Well Jakarta, you are what your people are!

I found a very very cool tool called the wewe* calculator. A calculator that checks how selfish and self-absorbed your corporate website. The new rule: you should not use too many “we”s in your websites/brochures/whatever publications or you will risk your company sounding like a rude, arrogant, selfish company.
Instead, you have to write for your readers and address them accordingly, read this to get better picture.
I checked one of PU’s page and the calculator gave me this:

Someone should improve that.
And from now on, everything published by Infinitum must pass the wewe calculator, yet counting “we”s alone isn’t enough to see if what you write will be effective. I wonder if they’ve made a gobbledygook calculator somewhere?

(*) Indonesians: this calculator doesn’t do ghosts check

Finally, someone new and he sings in Cantonese. There is hope in HK music scene after all .
I was wondering why his name sounds like a Moslem’s name, and found out that Khalil Fong’s religion is Baha’i. Out of curiosity , I searched what Baha’i is, from what I read, it seems like a spin-off from the Islamic faith. This religion is prohibited in Indonesia, that’s probably why I never heard of it. Nonetheless, I love this song.

The lyrics (in scarily complex unsimplified Chinese) – I’m hoping I’ll find someone kind enough to produce the romanised version of it and possibly translates it too , haha ^.^

是他也是你和我
同相親相愛也相爭
大家偶遇在人海
你我各留痕
幾許歡與笑
多少愛和恨
那狂潮捲起
燦爛又繽紛
是苦也是甜美
人生的喜惡怎麼分
大家各自尋找
你我心中印
幾許哭與歎
多少假與真
讓狂潮起跌
混合愛和恨
是他也是你和我
同悲歡喜惡過一生

My phone was a Nokia something – can’t remember the series name. It was on sale in Carrefour and I needed a phone that can make/receive phone calls, send/receive text messages and be my alarm clock. Nokia something had all the features I needed, comes in a very very good price too, so without second thought, I grabbed it of the aisle and paid it in the cashier. It was that easy!

I was delighted to find that my Nokia something has nice limited polyphonic ring tones and colours – you see, these features have surpassed my expectations on my mobile phone ^^.  I also love how it has no camera whatsoever. The only downside, it has a highly limited phonebook space so I have been deleting old acquaintances’ phone numbers in favour of newer ones (cruel, i know).

Another good thing about that awesome Nokia something is that I can constantly change its cover! The latest one I had was Donald Duck.

Nokia something has been an object of ridicule among the uber-fashionable Jakartanese because janitors, students, and everyone else seemed to have fancier mobile phones than me. Even hubby believed that I should change my phone. For me, a mobile phone is simply a device that allows me to make phone calls, receive calls, send text messages and eliminate the need to carry bulky alarm clocks! I always thought that if I ever need a camera or mp3 player, I don’t need them integrated to my phone. My other excuse is safety. Carrying fancy cool latest mobile phone in Jakarta, makes you an easy crime target, and it will hurt so much more if you have wasted 1 month salary, surviving only with instant noodles in order to buy that phone!

However, now that the LCD screen is badly scratched I can barely see the display, and I noticed that there’s something very wrong with the speaker. So I thought maybe hubby is right. It’s time for me to embrace a fancier phone. Thankfully, hubby has two phones and he’s more than willing to part with one of them so I don’t have to waste money on a new phone.

Ta daaaa….

Sleek and nice. It’s Motorola V something … haha Thank you hubby !!

Today is mum’s birthday ! If I weren’t such a stubborn and demanding baby, my birth could have been postponed to match my mum’s birthday , then we both will always celebrate birthdays together. Happy birthday mama ! I hope you will always be in good health and wished you plenty of happiness too. And of course, you will always have us to argue and debate about whatever stuffs with you ^^.

Readers, here’s my mum (in red qipao) during our wedding reception:

I always thought Sarah Jessica Parker looks kinda like the younger , Caucasian version of her:

Haha, maybe I was wrong, but whenever I watched SATC and saw Carrie Bradshaw, I got reminded of mum.

Can’t believe I’m already twenty-eight. In another 2 years time, I will be thirty, and soon, 50 !!! Whooaa… that makes me wonder, how will my friends look like in their 50s ? ^^

2009 was a wonderful year for us. Lots of happy surprises and although there were unhappy moments, they were minor and unimportant. We strongly believe that gratitude makes us happier, and of course, we have to start the year with happy, positive thoughts.

