I dream of a place where there is no hurt, no pain..

The laws of nature, the physics are lopsidedly against human. We are, as human have to follow the law, living within the boundaries of what we can and cannot do physically. It doesn’t take an expert of physics to know that I will surely die if I fall from a tall building, flat on the concrete below with bone fractures and probably brain all over the parking lot. Funny to think that ants, with smaller and weaker body would most likely survived such a fall. That’s physics and even though countless Hollywood movies try to depict people with the ability to bend the law invulnerably, the fact is still crystal clear that we are just weak mortals, period.

How convenient it is that if our body is made of rubber-like substance with the durability of titanium that every time we collide or hit something so hard we would simply bounce and not even bear a tiniest scratch. Our bone is as hard as the hardest metal with high density which prevents it from breaking at an unbelievably high amount of pressure, but again, we are but a mere human with a lot limitations.

That leads me to a theory that God created us with boundaries and as long as we do not trespass that we will be ok. Human in general are only able to walk with the speed of 4-5 km/hour, that’s around 2-3 miles per hour. Running, which is only a little bit faster, are still within the safety zone. This ability will deteriorate as we grow older; it is a safety mechanism for our weakening body. Just think if a 70-year old person can run as fast as when he was still 20; probably he will have a heart attack or damaged joints.
However, everything changed with the invention of means of transportation. With horses, bicycle, motorbike, cars, we break the boundaries; with these vehicles we are traveling faster than what our body can handle a possible impact, a collision, and crash.

If you would think, how the injury would be when two people bump into to each other while they were walking 5km/hour, hardly any scratch, unless they got angry and punch each other (that’s another case). However, with motor vehicle, people who cannot run even faster than a dog would be able to travel at 60-80 km/hour easily. Now, think again, what would happen if two person on a motorcycle going 80km/ hour bump into each other. The word bump would have different meaning, they would inexorably crash into each other, not a pretty scene huh..

I’m a slow rider, I prefer to wait and I prefer to brake instead of honk because honking is not going to stop you from hitting other vehicle, but braking will, that’s a fact. When I ride my motorcycle on the road, I chose to ride defensively rather than aggressively. I always think that it only takes one careless driver to create a catastrophic road accident and the last thing I want is to be that person. I think that more lives can be saved if everybody is not trying to outrace anybody on the street.
There is one funny suggestion made by the police force in my hometown. It says ‘When in the city please drive/ride 30km/hours’. I know most of us laugh at that serious joke, that’s awfully slow compared to the general speed of the road user but when you all think about it, it is also incredibly safe. It will be a lot safer than going 80km/h in a crowded traffic, skidding here and there and with the best of luck, ended up in a morgue, not so wise eh..

No matter how important you think arriving 5-10 minutes faster at your destination, just think how minuscule that is compared to your whole life, and I’m telling you, so very not worth it..

For the time being, while waiting for my body to turn into super titanium shell exoskeleton (whatever that is) with the reflexes of a super ninja from outer space, I will still ride acceptably slower than the rest of the pack. This way, at least one less careless rider on the street..

So little time so many to watch

I never thought I would say that sentence for TV programmes, at least not in these past few years. If you live in my country you’ll know what I’m talking about. Growing up in the 80-90s provided better TV experience for me. There are a lot of sitcoms, dramas and less addictive TV shows at that time. The ratio between local and foreign content is somewhat equal. My audio visual experience fell on a long deep sleep when Sinetron rules the TV universe and it woken up when VCD and then DVD movies flooded in Indonesian market, providing us with more choices, better options. I no longer feel the need of watching Indonesian TV programmes. In one of the rare occasion when I do watch TV is for the news which actually is quite redundant as I read most of the news already on the Internet (Full fledge of information, when I want it, how I want it and about what I want to know)
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Indonesian movies, serials and shows. However, I do hate the cheap, poorly written story and even poorer acting of our lovely Sinetrons which blossom in every channel of my country’s TV station. I just can’t stress enough that these kinds of Sinetrons really degenerate my already deteriorating intelligence. Of course every once in a while a good one comes out, but the chances are getting slim and slimmer as we speak.
One of my friends even took a little bit extreme step by forbidding Sinetron in his house. Of course he provides his family with cable TV which has more options and a better chance to deliver good shows, education and morals too.

