Retreat, hell!

"Retreat, Hell!", comes from the French trenches of World War I, when a Marine officer named Lloyd W. Williams was ordered to retreat and replied, "Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"

Remember my post titled "Touch the Bottom"? I said I touched the ground and was ready to jump back [into productiveness]. Hell yeah I jumped alright, except that it was only a short jump. Now I'm hanging on the side of a steep cliff, gripping the root of a tree that happens to drill its way through the hard rock, almost fall down again.

My hands are tired, and this tiny root won't hold me much longer. All the voices inside my head are shouting: Retreat! Retreat! I almost give it all up. I can just let myself go and enjoy the free fall again. Yes, let's just have fun. There's still next year after all. But all the good things and the good people that recently came across my life give me the reason not to.

Now I scream to myself, "Retreat? Hell! I just got here!". I'll climb this fucking rock and get myself up there.

There are only four things left to do anyway, four easy things, so, to hell with retreating.

1. Write this post, which is almost done. I have not written any post lately and I just have to, because...just because.

2. Do the SPPK final assignment: "How to put down Soeharto using only a pen and a paper." Due Wednesday. Yes, Mr.D is a dick.

3. Study for the Computer Network final exam, also on Wednesday.

4. Translate a gargantuan amount of articles for my campus' website, which I have put off for...maybe three weeks. I've been overdue, but I'm gonna make myself a new deadline anyway because that's how I roll: Sunday! By Sunday, that's 7 days from now, all those idiotic pages bullshitting about the types of faculties in my campus must have already been translated into English. I'll start working on it on Wednesday afternoon, after the computer network exam. That means, three weeks worth of work crammed into four days. Google Translate must come to the rescue, so do my friends.

The best thing about this week is that all my money would have been spent to fix my mobile, so I'll only have a little money left, which means no hanging out with friends and no date. Oh, Kika will be on a retreat with her fellow teachers anyway, so it'll come easy:)

So, see you next week, world!

Breaking The Pattern

From Sunday to Saturday, despite all the assignments that have been nagging to be done, and despite my constant refusal to finish them, it's been an awesome week for me.

Last Sunday, I went to a music festival in Sabuga. Held by Fakultas Hukum Unpad, the event--called Hysteria--brought up some of my favourite artists: D'Cinnamon, The Trees and The Wild, and..wait uppppp.... Efek Rumah Kaca!

That night started kinda bad because my gf was acting sulky. Until about an hour or so, she finally told me the reason behind her sulkiness, which had me laughing out loud, and the awesomeness of the night was back. Thanks Kika, I thought you were just like any other girl who will sulk by some uncontrollable conditions like bad weather or whatever. But you're so fucking full of surprises. Having you is such a bliss.

Anyway, we went there with her younger brother Dio, who also loves Efek Rumah Kaca. We spent the night watching D'Cinnamon (which was surprisingly disappointing), some small bands, 4Peniti (which was surprisingly awesome), some traditional dances, Halmahera (who got a lot of sarcastic praises from the crowd because their performance was too long and the crowd couldn't wait for ERK), Efek Rumah Kaca, and The Trees and The Wild.

Efek Rumah Kaca performance was beautiful, albeit too short. They only played 7 songs, including my personal favourite, Jalang ("karena mereka paling suci, lalu mereka bilang kami jalang, karena kami beda visi, lalu mereka bilang kami jalang"), which had me stood--hand in hand with Kika--in awe. Haha. I felt like watching them in From 2 With Love (my old highschool's pensi).

We didn't watch The Trees and The Wild till the end because it was 00:30 already, I had to go to uni and Kika had to go to kindergarten the next (early) morning. But in the end, that was one of the most enjoyable night I've had in a year or so. Not because of the event itself, but because of the fact that we all enjoyed it.

I spent the next four days either in the City, North Bandung, South Bandung, or home. Whether playing CS with my mates, ngapel to Kika's house, going to another second hand English book store in front of Unpar (and eating Mie Jakarta), some me times, teaching Syifa some origami, and some family stuff. It's basically anything beside uni work.

Something awesome also happened on Friday night. My friends and I got a Guest List (or whatever it's called) to Embassy. Yes, Embassy, that nightclub I've been wanting to go since... I don't know, since I started being galau a few months ago. I've been raised in a religious family, and my friend circle is full of nice people, so I have never been to such place (except for once, loong time ago, but that was a different story). And I finally went there, with other 12 friends (some are my friends, some are my friend's friends, some are straight, some are gay, some are way older than the rest of us, and only one girl).

Earlier that night, my friends and I bought a pseudo-Whisky in a small warung in pasar Dayeuhkolot, because we knew that buying real drinks inside the club is a sure way to put a hole in our wallet. The so called Whisky was really cheap, just Rp65000 for a bottle (I think it was 400ml, or maybe 500ml, I forgot to take note) and the taste wasn't that far off from the real thing. Four of us drank that bottle empty real quick before we entered the building. No it wasn't enough, we should've bought two or even three bottles, but we were thin on money that night, so, meh, we were forced to enjoy the club half drunk.

My first impression to Embassy was... okay. It was bigger than I thought, with lots of sexy high class girls, some DJs, and heart blasting music from the big ass speakers and subwoofers. We sat inside for a while, and when people began to pour onto the floor we just went down with them.

It was a great place. A great experience. But I guess it's just not my cup of tea. Maybe I was just wasn't galau enough to fully enjoy being there. I'm so happy with my life nowadays that dancing to disco music seemed pretty pointless to me. Maybe next time! For now, I'm just gonna enjoy dancing to Lotus Flower.

But hey, like I said, great experience. I might got bored inside there, but I enjoyed the night with you guys. Thanks for the Guest List!

Lastly, Saturday was fun and random! Kika and I went to Winner (the Bratwurst restaurant), a park for old people at Secapa AD (luckily there wasn't any old people kicking us out :-p), Kineruku (to watch Experimentelle Deutsche-Indonesien Musikvideos, a part of Oberhausen International Film Festival), and Ciwalk (to watch... guess what? a movie? discounts for clothes? Wrong you fucking yuppies. We watched Efek Rumah Kaca, again).

Seriously, two Efek Rumah Kaca performances in a week! The latter performance got better songs, better sound, and better crowd. Their personal tweet this afternoon:

"Terima kasih teman2 di Bdg, yg telah menciptakan karaoke massal semalam di ciwalk."

Fuck yeah Efek Rumah Kaca!

Anyway, now it got me thinking, this Saturday we enjoyed two German-related stuff (the Bratwurst and the music video festival) and a park for old people. What the fuck, lol. One of the best days ever.

Speaking of which, it has been the most random week ever. I love every part of it.

Touch The Bottom

Last post at May 9th? Shit. What happened? I'm not really sure about the detail (and I'm not gonna tell you, pervert.), but a lot of things had happened, that's for sure.

Remember Kika, the girl I went with to Reading Light on my last post? Well, we [how do you say jadian in English?]. Hmm. If I was still a little boy (for me, that means when I was 18 y.o, or less), I would write a long post on how awesome she is. But fortunately I'm 22 years old now and I've learned a lot of things about not being a cheesy alay, so.. let's just cut to the chase and say she's soooo lovely.

She's a walking paradox. A self-proclaimed anti-social who loves to tell stories by...(surprise!)...talking. A skinny girl who loves to eat. A stylish person who doesn't like to go to the mall. An open-minded girl who do charity works for her church every single week. An old-fashioned girl who likes to rock and roll. And a kindergarten teacher who sometimes smoke and drink.

Oh, wait, this post wasn't supposed to be about my girl. Ahh.. my bad. Always wandering around. *checking the title of this post* wait, Touch The Bottom? What?

Oh.. the bottom, I remember now. It's about how I haven't done any shit for about three weeks. Seriously. I haven't read a single text book page (or, in my campus' case, Powerpoint Slides), I've only done a tiny bit of my homework (with the speed of a turtle whose feet had just crushed by a truck), and a few paragraphs of translating for the campus website.

And the cause of all that? There's no real cause. I'm always in this kind of state every time the final exams come. Well, I could blame it to my campus who squeezes all the hard assignments into the end of the semester. I could blame it to our educational system who has successfully created a notion in youth minds that school education is everything. I could blame it to the government who isn't trying to stop that. But in the end, I should just blame it all to myself for having a tremendous ego that makes me unwilling to to anything that I don't like/agree/give a shit.

So here I go again, fucked up to the bone.

But no matter what, I'm a diehard optimist. I never give up things (maybe sometimes I just let things go because I know there are better ones out there). The thing is, sometimes I can't control my mood. I can't control my spirit. Fortunately, in the past 12 months, I learned how to get along with it. So in the last three weeks, instead of trying hopelessly to kill this laziness, I just let myself do a free fall into the pit of sloth, and finally this morning, I hit the bottom.

And you know what I do after I hit the bottom?

I jump.

Yesterday

My mom had just bought a netbook. It's Toshiba. The design is kinda cute (to me), with a bright blue color for its casing. I don't know how that happened. After all, my mom is 46-year-old, her eyes would strain looking at that tiny weeny screen. But, meh, heheh, I forgot to think about that when my family and I bought it yesterday, I was kinda in a hurry, because Kika came along to BEC with me.

She was cool. She wore those funny shoes (I don't know what they're called, kinda like boots, but much smaller, no they're not boots, they're... I don't know, they're like my friend's shoes, Naresh's shoes), and a long skirt, and a sweater, and.. I don't remember. Hey, men rarely remember details. Anyway, her clothing was such old fashioned it could have been worn by Zooey Deschanel.

We went to Reading Lights after that, to talk about.. something (see I can't talk about it because I think she believes that if I talk about it, it's gonna get jinxed). After about three hours of conversation, a glass of chocolate ice cream, a glass of David Sedaris drink (which tasted like Vitamin C), a plate of blueberry pancake, a page of Ms.Word document typed using my broken laptop, Mew, Muse, Radiohead, and other random stuff, we went to Warung Steak on Jalan Setiabudi to.. well, to continue what we're doing that day.

Then we went on to Setiabudi's Circle K to smoke a cigarette or two, before finally went home. Oh, her house was in Lembang, haha, Lembang, at 9.30 PM, it was sure cold, but not for me, I felt warm alright.

Dumb, Dumber, and Lazy Bums

Holy shit I'm stressed out. Today started okay (a bit cloudy too, which was marvelously mellow), it went even better when Mr.D returned one of our test sheets. My group got a score of 12 (out of 10!) for one of our tests, all because of these sentences (the test was about the condition in Middle East Countries after last month riots, we had to explain why the "vox populi vox dei" can't be applied in the Middle East right now) :

"It is true that people's voice is god voice, but there are so many voices in the Middle East right now, and sometimes those voices conflict each other. So it's like a God with multiple personalities, who fights with itself."

Apparently he liked it so much that he added +2 point to our score. Yippe ki yay!

BUT my other test got only a score of 5 (out of 10) with a huge written message over it: "THIS IS A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM CLASS", probably because I put too much unrelated bullshits in it.

-------------------------------------

Wait, above paragraphs were written on Thursday, but I was interrupted by.. I can't remember. Oh, I do now. I was told to translate an article about the National Education Day, which had some quotes by our not so levelheaded Minister of Education, Prof. Dr. Ir. KH. Muhammad Nuh, DEA. Seriously, he said this on the National Education Day speech:

"Kesadaran sebagai makhluk Tuhan Yang Maha Esa akan menumbuhkan nilai transendensi dan nilai keagamaan yang kuat, yang pada gilirannya tumbuh sifat kasih sayang dan toleran saling menghargai dan menghormati  dan menjauhkan diri dari perilaku destruktif dan anarkistis."

Dude, it's National Education day.

Education.

I can't stress that enough.

Get an education, Prof. Dr. Ir. KH. Muhammad Nuh, DEA.

I sweated myself translating that article. Not only that article is against my opinion, it's against common sense. Our Minister of Education hasn't got a bloody common sense. It stressed me out.

I took a long breath and told my supervisor: "I don't wanna translate this". Fortunately she said okay. Heh. Thank you. Thank you very much.

The stress didn't end there. On 5 o'clock I had to attend a substitute class for Computer Organization and Architecture. My classmates and I ended up listening to our stupid lecturer complaining about how hard it is to explain the Memory Management chapter, for 80 minutes. Eighty. Fucking. Minutes. We could've used those minutes to read the material ourselves. But instead we had to listen to that bitch blabbering on how stupid he is.

Ah. but the day was saved by another Counter Strike session. No push up punishment this time, because all of us are lazy bums.

Lost in Translating

Quick! translate this tiny paragraph...

"Produk ‘all in one’ dimana semua fasilitas kebutuhan konsumen terkonvergensi menjadi satu produk. Keunggulannya yakni multifungsi dan efisiensi. Sehingga memudahkan konsumen untuk menggunakannya. "

...into its English equivalent.

Done? Feeling Annoyed? In the scale of 1-10, how annoyed are you? Now, multiply that by a million, that's how annoyed I am.

It seems that I'm not the only one who have a bad writing habit. You see here: "Produk ‘all in one’ dimana  semua fasilitas kebutuhan konsumen terkonvergensi menjadi satu produk." is not even a sentence, damnit. My current apprentice job requires me to translate some articles containing that kind of sentence every day.

These past two days I've been translating news and articles for my campus website. Or, the way I call it, I've been "reverse translating", because I translate articles written in Bahasa Indonesia into English (so far I've only translated 7 articles tho, most of the time I do nothing:p). It's easier than programming, and it's less stressful. BUT, it's not as fun, and it's fucking annoying when you have no idea what the sentences are actually about.

But I think I like it. At least I'm learning how to write properly again. It's just like writing essays about Othello or A View From The Bridge or The Kite Runner for Ms.Zubair's class in my high school years. I hope my writing's getting better, both in English and in Bahasa Indonesia, because two days ago, this conversation happened:

Ki*****R (5/2/2011 2:41:25 PM): hey, gmana kalo kita buat buku bareng?
Me (5/2/2011 2:41:51 PM): hmmm
Me (5/2/2011 2:42:19 PM): im not really good at making structured language
Ki*****R (5/2/2011 2:42:29 PM): so what?
Me (5/2/2011 2:42:52 PM): ntar bukunya fucked up gimana? :p
Ki*****R (5/2/2011 2:43:08 PM): trus knapa?
Ki*****R (5/2/2011 2:43:13 PM): selalu ada kali pertama kan

and the rest of the conversation is history.

Pigs

Hold on, just because the title of this post is "Pigs" doesn't mean this post is about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Sure, he was a fucking pig. He and the Taliban are the symbols of religious extremism in this modern world. If you've read The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini you'll know how vicious and evil they are. The death of Osama Bin Laden should be celebrated by every single non-evil person in the world, including you, or else you should be killed too.

Anyway, it's not about that. I'm gonna talk about a card game called "Playing Pigs" (I made that name up, the real name was "Babi-Babian"). Unlike Poker, Playing Pigs is a very simple game that in order to play it you don't need too much wits. Why do I bother writing this? Because on my last post I said I'm gonna write about pigs. Damn, I should stop making stupid promises.

This game can be played by any number of players. First, prepare the deck so that it will only contain [4 x number of players) cards, the number on the card doesn't really matter, but every four cards must have the same number in them (with different suites). Each person will be given 4 random cards. Oh, and every player starts as a human.

One player (any player) then count to three, repeatedly. On each repetition, every player must take any one card from their own hand and put it in front of the player on their right, face down. Each player now has a new card (the one that's given by the player on their left) so now each has four cards again. Repeat that until one of the players got all four cards with the same number in them. When one does, s/he must put the cards in the center of all the players, face up, then touch his/her own nose. The other players must follow him/her (touching their own nose). The latest one to touch his/her nose lose, and will be degraded to a pig, a level one pig.

Then the game starts again with a new round (the pig also plays).

In this game, a pig can talk to a human, but a human can't talk to a pig. If a human makes even the slightest communication with one of the pigs, that human will also be degraded to a pig. So if a pig asks for the time, and a human answer it, say, by saying the current time, or by showing their watch, s/he becomes a pig too.

The game goes on. Just remember that the latest player to touch their nose in each round will be devalued/degraded. A human will be degraded to a level one pig. A level one pig will be degraded to a level two pig. A level two pig will be degraded to a level three pig. And finally, a level three pig will be degraded to... a pig shit.

When someone becomes a pig shit, the game ends. There's no winner, but there's a loser, which is the pig shit.

I know right? This game is hardcore. Never been in my life I play such a heartless game. I played it with Dara, Ines, Adel, Rani, Ipin, Skie, and Choco after a small BBQ night on last Thursday at the back of the Student Center while other students were either watching or playing UNO. Before that, we also play "Thumb Guess", you know what I mean. I aced the thumb guessing game, but on the Playing Pigs game, I became the pig shit.

The pig shit.

Nice jobs, human friends. I'm gonna get ya next time!

On the brighter side, today was my first day at work. Ha. I'm gonna tell about it when I find something interesting. Not today. Nothing much was going on today, except that after I've been in IT Telkom for almost 4 years, I just knew it today that there's a room near the campus clinic where every IT Telkom officials can eat lunch for free. And now that I work with them, I can eat there too :D

Barney's high pitched voice: Aweeesooome!

Black Saturday

Today is Saturday, yesterday was Friday, the day before yesterday was Thursday, and you get the point: I'm on my lowest point since last month, so low that I'm actually singing Rebecca Black's song in reverse. And I'm listening to Justin Bieber's "U Smile" on repeat since an hour ago in Masjur Room, too. Today has been sucked, hard. Well, relatively, hard.

Firstly, at around 3 am this morning I woke up from a nightmare. That was the first nightmare I've got in months. Literally. No, the dream hadn't got any ghosts or funny shit like that. It's about...nevermind. Damn. I think I'm in..nevermind.

Anyway, since yesterday, I planned to skip this morning's Jarkom Lab Work because I would take the EPrT test (kind of like the light version of TOEFL). But I woke up late (partly because of the aforementioned dream) and... not only I did skip the Jarkom Lab Work, I came to EPrT an hour late, so I decided to ditch that too. That's Rp35.000 wasted on nothing. Fuck. You remember that extra Rp30.000 I got from a van driver after the small accident that happened a few days ago? Gone. Karma is a bitch.

Also happened this morning in my Kapita Selekta class, a caterpillar had somehow landed on my neck. Well, at first I felt a weird tingling sensation from the upper back of my neck. I reached it with my hand and then I realized there's something spongy up there, and it was wet too. So I retracted my hand and asked my friend to see what it was. He said there's a caterpillar on my neck. THERE'S A FUCKING CATERPILLAR. ON MY NECK.

 

Well, luckily it wasn't the kind of caterpillar that can cause itchiness. It's just a normal caterpillar,, wait, no, there's NO normal caterpillar, all caterpillars came from the deepest level of hell to take over the world.

I wanna say thanks to my friend Bayu who had got the guts to remove it from my neck, using his mobile phone as a stick. He then put the phone on the floor, let the caterpillar loose, and retook his mobile. Without missing a beat, I step on it, instantly killing that motherfucker. To other caterpillars out there, if you can read this, do NOT mess with me, or you'll end up like your friend there, lying flat on Gedung Serba Guna IT Telkom's floor. And I have no mercy for caterpillars. I repeat, I have no mercy for caterpillars.

That's all? Those small problems had made me miserable for the whole day? 

Actually, no. There is one other thing: I'm kinda anticipating something right now. But it's too personal to write it here on my blog. Can you believe that? After all those personal things I wrote here, which basically turned my little life into a self-proclaimed open book, I still have something too personal to be written. Maybe because this particular thing isn't just about me, but also about someone else. 

Aaaahhhh huehauhae. I feel weird today. I can't stop thinking about it.

Alright *slap myself really hard 3 times*

Let's forget about it and write about something else instead. Oh, that story about last night where I went to Dapur Bebek with some friends and talk about the end of the world, that would do, I'll write it on the next post. But my friends and I are gonna play Counter Strike first. I'm gonna write that post after the Counter Strike game, which would be around midnight, or if I'm sleepy, I'm gonna write it tomorrow.

--------------------

#Update

Fuck this post, today is saved by an awesome Counter Strike session. So we played like usual, except that we made a little bet on it. Our rank at the end of each round will determine how many times we have to do pushups/situps (5-30x). This changed the way we play the game. I guess sometimes when something--anything--in our life feels a little bland/flat/boring we just need to spice things up a bit with some motivations, and watching our friends harmlessly suffer is one of the best motivation in the world.

Meh it's 2.45am already, I'm gonna write the next post tomorrow.

Anyway, this post seems stupid. I feel stupid. I've been feeling stupid these past two days. I don't really know why. Or maybe I do know. I just don't wanna admit it. I've been galau with a reason you wouldn't believe. One thing is for sure, I've totally moved on. And I'm really happy about it^^

aaaah.

hihi.

it's okay to be stupid sometimes, right?

The Bluest Orange

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love" - Dr.Seuss

Yay!

Four things made me go "yay!" today:

1. I learned car driving with my friend today. Yay! Yeah yeah I know a lot of my friends could drive a car when they are 15 or less, but hey, better late than never. I don't know what suddenly gave me the urge to learn it, maybe the little accident last night had made me realize that car is superior than motorbike. It's still a long way to go, but the hardest parts are done (gear, clutch, and gas control). Now I just need to learn to park precisely and then I'll make a car driving license.

2. Google had just replied my complaint about their rejection to my AdSense registration. Before today, I thought the rejection was caused by some racists/hatred posts in this blog, hoho, who am I kidding, they're Google for fuck sake, they are so open minded they won't care about those harmless stuff. The actual cause they told me was a little bit surprising to me: my blog was mostly written in Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Indonesia is not supported by Google AdSense yet, lol. Only after I delete most of my posts that's written in Bahasa Indonesia they'll let me put the AdSense. Meh, not in a million years, mate. So I went to /b/ to find posts about AdSense tips instead. I few minutes later I decided to make a second blog. This second blog will be written completely in English and it will contain stuff that people really care about (unlike this blog which is mostly gibberish). What important stuff? Well, stuff like (copypasta) news, (copypasta) reviews, (copypasta) articles, etc. It's just like Information Retrieval task on my course of study: the mission is to get as much traffic to my blog as possible. And I just knew how to do that. Yay!

3. Dika just sent me an SMS. She wrote: "uji, lupa my nympein psen di bu h****. Bsok dminta nemuin bu H**** ji". Finally I got my first job interview in the last four and a half years yay! Well, it's just an apprenticeship job, but c'mon, a job. If I fail this interview, it's not gonna be a big deal though, because see #2.

4. Last but not least one of my friends just told me that there are magic mushroom in Sawarna Beach (I don't know where exactly Sarwana Beach is, but I know it's a thousand mile closer than Gili Trawangan, where magic mushroom are also sold in public). You see, it's not about mushrooming. I know guys who sell magic mushroom here in Bandung, so if I want to get (legally) trippy I could just contact them. It's about... mushrooming on a beach. Yippe-ki-yay-motherfucker!

Cuts and Bruises

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Rebounding The Rebound

The night out to Madtari, Braga, and Dapla last Saturday night had almost caused an undesired effect on my future. The night was nothing spectacular, but we went out until 4 am in the morning, which means it had disturbed my newly hard earned sleep pattern. It also means I couldn't get to sleep at the right hour last night, which ultimately made me skip 2 classes this morning. I had already used all my absence allowance for one of these classes, so the fact that I did not come this morning would mean I won't be able to do the End-Term Examination for this particular subject.

The damn butterflies had flapped their wings and tiny winds are building up into a hurricane. I mean seriously, if I have to retake this subject next year I would have to take another additional semester (eleventh semester). That means everything in my later life would be delayed by another 6 months: job, marriage, children, and maybe death (the last one is fine though). I can't let this happen.

I woke up this afternoon feeling depressed about this, so I went straight to my laptop and fired up the ittelkom website to check my current attendance data. To my surprise, I have fewer absences than the one I saw on the printed attendance sheet (the one we sign on every time we have a class). Then I see a spark of hope: I think the print version of attendance sheet is faulty. Because I remember seeing a negative attendance of one of the students. Here, I took a picture of it about a month ago:

When I took this picture the subject had only been held 13 times (26 hours) but there's someone whose absence is 30 hours. How could someone skip more classes than the actual number of classes ever held? There can be no other explanation, there must be surplus of absence in this sheet of paper. This means the data in Ittelkom website is the right one and I can still do the end-term exam. Fuck Yea!

Meanwhile, I must fix my sleeping pattern as soon as tonight before my old habit sneaks back in.

Where You End And I Start

I tweet,
I am making a script for Levi's Short Movie Competition,
I learnt some motorbike repair skills from a friend,
I will probably take a French course at CCF soon (finally got the motivation, now I just need the money),
I temporarily hate long term relationships,
I threw away the wedding coin that I'd been keeping in my wallet for a very long time,
I crave for money,
I look back to my old unfinished android app project and will probably finish it and sell it in Android Market,
I make some ugly flash animation about MIPS for COA,
I stopped buying cigarettes,
I exercise,
I sleep at night,
I wake up in the morning,
I feel optimistic.

Today is Friday

Today has been...well...how do you put this indelicately...normal. I had several plans from days before but I didn't do any of them. Instead I just stayed at home watching the 6th season of How I Met Your Mother while listening to my Cirebonese friend talking non-stop about how hardcore it was to live in his kampong, my grandfather's kampong. One of his stories involved a killing of a local prostitute. True story.

Oh man. I should've gone watching Tanda Tanya with k'Wie today. But I totally forgot about it until this early evening, which was raining heavily so I decided to postpone it indefinitely. I don't usually forget about going out with someone but our original plan was to go on Wednesday and she forgot about it, so maybe my subconscious mind was just trying to do some sort of mind revenge and trying to make me forget about it. Meh, let's just go next time kak :p

Aaaaand there's this other plan to go ice skating in PVJ with my classmates, who was also scrapped because we were short on motorbikes. And also, rain.

Seriously, rain, stop it.

But if all is going well, we might gonna do it tomorrow afternoon, but in order to do that we might have to ditch Tekom class. C'mon, Mr.Lecturer, tomorrow is the Holy Saturday, just one day after Jesus died for your sins. For christ sake, let's respect Him and not having any Tekom class tomorrow, a'ight?

Anyway. Another plan was to go on a "culinary night out" with Skie and Anggie (you're such a cool couple, please stay together as long as possible, because the fact that your birthday dates are close to each other makes it a great reason to give us [read: your beloved friends] a double treat. Please!). It doesn't have to be today but it has to be done. Please! It's unfortunate that currently Skie's got a digestion problem, Reja is in the hospital, Bayu and Rico are on their hometown, and Yans, I think, is on fire doing his final project because his girlfriend had just graduated a few days ago. So I guess this culinary night out has to wait until everyone is back to normal.

And oh, there was another unexpected plan. Well, if it's unexpected then it's not really a plan is it? I'll just say that there's an unexpected chance to go out of the house. So, anyway, two days ago, The Sri, my 2nd cousin whom I have not seen for a very long time, came to Bandung to do her graduation ceremony. Ahhh it's so weird to talk with her again, knowing that she's still as pious as she was 8 years ago, while I, let's just say, had been through a lot of changes. So, anyway, she came to Bandung with her sister in law, right. My family and I, plus Teh Sri and her sister in law, went to Gokana Teppan last night. But hey, this post is about today, not yesterday, so,

You see, I think Teh Sri's sister in law has got a crush on me. Well, I might be wrong, but then I don't know how else I could explain the fact that she sent me more than 25 smses in the past 48 hours. And no, my answers weren't enthusiastic at all. Mostly just "iya", "ok", "ujan..", "ada", "bentar lagi nyampe kok", etc. and she keeps sending me messages. Don't get me wrong, it feels good to be needed, but it just doesn't feel right to pretend that you care when you actually don't. So today when my parents asked me to go with Teh Sri and her sister in law to buy a rabbit for Teh Sri's daughter (they went back to their hometown today) I just said no.

That's how I ended up staying at home on this good friday.

I've finished watching the 21st episode of the 6th season of How I Met Your Mother by the way. Phew, what a marathon. Now I can finally do something more productive with my life again.... whaduuuup!!!

Not How I Met Your Mother

So kids, this story started 25 years ago, when I had only been living for three months in Australia. As you know, grandpa got a doctorate scholarship in Latrobe University back then, so all of us decided to move there for some financial reasons. I was reluctant to move because it meant I had to leave my SMA girlfriend, Andriyani. Well, we were naive and stupid so we decided to have a long distance relationship anyway.

When we first arrived there, spring had just started, the weather was still freezing for us who was used to live on the tropic, so I spent most of my time heating my body while blogging in my comfortable room. Yeah, blogging, on boleh.com. Boleh.com was a nice online place to hang around. The people were funny and friendly, just about everything a homesick person needed.

One afternoon, it was on December 2005 I think, I got an email from someone named ndie. I don't mean to brag, but she loved my blog and wanted to chat with me. No, I was serious when I said "I don't mean to brag", because after three years or so I read my blog again and I wanted to throw up for its super alayness and cheesiness and fuckedness. Anyway, we exchanged YM ID and we started to chat.

The first chat was hilarious. I couldn't remember the detail but we talked about a lot of things. Funny thing is, I didn't know that the girl I was chatting with was in fact, a girl. Y'know, "ndie", I thought it stands for Andi or something. Only after the end of that chat season I realized that ndie was a girl.

We chatted on and off for about 2 years. Our topics were ranging from religions to the stupidity of dating. I hadn't got any dibs for her at that time, but she seemed like a cool person. Within these period, I broke up with Andri because as any sensible person would agree, LDR just don't work. She was my first love. It really broke my heart coz y'know, first cut is always the deepest. It got me in a rut for months.

Still within these period, I had a new long distance girlfriend (I know, I know, I was stupid, give me a break, I was only 17 at that time, jeez), Rista. She was living in UK at that time. Well, we both felt like we were in the same situation: living in a country where we didn't belong. My mates used to tell me, "dude, move on, there are girls in Oz too" but no, I was still sooo Indonesian back then that the only thing I wanted was to go back to Indonesia and hang out with my Indonesian friends like I used to do in SMAN 2.

Anyway, after only three of four months I decided to break up with Rista, because I was such a douche.

After that I actually enjoyed living in Australia. The rest is history.

Back to Ndie. We kinda stopped chatting because for some reason my internet connection at home was cut down. But we texted sometimes.


On April 2007, I finally went home to our beloved country. So many things had changed. My neighborhoods had changed a lot. Geger Kalong Girang became so crowded. Daarut Tauhid was bigger than ever. And why the hell am I talking about my neighborhoods? Where was I? Oh, Indri and I were going to meet for the first time.

We met at the third floor of Gramedia. I was wearing a sweat pant, green t-shirt, hat, and sandals. I don't know why I wear THOSE. Seriously, it was weird. Maybe I just wanted to show her that I was indifferent about fashion and I don't care about other people's opinions.

She, on the other hand, put a lot of effort. I don't remember the detail (hey, I'm a man, I'm not supposed to remember details) but she looked pretty in that long dress/i don't know what's the name of that piece of clothing. Seriously, she looked muslimah-ish and stylish at the same time, and great one at that, too. That's one of the things I like about ndie, kids, she always know how to dress well, so well that it never failed to eclipse any other girls around her.

Anyway, we ate on AW (curly fries!) and watched Kala (a great film by the way, kids, if it wasn't for Joko Anwar, I wouldn't be a film director right now). Then bla bla, we went to SMAN 2 sitting under the canopy of the biggest rubber tree (?) on Bandung, like two innocent teenagers that had just been introduced to love for the first time.

You see, kids, universe had created plans for us. Or maybe not. But somehow, my SPMB score wasn't high enough to get me into medical science in Unpad, and somehow I refused to take my second course choice, Civil Engineering in ITB. So I decided to go to STT Telkom instead, where, coincidently, or maybe not, ndie was studying. I got a kostan in there and we were dating like the world was ours.

Now that I think about it, it was one of the happiest days of my life.

I'm not going to tell you the details, kids, you will experience them yourself when you have a boyfriend/girlfriend.

Unfortunately, three and half years later, we had to break up. It was a mutual decision and we thought it would be the best for both of us. It's a hard thing for me to do coz she and I had been through a lot of things. We even planned our marriage, kinda. But yeah, the universe had spoken. Had things ended differently, your name could be Chamomile, and yours, kiddo, would be Nero.

Anyway, a piece of advice, kids, when you're in a relationship, there will be a lot of problems, you might get hurt, or you might hurt your loved one. But no matter what, never ever regret. Because anything, EVERYTHING, that happens to you, good or bad, is the best lesson you will ever get in your life.

And that, kids, is the true story of how I met your aunt Indri.

Purgatory

My friend's friend in Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia once said, "kuliah di sini murah, tapi ujiannya mahal". And last night we'd just watched that very sentence in action. It was the third time we watch a theater show in STSI. Just like usual, it wasn't a professional show, it was just an examination for those who are in the 5th semester of Theater Directorial Study (I just made that name up by the way, I don't know the exact name of the course, let alone the English version).

For outsiders, the examination looked very simple: He (it was an individual examination, only ONE person would get the score) must direct a drama and show it in front of people and the judger/lecturer/whatever.

For him, on the other hand, it meant 3-4 months spent in hell: First he must find the script which he wanted to direct (or he could "just" make one), then he must find the suitable actors (remember that only the director was being tested, the actors were doing it only to help him, voluntarily), he must find the make up artists, the lightning directors, the musicians, the costumes, the props, the foods, and he must bring the them all (including the voluntary actors) to practice almost everyday for at least 2 months. Aaaaaargggghhhh if I was him I would've just made a script with only one character in it, who is naked, and the drama will be completely played in the dark, with no music and a little bit of monolog. And maybe I'll put some badass firecrackers too to make the play a little bit more like an emotional rollercoaster.

By the way, let's get back to last night. So the drama was titled Purgatory (subtitle: Arwah-Arwah). The story was about... well, wait, I had no idea what the story was all about. I mean, the lightning was great, the music was awesomely creepy, the actors were good, the atmosphere was indeed feel like a purgatory (they all put a really good effort in this drama) BUT the dialog, Jesus Christ, I didn't understand what the actors were saying. They were using too much literature-kind of language, it was like going back to year 10 in high school and learning Bahasa Indonesia, the chapter about old literatures, all over again. This kind of language is, for me, almost as bad ad Al4y'5 laN6uaG3.

Sorry for the bad drama, I mean, bad photo, I don't have a decent camera

So I went out feeling kind of a little bit disappointed. Because for me, story is everything. If your dialogs were indecipherable then I'd just assume your story sucks. If your story sucks, you can make a movie with whatever special effect you want, but it will still end up in a trash can just like 2012 and Transformers.

Anyway, it was a great night nevertheless, because after watching that theater show, we went on to HDL Cilaki to eat some seafoods. And boy the fish there was huge. But we could only afford to buy 1 fish, a plate of squids, and a plate of cah kangkung (three dishes for the 9 of us) because this restaurant was freaking expensive(-_-;). It was enough for us though because could eat as much rice as we want and the girls only ate a little so the guys could eat more. And the best part is, one of my friends, let's just say, Parker, just got a new girlfriend. So he paid around 75% of our bill. Congratulation, Parker, I hope your new relationship will last till 75 years!