Here are the list of things that we are thankful about:
1. We have each other
2. Our parents are happy and healthy, and we realised that having both sides of parents on our wedding day, healthy enough to be able to enjoy the day with us was a remarkable thing!
3. Our siblings are doing pretty well despite the economic turbulence forcing them to go in and out of jobs >< . We hope 2010 will be a better year for you! Good luck!
4. We have countless wonderful friends ! This includes all of my former students too. Without them, our wedding will not be as fun. Without them, we will not have so many great and fun memories.
5. 2009 was definitely an auspicious year to get married. We share wedding years with Yacko-Nicko, Fanny-Pierre, Icha-Kevin, Pici-Leo, Rosa-Genta, and the most recent one, my cousin Andrew!
6. I made a serious and rather risky career leap. I hope I can do a good job.
7. We took a mortgage and decided to be in debt for a while.
8. We’re thankful that we can enjoy a pretty good life!
Now that 2010 has arrived, we hope we can be as happy and we hope we can bring happiness to others too. As I speak(type?), I became more certain that happiness is definitely here, because someone just gave me a free ice cream! Yay!

Wishing everyone who visits this blog a very merry Christmas and an awesome year of 2010 ! I can’t believe 2009 is over , time does fly when you’re having fun ^^.

I finally watched this highly controversial movie. Although Balibo is not allowed to be screened in most cinemas in Indonesia, we can easily find its pirated DVDs. This Australian movie is quite successful, and I can see why. Robert Connolly did a very good job in portraying the tragical story of Indonesia’s invasion to East Timor in 1975. The story moves in a very vivid, almost blunt manner. No mystery, or no over the top actions, no computer graphics or ultra cool special effects. Its simplicity makes the story felt real, and it makes Indonesia’s popularity to drop slightly. This movie has enraged many of the former country and army leaders because they considered the portrayal as offensive and highly inaccurate.
In Indonesia, everyone believed that the Balibo Five (5 Australian journalists that were killed in Balibo) were not murdered cold heartedly like how it is portrayed in the movie but they were accidentally killed in a gunfire. We used to believe that Indonesians came to East Timor in peace and that the East Timor people themselves chose to be a part of Indonesia too. And let’s not delude ourselves, Australia wants a piece of East Timor too, the abundance of oil in Timor Sea is a lucrative business and Australia has secured its part in an ever profitable agreement with East Timor.
Nonetheless, I do hope that since East Timor (now Timor Leste) is fully independent now, they will be able to mend their terrors-tainted country and build a much better life. Timor Leste’s restoration should really be a part of Indonesia’s responsibility too.
Overall, I give this movie an 8 out of 10 .

I think none of you will ever hear me shout, “I WANT TO BE SUPER RICCHHHHH !!”, because I never really aspire to be the next Riadys. Seriously, if I wanted to be filthy rich, I wouldn’t have spent several years of my life teaching. But I’m extremely worried about our finances.

Firstly, our country’s inflation is horrible! Although the government said that the inflation rate is quite low (not more than 5%), I’m skeptical that they can keep that up.

From IMF:

Optimistically, we can say that inflation is approximately 10% every year, with the exception of the evil year of 1998-1999, where inflation went 58% and 20% respectively. Well, 10% is still pretty bad.

Second reason, everyone in Indonesia is forever threatened by the danger of unemployment. It can happen to me or hubby , or anyone !

Third reason, somehow everything is getting so darn expensive! Obviously, we’d like to have a child in the future and education doesn’t come cheap at all. According to friends – who have kids and are battling with the expenses – as well as various observations, the price for education in decent schools here, increases by approximately 20% yearly!
We don’t even dare to aim at those super expensive, highly prestigious international schools. We thought, we just need some decent schools with good quality and disciplines, so our kids won’t become thugs or worse .. suicide bombers T_T. The price tags (based on 2008 prices): Rp 5 million to 17.5 million to get your kids into kindergarten plus a monthly fee of Rp. 400,000 to Rp. 1.1 million !
And that’s just kindergarten, what about primary school, high school, universities?? -_-”

Fourth, as what we all know, there’s no such thing as social security in this country, a pension? what pension?? Even if we have one, the amount will be extremellyyy small. And I can’t blame the government either, they have so much homework to do. So we,as good citizens should really shut up and not bother them too much.

How much money do we need to keep us happy from the first day of retirement to the day we die? If we were to retire next month, and need approximately Rp. 2 million/month to keep us happy. And assuming we live for the next 20 years. Then we will need about: Rp. 24 million/year. The year after that we will need Rp. 26.4 million and 19 years from that, we need Rp 146,781,817 /year. The total of post-retirement living cost will be …. Rp. 1,374,599,988.00 but what if we live longer than that and suffer from some crazy illness??

So what will Sandy do? Keep being a cheapskate ^^, stock on gold, invest invest invest, and keep looking for opportunities. ABBA-therapy to keep the stress away: