What Would Jessica Do?

DaNte's Post

2008-05-18T09:10:00.003+07:00

DaNte's Post
18-05-2008

On this very day, we are celebrating a very special event that happens annually. This event has been a blessing for humanity, and all the creatures of this planet. It is the BIRTHDAY OF OUR PIMP: JONATHAN MARSHALL PANGKEY II!!! For your information Ms. Jess, Jonathan Marshall Pangkey is this ugly... no, HANDSOME, dashing, bold, intellectual, and awesome man on our grade. He is IRRESISTIBLE for women and he is a chick magnet. He is the ONE AND ONLY PIMP!!! Well that is beside the point of this blog... let's just start:

Of Trailers and Spoilers

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's always something that we look forward to in the cinemas right? If you are not a movie enthusiast, then there is something to look forward in the video games console. This is all thanks to trailers that are posted everywhere, especially before the movies in the theater start. Trailers, are very, very well... annoying, in a way. If the trailer was shown a year before the actual movie/game/electronics is released, people will go 'UGH! I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE THING!!! HURRY UP!'. In economics term, this will make the demand for the good more inelastic, since trailers are a form of advertisement.

The iPhone advertisement/pictures were revealed around a year before the actual item was released. When the iPhone was officially released in the U.S., Apple aficionados went hectic and the amount of iPhones sold went skyrocket. When the infamous Sony PlayStation 3 was released, people lined up even before the store was open and the stock for PS 3 in all retailing stores in Japan was finished. This is what happens to advertisement, or trailers. My friend, Jason (formerly known as James) was so exhilarated when the Iron Man movie was released. I myself had been a victim to trailers. I became and act like a crazed lunatic waiting for the new season of Heroes. Well, I acted like that when I watched the trailer, but now I became normal again... sort of. I went rampage when I watched the trailer of Kingdom Hearts 3. There are a lot of trailers that have drove me insane and obsessed.

Despite the fact that trailers are thrilling and exciting, there are some crappy trailers that boils your blood and irritates your eyes. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read my previous previous blog post, or watch the trailer of 'SUMPAH POCONG'. That is the definition of sh*t, friends. Really. I can't think of anything worse than that. Not yet, at least. That trailer is degrading the media of Indonesia. Some items or products weren't as expected as when they are in the trailers too, especially Indonesian horror movies. The Jumper wasn't as I expected it to be. I thought the movie was going to be awesome, but turns out it's just decent.

Trailers are the minions of evil, my friend. They are brainwashing you! Actually no, trailers are fun and adrenaline-rushing. At least with trailers you'll know what upcoming movies are there, and there is something that keeps you excited. Just be sure that you don't become obsessed and forget about everything else, ok? And watch out for crappy trailers.

The Scope of Channel Providers

2008-05-13T21:07:00.011+07:00

"Don't work harder, work smarter" is what I could say to all us for the upcoming exams...

Anyways... Donny's spirit for badminton is ignited by the biannual Thomas and Uber Cup, and he is neglecting all of his school works!! (except for this blog, since it is pertaining to badminton)

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The badminton spirit within Indonesians is on its climax. Numerous people from different ages are excited. These include me and my friends who watch the Thomas Cup in a teacher's room during lunch time and study period! However, when I go home and decided to watch the rest of the match, there are not any tournaments. It is not because the tournament have finished already or suddenly got canceled, but because of my provider.

I use Kabelvision for my TV provider, and it gives me many channels - national and international - with a clean vision. Not to mention that it is cheap and we can access the upcoming schedule for every channels. Such facilities can also be found in other providers such as Indovision and Astro. However, it is surprising to know that these providers are unable to broadcast live shows that is held in several Indonesia channels. For example, the Thomas and Uber Cup are held in Trans TV and Trans 7 at one and six o'clock. If we watch these channels during those time through normal TV antenna, we can watch the competition. But during the same time, if we watch the channels through providers, we will only watch a black screen with background musics. Yet, the schedule on the provider indicates that the competition happening right now. What makes these providers take such actions?

Maybe the providers does not have the agreement from the TV channels to broadcast the events, or they have to pay more to do that. Thus, the providers decided not to broadcast it at all. Another reason maybe because these providers does not feel that the broadcast is important. Note that such providers are often use by expatriate denizens, who does not have the same badminton spirit like most of the islanders. They are assuming that even if they broadcast the competition, majority of users will still watch other channels like Star World, MTV, Disney Channel, etc. It is a business strategy and and economic decision.

Even with those purposes, providers (especially ones who are owned by Indonesians) should realize that many Indonesians would be disillusioned. I, for example, lived in Lippo Karawaci where Kabelvision is offered since the day I moved here. Because I am not using normal antenna, I cannot watch the tournament at home unless I buy an antenna. Even with antenna, the screen quality is less clear than providers'. It is just sad how business sometimes makes people too blinded with money, that it forget the happiness of its fellow citizens.

this article does consist of a bias perception since I'm a badminton lover. But this issue is often argued by many people, especially during sports seasons. I hope that providers will consider this blog, and use it to improve the customer satisfaction. :)

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[just a short response to Dante's post]

I'm also concerned about the axis issue. Me and my bus-mates discussed about this earlier, and we come to a conclusion that this is just a business strategy.

It is possible that this fanatical gossip is a "sabotage" from other national cellphone operator. With the chain text-messages regarding the issue which threatens people's live, the operators like Telkomsel and Mentari will get more income through it. Keep in mind that with this issue, the text-message senders are mostly from non-axis users.