Btw some of us were acting all Barney-ish last night, which was hila.....wait for it......rious:)

Unemployed.

I'm gonna give myself a challenge. All these time I've been writing really,, really slowly. It takes me 1-2 hours to write a regular length post (sometimes it even takes up to 4 freaking hours). Now I'm gonna try to write this post in less than 15 minutes, because I'm in the mood of writing but I need to go to uni soon.

Alright because I haven't think about what I'm gonna write, I'm just gonna write stuff that comes to my mind along the way.

So I've got a class on 7, Artificial Intelligence. Funny, this subject. It used to be my favourite subject before I go to university (I'd always dreamed about learning how to make robots who can joke about your mom). But when I'm actually taking it, it seems duller than what I'd thought before. Well, imagination is always more colorful than reality.

At 9 I'll go to Politeknik Telkom to talk about the possibility of Kerja Praktek (internship? Im not sure if it's the correct English word for it). I really want to do it in another city, like, Jogja. But one of my mates prefer to do it in Bandung so, well, bro code #1b: Bro Before Self. We'll just see if we can get it here in Poltek, I hope we won't get it tho, I really want to go to Jogja.

I'm really looking forward to this internship thingy. Not that I really like working for someone. Really. Working is boring. I worked after I finished high school and before I started university. First, at a pastry factory for a month, and then in a hotel for another three months as a bellboy, and honestly, I don't think I can be in one job for more than 3 months. A thought always come to my mind in one of those boring days: "fuck it, let's just quit and find another job." I hope I can change this in my future life. I should stop getting bored and get a job A.S.A.P, or I better think of really good idea for a business, or else I'm just gonna commit suicide.

But it was MUCH better than sitting inside a classroom though. And the money was good. I got $11 an hour in that pastry factory, and $13 an hour to bring tourists' luggages. For about 6-8 hours a day. I don't know if I can get that much money working as a programmer here in Indonesia. But still, I'd prefer to be a slave right now than being an unemployed university student.

Anyway, yeah, I'm looking forward to this internship thingy, just for the fuck of it.

Ah, 6 am. Let's go to get some education.

I'm nowhere.

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not an ababil. But I don't like to be on one side either. I know, I know, every debater in the world will say you must take a stance to everything or else you're gay. But I totally disagree with that.

The thing is, I don't see this world as black and white. Many people think if something's not black, then it must be white. Moreover, many people don't even realize that they're seeing the world as black and white.

Let's take an example. Erm,, I suck at thinking about examples so let's just take a random thing that comes into my mind aaaaaannnnd GOD. Let's take God for example. Most people on earth believe that God exists. And most genius scientists believe that there's no such thing called God. The atheists say the believers are stupid because they believe in something that cannot be proven true. The believers, in turn, argue that the atheists are idiots because they DON'T believe in something that cannot be proven FALSE. Both sides stand firmly with their own belief, so firm that cyber wars between believers and atheists are still going on right now.

Me? For me, something that cannot be proven true nor false is not something that we should be worry about. Sure, the existence of God (or not) is very important to.. wait, how is that important? No it's not. Our mind as human beings are very limited at the moment. So why be arrogant and say god exists (or doesn't) if you cannot prove it? I'll just be humble and say "I don't know".

Okay, this is heavy. Let's talk about something less godly. What's less godly than god, how about......marriage. Right. In case you don't know, there's been an increasing number of people who oppose marriage lately. They argue that marriage is stupid. It's like walking in to a prison. Life is an adventure, don't limit yourself with an old age tradition called marriage. And the sex. Let's be honest, copulating--wait, let's keep it simple--fucking with the same person for 20 years, is pretty boring. And I agree with them, well, most of them. I do think every relationship has an expiration date.

But then, what the fuck would you do in your life if you don't get married? Sure, traveling around the world with only your backpack could be fun, but what would you do when you get home? Come into your house, walk into your room, take a bath, and sleep on your bed, alone, for the rest of your life?

And how about when you get old? Would you live alone in a little house on a mountain of far far away until you die sitting on your rocking chair? No. I feel much better when there's someone waiting for me at home. So that I can hug someone I love while I'm sleeping, instead of a bantal guling. And I wanna die while hugging someone. Oh how I love hugging. And what about sex? Well, swinger clubs, baby. Seriously, if I can find a girl with a matching personality, I'm sure I can make it beyond the expiration date. We'll go around the world together, raising up children together, having sex with other couples together, and be adventurous together. Sounds too ideal? It is. Because...

The type of girls that I like don't exist. Or maybe they do, I just haven't met any. Problem is, I like independent-yet-submissive-intelligent-fun-loyal-knows-how-to-dress-fashionably-in-public-loves-to-talk-yet-a-good-listener-kinky-yet-not-a-bitch kind of girls. I know what you're thinking. But I'm betting all my love life that out of 3 billion girls in the world, some will fit my preferences.

Let's back to the topic. Another example is music. Many normal people out there like to listen to mainstream music. Peterpan, D'Bagindas, D'Masiv, ST12, Maroon Five, you name it. The "cool" people will say those normal people as "shallow". These "cool" people like to listen to music not too many people know exist, like, Sigur Ros, Efek Rumah Kaca, 65 Days of Static, Mars Volta, etc.

I'm also picky at choosing music I listen to. But I don't choose them based on their mainstream-ness level. I like some and I hate some and that's all. I don't care if it's a trash metal or rap or pretentious-pop-rock or whiney love song, if I like it, I like it. That's why my playlist is filled with various artists from Rage Against The Machine to Kangen Band.

picture unrelated

Another simpler example is smoking. I don't know how many times I told smoke-haters out there that smoking is awesome. It's a great stress reliever. No, it's not just a placebo. It does work. Scientifically proven. And it's a good ice breaker too. Yes it increases the probability of getting some types of cancer, but please note when I say "probability", it means no matter how much you smoke, you don't always get cancer. And if you do? big deal. Most Indonesians (that's us) eat too much carbohydrate anyway, if we don't get cancer, we'll get diabetes.

But I also pity those who give their life to an uncontrollable smoking habit. Not that I care about their personal life, no. It's just that.... why smoke a pack of cigarettes a day man? That's just not cool.

I'm running out of example. And, as always, I suck at writing. There's no structure at all, right? Well guess what, I found another example: I suck at writing, but I love writing.

Oh, and I think I'm bi-curious too.

There you go. How I'm stuck in the middle of almost everything. This is why I don't feel like I belong to anywhere. Oh, not even the middle, because sometimes I take a side too. And I change sides. Still, this is not ababil, this is just my way of life, a way to survive the world, or maybe not, coz once in a while I think about suicide too.

I guess I'm just a believer of nothing, and everything, and things in between.

Yes.

Because every generalization is wrong.

Moko, Karaoke, Break Up, Cigarettes, and Alcohols.

I have not written any journal in the past.. 700 days. Or more. And I don't know, a can of beer made me wanna write one now. I feel awkward tho, I.. I haven't written anything beside Facebook statuses, tweets, smses, and UTS answers since... weeks ago. Anyway,

My friends and I went to Cafe Moko, or also known as Warung Daweung, earlier tonight. I prefer to call it Warung What-The-Fuck-Man-Why-Did-You-Build-A-Cafe-At-Nowhere? because it's located ridiculously high from the sea level, I mean, sooooo high. Seriously, it's like the only warung in Bandung where you can see clouds below you.

There were 13 of us. We rode motorbikes because using a car to get there is a sure way to fuck its engine. The roads were so steep we had to use the lowest gear most of the time, and that's nothing, because just before we arrived at the warung, the road became super rough (no matter what you hometown is, it would be the roughest road you'd ever seen) and did I say steep? so, the mbonceng person (I don't know the english of bonceng and I don't want to think about it at the moment) must get off from the motorcycle, and us the rider must use our two feet to support our bike.

So, we arrived there and ordered some foods. Most of us ordered Kezo Goreng. Yes you read that right. Kezo Goreng. Kezo was derived from the word kejo, which is a Sundanese word that means rice. I know right? Alay's everywhere.

We ordered some warm chocolate too. Which was kinda necessary at that time because it was freezing up there.

The foods weren't that bad, but the chocolate drink was just Susu Kental Manis Coklat I guess, which I didn't like so much because it's 80% percent sugar. Yes it is.

After that, we went outside to see the view of Bandung and "my god it was so amazing! Those lights!!! You can see the entire city!! And it's better than Bukit Bintang because this place is so much higher so you got a much wider view of the city! It's like the view of Bandung, live, in super duper ultra High Definition!" was my first reaction when I see the entire Bandung spread over my puny eyes (I didn's say it out loud of course), but after a few minutes I got bored because I realized this city doesn't have the eiffel tower, the liberty statue, nor any remarkable building. And it's freezing too.

So we decided to call it a trip and went back down to civilizations. Toward the NAV Karaoke, which was fully booked when we arrived there. They would have a vacant room at 12 am, so we waited.

FYI, 4 of us were females. One of them was sick (I mean she got flu, not, like, psycho). Coincidently, in our waiting time, her boyfriend was buying susu murni in Buah Batu. She somehow met him and decided to go home early with him. So there were 12 of us remaining.

One of the other girls followed. She went home with her bf (but this time it wasn't a coincidence. She called her bf to come and pick her home). And then there were 11.

My other two female friends were kinda annoyed by that. And decided to go home too. Leaving us guys chickless. And then there were 9.

I asked my friends (which were all guys now) if they'd been to a karaoke without any female friends, and I was pretty surprised that all of them answered NO., I mean, what the fuck? This is incongruous (okay, I shouldn't have used a big word. Let's keep this blog simple. Let's keep this blog really simple) This is absurd! None of these guys have ever been to a karaoke without at least one girl. This is so wrong. I can't describe the reason why this is wrong right now because like I said before, I just can't be arsed tonight. But this is so wrong.

So we did it anyway. One hour of karaoke without any chick. My friends had just lost their all-dudes-karaoke virginity. It felt good right? It fucking did. Because without any chick around, none of us had to pretend anything. We could sing any motherfucking songs we wanted, with our own honest singing style, using our own honest voice, with a pure intention of screaming it aloud, without trying to impress any chick. Fuck yeah. But that didn't change the fact that I can't sing, though.

And then we went home, to our respective... er,, home. It was 1.30 am. I rode alone across the city. I stopped at an Alfamart, bought a can of beer, and went straight home. I drank the beer. It was 3.00 am. And I wrote this post.

AND OH MAN THIS POST REALLY SUCKS. I just realized that I really really suck at making narrations. I don't have the ability to make a good description of anything. And how I can't be arsed to fix it tonight. Too tired. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. Ah I'm just gonna post it and whatever.

And life's good, by the way. I just broke up with my gf a week ago but life's good. Or maybe not. I don't know. I'm not sure if it's really good or I'm just trying to hide the fact that I'm a wreck right now. Well. Maybe. I really don't know. I drink alcohol much this week, so probably I'm not okay. And I've been smoking again since UTS. So ok I'm pretty much fucked up right now. But on the up side: I think I'm not sad, I go out more, and I'm actually looking forward to my future life, which basically means, money.

So life's good. Well I hope it is. Ah. Whatever. Let's sleep.

8th of December 2

manusia kecil di kepala saya itu bertanya,
"hey zi, what's up?"
saya pun terdiam membeku bagai batu di pelabuhan ratu.
oh bugger kapan ya saya bisa bikin kalimat yang bagusan dikit.
what is up, indeed.
sekarang adalah tanggal 8 desember,
yang artinya, tepat empat tahun yang lalu,
kalender menunjukkan tanggal yang sama:
tanggal 8 desember.

obviously.