boss, i ate your admin

There's this training for administrators of a particular website, held by the web's developers.

"The picture dimension for your products is X pixels high and Y pixels wide," the developer said: "Landscape." X and Y were numbers, of which exact value I didn't remember.

One of the loudest guy from the admin group exclaimed, "But I don't wanna resize the pictures! I want to upload a picture of whatever dimension I want, and it shouldn't be distorted!"

"You can't do that," the developer said, obviously boiling but trying to keep it cool. This admin had been irritating from the start. B­­ut the admin still hasn't finished yet: "I want to upload them three times the size you mentioned and I want to upload 'em portraits!"

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bad company corrupts good character

I was surprised to learn that a colleague turned into someone he would've been despise a few months ago. So we were on a ride and another colleague pointed to an overweight girl and badmouthed her. She didn't know the girl, she just loved to badmouth people.

To my surprise my first colleague joined her. They were badmouthing a stranger that didn't do a single bad thing to them!

The sad thing is, I had been used to hear him saying good things about others and life in general, how you should treat others the way you want to be treated, etc. He changed after spending just a few months in close proximity with my other colleague, the one who badmouthed the overweight girl at the beginning of this story. Seeing this, I, being a paranoid girl that I am, became even more paranoid of whom I spend my time with. Must avoid by her and the like in order not be contaminated!

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stupid things that stupid people do -- part two

So someone compared vandalism of public properties to iconoclasts in Byzantium. He said that the later was eponymous and Indonesian government should have been more sensitive to the beliefs of the people when decorating public spaces.

Byzantine Iconoclasm refers to two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Eastern Church and the temporal imperial hierarchy.

He was not an Indonesian, so I told him that my example is not religious statues. Those were statues of nameless people cooking, farming, doing everyday things in general.

After all, other cities had built bigger, more famous statues since 1945 with no problems whatsoever, some even of Hindu deities, of which follower is less than 3% (according to the data he gave me earlier, I like to use people's data ;)). I said that smart Indonesian people are not intolerant. These are the majority. Small number of people, stupid ones, unfortunately are loud. And explosive.

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stupid things that stupid people do

There's a city in Indonesia known for its religious nuts people. They covered statues that were freshly installed on city square with dark plastic bags. They also demanded the statues to be removed. The reason? They were afraid their children will worship those statues.

Educate your children, people. To NOT worship random statue they meet on the street. Instead of wasting plastic bags like that. Sometimes how stupid people can be is just beyond my comprehension.

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the 5th wave

We'd better get going. I think Evan Walker is going to blow this place out.
-- Ben Parish in The 5th Wave --

God, Evan Walker's so handsome I need to find a corner and rake dirt.
-- a friend's Path status that made me go watch The 5th Wave, ain't nobody got time to figure out what she meant --

So The 5th Wave is not a singular movie. I actually have told myself that The Hunger Games will be the last multi-part movie I watch. I've been sickened by the way movie makers shamelessly try to add piles of gold coins to their already mountainous treasure hoard.

The movie was intense but the plot was too easy to guess. The main attraction was its lead character, played by Chloe Grace-Moretz. Mainly for straight guys, I think. The great Evan Walker is not that handsome in my opinion.

The movie itself looked like Frankenstein's monster, if Dr. Frankenstein had created movies instead of monsters. Think of it this way: the opening scene was derived from 28 Weeks Later. Then flashback to the main character's high school life and partying of There's Something About Mary. Later we got a disaster movie, maybe 2012 for the first two waves. Third wave reminded me of a movie of which title I cannot recall, about a disease outbreak in a city. Fourth wave was Resident Evil. About Fifth wave... all I can tell without being a spoiler was, fifth wave's been predictable ever since the scene where Ben Parish pushed the button.

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ethnicity and presidency, indonesia

So, how likely is it that people of non-Javanese ethnic will be elected as President of Indonesia?

Indonesian's elected president (Habibie was not elected, he was VP turning into P) has always been a Javanese-born. It's not exactly the problem whether Indonesian people will vote for a non-Javanese ethnic to be their president, it's the road to be a candidate that's harsh.

