fit at that time. The gate was opened at exactly 5:30pm. There were things that annoyed me a bit though. It was explained that the front standing were supposed to enter in door 5 or 16. And the rear standing to door 15. I was confused. I got the front standing but it said on the ticket to enter in door 15. Then the man told us "Front standing please go lining up to the city side, rear standing to the Richmond side". Some chicks behind me was like "What the fuck? I don't know where I'm going! Where's city? Where's Richmond?". You know there were lots of people coming from other state. Anyway as we entered the gate, I ran as fast as I could to door 16 (which is on Richmond's side!!). We had to wait for another 45 minutes there. When the door was opened, we ran and I couldn't believe we got the front row!! YEAY!!!

I knew that the show was going to be different when there was some surprises during Jet's performance. There were toilet paper everywhere, there were fireworks and bunny, lion, giraffe. It was awesome!
Right after the drunk bunny appeared, Green Day showed up! I went hysterical (like usual). They opened the show with normal setlist : 21st Century Breakdown, Know Your Enemy and East Jesus Nowhere. Then after several songs, Billie Joe said "We'll play that later! Now we're gonna play some old shit!". Everybody screamed so hard I could feel my ears like bleeding. And then Billie Joe started with "Seventeen and strung out on confusion..." and I was like "I can't believe they played Coming Clean!". Everyone around me who was screaming before stood still, not knowing what the song was. I screamed my head off singing to every line of the song! They also played "Going To Pasalacqua"! They also did the cover of The Kinks - You Really Got Me. It was the best fucking setlist in all Australian shows! Even though I was hoping they would play Knowledge though. During "King For A Day", Jet showed up with a bunch of male strippers! They lift up Tre Cool and it was all hilarious. Tre Cool had a boner. Oh well I had a really good time that I couldn't feel everyone was pushing and pressing. I kept jumping and screaming no matter what. And this time Billie Joe sprayed the water right at my face.

The best thing was Tre Cool was actually smiling at me and blew me a kiss! I swear to God it was for me! But you know the worst part is when they finished playing "Minority", Tre Cool went to my direction and tried to throw me the drumstick but he missed it! The girl next to me got it. I was so bummed I felt like crying. I was so close to tears when Billie Joe went acoustic. Time of Your Life (Good Riddance) is a really beautiful song but I hated it so much when the song was played because I knew that the whole Green Day thing was going to end. I wanted the drumstick and I didn't want the night to end, you know. Oh well but in the end I got Mike Dirnt's guitar pick. And I also got the original setlist! Thanks to the very kind security in front of me. She'd been giving me water and smiling at me. There was a time when I saw her mouthing words to the song and I smiled at her! You know almost all the security guards I saw were really serious, except this security guard. I thank her so much for giving me the setlist :)And I GOT THE GUITAR PICK! That's the guitar pick that Mike Dirnt was actually using on that show and it has his signature on it. I still can't believe I got it.

That night was turning to a bit chaotic. The front standing was wearing blue wristbands and the rear standing with yellow wristbands. When the show was going halfway, the people behind us were all wearing yellow wristbands! Shit. I didn't know where the other blue wristbands behind us before. Bobby who was standing beside me was now behind me. Just like Sylvia did when we were in Sydney. There's a tip for floor standing : HUG the barrier in front of you and NEVER EVER let go even when you are jumping like a mad man.

Green Day shows were hands down the best shows I had ever seen. I don't know if I'm biased though but I successfully converted my sister and some of my friends to be Green Day fans. And here's a quote I found from a forum:

"Well, I'm definitely not a big Green Day fan, but I went to the show tonight... it amazes me that I'm about to say this, but it was hands down the best concert I've ever been to :?

I've seen bands I CHERISH, bands whose reputation precedes them hugely... I've seen masters of stadium rock like Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica... And Green Day SHAT on all of them.

I'm floored... I still don't really like them any more than I did before, but that show was fucking amazing. When three songs in you've had fireworks, randoms invited on stage, band members sprinting through the crowd etc, you know you're at an event. When that went on for nearly THREE HOURS and never once really lagged... Yeah. Don't know what more to say, fucking brilliance. "

FOR VIDEOS : CLICK HERE

One Way Cheap Ticket To Hell

2009-11-19T20:04:00.017+07:00

I'm a fan of Air Crash Investigation on the NatGeo channel. Friends would always say why I love to watch such programs which would make me more paranoid about flying. Well, I love the program because first - it really happened in reality, two - it investigates what have caused the crash, three - you get to learn something from such incidents (in case someday you're in it) and four - i just can't switch the channel once it starts!

I think I've watched almost all episodes of the crashes. I even watched some cases twice. But today, I watched one that I had never watched before. And it was exciting because it was about Adam Air, an Indonesian airline. Don't take "exciting" the wrong way, plane crash is a terrible thing and it was just thrilling to find out why. I knew about the crash before and I didn't even know what have caused the crash until I watched the program.

Let's rewind two years back.....
2007 was started with a gloomy day in Indonesia. A plane from Adam Air with 102 people on board was reported missing from the radar and it was all over the television. I was quite terrified whenever I heard some news about plane crash. It's just HUGE to me. I kept following the news update. I shed tears and prayed (yes I did pray!) for those victims' families and relatives. Everyone was devastated. There was a false report of finding some victims and wreckage on a mountain in Sulawesi. It made the situation worse. I can't imagine of having false hopes in such a helpless situation. Wreckage and debris were found in the sea and it was confirmed that the plane crashed into the water. The black-box was then located and took more than half a year to retrieve it because the government wouldn't fund it and Indonesia couldn't force Adam Air to do so.

The last thing I remembered was watching the families and relatives crying and spreading flowers on the sea. It kind of broke my heart to see all that.

Then I got lost. TV channels had stopped broadcasting news about the plane crash and everything was back to normal. So was I. I didn't know for sure what caused the crash.

Well thanks to NatGeo now I know why. I don't mean to sound like I hate Indonesia but it was the stupidest crash I had ever known. There were so many dumb and fatal mistakes. There was so much things that could have done to avoid the plane crash. It got me furious for a while. Watch the program and you will judge.

1. The faulty navigation system.
It was reported before that the same plane was having problems with the navigation system and guess what Adam Air had done - they swapped the faulty part one another with another plane. They DID NOT fix it, they just CLEANED it with some kind of lubricant.
It was also reported before that another plane from Adam Air had the same problem with the navigation system. The pilot didn't know where they were flying to. They didn't even know which location they were at.
They kept flying for three hours until they saw an airport. They didn't even know what airport it was because they lost the communication with the air traffic controller. They knew where they were at just after they landed to the airport.

2. Lack of training.
It was reported that when the navigation system failed, the pilot and the co-pilot disengaged the autopilot system YET (believe it or not) NO ONE WAS FLYING THE PLANE! They were too pre-occupied with flipping pages of the manual book trying to fix the system.
When the alarm was on, the pilot turned it OFF.
Until the plane plunged, they realized how bad the situation was. The pilot took control. Guess what - it made the situation went FROM BAD TO WORSE. The pilot made the plane went to the opposite direction and it plummeted to the sea with the speed of sound.

3. Severe weather.
Okay you cannot blame it on Adam Air or the pilot for bad weather but you can blame the pilot for making the decision to go ahead even after being warned for such weather.
Okay maybe the pilot was under pressure by the Adam Air to keep flying no matter what.

4. Regulation for aviation industry.
Blame it on Indonesian government too for letting such faulty plane with faulty management to freely fly in the country. Blame it on Indonesia for not having proper regulation in the aviation industry. Things would have turned out much different if Indonesia had adequate regulations.

5. Information verifications.
Rumor had it that some victims and wreckages of the plane were found in the mountain of Sulawesi. The authority confirmed it without verifying it first. It gave hopes to the families and relatives. Some of them flew right away to the spot of the accident - eager to find out if their loves ones were the lucky ones to be alive. Yet it was ALL WRONG. It made what the families felt even worse. Worsened scars for life.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE:
1. If Adam Air underwent the proper maintenance and actually fixed or replaced the faulty part, such accident would have never happened.
2. If the pilot and co-pilot knew how to actually fly the plane without autopilot, they could survive the plane crash and such accident would have never happened.
3. If Adam Air provided adequate training, the pilot and co-pilot would have known what to do in such situations thus such accident would have never happened.
4. If the pilot refused to fly due to the bad weather ahead (as warned), such accident would have never happened.
5. If Adam Air had responsible management (by not giving pressure to pilots to keep flying no matter what), such accident would have never happened.
6. If Indonesia applied proper rules in the aviation industry, Adam Air would be banned from flying thus such accident would have never happened.