And I’m not saying that foreign serials, dramas and shows are always better than Indonesians. I’ve had my share of shitty movies and drama back when I lived in US. But, let’s put it this way, if these foreign TV shows were aired all the way across Pacific Ocean in Asian TV station, particularly Indonesia, and that the directors our TV decided to actually pay to have them aired, then at least they must be decent,
I can’t imagine how our future generation would be if now they are being shoved by TV shows that rapes the human logics, strips down reasoning, cause and effect, and throws some cheap tricks and tears while they’re at it.
Hmmpfh, I tried not to fall to the rambling and ranting traps when I talk about this issue, but I guess I failed..

Back to the topic, what I originally want to say (before I was trapped into the bashing on the Indonesian TV shows) was that these past two weeks, I’ve been traveling away from my home town and had to stay in various hotels. The good things about most hotels are they have cable TV which provides me with over 50 channels; you name it they got it.
What initiated me to write this was last night when I turned on the TV; they had 3-4 different discovery channels, each with equally interesting topic. International news, talk shows, informative programmes that actually give you useful information and insight views of the outside world. I ended up confused which show I want to watch, switching from one channel to another, just like when I watch Indonesian TV channels except for the opposite reason.
I’m quite realistic, I can neither possibly hope that Indonesian TV stations would raise the quality of their shows up to a high standards nor keep on buying foreign serials with skyrocketing price due to our weak currency.
I just want them to really use their head to make average (if not good) quality shows which are not over exposing wealth, poverty, miseries and misfortunes. I want them to have a good writer or team of writers who actually sit down, put their head together and write something worth watching.
And maybe, I will start to watch Sinetron again just like old time..

woopiee..1MB/day..

I just can’t help it, I have to say something about it, it’s so ridiculously silly..
If you watch the TV recently there is a new commercial from Three. It’s about their new free mobile internet service. They are giving free 30 MB monthly bandwidth (max) for Three (3) user (terms and conditions apply). That means 1 MB per day for internet activity using your mobile.
Actually, I was fine with the 1 MB per day service; it was way better compared to XL super stingy 50 KB per day. The thing is they’re (Three) promoting it as if they’re giving out 100 MB free daily bandwidth. The ads shows people cheering up, acting hilariously happy after they get the..errr 1 MB/day free internet connection. I was just like wtf, who are they kidding, is this some kind of corporate joke that I don’t understand. Why don’t they use the money they allocate for the lousy commercial to pay for more bandwidth, like 10-50 MB per day? :-P. In case you want to know, I’m an Indosat Matrix user with unlimited monthly bandwidth and so far somewhat satisfied with its internet service (although super slow).
Anyway, this is just one of the rants I had against the internet price in Indonesia and when I come to think of it, I have objections to almost all of mobile-slash-internet providers in Indonesia..well, hard to please customer..:-)

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly..

by Pablo Neruda

New Year

So much for New Year spirit, it’s already the 25th day of the first month of 2009, so the year is not so new anymore. I remember last year that I did not post in my blog until 21st of Jan 2008. Well, I have a lot of writings, but as usual, too lazy to edit, polish and post. So, for the time being, let me just end my first post of this year by saying happy New Year and have a better life (fingers crossed)

Blind Faith

Justice maybe blind, but it can see in the dark and so does my fingers..
I just realized that I had just finished typing two postings in total darkness. Well, almost,all the lights in my room are off, the only light was from my laptop screen which I set really really dim to avoid expossing my poor eyes with exessive light...
Hmmmm, not only does my fingers has eyes, but they can see in the dark also. Maybe I should switch my eyes with the one on my fingers..he he he