Users of "axis" who believe in such myth will decline dramatically; decreasing its demand and forcing the operator to quit from Indonesia's market for cellphone operator. This might also a predatory strategy to kick foreign newcomers.

All of this are just opinions, and are not meant to be taken seriously or offensively. Thanks

DaNte's Post

2008-05-11T19:06:00.003+07:00

DaNte's Post
11-05-2008

Hoam... another week passed, and we are getting closer to the exams. So we better prepare ourselves and STUDY LIKE A POSSESSED MAN FROM NOW!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA

The Axis of Evil

What strikes your mind when you read this title? Russia? World War 2? The Allied? Well, this 'Axis' is not about World War 2 or the like. This 'Axis' I'm talking about is the recent cellular phone operator in Indonesia. I am pretty sure you all know what I mean by 'The Axis of Evil', right? I think everyone got the sms... The stupid sms... I don't know who started the sms but it is certainly stupid to jump into a conclusion that 'Axis' is a satanic and brainwashing product when it just came into Indonesia's market.

The advertisement of Axis with the repeated number of '6' makes it egregious for promoting the number of the devil. I guess not all big scale advertisements really promote their products well yeah?

However, is it really true that 'Axis' is actually satanic and they are scheming an evil and diabolic plan? The number '6' that they continuously use could be a sign of evil. Not to be racist or anything, but their country of origin is Arab, where most of the population is Muslim. The advertisements are very large in scale as well. I saw the advertisement took a whole page in the newspaper. But nevertheless I don't think people should really be afraid of the product and spread such ridiculous rumors.

But the rumors are not actually an entirely bad thing at all! I mean, this could make us more caution about what the media is trying to tell us right? By giving such fearsome rumors people will be more aware of what the advertisement offers and they are less likely to fall into the sweet euphemistic yet deceptive messages of media.

Of Sausages and Advertisements

2008-05-04T22:12:00.003+07:00

I don’t watch television often – in fact, I think I can count the number of times I’ve sat in front of the TV per annum. However, sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of what my other family members are watching. This evening, as I was having a snack in the kitchen, I saw one of the advertisements on TV. It was an Indonesian advertisement that was trying to promote sausages. It was decent enough, until it came to the company’s jingle. I didn’t remember how it went precisely, but I can assure you the tune was very cheesy and the lyrics were, well, ridiculous! In a nutshell, the singers in the advertisement were singing how awesome and nutritious the sausages are. And yes, they used the word ‘nutritious’ in Indonesian.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sausages? Nutritious? How absurd! They comprised of the excess meat of pigs and cows and chickens that the meat companies couldn’t sell directly to the consumers! The sausages can very well contain the snouts and the disgusting what not of those animals that have been butchered into pieces! In addition, sausages contain this red dye that can be toxic to our bodies when consumed in a large amount. So are sausages healthy? I think not!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love sausages! Despite knowing their origins and how they’re made (an episode of The Simple Life covers this process!) I still eat them anyways. But even so, I wouldn’t consider sausages as ‘nutritious’ at all. I can’t believe the sausage company had the nerve to promote sausages as healthy; I know it’s technically legal – especially in Indonesia – but imagine the reaction of the not-so-educated people who have watched this advertisement. I’m afraid they’re going to believe the company’s incorrect jingle. I know I’m probably making a big deal about the whole sausage promotion, but I know that every other company is also implementing false advertising or censoring what the consumers should be informed with. As a result, the society continues to be unaware, ignorant, and well, naïve of the consequences that they might reap from buying those products. And that is dangerous.

What Was Then and Now

2008-05-04T21:02:00.003+07:00

Have you ever wondered the amount of movies and advertisements that you’ve seen in your life? Countless, I’m sure. An American youngster would watch TV at an average rate of four hours per day - let alone SPH students who could go to the nearest pirated dvd store and purchase tens of movies for an unbelievably cheap price. Over the years, I’ve realized that all the chick flicks, thrillers, musicals, comedies, action and horror movies that I’ve watched as well as the advertisements that I’ve seen on highway billboards and magazines have shaped my mindset in such an inconspicuous – and dangerous – manner.

I remember that I was in third grade when ‘Sex and the City’ first aired on HBO. I never stayed up late enough to watch the show, but I remember how I was so horrified at the name, even though I didn’t even know what ‘sex’ was back then. During those years, I felt that it was inappropriate for movies to show sensual activities – even a mere kiss on the lips! In addition, I’d cringe at the slightest profanity and condemn all violent actions as ‘inconceivable’!

…How I’ve changed over the years. Now I spend my weekends watching television shows such as Desperate Housewives, the O.C, Gossip Girl, and Cashmere Mafia, all those which are filled with endless sensuality, implied sexual activities, profanity, violence (kind of). Many times I’d watch a movie that is not supposed to be shown within my age range. For instance, a couple of months ago I watched the Atonement. Although I really think the movie is amazing – the casts, script, cinematography, and background music – the movie is actually R rated due to sexual references. Do I think some of the scenes are inappropriate? Well yes. But did it stop me from watching the rest of the movie? Not at all. Furthermore, I actually do not mind when people curse around me – it slowly integrated to what I deem as normal and appropriate.

It’s unfortunate, I know. However, I’m still wondering whether one should abolish all means of media. I think the viewers ultimately have the power to control the negative influences of media on their lives. But I also know from personal experience that tv shows, movies, and advertisements are hard to resist. Thus, even though the best course of action would be to eliminate the kinds of media that we know would contaminate our minds, this would lead to ineffectiveness. Besides, it’s hard to cut off every single media whilst living in such an image driven world. Eh. I’m confused.