All Indonesian airlines were considered unsafe and were banned from flying to several European countries and I think the ban still applies til now.

Cutting cost doesn't mean Adam Air can cut people's lives. I'm not saying that premium ticket with safer plane is always guaranteed. Shit still happens no matter how good the plane is. But at least the risk of crashes is much smaller than the poorly-maintained planes.
I'd rather pay more money than to risk my life being on a dodgy plane. If there's anything you can do to be safer, farther away from the dangers - why not?

Losing My Religion

2009-10-11T23:45:00.039+07:00

I was born and raised in a country where religion is just mandatory to be put in almost every ID : citizenship cards, family cards or even in grade school reports. So it's kind of weird if one doesn't have any. It seems that we are programmed to have some religions.

My dad and his family claimed themselves as Buddhists. Well I think they were more like Confucians. Here I found most people get mixed up: Buddhism and Confucianism are two different things. Well I don't really know how different but from what I've learned, Buddhists believe in Siddhartha Gautama and Nibbana (Nirvana). While Confucianism is more like a philosophy and old traditions. Buddhists go to Vihara, Confucians go to temples. Buddhists hold on to their principles of Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. Confucians pray to old ancestors and some other Gods like Guan Yin (Dewi Kwan Im). I learned Buddhism for 6 years in my elementary school so I hope I'm getting this right. Confucianism is not claimed as one of the official religions in Indonesia so maybe because of that most of them are declaring themselves as Buddhists.

Okay back to the background of my family's belief. Most of my dad's family have some altars in their houses: a table with some red lights, some pictures of the deceased ancestors, some fruits or food and some candle sticks. I remembered seeing my grandma and uncles did some praying there. I did it too during special occasions like Chinese New Years and to be honest it was creeping me out a bit because I've never known anyone in the pictures so I didn't know what to say. I was afraid of saying things that were not supposed to be said. But then grandma told me that I could say it in my head. By then I got scared of just thinking about anything. I felt like they're judging me and would take me to their dead world for punishment.

When I was a little bit older, I asked my grandma about Jesus, Guan Yin (Dewi Kwan Im), The Laughing Buddha (the one with big belly), Confucius (the thin one with long black beard) and Buddha (Gautama). She told me that every religion is good : Buddhism, Hinduism, Christian, Moslem, Catholic or whatever - they're all the same. I remembered she used this analogy : "If you want to go to Malang (from Tumpang), you can go past Pakis or Sawojajar - up to you. That goes the same thing with religions. They're all friends with each other up there. So be a good girl - do no harm to others and listen to what your parents say". I still have a clear picture in my head of how I imagined Jesus, Guan Yin, Confucius and Buddha were holding hands and smiling. It was one happy picture that I had.

During my childhood, I spent my days playing and studying. Religion is not a big deal in my family. We didn't have to go to Vihara or temples regularly and we didn't condemn each other in the family who didn't go. There was just no talks about it. We understood some Moslem workers had to pray several times a day. I did see my house maids praying while I was in the room with them - playing with my toys. It's just the things they had to do for what they believed in and we totally respected it.

Junior high school. I was introduced to Catholic. It's a compulsory subject in the school so I learned about it. We went to church once in a month I think. I became best friends with Sylvia and sometimes I would go to church just to accompany her.
High school. I was getting more familiar with Catholic. You know as we grow older, problems start to keep arising. I was getting more and more into Catholic and started to have some faith. When times were hard, I would just go to church and pray. I even experimented by going to Christian's churches without my dad's knowing. He didn't want me to be a Christian just because he thinks that most Christians are fanatics and out of their minds. Well I said no comments about that - who am I to judge? My faith grew stronger. I prayed everyday. I was very much in love with my boyfriend at that time that I kept on praying for our relationship and him. I got depressed and I turned to God. Being in the church just gave me some senses of "someone BIG out there named Jesus is taking care of you" - so I worried less.

Until one night. After several disappointments, I started questioning about Jesus. I questioned everything. I realized that I had been believing in Jesus just because others around me were believing in Him. I browsed in the internet for hours and got nothing. Everything was referred back to The Bible while all that I wanted was some unbiased references. I came across so many anti-Jesus websites and I got really confused. I didn't remember what I typed in the Google engine but I remembered I was not satisfied with all the evidences I've tried to collect about the existence of Jesus historically. To my surprise, the real evidences that I got satisfied with was the story of Siddhartha Gautama. Well I really couldn't sleep that night. I woke up my mom just to ask her a question about Jesus. She's once a fanatic Christian but because of my dad - she never talks about Christian or Jesus. I asked her if Jesus does exist and she said of course yes. I bombarded her with so many questions that I can't remember now. I remembered she said nothing. Maybe she didn't really know how to answer or maybe she was just sleepy. In just one night, my faith was crashed and burnt.

I started to get to know more about religions. I got sick of them. I found so many useless forums debating over Christian and Moslems. The debate of how Christians condemn those Buddhists people who worship statues. I got sick of Christian people telling me that going to Gunung Kawi temple is SINFUL. I constantly found some Christian people told me bad things about Catholic. I hated it when Christian people told me that Mother Mary was no Saint or no God or no Holy Mother - that I only had to pray to one God - Jesus. And if I pray to Mother Mary, I was just plain sinful. Even Christians people tell other Christians from different church is wrong. There are a lot of types of Christianity. I got tired of seeing my mom got judgmental questions "Are you still going to the church? Are you still serving GOD? Come on you have to go to church" - my mom would just turned her head down and said nothing. You know the perfect picture I had when I was a kid about those Gods holding their hands to each other - that's bullshit. That was a beautiful dream I had and I just woke up. In reality, some Gods are indeed peaceful and do nothing about different point of views - some Gods just can't help bitching about others. Well maybe it was the people representing their Gods and they make it like their Gods were like that. Well I don't care anyway. But it's the reality. That's the message I got.

My mother was raised in a Christian family. I constantly got questioned about my belief too by the family from my mom. There were times when I got asked if I believed in Jesus - I said no. They were like so much in shock. They asked me why oh why. I said well I just couldn't because I had to see some real historical evidences. How can I believe in something that I don't know if it's true or not? I asked so many questions about Jesus and stuff to my uncle and he couldn't give me any answers. And believe me, he got three people from his church coming to my house just to have me converted to Christian. I was gladly welcoming them and I questioned so many things about it - and again, they referred back to the Bible. They just couldn't shut up. They just blabbered proudly about how The Bible was made from different people but they delivered the same meanings - well I thought "How do you know? They could be the people who were just lucky for not getting busted for all the conspiracy they've made". I asked them about some scriptures that was claimed as lies - what base did they use for considering them as wrong? These three people were just so clever that they made me forget what my question was - leaving me more confused than ever. There was this one particular answer leaving me shut up "Well you know you cannot see things with your nose. You cannot feel how rough my skin is with your ears. You cannot listen to music with your eyes. And that's how faith works. It needs another sense". They got me and I was like "Really? What kind of sense? Sixth sense? Do I have it?". I asked them how I can get the extraordinary sense, they told me to open up my heart.

One night my passport was lost. I needed it to buy a flight ticket back to Melbourne. I had my mom and my housemaid helping me out looking for it until 3 o'clock in the morning. It wasn't found. I broke down in tears and asked my mom "Does God really exist? If He does, show me my passport and I would believe in God!". The next day, magic happened. The passport was then simply lying on my desk. We've gone through the desk like hundreds of times and it wasn't there last night! The hair of the back of my neck stood up. My mom just said "See, God really does exist" and she shared the story to my aunties and uncles. While my dad believed it was just a ghost teasing me. It was quite a turning point for me. I started to have my faith back. I started to believe in Jesus again.

I started going to church. I have so many friends who went to church. I went to pray every Fridays and got involved in some Sunday services. To be honest, I was still in constant refutations with myself. I was still searching. Well even though I was still in search, I know one thing that I always believe in : it's kindness. And one thing that made me believe in Christian is how great my friends were. Some of them were really good hearted. Let's name one of them : Yulia. I knew her and she had changed since she turned to Christian. She's just one amazing person who's always there when everybody needs her.

A visit to a hospital did some damage again to the faith that I had built. I was unwell and I went to hospital because it was public holiday and there was no doctor around. In the reception desk, I was asked my name, my address, my date of birth... but then "religion?". I panicked. I didn't know what religion I was. I couldn't say I was Christian because it was just not right. I felt like the receptionist looked at me like a fool for being confused. Well I was confused why I should declare my religion at that time! To end the weird look on the receptionist's face, I blurted and I said that I was a Buddhist. I was quite in a disbelief. Why did I say that? Then I got to think that deep down inside my heart, I wasn't really a Christian. I was forcing myself to become one. I wasn't a Buddhist either because I didn't go to Vihara to pray. I felt like I didn't belong to any of the religion group. I felt like I was a misfit. An outcast.

For all those times going to church and praying, I tried really hard to believe - they say I need to open up my heart? Well it sounds stupid but I didn't really know how to open my heart. I didn't really know why but I just couldn't feel anything that those people told stories of how they were called by Jesus, how they heard God's voices. I NEVER had any of those. Those things just don't suit my whole belief system.

Then I went to go on a road trip with my friends. I was in a car with a Christian friend and a Buddhist friend. They were quite fanatics for what they believe in. I was sitting at the back. I was sleeping and when I woke up, they were debating over religions. I wasn't taking any side but I agreed a bit with my Buddhist friend - simply because he backed up Moslem even though he was not one. I joined the conversation and I told my Christian friend that I didn't have any belief in particular religion - I just take what's good from each religion. He then encouraged me to keep looking and find one that suits me.

Well, what if there's none that suits me? Why should I find one? What if I don't want to have any religion? Some people say "If you don't have any religion - when you die - where are you going? You will be judged based on what you believe. Aren't you scared?". To be honest, at this point I don't care. I don't really care about heavens and hells. I don't care if they really exist or not. The fact is religions were the ones who had been doing damages to humanity - wars.

Sometimes I wish I was like them - the ones with faith, the ones who don't question everything, the ones who just accepts the beliefs without any doubts. I don't have any of that. I can't close my mind and read The Bible and become a blind follower. That's just not right for me.

Some people were born with faith, some people were not. I don't know if I was lucky or unlucky to be one with no faith to religions. You know how debate over religion never ends : those who believe in some particular religion consider those atheists need to be saved, while those atheists think they're lucky that they're not brainwashed.

I once told Ayu about this faith thing and she gave me some quotes from "The Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown : "Faith is a gift I have yet to receive". That's a good one. Maybe someday I would receive that gift. If I do, I would definitely share in this blog. But at this time, I have no religion - but I DO believe in God or any higher power. It's not specifically Jesus, Buddha, Confucius or Guan Yin or anything. It's just God. I believe that this universe was not built out from nothing. I am declaring myself as Agnostic.

Well if I don't receive that gift of faith until I die, maybe I would get scared of where I would be going. If I die someday, just do whatever prayers you want to pray I don't care as long as it's good. I'd like to be cremated because I don't want to be another burden to the environment. I'm dead anyway I won't feel a thing if I get burnt.

A GREAT video clip by REM - Losing My Religion

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Jonathan Swift quotes

“Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"” Annie Dillard quotes

“God has no religion” Mahatma Gandhi quotes

“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” Mahatma Gandhi quotes

“If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.” Dalai Lama quotes

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” Dalai Lama quotes

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off” Stephen King quotes

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.” Stendhal quotes

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” Dalai Lama quotes

“Suppose we've chosen the wrong god”

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer quotes

Unboxing The Green Day Ultimate Collectors 7" Singles Box Set

2009-10-08T21:28:00.019+07:00

Got it yesterday and I was super excited to open it! :)

Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. Australian Tour 2009

2009-10-07T23:35:00.016+07:00

I am not a fan of hip-hop, but I do enjoy some of hip-hop songs. I love some Black Eyed Peas songs from their album Elephunk and Monkey Business. Sadly, I hate their new album called "The E.N.D". No offense to any BEP lovers but I personally think it is so lame : "E.N.D. is for Energy Never Dies". Really? I hate how they open the first song of the album "Boom Boom Pow" with some robotic voice saying "The energy never dies - energy cannot be destroyed - blah blah blah". I can't stand listening to that part - I feel like banging my head on the wall - really. A friend of mine can't even stand listening to the whole song of "Boom Boom Pow". Also their new album sounds too computerized (try "Rock Your Body" where Fergie sounds so weird) and so techno. I am not a fan of techno. The beat and the lyrics are so repetitive that most people think it is catchy - it is actually boring. Well at least to me. Some of the good stuffs from their new album are : "Meet Me Halfway" and "I Gotta Feeling". I hate "Rock Your Body" and "Now Generation". I also hate "Imma Be". After I listened to it the whole song, it is more like a "I'm a bee". Sorry for bitching about them a bit. I guess they're just not my cup of tea.

Despite their disappointing new album, I went to see them last night. They put quite a great show though - because Will.i.am played some Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers even if it was just for a few seconds. It was like the best seconds I had in that show. I was in disbelief for a while because I thought that it was all hip-hop and there would be no Rock 'N Roll. I guess the surprise factor played a role here. Well it was until that time that I really enjoyed the show. Once I heard the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music, I screamed and jumped jumped jumped. I knew everyone in front of me, next to me or behind me maybe was not as excited as I was. I was jumping and screaming by myself. Well I don't care though! I had a good time! :D Ooh if only Kurt Cobain was still alive... :( What a shame :(

My favorite songs from the show last night : "Where's The Love?". Well I think it is the best BEP songs. I had a great time during "Pump It" and "I Gotta Feeling" too. Too bad during the encore the BEP wasted so much time introducing the other members of the band. It got quite boring that almost everyone took a seat.

Set List :
1. Let's Get Retarded
2. Rock That Body
3. Meet Me Halfway
4. Don't Phunk With My Heart
5. Shut Up
6. Will.i.am Free Style
7. Imma Be
8. My Humps
9. Missing You
10. Apl.de.ap Solo
11. Taboo Solo
12. Fergalicious (Fergie Solo)
13. Glamorous (Fergie Solo)
14. Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie Solo)
15. Will.i.am DJ Set (In The Ayer/American Boy/Jump/Otherside/Smells Like Teen Spirit)
16. Now Generation
17. Pump It
18. Where Is The Love?
19. Boom Boom Pow

Encore
20. Showdown/Party All The Time/ Outta My Head
21. I Gotta Feeling

Lemon Detox Diet

2009-10-01T18:04:00.002+07:00

I have a problem with self-control when it comes to eating. Just can't stop eating. I once got a friend of mine yelling at me to stop. She just simply shouted "Stop!" and I stopped. Her voice got me some self control for a few days. But now she's far away and I lost it.
The thing is that when I am sad I tend to eat. I turn to food for comforts. I eat because I feel empty inside. I am trying to fill the void by eating. But it got me even worse. I feel depressed in the end - feeling like a useless fat bitch.

Well so I decided to go on this lemon detox diet again. This time I'll do it in the optimum way : two weeks. I've gone through this diet before and I realized that once I did it successfully the other day, I managed to take control of myself - having a healthy lifestyle - well even though it was just for a few months. This time I hope I can make it for life. *fingers crossed*

DAY ONE
Weight : 55.7 kg
9am : I woke up and try to drink the sea salt water. I was never successful in drinking the whole litre so I tried to use the trick I found in some website. Drink 200ml of warm water + sea salt water then try to drink the rest of the 800ml warm water. I tried that and I FELT SO SICK @_@ I got an instant headache and the taste of the sea salt water is like soooo BAD. SO BAD SO BAD SO BAD. So bad that I felt like vomiting.

3pm : I got hungry. I picked up my Soundwave tickets at the post office. Then I picked up my Black Eyed Peas tickets at the Ticketek outlet. I really can't wait for Green Day ! :D

6pm : Went home and took a hot shower. My hands got cold. Turned the heater on and watched How I Met Your Mother
9pm : I had the tea. I am going to go to bed soon.

DAY TWO
Weight : 54.8 kg
I slept for 12 hours last night. I woke up at around 9.30am and I felt better. I made another batch of sea salt water and it tasted so BAD like yesterday. I didn't feel as hungry as what I felt yesterday.
But when I went outside I felt the urge to eat. But I handled it pretty well. I went to bathroom more frequently because I drank so much water.
I'm gonna drink my tea and go to sleep.

DAY THREE
Weight : 53.6 kg
10.30am : another 1 litre of sea salt water *almost puke* but this time I could finished one whole litre! YEAY me!
1pm : I baked some profiteroles and damn I couldn't taste it :(
I AM HUNGRY and felt like giving up but I didn't! 11 days to go.. Geez..

DAY FOUR
Weight : 53.2 kg
It was the worst day yet of the detox program. I had a dream where I was eating a bowl of meatballs. So the next morning I woke up, I was hungry and really wanted to eat. I felt low on energy and really cold. So I turned my heater on and wrapped myself in a blanket but still felt cold. I did some baking to get my mind off of eating and it was quite successful, which was ironic.
I felt so weak...

DAY FIVE
Weight : 52.9 kg
I felt happy because I realized that my stomach was not as big as it used to be. But got disappointed because the weight loss is getting less and less. If you notice, I almost lost a kilogram the first day I was on the program. Then 800g and half a kilo and today only 300g.
And there was this weird thing : I kept asking everyone what they ate. I watched my sister eating those snack. I was looking at recipe books just to stare at the food and want to cook it (I might as well eat it)... Now I'm concerned about me losing control at eating once I finish this program. Well I really hope not.

DAY SIX
Weight : 52.2 kg
COLD. I felt COLD despite the sunshine outside.

DAY SEVEN

Weight : 52.4 kg
The weight scale must be joking when I weighed myself this morning. I gained 0.2 kg! I don't know why but I hate gaining weight ! :(
So I cut down the amount of maple syrup into my drinks this morning. It was supposed to be 140ml but I made it 100ml.
At this stage, I don't feel hungry at all. But there is the urge to eat. I want to taste some food :( I miss food! :(

DAY EIGHT - LAST DAY
Weight : 52.4kg

Yes I had decided to cut the program short. It was because of the weight scale which keeps joking. My weight stayed the same. And it was also because of some health issues. I decided to hit the gym and start eating healthy. Well this time I really hope I would not fall into the bad eating habits again.
Amen.

FINAL WEIGHT (Day 9): 51.4 kg
TOTAL LOSS : 4.3 kg in 8 days

Cockroaches Hysteria

2009-09-24T09:36:00.019+07:00

If one day God magically appears in front of me and ask "If I could make one creature disappear, what creature do you want me to kill off forever and why?". I'd undoubtedly reply "COCKROACHES please!". And that's because they are the most disgusting creatures on earth and they have no use at all! Okay I am sorry if any of you are cockroaches-lovers. Excuse me for being too harsh on cockroaches but I really hate them from the bottom of my heart! I was born to hate them. I was meant to hate them. It is destiny.

With their long bodies, long antennas, tiny feathery feet and SHINY bodies OMG how can you not get phobic to those things?? And some of them can fly! They can get stuck in your ears too!
They are capable of spreading viruses thingies. Maybe like salmonella or something (I read it somewhere on the internet). I got a strange phobia with cockroaches. I am a cockroachphobic (i don't know if it's a word but you get what i mean, don't you?)

I had a long old feud with cockroaches back in Indonesia. I don't know since when or why but here's what I can remember :

I was walking to my living room to watch some TV when I felt there's something on the back of my neck. I tried to make it go away by grabbing it. And when it fell to the floor and there I saw it. I screamed like I was seeing ghosts and pleading for my maid to kill it. Even though the cockroach is killed and thrown away to the garbage, I still could feel it all over my body. For days.

I was getting ready for school - I had my breakfast - I put some socks on. When I put my shoes on, it felt not right. All of a sudden, a cockroach appeared from the shoe where I step my foot on and it went right up to my thigh. I was in so much shock and excessive fear that I screamed and literally rolling on the floor with my feet kicking the air. I was crying and screaming. My dad was panicking and thought I got some electric shock or something. He got angry at me for being too dramatic but then laughed at me. And I kept crying.

I was afraid of sleeping in my bedroom alone. It was haunted. I am not kidding but it was haunted. So I slept on some mattress on the floor in my parents' room. I was maybe half-asleep when I felt something walking on my hands then to my arms. I spontaneously got up screaming - thinking that it must be a cockroach. AND I WAS RIGHT! It was a cockroach! Again I cried and my mom was the hero that night. My dad chickened out and my mom stepped up and killed the cockroach.

Well my dad also hates cockroaches. Whenever he saw one, he would use up one full bottle of Baygon. There once he found a flying cockroach and he didn't know that it could fly. When it first time flew, my dad was terrified and fell sitting on his butt. I and my sister were watching from afar and we laughed so hard. We weren't being disrespectful or mean but it was really funny!

In the middle of a night, my maid knocked on my parents' door and crying. She was in so much pain. She said that her ear was hurting so bad and she felt pretty sure that "something" got inside her ear. So we went to doctors and guess what? It was a cockroach! The doctor found a cockroach dead inside the ear. OMG I felt so sick. I guess it's best to plug your ear with iPod while sleeping. Safety comes first.

There was one night when I was alone at my home in Indonesia. My maid was going back to her home. My parents were attending some kind of party. I was chatting on MSN on when a cockroach suddenly walked passing on my table! I was screaming in horror but at that time no one could help! I called my mom and dad and they couldn't hear what I was saying because the party was so loud! So I texted them. I got angry at them for leaving me alone at home. I knew it was stupid. But I was in so much horror. I spent hours alone at my home with a bottle of Baygon on my hand - staying alerted for any cockroach. Or maybe I was paranoid : eyes open wide and even the slightest sound or movement can jerk me out. Not really alerted.

I had never seen cockroaches in Melbourne. It is one of the reasons why I love Melbourne. Cockroach-free. Just when I thought so, I saw one this morning. I was in a hurry to pee (since I drank a lot of water) then I saw this very BLACK cockroach. I didn't know what to do. I was alone at home. I knew my sis was having tutorials. I immediately called Nonoh just to get some company. I really wanted to cry because I knew I was helpless. I needed to do it myself. I had no insect spray and I got no broom! Then vacuum cleaner came accross my mind. I turned my phone off, trying to call my sis but as I had expected she didn't pick up the phone. I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and when I got back to the toilet. It's gone!! Geez I hate this feeling! Not knowing where your enemy is is the worst feeling ever! Knowing that it can attack you anytime unexpectedly can drive you insane. So I kicked the door hoping that the cockroach would get shocked and run. But nothing. I turned the vacuum cleaner ON - even the sound of the vacuum cleaner made me jerking out. Then I waited patiently til I saw it coming. It was hiding behind the toilet. I waited for the right time and I sucked it into my vacuum cleaner while screaming. I didn't turn it off. I was afraid that if I turned it off the cockroach would crawl back and got back his freedom. There's no way I could let that happen. Then Nonoh told me to wrap around the vacuum cleaner head with a plastic bag. I tried to do it with the vacuum ON but the plastic got sucked up so I really needed to turn it OFF. I turned it OFF and quickly wrap it with a plastic bag.

But I was left feeling paranoid. Trembling. What if the cockroach somehow manage to crawl back? What if it already bred somewhere? Where did it come from anyway? Only God knows...

And The Fat Kid Confessed.....

2009-09-14T19:29:00.016+07:00

I spent my childhood as a fat kid. I am dead serious when I wrote "fat". I was seriously fat.

Whenever my uncle saw me, he would just catch me and wouldn't let me go until I said "Okay I am ugly, too-tall, fat, have big butt and rotten teeth, chubby". I was saying it in Javanese : "elek, genter, gendut, semok, geges, lemu."
I wasn't offended at all or had any hard feelings about it 'cause I know he was just teasing me.
I was called "the Mother of all KingKong". There were other "KingKongs" too but apparently I was the fattest, so I got the honor to be the "mother". Whenever the boys teased me with the other kingkong friends, we'd chase them. Once we got them, we'd punch, slap and pinch them. The louder they screamed from hurting, the happier we were (or maybe it was just me?). *grin*. Don't take this the wrong way, I was and am NOT into sadism or masochism or both. It was just another stupid thrill every child got from any chasing games. The boys that we tortured were actually happy and they seemed to enjoy it too. And they're not into S&M!

Of course there were times I was feeling humiliated. Body weighing at school had always given me nightmares. I secretly hoped that we would be weighed individually and secretly, without no other kids watching how heavy I was.
Everybody laughed at me when I fell down from playing roller blade. There was this one stinky security guard laughed so hard and said ugly things about my bum and I was really annoyed. Fuck him. So I ended up playing roller blade in my own house, leaving scratches on the tile floor but who cares? Okay my mom cared about the scratches but I and my sister did NOT.
My dad would say ugly things about my weight too and I would cry under my pillow. Fell asleep but then forgot about it completely the next day. The worst thing was that my dad kept feeding me with lots of food but then scolded at me at the same time. There. I was trapped in a world of "come-on-let's-eat-this-and-that" and got thrown back into the world of "you're-so-damn-fat-no-boys-like-you-useless-fat-slob" then into the world of "those-sayings-are-just-to-make-you-better". It just kept going full circle.

