muscle pain

Your freedom to swing your fist ends where someone else's nose begins.
-- Franklin Veaux's answer to Are we truly free in the United States? --

I tried this exercise at the gym called hyperextension. At first, I was not aware of the name of the exercise.　Until Ravi Singh told me, that is. All I knew was people lean their bellies on waist-high surface and start doing sit-up-like movements.


Like this.

I thought it would train the muscles on my stomach and started doing it, two days in a row at the gym.

... I knew better today after waking up to the most awful pain my hamstrings ever experienced. =__=

(The hamstring is the muscle on the back of one's thigh)

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putri kendedes

The owner of Putri Kendedes [sic] sure liked Soekarno a lot! He decorated the whole restaurant with Bung Karno's memorabilia.

Soekarno, the first president of Indonesia is known to had been married several times to pretty ladies. While Naoko Nemoto is no doubt the prettiest of them all, Fatmawati bore the most children. There was a picture of Fatmawati's children with their parents. Said picture lacked the youngest sibling, Guruh, because the relationship between Soekarno and Fatmawati went sour following his birth. To the extent that Fatmawati didn't even visit Soekarno on his deathbed. However when they were still all lovey-dovey, they were a cute couple.


This picture of Fatmawati rode behind Soekarno on a bike, for example.

Oh, about what this restaurant sells -- Indonesian food, something in between Sundanese and Javanese. I like its grilled gourami fish with vegetables and rice.

But you absolutely must taste its soursop juice. The sweetness, smoothness, tanginess and coldness are uncomparable! The best soiursop juice I've ever drank!

Location: Mojokerto, East Java, Indonesia.

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brain rendering is really something

Lately my brain incorporate more and more people into my dreams. Last night was the peak. A city square was utilized by a performing group of which members included two of my male friends. Like many others, I sat on the ground with a female friend of mine. The show itself was magnificent, with 19th century France-ish costumes, make up, stage properties, etc.

There were two big screens above the stage, it replayed bits of important scenes, similar to replays of goal scenes on a soccer match or a FIFA videogame, really.

My friend who was in charge of a particular scene lit his lighter. People playing as the crowd were supposed to follow the fire with their eyes and head movements. The lighter moves from the right side of the stage to the left side, where other performers stood in a wedding-esque pose, ready to enter the stage. The playback of this scene turned out amazing!

However, the most awesome part was when the crew managed to release hundreds/thousands of grasshoppers. The sky above us suddenly darkened as the grasshoppers fly in circles above our heads, and some of them get tangled in the girls' hair. I myself got one.


Kinda like this.

That being said, I didn't pay much attention to the show. Earlier that day (still in my dream) my mother said she's going on a date with my ex. She was ecstatic like a kid on a candy store.

Yes, pretty f*cked up, I know.

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on visiting indonesia: tips for foreigners

So a friend is visiting Indonesia in September. She asked me for travel tips.

Since she said my answer was 'really helpful' to her, I'd just copy-and-paste it here.

General travel tips:
1. Have your documents (passport, ID, etc) copied and ready.
2. Let a friend at your hometown check on you every once in a while.
3. Have cards with important words (airport, hotel, how much, doctor, etc): in your native language on one side, in your destination country's language on another side.

Indonesia only:
1. Avoid wearing short bottoms (skirts, shorts) at public places on your first visit. If you've visited that place before and people wear short bottoms there, then you are free to do it on next visit.
2. Our food can be too spicy and/or too unsanitary for foreigners from first-world countries. Prepare accordingly.
3. We call any Caucasian 'bule'. It's read boo-lay. Not derogatory, unless tied with swear words.
4. Sometimes we call you 'londo'. It's read lawn-though. Same as above.
5. We have mosquitos. A lot of them.
6. We have some men who don't want to shake hands with women for religious reasons. Not a lot of them, but you might encounter them as a group in social settings.
7. September used to be the time of climate changing, from dry season to rainy one. But thanks to global warming, I don't think you'll need any umbrellas in September.

I'll add more later if I find something new.

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project almanac

What would you do if you were a smart man surrounded by equally smart friends, but your father had been smarter than you -- as in he had built a time machine and you found it after his death?

Yep. My thought actually. Go back in time to buy lottery. At first it was fun: the lotto money was more than enough to help mother with her mortgage, hold a party, buy pretty clothes, etc. The time machine also enabled them to go to a music festival that they have missed, having the main singer dedicating a song for one of them, etc.

But soon things get ugly. Like the movie Butterfly Effects, small things led to disasters that took lives of many.

What about you? What would you do if you're in charge of a time machine?

For me, what I would do is going back in time and tell the teenage version of me to stop worrying over small stuff, that everything's gonna be alright.

But wait, I couldn't do that, because I would disappear if I did. This is an obstacle set by the movie Project Almanac, whoever doing time travel is not allowed to be seen by his/her younger self.


I guess I should be content by leaving her a mIRC chat instead.

By the way, throughout the movie there's not a single man uttering his desire to embark on a journey to the future. Maybe they're all sure the world would end in the near future. Or this time machine was only capable of moving backwards, the one with the ability to go to the future's being sold separately?


Just like Ken. Ken came in another box.

Also I haven't found the exact meaning of 'almanac'. I remember looking this word up the internet many years ago, only to end up on a Wikipedia page about Benjamin Franklin's almanac. Google wasn't so omnipotent back then.

Needless to say, I gave up.

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who knows?

... "I like onions on my hamburger"... that person gets you a burger and all it is, is an onion slapped between two hamburger buns... Yes, a woman may want a guy who treats her well. But that doesn't mean that every guy who treats her well will just automatically get a date.
-- Lauren Campbell's answer to Why do some women say they want a man who treats them right but then when someone who come around they deny them? --

During our group discussion on WhatsApp, a friend of me stated that she's afraid to open her morning paper for she didn't want to read either Dahlan or Ahok was being shot to death by a hitman.

This was about a year ago, when Dahlan Iskan was still working as a politician. Both were hated, openly and secretly, by their rivals, those that are regarded by many Indonesian commonners as corrupt politicians.

Later Dahlan chose another path outside of politics, and Ahok rose to power as Jakarta's incumbent governor.

So are they really 'clean' politicians? Dahlan was accused of corruption a few months ago, but media sided with him, like most of commonners do. Or should I say, most commonners do because media sided with him?

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i challenge you

What is more unfortunate as a person with a name that is considered unique in your country, working in a group of massive companies of which computers are interconnected, than to have IFrameRefI virus spread from your computer?


Add to that naming your computer with XXX-PC, where XXX is your name.

What exactly does this virus called IFrameRefI do? It assumes the name of the source computer, dabs '.eml' on its end, then duplicates itself into different folders. On that computer and on every other computers that are within reach of the infected computer, a.k.a all commputers in the network. Suddenly all computer bearers in said group of companies know your name, and not in a good way.

Note: You can take it down with Windows Defender bootable. I will write about it later, when I'm not too busy digging a hole under my desk hiding myself hoping to just disappear.

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transportation fee markup, eh?

Note: this post by no means an attack to a particular group of people. What happened was the choice of an individual. It can be done by anyone regardless of gender, age, and occupations.

So a public transport car driver is given transportation fee by his passengers using ten thousand rupiah bills mid-journey. Seeing I was new to the area, he gave change money to everyone except me.


The ten thousand rupiah note.

I called this move 'transportation fee markup'.

But! Later a woman got into a car and after about five minutes asked the driver to stop the car with a stern face because the driver wouldn't comply.

"This <insert the name of a public installment here> is where I got off," she said, and upon hearing his answer, "I won't pay you! You stopped one-quarter kilometre further than my actual stop."

The public installment she mentioned was void of people. The installment where the driver eventually stopped was busier. It was known publicly that said public transport car drivers preferred to stop at busier places to attract more passengers.

She got down and really didn't pay him. The fee was more than the change money he didn't give to me. ;) Karma's a b*tch.

And yes, once I wrote something like this.

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the downside of marriage life -- part five

I placed an order to a online shop and gave them my hubby's contacts. Nothing unusual here -- I just like to remain anonymous to online shops and services and my hubby doesn't mind receiving spam *ahem* promotional texts every once in a while.

So this shop, a bag shop in particular, told my husband last night that the item I wanted was out of stock. They haven't updated their website since.

Annoyed, I asked my husband to tell them to switch to another product, a silver-colored woman purse.


The product I originally wanted.

This evening my hubby casually mentioned a gold-colored purse that's on the way.

"Gold? I ordered silver!"

'Last night they texted back and said there's only gold ones left. I asked you and you said OK.'


I want the silver one!

"I didn't remember saying OK to a gold purse. What was I doing at that time you asked me?"

'I dunno, you were laying on bed, alternating between opening and closing your eyes and stuff.'

"You choose the time when I was drifting to sleep to pop the question? Like for reeaal?"

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the downside of marriage life -- part four

My wife is weird... She begins every conversation with "Were you even listening to me?"
-- Blaze51019 --

I laughed (and still laugh, sometimes) at jokes about couples where the man won't listen to the woman. But then I experience some.

A man's brain part that accepts a girl's voice seem to degenerate once he's married to that girl. Repeating a piece of information three times doesn't guarantee that it will get through a man's skull. A married one, that is. And only if his wife's the one speaking.

So it happened that I put two pills on a saucer on the nightstand. One was pink. It contained B-12 vitamin. The other is green. It was GNC women's hair, skin & nails formula. I told my husband to take the pink one, the green one was for me (obviously).


The green one.

Later when I wanted to take the green one, there's nothing on the saucer. I rushed to my husband only to find out that he had taken them both as the result of his habit of not listening to what I say.

... I can't say I didn't enjoy seeing his face after I told him the green one was for women only. Like he's afraid he would grow a pair of breasts or something. XD

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ask red wine dinner: may 2015

Q: I have an annoying friend. He only talks to pretty girls, he won't talk to fat girls. What must I do to change him?

A: No you don't. Instead, use him like you use one of your bathroom scales. If he talks to you, it means you've lost weight. If he doesn't, it means you've gained weight. You don't have to buy weight scales anymore for the rest of your lives! This lifehack is not as uncommon as you may think, other people use their neighbors as radio clocks.