Heart Drive Storage

These days hard drive or hard disk is getting more and more advance, sophisticated. There’s one that has some sort of motion sensor, detects shakes, movement so it can predict sudden shock. There is also SMART technology, the hard drive that has SMART technology is smarter than other hard drive, SMART stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (to tell you the truth, I had to looked up on the internet for that :-).
Anyway, at this point you’re probably wondering about the typo you thought I made on the title “Heart Drive Storage”. Well, that was not a typo and I’m not going to talk about hard drive (though I already did a little bit). So, what the hell am I going to talk about? What does hard drive got anything to do with heart, what’s the relation?
There is a relation, but we’ll come to that later. Right now, business first.

Events (not sure that’s the right word) which I observed these past couple of weeks made me think (I know, too much celebrity gossips). How in this real world, love is not fair. It’s not fair at all. How do I come to that conclusion?
Ok, let say a love is a heart, to love one needs a heart. In a perfect and ideal world, an idea which probably only existed in my head, one person can only have one heart inside his chest. Let me repeat, in a person’s chest there is only one heart allowed, which is his own heart. When he loves someone, he would give his heart (or love) to that other person. Of course owing to the fact that a person can only have one heart, the other person cannot receive that heart unless she gives her own heart (remember heart=love) to the first person. Confused yet? Let me make it simple, these two persons are exchanging their hearts. He gives her his heart and in return she gives him her heart (my default orientation is he and she, so for others like he and he or she and she please bear with me) .Just as simple as that. Once they exchanged, there is no space left in his chest for another heart and there is no other heart left for him to give to another person. They are legally, emotionally bonded, tied or whatever you call it. How perfect that is (unless someone spotted a loophole in my theory :)
Bad news for you all (or might be good news), in our lovely real world. There is no single space/slot chest, there is no single heart. In a person’s chest, there are multiple spaces and a person may possess more than one heart (of different sizes). The outcome is that a person can receive more than one heart at the same time and of course, that person can also give multiple hearts to many people. Scary isn’t it?
That’s not all. It only gets worse because there is also fake heart. Beautifully crafted fake hearts which are usually owned by playboys, womanizer (sorry guys, don’t mean to take sides). They crafted fake hearts with attention, sweet words, gifts, roses, you know, the things that women loves. They even make fake hearts with misery, misfortune and other unfortunate things to get sympathy. These people, they probably don’t know where their real heart is (if they have), the hell, they probably can’t recognize it because their chest is full of fake hearts. Shame for the human race..
But no worries, somewhere out there, there are still higher breed of human. Person that only has one heart, one real heart and there is no other storage for multiple hearts. You don’t have to look for these people. All you have to do is just wait and keep loving whomever you’re with, because eventually, after a series (can be few or a lot) of bad episodes, he or she will finally found you..

Wait, just one last question..
How many storage do you have in your Heart Drive?


p.s. If you have a heart time oops, I mean if you have a hard time understanding this, please change all the word ‘heart’ into ‘love’, maybe it will make more sense.

Long relationship

There are some couples I know who I didn’t think would break up. They are the couples who have been together for a long time. How long is long in a relationship? Is it one year, two years, 5 or 10 years? I would say somewhere around 5 years is long enough. Long enough for the person involved in the relationship to know about the other person. To know about the goods and the bads. I’ve only been with my wife for little more than 2 years even though I’ve known her for 11 years. So I can consider our relationship is still young. Someone might argue that time measurement is relative; the quality of a relationship cannot be measured by the year it has been established. True, but I have to say that sometime things take time. Love, understanding, and acceptance take time.

I watched a movie last week, Weatherman. Story of a divorced man, struggling to pull himself together, to put his life on the right track and to get everything back in its place. He has 2 kids; one is already in high school. So he had been married for quite a long time. He has problem with his attitude, he’s forgetful and he can be such an ass sometimes, cursing and yelling. I guess that was one of the reasons why they got divorced. The movie touched me; it’s so human, natural, and fallible. It’s just sad watching him trying and failing all the time. In the end, even though he succeeds in his career he is still failed to bring his family together.