Well maybe it all make sense when it was for the 12 years old who weighed 66kgs. Yep I was 66 kgs.

Then I started to get obsessed with Backstreet Boys.
I started to watch MTV.
I started to feel envious to the skinny girls shaking their booties on MTV.
I got busy for junior high school things.
I skipped meals.
Then everyone started to say I lost some weight.
I weighed myself and I lost 10 kilos!
There.
It was the point where I got obsessed with my own body weight.
I constantly weighed myself before and after meal. Of course to get depressed after meal.
I didn't remember quite clearly when and why but there were times I really lost the appetite to eat.
I kept losing the weight and some teachers got concerned about it.
I used to be in top 10 in class (in terms of academic, NOT weight!).
But ever since then, I was out.
Apparently not eating food makes people dumber. It's true!
I was dumber.
(Geez, writing this makes me think "was I anorexic at that time? I really didn't have the appetite to eat!")

Then I got sick and hospitalized for a month (not because I was anorexic, but because I was infected with typhus). Everyone in the family protested and forced me to eat. I ate and ate and ate because I was really afraid to die at that time. There was one night where I had this creepy dream that I was dying, surrounded with panic nurses and crying family behind them hoping for me not to die. It was one hell of a dream. So I started to eat normally and got recovered.
I kept struggling with dieting and eating food.

Until now.

I am still obsessed with my own weight. Or maybe worse.
I tried so many kind of diets.
3-day-diet
mayo diet
lemon detox diet
milk shake diet
cabbage soup diet
steamed food diet
grapefruit diet
I even bought the stupid Slimmist which was advertised on Oprah (it's a kind of spray that's believed to have the power to curb your appetite, and an inhaler - each time you feel hungry, just inhale it and the hungry is gone). That didn't work at all!

I thought of smoking cause I heard that smoking makes you look skinner (i know it's muscle but the skinny things intrigued me)
I passed this thought to some friends of mine and I got yelled.
They asked me "Why do you want to smoke?"
I said "Cause I want to look skinny"
Then a friend of mine who also smokes said "Well that's stupid"
I asked him "Why did you start to smoke?"
He replied "Because my friends were smokers and I wanted to socialize"
I was thinking nothing. Blank mind.
Until another friend of mine snapped "You both are stupid".
Thank God for that! We both needed the word "stupid" to shake us out of the "Smoking World"

We were indeed being stupid. Smoking is stoopid.

I know I am not alone in this body weight obsession things. In fact, almost every girl I know has this obsession. The girls who eat and eat but then complain and complain about too much food. I do it all the time too. I shove my mouth with fatty foods one day and jumped on cardio for hours the next day, regretting all the foods I ate the day before. I am really hoping to escape this whole food and dieting things. But how? OKAY I know it's simple. Reduce your calories intake and hit the gym! It's just so hard!
I keep stuffing food to my mouth but I never stop believing that there is a skinny girl inside of me - waiting to come out from the fats.

And I am looking for something to blame it on. Televisions? Advertisings? Internet? Or even my childhood?
...........................................

Or maybe it's just that I am afraid of blaming it on myself.

The Struggle to Be on Time! Everytime!

2009-09-06T14:58:00.011+07:00

Punctuality. It's a simple yet one of the hardest things to do. For 10 times I try to be on time, I made it maybe once or twice. Yes I am that bad. In fact, being "punctual" is always on my New Year's Resolution Lists. It has always been there each year.
Well except when I went to work. While I was doing the stocktake, I was late maybe twice in total (out of 158 stocktakes). Yes I did have the record of the stocktakes that I was allocated to. Thanks to my boredom at work, I typed my own name into the company system and counted how many stocktakes I've done from late 2007 til mid 2008. 158 shifts. Two of them I was late : once I was an hour late because I was overslept and it was on Saturday! People deserve to be late on weekends. Saturday is the time for the hangover and sleep. Okay I know those are all wrong.
And the other one I was 10 minutes late because I got a bit lost - stupid Google Maps for writing down North Road as the "N road". How was I supposed to know?? It could be whatever starts with N. Nothing. Nuts. Nonsense. Or even Ninny.
Anyway I was quite impressed with myself for that. But when it is time to meet up with friends, punctuality goes out of the window. Well I always try to be, but it seems like the universe doesn't want me to be.

Like this afternoon for an example. I agreed to meet Eric at 1.30pm - to pick up my Corica. But before that,I was planning to wake up at 10am. Hit the gym at 11am. What happened was : on 12.30pm I was still laying in my bed. Hurried myself for a quick shower, put some clothes on, dried my hair, straighten them, put sunblock and eyeliner on and ran to the door. It was 1.08pm when I was waiting for the lift. I thought I still could make it if I get on the tram once I arrive at the tram stop.

Well you know that in most apartments, you have to push some button to open the security door (the main entrance door). Mine didn't work this afternoon. At first I thought I needed to push the button harder, but it didn't make any difference! Great! I was locked in my own apartment and I couldn't get out. Trams were passing by in front of my eyes. I hated that hopeless feeling. I pushed and pushed the button again and again but still it wouldn't open. It was Sunday, trams are much less frequent than any other days. And I was in a hurry! Crap!
I tried to dial the building manager, no answer. I dialled again. Still no answer. Shit! I ran around back and forth to the button and to the door wishing it would magically open. But no magic was happening. I tried to find a fire emergency door but I couldn't find one. I was angry at the fact that there was no emergency door! What if there is fire on this apartment? Then I realized I was on level one. How stupid I was. If there is fire, of course the people on that level will just have to get out from the main entrance door. Just let's hope the door doesn't get stuck like this on fire situation though.
Then I tried to go one level up to find an emergency exit. But my sister reminded me that there are some chances if I open the door is that I would trigger the fire alarm and it would make a great mess - panic residents running around and get evacuated. I was afraid to do that and I backed down.
So I went out from the car park entrance. It was 1.30pm. I was definitely going to be late!

I was angry at the stupid door. I was angry at the building manager. So much that I brought back the thoughths of all the inconvenience I got from living in that apartment.

First : In my apartment, if we want to move in/out we have to make a lift booking. This is normal. What is not is that we are required to fill some stupid form, put the date of the booking and wait for it to be approved. Well if the date is not available, we have to make some changes and re-send the form again. Once it is approved, we have to make an arrangement to meet with the building manager to deposit $100 and get the lift key. The $100 deposit is for some kind of insurance for them in case if we break the lift or wall or whatever. The moving in/out procedures are a bit complicated, we have to get the removalist park the van/truck in the small stupid lane which is really SMALL and it is really hard to park there. I remember how every morning I went to work I had to wait for some cars going the opposite way first before I can go forward. I don't really know how to explain it but it was really SMALL, especially when you park some BIG truck there, you would definitely block the lane.
And they got these cameras everywhere. So if we do something wrong, they would deduct the $100. What a load of craps!

Second: They always put some announcement in the lift each time there are some residents do something wrong.
"On last Tuesday, there were two gentlemen put some hard rubbish on the B2 Level on 6:33pm. Could the gentlemen contact this 04xxxxxxx number. Otherwise the photos from the security camera will be taken and put on this board".
"On Monday the rubbish chute was blocked due to some residents didn't comply with the rubbish throwing policy - no loose objects, no hard rubbish bla bla bla. Security cameras are now being investigated."
"On 5:47 last Tuesday morning, there were three irresponsible residents who blocked the main entrance door with a bunch of yellow pages. This was such a dangerous and irresponsible thing to do. To avoid any embarrasement, please the residents who did that contact this number before the photos are taken."
Give me a break! I know it is a good thing to try to make every resident happy, safe and sound but I don't think there's any need to threaten the culprits by putting any photos on the board. That is just childish and ludicrous. It made us (me and my sister) afraid to do anything. I do not go to the gym downstairs due to a lot of regulations apply. I am much more willing to pay Fitness First $20 each week !

Third : If we ever accidentally leave our keys inside the unit and we cannot get in, we are required to pay the building manager $100 just to get us inside..... $100! No locksmith needed Just the building manager who's got the spare keys. $100 is bullshit.

I think this is the strictest apartment I have ever known.

Okay I know it's not fair to blame it on the door or even the building manager. I was late because of myself. I was late because of my poor time management. Next time I will try to be on time. No reasons involved if I am late. Late is late. Well I was angry at myself actually. For being late. Late. Late. Late.

Quarter Life Crisis - Lost in life after Uni

2009-08-26T01:04:00.014+07:00

I know almost everybody is facing or had experienced this thing. It is the time when you have finished your studies. It is the time when the "real life" starts to set in. It is the time when you have no idea which way you are going to. Well for me, I'd like to stop the time and get stuck in here, going nowhere. Or move backward. I know it doesn't feel quite alright and impossible. Someday I will just have to go somewhere.
We just spent so many years as a child, teenager - dreaming about what our future will be like, how many cars we're going to have, how cute our children will be. Then suddenly - it's right upon us. And it's nothing as glamorous and exciting as we thought it would be. Lost. We're lost. Or maybe just me. I am.

I have finished my study 2 years ago. I was taking what the majority of my friends were taking : Accounting and Finance. I had no passion at all. I was satisfied with just "Pass". I did my assignments mostly during the last minutes. There were some nights that I had Ayu taught me so passionately for the sake of me passing the subject, even when I was prepared to fail the subject. I was thankful to have her. And I passed the subjects. Graduation ceremony felt nothing like excitement. It was just plain. Well I was happy to throw the hat though. I had no clue about working and stuff. What I had in mind was going to China to learn Chinese - well almost everybody does that ! I knew deep down inside my heart that I was trying to escape the reality by learning Chinese there. I still wanted to have fun as a teenager, when in fact I wasn't anymore. I was 21.I didn't want to have any responsibility. Well of course I had been doing a lot of deep thinkings about many kinds of business ideas. I bought lots of books to inspire me. Yet nothing did. I was scared. I felt like I wasn't prepared.

One day my cousin, who now lives in the USA, was chatting with me. He encouraged me to get the Permanent Residency (PR) in Australia. He said that I shouldn't give up the opportunity, since a lot of people want to get PR but they can't afford to pay the tuition fees for the university. FYI : People will just have to complete a degree in Australia in order to be eligible for applying. So I decided to do so.

I had a casual job as a stocktaker during my times at uni. When I told a workmate that I had graduated, she asked me what I was going to do. I said I was going to apply for PR and maybe get a job, but I wasn't sure. I remembered she said "That's good, so you don't have to burden your parents financially. When you finished your uni, you should be able to stand on your own feet". Those words slapped me some senses. I was getting money from my parents and I didn't feel guilty. Until that moment. Then I decided to try it. I tried to live with the money that I earn myself. But the rent is the exception. I won't be able to survive paying all the rent and the food just by working as a stocktaker. I wasn't even a senior stocktaker.

Half a year passed and I was still doing the stocktake. Everyone around me was desperately looking for a professional job, while I was really reluctant just to think about it. I knew I was supposed to look for a job in an office which is related to what I had studied. I kept dodging that thoughts and kept doing the stocktake. Until the HR Coordinator from my stocktake company sent me an email, letting me know that there was a position available as an Accounts Assistant. I copied my friends' resumes, combined them and made some changes then submit the job application. Tada! Done!

A week later I got the call. I was called for an interview for that job. I was really happy but a bit scared and sad. I can't really explain why there was a bit of sadness in me. Maybe I wasn't really prepared to work. Well I went to the interview anyway. It took only 5 minutes. Basically we just went through my resume. The HR Coordinator had known me for almost 2 years at that time, so it was great. There was no complicated questions just like what my friends got in the "REAL INTERVIEW". I was thankful. Two days later, I was confirmed that I got the job. I was lucky.

Three months had passed and I felt sick of doing 9-5. I had a great boss. The best boss I ever had who always gave me many kinds of snacks and lunches. The best boss who told so many jokes and stories. I had a great workmate beside me too! I had the easiest job ever. I didn't have to come at exactly 9am and go home at exactly 5pm. I could come and go whenever I want. I could go to Box Hill and took 2 hours lunch break (I did that only once!). I had more than enough money in the bank to pay for my own expenses. I knew I was really fortunate. I knew I should thank the stars above for all those great things. Yet I was fucking bored. I felt like I was living my life as a zombie during Monday to Friday, coming back to life again only during weekends.

Seven months after that I quit. I decided I was going back to Indonesia for good. I had no idea what the hell I was going to do there but I thought that I couldn't live my life Mon-Fri 9-5 for the rest of my life. I am just so not a fan of 9-5!

Then some problems came and just kept coming and I got really depressed. I got tired of everything. I got tired of all the dramas. I got tired of all the shit. I got tired of all the lies. I was lost. I got tired of fake people. I got tired of being fake to those fake people. I got tired of life. I needed a break. So I thought I was giving myself a break until this end of the year. Then I will make up my mind. Meanwhile I just want to have fun. I want to find something new. I want to be inspired. I want to feel alive. Some people may think I am a slacker who is wasting my time that I am going to regret it someday. But hey, it's my life! What do you know about life anyway? We're just moments. We'll die eventually. No one is ever going to get out of this life alive! So suck it up! I am so stressed that I need a break! Yes, I deserve a break. Well I am just bitter at the moment so excuse my harsh words.

It's the quarter life crisis.

How I wish life was going the other way around. There was a saying and it is my favorite quote at the moment :

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...

...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

George Carlin quotes (American stand-up Comedian, Actor and Author. b.1937)

Gay or Not Gay : Does it matter?

2009-08-23T19:57:00.027+07:00

First of all, I am not gay. Not even in disguise.
I love sexy guys.
I love cute guys with dimpled cheeks.
I love guys with great attitudes.
I fell for Edward Cullen.
I spent hours downloading pictures of Robert Pattinson.
I love Billie Joe Armstrong.
I download every video of Green Day and BIllie Joe on YouTube.
I got jealous of Adrienne Armstrong.
I have a boyfriend of 5 years (rounded up) and I love him truly.
Okay that should prove you that I am not gay.

But the weird thing is that I have this strong feeling of support for the gay people. I didn't know where this came from. This thing didn't bother me at all before. In fact, I didn't care about gay or not gay. I just simply didn't think about it. I never judge gay people. I wasn't afraid or disgusted at all. I just didn't care.

American Idol Votes - Adam Lambert
It all started with Adam Lambert, my favorite contestant from the 8th season of American Idol. He was brilliant. He blew me away when he sang "Mad World". I never thought that he was gay until Ayu told me so. Well it didn't change anything about me supporting him to win. He deserved to win because he's talented!
Then I heard some news and rumors from the internet that most Christians voted for Kris Allen because he was a church-goer. Danny Gokey (who used to be voted by most Christian people because he was very active at church) was already eliminated. So Danny's fans turned to Kris. I read in some forums that even Christian people didn't want Adam to win simply because he's gay.
Well now people are voting based on religion? Based on sexual preference? What the hell is that? They're voting for Kris because they don't want to have a gay winner? God, that is so sad.
I was rooting for Adam more and more. I really hoped he would win. I really wished I lived in the US so I could vote!
My wish was crashed and burnt. Adam lost. Kris won. There was a silly and sudden anger in me. Adam was clearly a better singer.
I didn't know if the rumors about anti-gay and religion affecting the votes was true or not. Kris could be winning because he's cute and got all the teenagers' attentions - and great voice (I admit) - even though Adam was way better!

Until I read some news about Adam Lambert being protested by Westboro Baptist Church during the American Idol Concert in San Jose. Basically the protesters were bringing signs saying "God hates fags" and some other hurtful anti-gay words. I really have no respect to those religious people who act like they know what God would think, what God would do and how God would judge and blah blah blah... They're no Gods! Stop judging people in the name of God! Stop advertising religions!
What made me love Adam Lambert more is when he responded "I think God hates hate more". Amen! He just earned my respect by calmly responded to those hurtful words.

Ellen DeGeneres

Funny. Down to earth. Inspirational. Beautiful. Smart. Gay.
During the speech, she told a story of how hard it was to keep a secret of being gay for years. Until she decided to set herself free by admitting that she was gay in public. Her career was falling apart after six years of success. Because she is gay. Thankfully she was offered a talk show although it wasn't easy at the beginning. But look at her now! She managed to weather the storm and she is now hosting her own successful show! One of the role models for gay community! I love her!

Ted Haggard - in denial?
I watched his appearance on Oprah show several nights ago. He was called Pastor Ted - an American evangelical preacher. He was very well-known, had his own church : New Life Church. He was very active in politics, protesting against same-sex marriage. Until he confessed the homosexual scandals with a prostitute. He was condemned, as a liar, as a deceiver etc. He resigned from all his leaderships and admitting of being gay. He lost his career.
He appeared on Oprah saying that he had been going through a lot of counselings, therapy and other things to explore his sexuality. He denied the rumors that he was gay and he claimed himself as "a heterosexual with issues" (Wikipedia). He started to preach again in some churches.
Well I think he just lives in denial. He's gay, he's gay and he's gay. Enough said.

For all of you gay-haters : everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Don't bring God into hating gay people. It's you hating them, not your God. I got really sick seeing some protests the other day "AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE". Why bother? It's because that they are so actively protesting gay marriage that makes me want to screw them, really. Why can't they leave gay people alone and have their own rights? They do no harm to other heterosexual people. Why can't they let homosexual people alone?
Think this way. If only the world was the other way around. You were born in a world where everyone is homosexuals. You were born as a heterosexual who's got attracted by the opposite sex. You're weird. You're condemned. By the world. Can you really pretend to enjoy putting your tongue down to another guy's mouth when you are a guy? Can you really have an intimate relationship with a girl when you really are a girl? Won't you be disgusted with yourself?
Or think this way. It's merely just SEXUAL PREFERENCE. Treat it the same way as FOOD PREFERENCE. Some people love olives. I hate olives. But whenever I see someone eating olives, I just don't take the olives from them, throw them to the ground and step on them. I don't condemn people who love olives. I don't go marching a protest around the city to ban olives to be eaten. I don't bring signs "Fuck you olive-eaters".
That's how stupid you are - gay haters.

The All-American Rejects and Hoobastank Australian Tour 2009

2009-08-23T17:35:00.017+07:00

Last night I went to this great show : All American Reject (AAR) and Hoobastank.
It was my second time watching AAR performing live on stage. First one was back in 2005. AAR was the opening band for Simple Plan. Well now they have other bands to open their own show. Way to go, AAR!

The show was opened by The Sundance Kids, which was pretty good. After 20 minutes playing and another 20 minutes of interval, the Hoobastank came on stage and played "Running Away". At first I didn't get excited about Hoobastank, cause I was coming only to see The All American Reject. But I gotta tell ya, Hoobastank was great! There was so much energy (although it wasn't as much as Billie Joe's) that made me want to jump and sing along (too bad I didn't know the lyrics).

There was also this moment when a kid got on stage (I wasn't sure what the hell he was doing up there). Then a security guard got him and dragged him inside, only to be kicked out again back to the crowd. That was hilarious!

Hoobastank also surprised the audience by singing the Ghostbuster theme song.

Hoobastank played for 40 minutes and they said goodbye with their biggest hits : "The Reason" and "Crawling in The Dark".

Hoobastank Set List (as far as I can remember) :

Running Away
My Turn
Same Direction
All About You
The Letter
Ghostbuster theme
The Reason
Crawling in The Dark

It was 9:15 PM when the lights were dimmed, everybody screamed expecting for AAR to come out anytime soon. Then the AAR showed up playing "Move Along". It was really great I was put into a stupid dilemma : recording the moment with my camera or just enjoy it by singing along and jumping around? So I decided to record half of the song and enjoy the rest of it. Well it wasn't easy. There were times when I really wanted to turn my camera off and sing along but I wanted to have something to remember. My arm also got sore because I kept holding my camera up high above my head (otherwise the tall and big heads in front of me would be just blocking my camera).
My favorite moment was when they sang "Fallin' Apart" and "Gives You Hell".
They also beautifully played the "It Ends Tonight" and "The Wind Blows".
During Mona Lisa, the audience in the front got to touch Tyson! He got off stage and walked in the crowd! I am so jealous!

Closing the show, the All American Reject didn't fail to make everyone hyped up for the encore "Gives You Hell". This time I turned my camera off and it was fckn amazing!!! GREAT SHOW indeed!

The All American Reject Set List (I tried my best to remember this set list) :

Move Along
Fallin' Apart
Dirty Little Secret
Stab My Back
My Paper Heart
Believe
Swing, Swing
I'm Waiting
I Wanna
Happy Birthday
Mona Lisa
Real World
It Ends Tonight
The Last Song

Encore:

The Wind Blows
Gives You Hell

It was the best $60 I spent this year yet! I bet Green Day will be so much cooler. I really can't wait for December.

The Story in American Idiot

2009-07-14T18:57:00.017+07:00

It's the first rock opera album produced by Green Day. The 13-tracks album is about a character named Jesus of Suburbia (JoS).
It's interesting to read different interpretations of the album. Sometimes each song has different meanings to each person. After reading too much of them, here's what I think that fits best:

1. American Idiot :
It's the setting of the story, the mood and the main character's view on American culture which he thinks declining as people are becoming more and more revolved around the media.
2. Jesus of Suburbia :
It's the introduction of the main character in the story. Jesus of Suburbia (JoS) who is a typical American teenager, got sick of all the lies from what's so called his role models : "Mom, Dad and Brad". He can't stand the hypocrites and all the lies, he runs away from home.
3. Holiday :
JoS is free and up partying as he pleases. It's a celebration song for his freedom.
** Apart from the storyline, it's a song about the war in Iraq and criticisms to Bush administration. It's how we can see and hear the destruction but no one is actually doing anything about it. Billy Joe also said in a show : "This song is not about anti-American, it's anti-war"
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams:
JoS gets the hangover after all the partying. He's on a low and starts to question himself. He's lonely and feels like there's no point in living. "Walking down the line that somewhere divides me in my mind" is describing JoS is on the line between him and St. Jimmy (his split personality).
5. Are We The Waiting:
It's describing JoS' fragile state of mind. He is questioning his own beliefs, wondering who he actually is and anyone really is. He is slowly losing his mind and slowly he develops his alter-ego: St. Jimmy.
6. St. Jimmy:
JoS decides to take on an entirely new identity named St. Jimmy. It's the dark side of JoS - angry, violent, aggressive and hateful.
7. Give Me Novacaine:
Confused about everything, especially his split personality, Jimmy introduces the world of drugs to JoS to ease away the pain and the sense of hopelessness.
8. She's A Rebel:
JoS/St. Jimmy meets this girl. Her name is never said because JoS/Jimmy has forgotten it. She is then referred to as "Whatsername". They have a lot in common - "She sings the revolution and the dawning of our lives" which is also on the song "Holiday". The image cover of the album was also taken from here - "She's holding my heart like a hand-grenade", meaning Whatsername is controlling JoS/St.Jimmy.
9. Extraordinary Girl :
JoS/St. Jimmy describes his feelings towards Whatsername. Whatsername is insecure, not happy with her life and her own image. But JoS/St. Jimmy sees this quality and Whatsername is ashamed of the fact that it's the reasons why he loves her so much. They're finding out that they're unhappy with themselves but find comfort in each other.
10. Letterbomb:
Whatsername is breaking up with JoS/St. Jimmy. She realizes that he's not good, nobody likes him and wants to be around him. She hates the St. Jimmy that JoS made up. She says “You’re not the Jesus of Suburbia, the St. Jimmy is a figment of your father’s rage and your mother’s love - made me the idiot America”. It's ironic that she’s sick of the lies he’s created. She leaves him and the big city.
11. Wake Me Up When September Ends :
Although this song is about Billie Joe losing his dad when he was only 10 (September 1982), this song is also about JoS/St. Jimmy. It's about losing someone close to you - wanting to forget but you never can, be it 7 or 20 years. In the story, JoS/St. Jimmy is dealing with the pain losing Whatsername. It is not known what she could have done in September that makes JoS/St.Jimmy doesn't want to be around in that month - possibly the month she dumped him.
This song has a personal meaning to Billie Joe about his dad. He said in an interview that sometimes he felt like he got choked up just to sing the next line, there's just too much emotions coming from the song. Billie Joe equates his pain of losing his dad to JoS/St. Jimmy's pain losing the girl.
There is also a speculation that this song is about the 9/11 tragedy.
12. Homecoming :
Jesus of Suburbia kills off his alter-ego "St.Jimmy" because he realizes that it's not worth it anymore for all the troubles ending with Whatsername leaving him. He then leaves the big city and heads back to suburbia and turning back into what he used to be - Jesus of Suburbia. He does this partly because of Whatsername wanting to leave the city and he wonders if he could ever live the old life again. He is leaving the city and return to the city that he had run from (City of The Damned). JoS gets a boring job, daydreaming about the lives that he had back in the city and he wonders if he'll ever see Whatsername again.
13. Whatsername :
JoS is still in love with Whatsername and he thinks of how perfect they were back then. He understands that they wanted different things in life and has no regrets. "I'll never turn back time, forgetting you but not the time". The times he spent with her were the best times of his life

THE END

Sleep Paralysis - Ghost on Your Chest?