(Forgive me for writing such a dull post.)

DaNte's Post

2008-05-04T09:44:00.004+07:00

DaNte's Post
04-05-2008

I KNEW IT! Sooner or later someone is going to write a blog about the stupendous and epic IRON MAN!!! YEAH! GO IRON MAN! I think it's the best superhero movie I've ever seen. Or probably it is just how they visualize the creation and assembly of the iconic red and yellow metallic armor. I was going to write something about Iron Man, but I had to abandon that idea thanks to Jesse. Nevertheless, I'd like to write something that was related to Iron Man, in a way. It's about an advertisement of an Indonesian horror movie (we all know in this case it wouldn't exactly be a horror movie at all) before the movie started.

Three high school students sneaked through the school corridors, with one of them holding a video camera. They stood upon the threshold of the biology lab, and in the distance there is an old, filthy and mysterious school cleaner watching them closely. The students opened the door, and it turns out it was a birthday surprise for one of the students. The old man, however, stared at them with a cold and malicious look on his face.

Hours later the principal found out about the birthday surprise and summoned the three students who sneaked into the school late at night. The principal was infuriated and scolded the trio. It was unclear who gave the video camera to the principal and why he was uncontrollably irate. The trio pretended to be oblivious about the video camera, and they swore that they don't know anything about the whole birthday surprise. Suddenly, one of them said "Sumpah pocong pak!" which means they swore to the 'pocong' ghost. The lights went off for a while, and the principal was appalled in silence. The trio walked out of the corridor, and once again the lights in the corridor dimmed and faded. The trio ran up to the stairs, and on end of the corridor the old man once again stared with an intimidating stare on his emotionless face.

This is when the horror movie advertisement crumbles. Suddenly a girl with red dress appears and asking the audience if they are interested with the story. Unexpectedly, the setting changes into a movie cinema, where the girl appears in a casual clothing. The woman started advertising a new system the cinema had implemented. Advertising a lame horror movie is still fine, but to elongate it with a completely different product is outrageous. Not only the advertisement has no relation whatsoever, the latter advertisement is even longer than the former. At the end of the advertisement, the old mysterious man seen on the previous advertisement appears and says "Nonton filmnya!" with the girl supporting his statement.

This is a pathetic advertisement. It doesn't conjure any image of an epic horror movie that will strike fear in the hearts of the audience. First, the horror movie doesn't even make sense and doesn't look intimidating at all. Second, the latter advertisement ruins the whole image of the horror movie and it doesn't even relate to a horror movie. This kind of advertisement depicts the degradation of media. Advertisement is everywhere. It is displayed anywhere even in the inappropriate place and time. The purpose of advertisement is no longer to educate and inform its audience, but to brainwash and define concepts and terms for society.

The Vision of Reality

2008-05-04T00:43:00.007+07:00

Let us not forget another form of media, the proof of humans' creativity, called novels.
A written literature which consists of nicely put words and touching lessons
Who says that only Western literature can create a huge impact to this Earth?
I, as an Indonesian, proudly present an Indonesian novel that touches the heart of many...
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Chapter 2: Laksar Pelangi (Rainbow's Army)
- a novel that motivates and makes you feel sinful if you don't appreciate life.

We are might be bored with novels about friendship where controversies arise and ceases in the end. Although it might be endearing, such works does not truly open our eyes to the friendship circle we lived in. Let say that they are utterly fictional.

Laksar Pelangi, however, tells us about the life of 11 students (classmates) from unfortunate backgrounds who study at a provincial school. Written in the pages are their relentless journey to search for knowledge and dreams. What makes this book special is the fact that the story is based on a true story of the author itself! Some people might grasp it incredulously because the event is too tragic or too fictional to be true.

Lintang, one of the student, never skip a day of school even though he must bike for 40km to go to school everyday. He still comes even when all they did at school is singing a song for a festival. When he went home (another 40km) he help his dad as a human labor and can only study, using an oil lamp, when everyone have slept. Yet, he realizes that he is a natural genius; an Einstein and Archimedes who lived in a unfortunate village. Even in one scene, he dares to rebut a scientific analysis of a PhD Physician. This character truly amazes me. His intelligence has opened his friends' eyes and see that they can have a dream about their future, instead of continuing their dads' path as labors.

Mahar, another student, is gifted in arts. His creative mind has make their school to achieve the 1st place during an Independence Day competition. And the materials used are not festive either. His scatter-brained persona and vivid imaginations had once lead him to believe in paranormal activities, which sometimes provide some scientific proof on some myths - a somewhat myth-busters. Readers will be surprised with how these poor students can change the society where they lived in, the society of Bangka Belitong (a town in Sumatra)

Aside from these two are other students with unique, yet not as significant as Mahar and Lintang. Altogether, with their different dreams and ambitions, they build up a tight pact and make every events in their life meaningful and memorable.

This first book of the tetralogy is narrated by the author himself, one of the 11 students. Although he seems very insignificant throughout the story, readers should realize that every single detail is sophisticatedly described and the flow of words is just....amazing. When reading this novel, readers will feel as if they see the scenes with their own eyes. Maybe it seems like an exaggeration, but it is true.

I honestly cannot say much about the details, since every single pages consists of sentences you don't want to be spoiled with. As the back of the book says: this book is dedicated to those who believe in the magic of childhood and to those who trust a miraculous door that can change the future, known as education.