There are two ways one can be a presidential candidate: through political party or through independent means. Political parties, however big portion they have in mind for people's greater good, can't achieve that if they don't get a seat in the government's forum (MPR, DPR, governor, you name it). The seats are supposed to be won by vote, too. Now if you, as the party's head, have an unpopular presidential candidate, that surely will affect (not in a good way) your party's probability of having many seats, if any, in the said forum.

Like I said, Indonesian's elected president has always been a Javanese-born. There's little chance political party leaders will be willing to break tradition by having someone out of Javanese ethnicity as their candidate.

As for independent path, I personally know someone who's trying to run for major in Surabaya. Basically he did that because he was a supporter for incumbent major, who would be kicked out of office if there's nobody to challenge her in the next (now past) election. Google Risma's controversy for further information, Risma is the incumbent major mentioned above.

This guy said it was hell trying to meet the requirements to run for major. If I'm not mistaken, one of the problem was collecting letters of support. He needed X amount of people willing to sign the letter of support. That was independent path for running as a major. Just imagine how much tougher the hell one must go through in order to run as president by independent path.

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how to introduce yourself, the javanese way

Javanese people seldom be straightforward, even to the point that they generally dislike to introduce themselves to other people. They prefer their new friend finds out their name during the conversation.

How? By inserting their name into a story they're telling the new friend about. I myself personally have observed this behaviour more than once.

First encounter. My masseuser. She told me that a neighbour of hers was going to move and couldn't afford to bring too much stuff to her new place. "Later my neighbour said, 'Annie, I want to sell my cupboard.'"

That time was an aha! moment for me. So my masseuser's name is Annie.

Annie is not her real name, I just used it for example.

Last encounter. A gym-goer. She was telling me how other people at the gym encouraged her to lose weight. "'Avoid fried stuff, Zaskia. And drink lemon juice.' The old Chinese guy at the gym told me."

Aha! So her name is Zaskia.

No, not really Zaskia either. Only use it as an example.

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hotel keys

We heard people accidentally left all kinds of things in hotel rooms they're staying: mobile phone chargers, hair accessories, skin moisturizers etc, but how about the other way around?

During last Golden Week a colleague went to a nearby high land. He rent a big room together with his cousin, their spouses and children. When they checked out of the hotel, his cousin forgot to return the key of the room to the receptionist.

My colleague's cousin only realized it when they're on the way home already. It didn't make sense to drive all the way back up there just to return the key due to traffic. Golden Week, remember?

So the cousin called the hotel and explained the situation. She told the hotel she'll send the key she's holding through a post service. Luckily the hotel had spare keys to the room, so they don't have to wait before renting that room to someone else.

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red eyes writing experiment

My head is dizzy. I've eaten one too many sweets and now am experiencing some sugar rush. Combine that with lack of sleep and eagerness to write, only one word crosses my mind right now: interesting.

Interesting? Maybe not your choice of word. But I wanna wake up some hours from now reading what my brain told my fingers to type under this condition. I've read somewhere about an artist, or maybe there were more than one, who drew while under some drugs' effect. I've been wanting to conduct similar experience since, only without drugs.

...

......

This sentence is written three days (and three sleeps one nap) later than the last one. Actually that wasn't really the last one. I had to remove the part written after it. The now-alert me read it and decided it was too incoherent to put out on public. The topics changed every one or two sentences, from Google Image to pillow shams to meatballs to pinky fingers.

Interesting experiment, still. Maybe I'll do that again sometime in the future.

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the downside of marriage life -- part six

The husband and wife was visiting a local mall when the wife saw a chic bag. The wife asked the husband how much he thought the price of the bag was. "100K," the husband answered.

They had played this game countless times before. The wife would point at a particular item on display and had her husband told her how much he guessed its worth. She would buy the item only if the item turned out to be higher than her husband's guess.

Not that she needed her husband's permission to buy stuff. She just liked to buy things that looked more expensive than their actual price, thus the need for other people's estimation of the price.

However the longer men are into marriage, they tends to be less and less willing to let their partners spend money. So this particular husband learned to lower his guess. He did the trick well, to the point that his wife haven't bought anything in the last 50 guesses.

The wife could see behind his trick, but decided to play along, looking for the window of opportunity to open for her to jump and bust her husband. And opened was the window. 100K was a really small sum for a bag. She whipped out her purse and handed him the money. "You go to the shopkeeper right now and ask her to wrap the bag for me. Keep the change if it's lower than 100K. But if it's higher, you pay the rest."

...

The bag turned out to be five times of the husband's guess. It was 500K.

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to google translate

Google Translate now provides you with slower pronunciation of words. This helps a lot of people (well, at least it helped me) learning languages, for details can be observed better this way.

How to access it? Do the old pronunciation thing first, then hit the button once more to hear slower pronunciation.

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sexy housemaids!

There's a joke I read earlier today, about a lady who told her maid: "Nora, I saw a policeman in the park today kiss a baby. I hope you will remember my objection to such things."

Nora answered, "Sure, ma'am, no policeman would ever think of kissing your baby when I'm around."

>.<

So this joke reminds me of an Indonesian TV series from the 90's called Inem The Sexy Housemaid, or its original Indonesian title, Inem Pelayan Seksi.

The story revolved around Inem, a widow who worked as a maid at the house of a middle-aged couple. Once when Inem was going out, she met his boss' boss (at the office). This man was smitten by her beauty. And in a way that resembled Cinderella, Inem dropped a handkerchief which was later taken by this superboss.

Except that the handkerchief was not Inem's. It was his daughter's handkerchief that Inem took before she went to the city working (Inem's hometown is in another town), to remind her of her. And the handkerchief has Inem's daughter's name, Sarah, sewn on it.

Normally Inem's boss' boss thought that the handkerchief was Inem's. He thought that Inem's name was Sarah. Later after a series of events, superboss visit Inem's boss house and the two met. They got married and took Sarah to stay with them.

Now it's happy and all, if we're not being shown the superboss, after getting the handkerchief, numerously took it out and put it on his chest while saying "Sarah... Sarah..."

He did it while thinking that Inem's name was Sarah, and in the privacy of his own house, but still... I can't imagine the toungue slip that would ensue and the awkwardness that follow: "Sarah my dear, you were so sexy in that apparel last night..."

>.<

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korean tv series

My friends told me they loved Korean TV series a lot. Their reason was, Korean TV series were more realistic than their mainland Chinese, HK, Taiwan and Japanese counterparts.

I must admit that I only have watched five-ish Korean TV series my whole life. Two of them were not very realistic in my opinion, but it was maybe due to the genre. The rest three were bold. They didn't sugarcoat things.

Miss Kim's A Million Dollar Quest, for example. While TV series from Taiwan are known to show pretty girls expressing mostly elegant, princessy behavior on screen (Romantic Princess etc), A Million Dollar Quest shows a relative of its main character doing minor exercise on screen while conversing with other people, which is not becoming a point at all. People she's conversing with didn't seem to pay attention to it, and very soon the scene was over.

Rain did that too in It's A Beautiful Life, when goofing around with his fellow construction workers. More exposure this time, because that's the point of the scene.

Now, in Chinese TV series, can you imagine the character that Angela Chang played doing a kind of chicken dance exercise while conversing with other characters and they brush it off with 'no big deal' attitude, or without the camera exploiting her act?


This is Angela Chang.

My friends told me Korean TV series were more realistic than their mainland Chinese, HK, Taiwan and Japanese counterparts, and I agree with them sans certain genres.

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wtf, brain?

There are two kinds of women: The fashionable ones and those who are comfortable.
— Tom P. Morgan —

I overheard one of my colleagues conversing with a man about the lack of signal of a mobile phone service provider they were using. This happens from time to time to all kind of mobile phone service providers where I live. Often the cause are some hardware fail on a BTS of theirs. Very third world-y, I know.

IDK what BTS stands for, manybe broadcaster something something. People who have no other BTSs within their phone's reach ends with zero signal.

Less than five minutes later I called my lover on his phone that happened to use said service provider. I had forgotten that the signal was zero in my (and his) area, and got upset when he didn't pick up the phone. In fact his voicemail was picking.

I spent another five minutes dialing like crazy and whole evening mad at myself after realizing I'm the one to blame.

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all urine contains lithium

... was the title of a poem I created back in 1999, when everybody talked about Lithium. Or that seemed to be the case, in my circle of friends.

'I see you have a new mobile phone over there, Nokia 3330?'

"Yes, and with Lithium battery it is!"

Yes, that particular circle of friends consisted of a bunch of kids turning teenagers.

"Why don't you reply my message, man?" The message was about how cool a particular member of the group band Backstreet Boys was.

'I had to turn off my 3310, the battery indicator showed only one bar left. Lithium, you know. Can't let 'em drain completely before charging.'

At that time our world revolved around Lithium, while at the same time also revolved around the McFlurry ice cream on McDonald's, the newest-cutest-must-buy shoes on Gosh store, the gorgeous boys at school, and Naoko Takeuchi's Sailormoon series. The word Lithium itself sounded crisp, new, hip and so 'in', we kept using it in every conversation without knowing much about it. XD

But today a friend gave some informations about Lithium batteries! I am not a stingy person, I will share with you.

Lithium oxide is used as an active material, and for the other electrode they use a lithium intercalation compound (don't ask me what it's supposed to mean, though). Its predecessor, alkaline batteries, used water as the electrolyte. Lithium can't do this, because a water based electrolyte could react with lithium compounds. An organic compound is used instead.

Lithium also operates around 3.3V. Compare that to alkaline's 1.5 V.

I believe there's more information, but aside from 'most alkaline batteries are primary (not rechargable, as opposed to secondary: rechargable)', I couldn't remember more. My mind wandered to that new fashion item, that trendy cake shop, and that hip shelf that will be a perfect addition to my study corner. I guess the teenager's still there after all.

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ear-piercing

Prettiness is essential in a girlfriend. Another basic requirement for a girlfriend is ability to groom oneself. Cooking skills in a girlfriend is also neat. But the most important thing is, those three girlfriends never meet each other.
-- a joke that circulates on the internet --

My ears were pierced when I was a baby. Now before you scream child abuse, piercing female babies' ears was (and still is) a widely accepted practice where I come from. Most go nicely, but mine were problematic later. It turned out the holes were too high. I couldn't wear certain types of earrings: french backs, lever backs, latch backs.


Pictured from left to right: french back, latch back, lever back.

That's why, at the age of 16-ish, my parents took me to be pierced twice more, both below original holes. These turned out not OK either. The angle of the hole punched on me was not acute enough, it looked bad when I wear stud earrings.

Now there's a war inside my head. One voice says I should go get my ears pricked one more time. The other urges me to wrap it up and call it a day?

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adam lewis' blogger find & replace

Learning English as a second language is hard. Or rather, it isn't, but a lot of my compatriots feel that way. And at the same time, it's sold as a necessary effort. "You need to speak English to travel the world!" How dare be born [sic] in a country where English is the vernacular? It's unfair!
-- Riccardo Orsini's comment on Frederick Bartlett's answer to Why do a lot of English-speaking French and Italians want us, as tourists, to speak their language when we visit their countries? --

So I've been told several times by my Chinese friends that my usage of Chinese commas are wrong. I used '、' instead of '，' on my other blog.


Pictured left: wrong. Pictured right: riight.

Some of them, when I asked, told me the usage of '、' (or dùn hào, 顿号, as they called it) is creme de la creme, which is a way to preserve face. Either they don't know the answer or don't know how to explain it to me in English. Others laid it out in the open that they don't know. Only a few bothered to explain it to me, which I appreciated deeply.

'、' is not your usual comma. It is only used when you list some things, for example: His mother sent him fruits in boxes: oranges, peaches, grapes. This type of Chinese comma can be used between oranges and peaches, also between peaches and grapes.

'，' however, can be used for listing things and other things. So it is safer to use. Hearing that, I planned to correct my writings accordingly.

The problem is, I've been using the incorrect '、' for as many as 75 posts. One post can contain multiple incorrect Chinese comma, too!

That's where Adam Lewis come to the rescue!

By a simple click here and there, all my posts now contain the correct commas. Imagine the relief from having to replace them one by one! :D


But with a poor color choice for user interface.

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