Was there a point of no separation that once a couple reaches it, they will not separate no matter what. A point where it’s not about time, it’s about connection. Where they already know the deepest and darkest secrets of each other. Know what each other was thinking without being able to read their mind.
I know a couple who had been together for 9 years and I guess they already had their share of tears and laughter. A couple that I thought would never break up, but I was wrong. They broke up for the reason that I could not comprehend. For the reason that I thought was trivial to what they had, what they used to have.
Probably they had nothing, probably they were holding on a broken relationship for so long that they didn’t realize. Probably they don’t really know each other, just a void togetherness..

Hmmm…makes me hungry..thinking about this kind of stuff…

Did we miss our little life?

Did we miss our little life?
The siren in middle of the night
Peeking out the dirty dusty window

Did we miss our little life?
The slow lazy Sunday morning
Lingering on till the sun’s flying

Did we miss our little life?
The green rusty bench at the bus stops
Waiting for numbers to come..

Was it thirty, forty four, ah alas, it was red
Yes we missed it. Was it our life
Or another thirty minutes or so..

Missing our little life amidst of rain..

from September 5th to October 9th

I haven't been able to post here for over a month. I did wrote some stuffs but haven't had the time to upload them. This has been a busy month, there's always something more interesting to do than posting blog when I was sitting in front of my laptop. For example, I finally got PCSX2 to run on my ASUS and load FFX I smoothly (graphically speaking). It was not a miracle or coincidence. I spent a lot of times and countless of crashes and restarts to get the stable configuration. Well, it was worthed, an unforgettable moments seeing the intro screen where all the FFX characters are gathering in Zanarkand. That's just the first step, I have a large box full of my old PS2 games waiting to be revived :-). So, expect a long and longer time between each posting in my blog.. :-P

Lost in Mac

One of my friend had the chance to involuntarily migrate from PC to MAC (albeit reluctantly :-P). My office bought an iMac, the big one, the one where all components cramped inside a 22-inch LCD monitor. Since he’s the public relation, the head of IT division and the one responsible for all designing processes, the big Mac (not to be mistaken with Ronald’s big mac) fell on his desk. Now, his desk looks tidy and neat. No more cables and wires except for the tiny keyboard and mighty mouse with only one button. He was well prepared, even before he got the Mac, he already bought all the necessary applications. Word processor, antivirus, internet messenger :-P, he has it all.

I wanted to try it. So there I was, in front of the big Mac, mighty mouse on my right hand, and tiny keyboard on my left hand ready to explore uncharted realm of OSX Leopard. A sudden feeling of loneliness creeps within me. I tried the menus one by one, it was a whole different creature with strange symbols for shortcut. I tried hard to feel the famous user-friendliness of Mac but couldn’t feel it. I was confused with the missing right click button. The small pop up windows which has no close button and minimize button. The swirling line symbol on the keyboard which suppose to have the same function as Windows logo on PC. I felt like using computer for the first time.
I was saying to myself, my friend must be smart, he picked up immediately and looks like he’s already know everything about Leopard. Then he said something seriously funny, “I think I need to install bootloader so I can install XP on my iMac” . ha ha ha…it turned out that I’m not the only one who’s lost is iMac.. :-P. No offense to Mac user, but for people like me, Steve has to make Leopard not just user friendly but extremely user friendly…

To mouse or to touch pad

Finally I have a desktop PC. I’ve been using laptop for almost 2 years but deep in my bone I’m still a desktop guy. There’s something sexy and appealing about that big noisy box which is sitting on my desk. First day I got the desktop, I quickly opened the casing and installed two PCI-e cards. One is e-Sata internal to external connector and the other is my 3-year-old good for nothing pixelview tv tuner. TV tuner that I regretted buying it, well I’m still regretting it now. The e-Sata didn’t work, it did not recognize both my external hard drive 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch. I don’t know why because my laptop e-Sata slot recognized my external drives. Then I moved to my tv tuner. Installed the driver (after digging through piles of books, papers, wire, cables) only to find out that it doesn’t work, the way it didn’t work 3 years ago. Installed dscaler hoping that it would work,. Well, it worked, half working. Only the pictures showed up without any sounds.
Apart from these two misfortunes, my desktop is working properly although it’s not as fast as my laptop. Did I tell you I have a new laptop? I’ll tell you about it later..

Chasing Kangaroo

For these past 2 weeks I’ve been busy preparing documents and filling out forms. September 5th is the deadline for ADS Scholarship application admission. I’m trying my luck, who knows at this time next year I’d be in Australia chasing Kangaroo :-)
I’m not really good in bragging about myself (maybe there wasn’t anything to brag about :-P) and this was how I felt when I filled out the application form. I schemed through 19 pages of endless questions and fields. I was intimidated by how these questions gave a lot of chances for people who has big achievements, accomplishments, whatever.
Starting from the first page, GPA. Good Lord, I’m not really proud of my GPA. I reluctantly typed my GPA knowing that I’m only 0.07 from failing the requirement. Pfh, so much for studying in university for 5 years, I could not even pull my GPA above 3.00. I know I would type excitedly, gladly and willingly if my GPA were 4.00.:-). Well anyway, past is past, I moved on and thinks that my GPA is not giving me any contribution to my working life whatsoever. Or would I get higher salary if my GPA were 4.00? ($_$ hmm..)
I have finished filling out the form and I’m sending it out first thing tomorrow morning. I would not dare to even think that I would be short-listed for an interview. So, I’ll just sit tight and enjoy the waiting game.

Heaven or Hell

I wonder, what will happen to us instantly after we are dead. Are we just gonna wake up from our physical body and run around naked? Because logically we do not have the privilege of keeping our clothes, since it belongs to the physical world. Just as we left our body and in what form do we take after we are dead. If we take the last form right before we die then I feel sorry for them who died old, cause they're stuck with all the wrinkles.
I got so many questions about life after death which has nothing to do with religion. Are they (heaven) going to provide us a guide book, which way to go or what to do. Like Life after Death for Dummies or ABCs of After life. cause they ain’t giving us enough guidance when we are alive. Another thing, can we fly after we die? Cause I've been spending all my life walking, surely I don’t fancy living for eternity on foot. Phew, so many complaints, and I don’t even know where I'll end up...heaven or hell

Sleepy TOEFL

Having a recent TOEFL score is one of the requirement for applying ADS scholarship. I don’t have any recent score, I don’t have any score at all. Yup, I never take TOEFL test before, any kinds of TOEFL.
So, two weeks ago, I dragged my lazy feet, brought my brain along (don’t wanna forget that) and take the ITP TOEFL test in Sadhar.
Saturday morning, 8 am and I was so sleepy. There I was, back to my university, in a language lab, sitting in one of those tiny half-a-meter cubicle. I was physically prepared, I got my pencil, eraser, sharpener, sniper rifle, you name it I got it. But I was nervous, can’t remember when was the last time I took a test. Strangers with tense faces all around me. There was a big wall clock in front of the class and I feel that it was running faster than it should. Everybody seems busy doing their businesses and I was hungry and sleepy and nervous, oh God.
I opened my pencil case, started sharpening my already-sharp pencil while waiting for the question sheet. The test started, listening, structure and reading. I crunched questions by questions, riddled by the questions or answers or probably both, especially the grammar. God I hate grammar. Everything went swiftly and I was finished 15 minutes before the time ended Put the answer and question sheet inside the folder, didn’t even bother to check my answers and peacefully took a short nap :-D. Dreaming, what a strange way to start a day in the end of the week..

I have 1.2 Terabyte of combined storage

My first computer had a 20 GB Quantum Fireball hard drive. It was big, 10 years ago when everybody was still using 10 GB, when an installed Windows is only 1GB and most games only takes up place around 700 MB-1 GB.
After six years, I bought a new computer and the hard drive is a whooping 200GB plus another 40GB that I used as external drive, 1000% increase from my first computer.

Now, three years later, my laptop hard drive and all of my external drives, the combined storage is 1.2 TB. Wow, that is 1200 GB.
Mmm..why do I need so much storage space. Let me tell you, now a recent game will take from 4-10 GB of your hard drive. Fresh installed Vista is maybe around 5 GB and all the software, music, videos, movies (which may take up 4 GB per movie) can eat storage really fast. Can you imagine? If I used my old 20GB hard drive, it will be full the second I installed Crysis and Office software.

I’m wondering, maybe in a not so far future, gigabyte will be extinct, less and less people talk about it. Just like kilobyte and megabyte. I no longer see flash memory in megabytes let alone kilobyte. Now everybody seems to have USB flash drive with the minimum size of 1GB..
Ah…I remember the days of 720KB and 1.44MB floppy disk…

I had a fried egg, tofu and tempe for lunch today

I often resort to internet when I have question or problem with my computer. My favorite search engine is Google. Recently I notice that every time I search for something I ended up in someone’s blog (some techie guys). And it was very helpful. How they give information, support, help and any assistance for free (except if they gain money from the ads on their blogs).

It has become a trend nowadays (I think) that people share their knowledge in blogs. It’s kind of like publishing a guide book on anything that you know (or you think you know) and without all the fuzz in finding publisher, designing the book cover (you can design your blog though, but you don’t have to)and this and that. In blog, just type and publish. You can always edit your ‘book’ later on if there some mistakes.and you'll get immediate responses from your readers (praise, curse, anything you name it) It’s really a convenient way of expressing yourself.

I, myself have been blogging (with a very few posts ^_^) for few years and I have to admit that my blog is not really informative, well, not informative at all. It’s not gonna help anyone with their computer problem, let alone love problem.. ^_^. My blog is about me and my world. It’s as simple as that.
So, now back to my blog, anyone interested in what I had for lunch today? :-P

wardhana@ymail.com

Every time I want to sign up for new email address I always tries 'wardhana', my last name. However, since I'm probably the hundredth million member, my name was always taken. As I was browsing Yahoo main page this morning, I noticed that there's a new Yahoo mail with 'ymail.com' domain. So I quickly sign up and fortunately my name is not yet taken.. :-). It's not that I need another email address since already have 3 yahoo mail account..he he.  

Log 030708 1.25A

After a whole month living without decent Internet connection I'm finally back to virtual world. I started working yesterday but it was not until today that I really started my work. Yesterday was the re-acquaintance with my work, I mean my daily activities :-)
If you notice there's a great deal of differences in my posting count before and after I went to US. I used to sit in front of computer for 8-10 hours when I was still in Indonesia two years ago. Then I went to US where I was not always in front of computer. Gathering motivation to actually post something that I have written is even harder that writing a post. 
So, now I'm back, I'll be working in front of computer for 8 hours a day (at least). Hopefully I'll be able to post something every now and then. That'll give me something to read about my life when I'm already 90 years old and already forgetting everything :-)

Adiós Mi Guitarra

A little bit more than a month ago I had to make many hard decisions. Coming back home was both exciting and overwhelming. Flying for more than 24 hours, across the ocean was hardly possible (or impossible) if I want to bring all my belongings.
Therefore, starting from 3 months before I go home, I start to give away or throw things. I had to throw my shoes, shirt, t-shirt, pants, sell my Yamaha keyboard and lots of things. But there is one thing that I really had a hard time to let go. It was my guitar. Considering what I had to go through when I bought that. It took 3 hours of a bus ride to go to the music store and another 3 hours plus getting lost somewhere in Phoenix to go home.
So I had to wait till the last second to let it go. I sold it, though I actually want to give it away but I need the money to buy another guitar back home.

Adiós mi guitarra, yo sé que usted más divertido que cuando estás conmigo..