2009-07-08T16:23:00.007+07:00

You're asleep and awake at the same time.

A bad dream? Not exactly.

It's definitely not a dream.

Why?

Because you're conscious.

You're fully aware of the terrifying situation.

And yet you are unable to move or speak.

It feels like something is pressing you down to the bed.

Frozen. Your body is paralyzed.

Sometimes you can see the light in your room.

Sometimes you can even hear your mom talking.

Sometimes you hear strange noises that's not even there.

Sometimes you see things.

Sometimes you even feel an unwanted presence around you.

It feels so real.

And you're feeling choked.

You're short of breath.

You're feeling like you're helplessly going deeper and deeper.

You try so hard to scream.

When you do, you feel like you already scream so loud.

But you know for sure that nothing comes out from your mouth.

Mortal fear.

Extreme panic.

It scares the hell out of you.

Ever experienced these things? Lucky if you haven't! And don't you ever want it. It's called Sleep Paralysis (SP). There are so many terms for this phenomenon. One of them, which is the most familiar to me, is "tindien" (Javanese) or "ketindihan"- where the locals believe that an evil spirit is actually "sitting" on you. There are stories about how some people had died from it.

Forget about being superstitious for a moment - there's actually an explanation from the modern science: When you sleep, your brain sends signals to inhibit any muscle contraction for the sake of having your body to fully rest. SP occurs when you come into consciousness before your brain sends signals to re-activate your muscle contraction - hence you cannot move. The noises or images you see or hear are merely hallucinations as a result of brain activity. In conclusion, sleep paralysis is when your REM sleep is simply malfunctioning.

Now explaining about the mysterious deaths: it is caused by the extreme muscle atonia during Sleep Paralysis, which is so severe that even the cardiac muscles and the diaphragm paralyze - leaving the victim with strong breathing difficulties and should straggle in agony.

I've had countless times of SP since I was in junior high school. I was constantly having the ordeal almost every night - making me used to it that sometimes I don't bother anymore. The scariest SP I have ever had is when I could hear a man's evil laugh on my left ear and a woman's on my right. They were laughing so loud - I could see the light in my room and there were dark shadows resembling faces. Faces that I was not familiar with - making the hair on my back stand up.

There was a time when my mom and dad went to see a priest. He said that there were evil spirits in my room and he already made them go away. Believe it or not, I stopped having SP for a few months. Coincidence? You decide.

Another time when I was sleeping in a hotel in Singapore with my sister. I had a sleep paralysis, woke up, changed sides with my sister. The next morning, my sister told me she had sleep paralysis right after switching sides with me. Another coincidence? I don't know.

I can't remember having sleep paralysis in Melbourne. After two years of not going back to Indonesia, I had my first SP a few nights ago and I hated it. I hate the heavy feeling and being scared to death. My question is : why SP now? Why Indonesia? Is it because the level of superstition in Indonesia is so tense? Or is there something to do with psychology? Can science really explain this?

A Woman's Trash is Another Woman's Treasure

2009-06-29T15:40:00.025+07:00

Have you ever looked at your wardrobe - full of clothes but you feel like you have nothing to wear? I think everybody has - well, every woman, especially those who love shopping. You can actually turn them into cash - thanks to eBay. I would recommend eBay if the items are known brands (eg Bardot, Sportsgirl, Witchery, etc), in good conditions and the shipping is easy. But if the items are a bit worn out or you don't care if how much money you can get from them but you don't feel like throwing them away - try selling them at a flea market! You might get a little bit of fun too!

Last Sunday was my second time selling in Camberwell Market. I didn't have many items to sell as I already donated most of them to Salvos when I moved to my new apartment. Just one bag full of clothes and 2 pairs of shoes - and two handbags.

After only 2 hours of sleep, I got myself ready, making myself as warm as I could - wearing what's so called "long john" and the thickest jacket I could find in the wardrobe.

It was almost 6am and cold, we're waiting for the taxi to come. We were so thrilled when we saw a maxi cab arriving. Without any word, we started loading our stuffs to the cab. Once we're inside the cab, the taxi driver asked us if we're going to the airport. We said no and the driver looked puzzled. After checking with the taxi center, it turned out that it was actually someone else's cab! What a great start! So we unloaded our stuffs out from the cab.

After a long wait, our cab finally arrived. This time we didn't forget to confirm first before we loaded our stuffs into the cab.

It was still dark when we arrived there. We hired two long tables and two racks. Before we even finished setting up our stalls, some people with flashlights came and had quick looks at our stuffs. Most of them were after electronics.

8am - some items were already sold. It was getting colder each minute, that's what my feet felt - and Pakne's. We were sitting and trying our best to make them warm. I couldn't care less about my stuffs. Maybe it was because of the shoes that we're wearing

The cold was getting unbearable so I went to Woolworths - thanks to Nonoh who accompanied me. I spent almost half an hour standing in front of the roast chicken section, just to touch the display glass. I didn't feel good.
When we got back to our stalls, there was sunshine. YEAY! And more people were coming to our stalls. Cring cring the purchases were made. If there's an award for seller of the day - it's got to be Marsia. She sold very cute shirts which I myself would love to wear.

Those wanting to rent a stall at Camberwell Market, just visit the website www.sundaymarket.com.au. Trading starts at 5:30am til 12:30pm. Book in advance, as it is usually fully booked - it could take at least 4 weeks before the day.

Flash, Flash, Flash Photography

2009-06-27T19:53:00.009+07:00

Sharing is caring. But sharing only one camera with your sister can lead you into a fight - especially when one of you are travelling. So I decided to buy a new camera for myself. I was marking and chatting with Ayu the other day - she showed me a blog about bentos. The blog was really good - any kind of food packed into a bento box and they were all so cute that even the most starving person on earth could feel guilty about eating it. All of a sudden I wanted to buy a really good camera that can capture photos like a pro : mouth-watering pictures of food, where you can see every detail of ingredients in the food. I've been taking pictures of food using my Sony camera which sucks most of the time - I don't know if it's because of my lack of knowledge of setting it right or because it simply sucks. Or sometimes using my Blackberry camera which sucks more - but it is so convenient because you can upload it as soon as you capture the picture. Well I love taking pictures of food. So I was thinking of buying an SLR camera - those BIG HEAVY cameras with complicated buttons and some skills required. I was so sure of buying an SLR camera when Eric, one of workmates, brought his SLR camera and showed it to me. I looked for more information but I was overwhelmed by the millions of type of the lenses and the body and bla bla blah.

Then the Green Day Australia tour was confirmed. I wanted to take as many photos and videos as I can during the concert and I want them to be at their greatest quality. But then I thought if I brought the SLR camera to concerts it would be so inconvenient. You can get elbowed, banged and even slammed to the ground (when you are in standing area esp. in rock shows) - the chances of your SLR camera being crushed is quite likely. So I changed my mind. I did some research : the best digital camera for concert. Many forums and websites give a really good recommendation for Panasonic LUMIX TZ7. I remembered Eka also suggesting this LUMIX camera. So I guess it should be good, knowing that he's an expert in this area.

So after comparing the prices in some stores, I bought one from Ted's. It was $636. But I paid $705 altogether with the memory card, leather case and extended warranty. Thanks to Nonoh and Kenny for the help for getting better prices :) . Not sure if I was getting the best deal but I was happy!

It has the capability of 12x zoom (while my Sony camera can only do 4x). I'm not sure how many megapixels but it says Leica lenses (which Eka said it was good). Here are some shots :

These two pictures were taken without me changing position. I was using the zooming function. See how good the camera was? I could zoom until I could read so clearly the title of "21st Century Breakdown"

The camera is a genius! I can't wait to get a close up shot at Billie Joe!

Simple Plan 2005 Australia Tour - 08.10.2005

2005-10-09T11:14:00.000+07:00

It was my first time going to a gig, so this gig always has a special place in my heart. I can't recall the setlist and I didn't take any photos or videos at that time but I remember I had a really great time there. I remembered I got a really close look at Pierre (the frontman) and I was left feeling happy for weeks. A little pop punk can never hurt anyone.