This book has been commented and praised by Indonesian well known authors, as well as other public figures. They keep on stating how this book is full of emotions and originality. The author is even invited to Kick Andy (Indonesia's Oprah) and is reunited with the characters in the book - his teacher and friends.

All of us will witness the ironic life of these students. Who would expect that their future is not as it is expected as what they have shown during their school life? It may seem bitter to be told about, but it truly is...a vision of reality. Yet, when everything goes wrong, friends will always be there to help us with our dilemma!

This is why, high school is the best period of our life! savor them... *cheers*

-it seems that this novel is going to be filmed too! -

Idolized Superhero with Wicked Computer Effects

2008-05-03T04:58:00.002+07:00

“Idolized Superhero with Wicked Computer Effects” 02-05-08

There is for all time a superhero within us that we admire as a child since our eyes have set upon one of the media. May it be actual people such as a hardworking father, a loving mother, your mathematics teacher, or people in the past who have contributed to society in the past such as the wise Confucious, Isaac Newton (Father of Modern Physics) and many others, or the typical fictional superhero that media has greatly enhanced in making it such a realistic figure such as Spider-Man.

I, myself have been endowed and inspired by many characters that might and most probably did shape me to the person I am presently. I revere my mathematics teacher, Thomas Wiryanto, who have such a great influence in teaching and telling me how we should deal with life (an of course the mathematics side of it), I adore John von Neumann (1903-1957) a mathematician who is illustrious for his contribution of the ‘Game Theory’ (theory of life expressed into mathematics – well, he tried, and was very much complex) and from the fictional perspective, I idolize the recent big hit in the blockbusters, Ironman.

Marvel Productions have yet again generated a realistic interpretation of a mere comic strip through the use of high technological media. Other productions include the X-Men Trilogy, Spider-Man Trilogy (soon to be Quadrilogy) the Hulk, and many more Marvel characters. Ironman is currently the latest production with the remake of Incredible Hulk on its way.

Ironman, like any other Marvel superheroes, concerns with the story of how one became a hero. Protagonist Tony Stark was renowned to be the owner of Stark Industries, producers of the best, most hi-tech weaponries a country can ask for. The story started with him being captured by “terrorists” and was forced to build a weapon. He was astounded after his traumatic experience in Gulmira, Afghanistan that the weapons he produced are bought to kill people and sadly, Americans. Determined to change the principle of his industries through his moral consciousness, he stopped the company’s production, isolated himself into creating something to destroy all his weapons manufactured. His greatest challenge was to face what he created falling into the wrong hands.

As an entirety, the movie is filled with wicked computer effects that rendered within the scenes and has captured many audiences into being enthralled by such high technology. One of the accomplishments is due to the protagonist itself which was described to be this hi-tech geek graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a billionaire that has helped made the storyline flow as if he was the genius in making such technology.

One of the scenes that strike my with amazement was the part where he created his “heart” through the use of scientific ingeniousness by injecting his nervous system with a modified techno-organic virus to save his own life and thus his circular light in his chest that is said to generate 3 gigawatts of energy to prolong his dying body. (A lightning alone is approximately 1.21 gigawatts). If anyone could build that right this moment in time, they can be billionaires like Tony Stark himself for global energy resources are dilapidating.

There are several reasons why I idolize Ironman. One of the fact is that he is a billionaire (that is a lot of money, everyone wants to be wealthy), he graduated from an Ivy League MIT with magna cum laude and that he is not one of those superheroes who has naturally gained “superpowers” such as Spiderman, yet he is a self-made superhero. *Yes I know, all the descriptions in the last paragraph are realistic fiction, but nonetheless, I don’t mind idolizing fictional characters, everyone does that*

There are hints that the movie showed to insinuate a sequel to this wicked geeky movie. The fact that in the Marvel comics, James Rhodes (the Air Force Military partner) will become WarMachine due to Tony Stark’s declining lifestyle of both financially and biologically, there was this particular scene where Rhodes in the movie almost took the Mark I armor, second prototype of Ironman but specifically said, “Maybe next time, baby”

It’s a must-watch movie especially to all those physics, chemistry and biology geeks and those who especially adore outstanding computer effects that has enhanced media to the next level.

Thus, ~~Tuesday’s~~ Saturday with Jesse – What Would Jessica Do?

Media: Something Everything Is...

2008-04-27T22:41:00.001+07:00

“Media: Something Everything Is…” 27-04-08

As they say that the definition and meanings of certain vocabularies change through time, the understanding of the word media on present day has also been slightly converted. Taking back to the early twentieth century, media is known to be the plural form of medium where medium means something. To elaborate on the vagueness of a medium, it is basically an object which is generated from ideas or information. As medium is considered to be single information, media is considered to be massive information. With this axiom deliberated, we can assume that everything around us is basically media, and in this reality, it is.

The forms of media has not just changed within time but has also grown and become miscellaneous in making the world smaller and smaller. From the times of which information was passed down through teachings and Chinese whispers, became more creative through the use of engraving in stone tablets and scrolls, a few decades later evolved into newspapers and in today’s world, we can see that information has been vastly portrayed through computers, books, television, radio and even handphones. We are constantly viewing some things (taking it back from its actual definition) and media is not just news or advertisement (people are usually mistaken in this) but anything that encompass information or ideas of any kind. Thus, even children’s books and movies are media, textbooks are media and taking the definition to the extreme, even the calendar should be a media.

It is not peculiar in knowing that media has such a great affect upon viewers, knowing that media surrounds us all the time. One of the most reckoned media, advertisement has been notorious in depreciating society’s morality and ethics, plays a huge role on media in even bluffing consumers to buy products. But we are obligated in these things that the world surrounds us with; lies, deception and trickery’s in the manipulation of information.