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of forgiveness and saw 3

So someone asked in a forum "What is the one movie that you have seen that has changed your way of thinking?"

As strange as it may seem, mine is one of the Saw series. Saw 3. The one with rotten pigs juice in it.

Quoting sawfilms wikia: Hanging from a conveyor-like bar, emerged numerous rotting pig corpses. Each pig was dropped into the silo with the saw blades and grounded up, leaving the large amount of thick grey liquid remains to pour down a chute into the silo containing the judge, gradually filling the silo. More dead pigs were pulled in on the rotating chain and dropped, one after the other, into the saws. Soon, enough pigs had been liquefied to fill the silo nearly enough to drown Judge Halden.

The guy who had killed the protagonist's child hadn't get fair punishment on Judge Halden's court. The protagonist, Jeff, was given the choice to save the judge or not. Saving the judge meant he had to jump into the silo, full of unappetizing pork soup with horrible aroma.



So how did this change my way of thinking? IMO Jeff could have avoided being in that mess (and much, much more mess later, you'll understand once you watch the movie) had he forgiven his child's killer, the judge, and basically everyone in the screwed-up court system earlier.

Forgiving is not an easy business even when your loved ones are safe, and certainly not when they are hurt. But life's kinda like Jigsaw in the sense that withholding forgiveness is like piling more and more rotting pig carcasses on one's head while he/she stand in a silo. You keep doing that, you'll drown in the soup.

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appealing to target market, eh?

Note: this post by no means an attack to a particular group of people. What happened was the choice of an individual. It can be done by anyone regardless of gender, age, and sexual preferences.

So a colleague was promoted to an important position at job. He treated everyone at my department with a fried food. Later a female colleague of mine came to me wearing a strange expression on her face.


the fried food

"List the food you got from <insert the name of promoted colleague here>" she said, and upon hearing my answer, "I knew it! He gave our male colleagues one item more than the female counterparts."

The item she mentioned was a kind of sweet soup native to our country. My female friends and I did not receive that soup. It was known publicly that said promoted colleague was gay, and single.

I called this move 'appealing to target market'.

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dragon blade

Am I the only one here who thinks that John Cusack in this movie looks like Russel Crowe in Gladiator?

Also... Am I the only one here who thinks that the missing tooth of the boy who played as Publius is annoying? I mean it's not a big deal, but it tickled me everytime I saw him opening his mouth.

And... Am I the only one here who thinks that Jackie Chan being a hipster for still acting as someone girls' love interest despite other actors his age stopped doing that a while ago? And being a great one at hipstery, too, for having not only one love interest, but two, with one of the girls opened her clothes for him to see!

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printing to epson t20 from ubuntu

With the risk of making this blog looks like a tech blog, I will show you how to print to Epson Stylus T20 from Ubuntu.

My Ubuntu is a fresh installation of version 10, so first I have to install PIPS. Pips can be downloaded from Epson website, but what is PIPS? On their own words, Photo Image Print System for Linux (hereafter "PIPS") is a printer driver (filter) for high quality printing from Linux using a Seiko Epson color inkjet printer. On mine, PIPS is something you install to avoid 'pips-wrapper' error during installation and 'scheduler could not execute a filter' error later when you try to operate the Epson printer.

However, currently Epson does not list Ubuntu. They only list Fedora 9, Mandriva 2008.1, and openSUSE 10.3.


Who needs all languages in the world when my operating system is not listed?

I settled for Fedora 9. Extracting the downloaded file to a folder on my Desktop, I open the terminal and login as root. I installed the .install file using './' command. That's it for PIPS. But the job is not over yet.

Go to System > Adm (Administrative? Sorry can't remember) > Printing > Add. Choose the type of the printer, Epson T20, forward, forward, finish. This time you're really done for. :D

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aes vs tkip encryption

Sorry for taking a long(er than usual) time to post. A few fays ago, upon being connected to the Wifi, my Blackberry suddenly lost its BB logo that usually appears on the upper-right corner.

Turns out someone changed Encryption on the Access Point's Wireless Security from 'AES' to 'TKIP or AES'.

Blackberries are not compatible with TKIP encryption.

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unruly kids or unruly parents? -- part two

... Who knows that the chance to take revenge came real soon? But at that time I decided not to seize the opportunity! :(

The 7 Dwarfs is an animated movie of which plot wasn't thought througouhly, I suspect. A main character that's so awkward to the point that it became annoying. Inconsistent drawing style. Stereotypes. Lame joke. Add to that slow pace. And I mean slooow I could just sleep on my chair.

But you know what? About half of people in the cinema were adults. Seeing from experience, I'd anticipate at least some children whines now and then, and if I got lucky, one or two top-of-the-lungs screams.

... Instead I experience silence. Peace. Not a single mouth spoke. They are too mesmerized by the jolly characters on screen.

Yes children can behave when it's a show dedicated to THEM, not some R-rated or PG-13 movies.

... I still regret not getting back to the kids by covering the projecting window on the back with a gum or something. >:)

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