To close the introduction of media, I would just like to say not to consider those remarks made by people through products and such; know that everything is advertised and that everyone is constantly giving information in all sorts of ways to convince such that our minds are molded into it. Beware; our study of media is to look at things not just from what it is showing but from what it is not showing and abstractly, the hidden messages.

*Aside from a brief history and explanation of the actually entity a media is, the next few blogs would be analysis of different medias, responses and hopefully, see the hidden side of everything.

“The medium is the message.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), "Understanding Media", 1964

“The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.”

Al Franken, "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them", 2003

Thus, ~~Tuesday’s~~ Sunday with Jesse – What Would Jessica Do?

When Two Chinese Action Actors Collaborate...

2008-04-27T20:45:00.006+07:00

It has been a long time since I have blogged here...

I have returned and starting from now I will bring to you synopsis of the media world around us!!

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Chapter 1: Forbidden Kingdom - the path is unsafe, the place is unknown, the journey is unbelievable

Through the Drunken Master tetralogy and The One we have recognized the adroit martial artist who is short, yet swift - Jet Li. And through Police Story trilogy, Medallion, and Rush Hour we have witness the humorous and robust Jackie Chan, who is well known for its non-stunt man actions. Those two have their own debut which lead them to fame and glory, but have you ever seen them act together? The Forbidden Kingdom gives you the answer!

The Forbidden Kingdom is about Jason Tripitikas, a kungfu-obsessed American teen who embarked a journey to China. With the help of martial artists warriors (Jackie Chan) he is on a mission to emancipate the Monkey King (Jet Li). Throughout the journey, Jason learns that kungfu is not as epic as it is described in comic books nor video games.

As a whole, this movie imbues perfection in terms of story line and visualization of scenes. This is because the setting has captured the audience's attention and brought them to a typical yet thrilling world of kungfu. Such achievement is also supported with the choice of casts and their position within the storyline. Jackie Chan gives the humorous ambiance along with his symbolical martial art style - a drunken master. Jet Li provides the exhilaration of action movies with his originality of kungfu. It is enjoyable to see how Jackie Chan's carefree attitude collides with Jet Li's serious nature. Not only they create a must-watch fighting scenes and humor, but there are times when they send a word of wisdom to the audience - typical Chinese movies.

However, the portrayal of a perfect Chinese action movie is disillusioning, to some people, because of a Western cast as the main character. Jason Tripitikas, played by Michael Angarano (Sky High), caused the story to mostly revolve around his naiveness; resulting a minimized action scenes. However, other viewers might see this as a reminiscences of old American martial art movies due to his facial resemblance to past's actors. It's all about perspective.

Rumor had said that Jackie Chen was first displeased with the script. Maybe it is because the storyline is distorted by Western movie cultures.

The fact that it is make to be watched by everyone caused the nonexistence of gore killing scenes. Yet, several swear words are said, possibly to give the antagonistic feeling. The Forbidden Kingdom labeled as PG-13.

The type of jokes in this movie are classic Jackie Chan jokes: twisting other character's sentences and playing around with his enemy during battles. Jet Li also displays his wittiness as the Monkey King. The funniest scene in this movie, for me, is when Jackie Chen tries to summon rain but what sprinkles him is not rain but Jet Li's urine :)

"Jason Tripitikas: He needs wine. It's his elixir.
Medicine Monk: We will send a walking monk.
Lu Yan (Jackie Chan): Can't you send a running monk?

Although this movie possesses a Western movie cliche, it did not hide the amazing collaboration of Jackie Chan and Jet Li but make the most out of it instead. What is disappointing is the cut (or badly edited) scenes. The anti-climax is also very brief and cliche as well. But nonetheless, it is a recommendable movie to those Jackie Chan and Jet Li lovers. But don't set a high expectation when watching it! I would rate this movie 8 / 10...

DaNte's Post - the newest!

2008-04-27T08:54:00.003+07:00

DaNte's Post
27-04-2008

Hey everyone! DaNte's posts are back! Yeah! Aren't you guys happy? So anyway, since it is a new term in the wonderful world of IB, there will be a new topic as well. We are currently studying about media and its dreadful effects to the society! Bad bad advertisements. However media is not only about advertisements. Turns out it is about movies and TV shows as well! The blog topic for this term is commenting about the medias that we are engaged with recently. Hence, we will be talking about movies, advertisements, TV shows and many more. Us prodigious Miss Jessica's A2 English HL class will show you the true power and the heinous purposes and meanings of the MEDIA!!! *dum dum dum*

STAR MILD: ''MORE TASTE! MORE OBSESSED!''

A few weeks ago (when I was still in my prime condition. No spots or poxes) when I was on the way home, I saw an advertisement on a huge billboard in front of me. The advertisement was, not surprisingly, a cigarette advertisement. The brand for that particular cigarette was Star Mild, the one where they always question you with "What's your obsession?". The advertisement I witnessed was a newer product of the Star Mild cigarette. It portrays a picture of a man pushing away another man (who is in the advertisement of the previous Star Mild product) to the edge. On the advertisement were inscribed "Lebih Punya Taste! Lebih Terobsesi!" which means: "More Taste! More Obsessed!". On the left corner, in tiny words, were inscribed the hazards of smoking.

This is absurd. Really. This is absurdly preposterous. I mean, what the hell?! "More Taste, More Obsessed"? What kind of fricking advertisement was that! Well, it is like saying: This cigarette is tastier than the others, you'll get more addicted with this! The advertisement has a subliminal message of making people addicted more to smoke by instilling the word 'obsessed' in their minds. Star Mild is probably insane. Looking at other cigarette ads, I haven't seen one who tells the audience to get addicted to cigarette, or maybe they didn't say it blatantly. Luckily, children may not understand this message clearly. But for bright and astute teenagers such as me, it might have an impact on our lifestyle. We might think: cigarette - obsession - addiction - trend - cool. This is really devastating. Imagine the increasing number of smoking-addicted teenagers if they think this way. So be very careful when seeing these cigarette ads.

Do not succumb into the temptation to be 'cool' or 'trendy' by smoking. It is bad, my friends. There are unwanted health consequences by smoking, so you mustn't fall for the euphemistic language of advertisement. They are just covering the hazards of smoking! Beware of the evils of advertisement. They are liars! WASPADA! WASPADA! (Beware! Beware!)

DaNte's Post: 9th for 3rd Term

2008-03-07T23:11:00.004+07:00

DaNte's Post

07-02-2008
(11:12 PM)

Yes I just finished playing Dota! The result: ABSOLUTE DEFEAT! Damn Hendru for being an ATM machine. If the next day is holiday, the best thing to do the night before is PLAY DOTA ALL NIGHT LONGGGGGG!!! Nah, I'm not that much of a dork...

Erratic Picture of the Day (again)

Strange Facts!

In 1958 the US sent two mice called Laska and Benjy into space.

Word of the Day (Again)

bounteous (adj) - giving or disposed to give freely; generous; liberal.

Topic of the Day (Again)

Well, I just finished playing Dota and I still don't know what to write. Maybe this post is going to be another random babbling from me. No! Random babbling is bad... I should come up with something... Hmm... I wonder what is interesting to write for a post...

To get an idea for my blog post, I asked a friend of mine in MSN. His name is Comeback Kid. So here goes:

me: hey, I don't know what to write for my blog
Comeback Kid (CK): Huh? since when did you blog
me: I'm in Ms. Jess's class
CK: OH yeah! A1 or A2?
me: A@
me: A2
CK: hmmm
CK: MARSHALL'S PIMPINESS!!!
me: Uh...
CK: MARSHALL'S PIMPINESS!!!
me: okay... what about the pimpiness?
CK: MARSHALL'S PIMPINESS!!!
me: ........ okay fine but you help me. Give me a testimonial about Marshall
CK: okay... actually I can't... I wouldn't know what to write either
me: - -"
CK: MARSHALL'S PIMPINESS!!!

Okay the conversation wasn't exactly like that, but sort of. Anyways, so I'm still stuck here all alone and it's 12:04 AM already. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WRITE! Oh yeah, I got one thing that I want to write.

I hate the current Naruto episodes. They suck! All they do is waste chapters while leaving readers in curiosity and suspense. First Sasuke was 'fighting' Itachi, and Itachi was stabbed, but turns out Sasuke was hit by a genjutsu (illusion). Sasuke then somehow appeared behind Itachi and stabbed him (he backstabbed him... ha-ha-ha get it?). Then it TURNS OUT (AGAIN) that it was an illusion. Finally they fight for real. Sasuke was striving hard to defend himself, and finally Itachi got him and the chapter ended by him plucking out Sasuke's eyes. BUT it TURNS OUT AGAIN THAT IT WAS A FRICKING ILLUSION!!!!!! )($#*@()$_*#@_!!!! Then they talk-talk-talk and then Itachi used Amaterasu... and it seemed that Sasuke died. BUT THEN IT TURNS OUT SASUKE WAS USING A REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUE OF SOME SORT THAT HE GOT FROM OROCHIMARU _)$#(_$)#@*$_()*#!)$!!!!!

The point is: I hate the recent Naruto manga chapters

Joke of the Day

A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.

She replied in a huff, "I wish you guys could get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you."

DaNte's Post: 8th for 3rd Term

2008-03-07T18:54:00.004+07:00

DaNte's Post!

07-03-2008

Sorry I didn't post on time last weeK! There's so much stuff to do (play Dota, open Facebook, chat with friends, etc) and I was doing my homework and assignments! Anyways, so tonight (hopefully) I will post 2 posts! Whee!

Erratic Picture of the Day

I don't know if that's true or not, but that's AWESOME! I should definitely go there as a refugee. (joking!!!!)

Strange Facts

No word in the the English dictionary rhymes with "MONTH"

Word of the Day

Ruminate (v) - to meditate, ponder

Topic of The Day

Hmm! It's another blog post, and I really don't know what to write (as always). So for this post let me just tell you some things about myself. My name is Edward Bud... :D nah, just kidding. Anyways, sometimes when unfortunate things happen, I just want to spill every single feeling into a blog post. But, the events occur anachronistically, and later I don't feel like writing anymore. Its just hard sometimes to bear misfortunes all by yourself. You just hope someone will catch you when you fall. However due to this unjust world and its vile denizens, we don't always get what we want. *Sigh*

I know, I know this is quite a depressing topic, but I've just been thinking to write this from last week, you know. Anyway don't you think it's easier if you could erase any memory in your brain? For instance if you want to forget about a traumatic experience, you can just forget about it and the thought of that trauma will not emerge anymore. Yeah it's nice to dream but I have to get real!

Lets move on from such a lugubrious conversation! Anyways there has been 3 birthday parties for 3 weeks in a row. Some people are not able to come to some of the birthday parties because their parents don't allow them to go that often. That sucks! We need more people in the party so it will be crowded and fun! But then again, some people are shy and they kept quite when the MC tells them to do stuff or something. Ugh we need more ME! I am fun! But then again if there are a lot of Me's, the global temperature will rise thus the global warming issue will be more severe.

I got to tell you about this stupid friend of mine. This is a big clue, he is in my physics class and his hair is NOT BLACK. So what he did is he pulled a measuring tape (the measuring device where you have to pull this tape to know the length and all) to TAKE the tape. It is like pulling a ball of string to get the ball. Oh yeah, my physics teacher is leaving. Great. He's such an enlightened and fun teacher. And he has an aerodynamic and stylish hair. Oh come on! Who's going to teach physics next year?! I don't want the other teacher to teach my class... He's... weird.

I'm in need of a new phone here. My phone kind of sucks. It's slow, has no camera, and battery life kind of sucks. However it's kind of an okay phone actually. I'm just kind of a materialistic person :P. Ugh, bad attribute of mine. Personally I think I prefer Nokia more than Sony Ericsson. Probably it's because I used Nokia longer than Sony Ericsson. The problem is, Nokia phones are relatively more expensive than SE. SE phones are decent quality with an affordable price. Nokia phones are money drainers. They're just like vacuum cleaners. They clean your wallet well.

Anyway, enough of my random babbling for tonight, I'm gonna play dota again now, CHAO! :D

Joke of the Day

The Marriage-Go-Round

There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman:
Before marriage and after marriage.

Married men live longer than single men.
But married men are a lot more willing to die.

DaNte's Post 7th for 3rd Term

2008-02-25T21:11:00.004+07:00

DaNte's Post

25-02-2008

Happy birthday to Stephanie T., William D., Fo Vania and Jessica T.! This upcoming Saturday all Indonesian IB schools will be attending the TOK conference crap... Blah... so boring. Then the next morning at 7 I must assemble in school to go to this community service... I also have to do my EE... Ugh... I just got a pretty bad grade for Physics Test... Anyhow, I must not be enervated! I shall exult and be grateful of what I have got!

Erratic Picture of the Day

Hahahahaha!

Strange Facts!

A headache and inflammatory pain can be reduced by eating 20 tart cherries

Word of the Day

Voluptuous (adj.) - relating or characterized by luxury or sensual pleasure

Topic of the Day

Why Indonesia Dwells in Misery

Yes, I have decided to pick this controversial topic due to a folly and horrible moment I experienced yesterday. So anyway, I had a drum grade test in Jln. Gatot Subroto. My parents were gone, and I have no driver available on weekends. So the only option is Taxi! Yay! So I told my gardener to find me a cab. The test was 11.30 by the way, and I have to be there in 11.00. Finally my gardener got me a cab approximately 10.30, and the cab wasn't Blue Bird. For your own safety and sake, PLEASE never use any other taxis other than the Blue Bird Group. NO ONE can guarantee your safety if you ride other taxis. Anyways, so yeah, I rode the taxi anyway, since there was no other choice and I'm rushing. Due to my fatigue and sleep deprivation, I fell asleep in the cab. THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I'VE DONE!!! Remember that the test was in GATOT SUBROTO, and when I woke up, I was in TEBET!!! Which is quite far from GATOT SUBROTO!!! Curses! $(#@*$@#()Yes, I have decided to pick this controversial topic due to a folly and horrible moment I experienced yesterday. So anyway, I had a drum grade test in Jln. Gatot Subroto. My parents were gone, and I have no driver available on weekends. So the only option is Taxi! Yay! So I told my gardener to find me a cab. The test was 11.30 by the way, and I have to be there in 11.00. Finally my gardener got me a cab approximately 10.30, and the cab wasn't Blue Bird. For your own safety and sake, PLEASE never use any other taxis other than the Blue Bird Group. NO ONE can guarantee your safety if you ride other taxis. Anyways, so yeah, I rode the taxi anyway, since there was no other choice and I'm rushing. Due to my fatigue and sleep deprivation, I fell asleep in the cab. THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I'VE DONE!!! Remember that the test was in GATOT SUBROTO, and when I woke up, I was in TEBET!!! Which is quite far from GATOT SUBROTO!!! Curses! $(#@*$@#()$&@()*!!!!!! Lucky I was able to manage my anger otherwise I would've punched the friggin driver and left the cab. I was almost yelling when I was talkin to him. I had to pay around 20 thousand more than what I should have payed. Damn stupid driver. Then I told him to stop at the nearest crossing bridge and I had to walk. Since that catastrophic, menacing and unfortunate event my day hasn't been so good, and during the test I made couple mistakes. #)(*@)($*#@)$*!
amp;@()*!!!!!! Lucky I was able to manage my anger otherwise I would've punched the friggin driver and left the cab. I was almost yelling when I was talkin to him. I had to pay around 20 thousand more than what I should have payed. Damn stupid driver. Then I told him to stop at the nearest crossing bridge and I had to walk. Since that catastrophic, menacing and unfortunate event my day hasn't been so good, and during the test I made couple mistakes. #)(*@)($*#@)$*!

Liars. Cheaters. Fakers. That's what our country's full of. Visit Indonesia 2008 my a$!!! C'mon, if taxi drivers are like this, how the hell are tourists supposed to go traveling in Indonesia with absolute security? Well, it was sort of my folly too, to sleep in the cab. Never do that! Especially when the cab is not from a well known company. Indonesia's trapped in destitution and misery because people do not want to work honestly and they always want the easy way. Indonesians also never try to be different from everyone else. Their paradigm is "oh, if he's doing it, then I'll do it too!". Oh yeah, forgot to tell you another reason why Indonesia sucks. Later that day I went to Kelapa Gading to visit my aunt. During the trip, the road was CRAP. I mean, ABSOLUTE CRAP! The CRAPPIEST OUT OF THE KING OF THE CRAPPIEST CRAP!!! Okay, I'm not making sense. I'm just stressed out at the fact that the road there was really bad. The holes were about the size of a school table with a depth of around 20-30 cm deep. That's really bad. And to make it worse, it's not just a patch. Its like the road for the next 30 meters are like that!!! WHAT THE HELL DO WE PAY THE FRIGGIN TAX FOR?!?! Seriously. Most leaders of Indonesia is MYOPIC AND SELF CENTERED! How can we grow if we don't solve the simplest problems in our country? How can WE FIX OUR COUNTRY IF WE DON'T START BEING HONEST TO EACH OTHER!!!

I apologize for mocking my home country, but I really think this issue should be addressed. If anyone is reading this post, HEED THESE WORDS! BE HONEST TO EACH OTHER ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE DOING YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES! INDONESIAN GOVERNMENTS, PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT OUR BELOVED INDONESIA!!! OUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT.... OUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT..... YE YE YE YA YE YE YA YA! okay I'm being random and not making sense at all. This is Alpha 06, over and out.

Joke of the Day

Sour Grapes?

A duck walks into a bar. Cutest little duck you've ever seen. He walks up to the bartender and asks, "You got any grapes?"

The bartender says, "No, we don't have any grapes." The duck walks out.

The next day, the same duck walks in and goes up to the bartender. The duck says, "Got any grapes?"

The bartender says, "Look, I told ya yesterday we ain't got no grapes." The duck walks out.

The next day, here comes the duck, up to the bartender. The bartender looks at him, and asks, "What'll it be today?"

The duck says, "Got any grapes?"

The bartender is pissed now, and he says, "Look pal, you come in here one more time and ask for grapes, I'm gonna nail your beak to the bar! You hear me!?" The duck walks out.

The next day, same duck comes right up to the bartender. The bartender looks at him across the bar and says, "Yeah?"

The duck says, "Got any nails?"

The bartender, kinda confused says, "No."

The duck says, "Got any grapes?"

A Spectacular Weekend: Nervousness, Smile, Tears - [The 18th Blog]

2008-02-17T16:39:00.009+07:00

****************************************************************************** Bahasa of the Day

Rekayasa - A planned and fake event ******************************************************************************

Ah, procrastination is in the air. It has been weeks since I haven't posted any blog and without realizing it, it's another weekend.

Life is sad when our hopes are absorbed away by our false assumption of failing. This is suffered by me for years and it keeps haunting me forevermore~ *random*

Anyhow, this week has been a relaxing week. This year's Valentine's Day is an okay one; I am still single and I am proud of it! Looting chocolate from friends was worth savored for. Last Friday I went to this Indonesian event regarding an appreciation towards Indonesian most beloved poet: Sapardi Djoko Damono. It was awesome! I get the chance to meet and take pictures with him! *but I blinked in the picture, sigh* The show started at eight, but I arrived at home at two in the morning, since Gary and Karina kidnapped me to go to eX at midnight to eat dinner. As i entered my room I, literally, fainted on my bed until morning.

Six hours later, I went to badminton practice as usual. I received my badminton uniform with my name envisaged on its back. Juan misprinted Jesse's name and when he gave it too Jesse, the name on the back is spelled "Yesse" instead. Juan felt really bad for it and we all laugh. It was hilarious.

During the practice, however, Pak Mikoyan (our coach) announced to us that I will participate in this BBS cup tournament next Friday. I was happy about it since I really need to train my mental (extreme field fright). The thing is, I was playing doubles with my best friend and it's gonna be a nightmare! We haven't practiced together for ages! It makes me panic even until now.

Kicking away those stressfulness, I went to Supermall with Vania to fix our rackets and to loiter around for a short amount of time. Just as I went home, Karina sms-ed me and asked me to the mall to have a movie-marathon, and she's on her way to me house. It was so sudden, I immediately took the quickest shower I ever had. The movie-marathon was worthed though. We watched "Jumper" and this Indonesian movie entitled "Love."

Jumper was great, the second half of the movie was full of suspense. The scene where the main character jumped, with an annoying character to the top of Sphinx and leave him, was entertaining. The movie also makes me imagine what would I do if I have that power (Karina wants to rob LV hehe). This is a must watched movie people! I will not write the summary of this movie since it might spoil the plot. Besides, I am going to write a lot about the Indonesian movie.

Love is a very dramatic movie. Why? Because it made Karina cried and made me almost cried. Although I think this movie was inspired from various love movies such as 50 First Dates and A Walk to Remember, the playwright endows a contribution that makes this movie high quality and doesn't look plagiarized (usually, Indonesia plagiarized movie look suck). Just a summary, this movie talks about five couples with different love background, and how their love is depicted through their worst time and controversies (or should I say tragic?). The different love backgrounds are: having different wealth status, a deadly illness, Alzheimer disease, affair, and been betrayed. Love will find a way in them, even though not all true love ends happily ever after. What I adored from this movie is the way they shoot it. These five couples are connected somehow even though they don't know each other (I don't know how to explain verbally, that is why you should watch it in order to get what I mean). The reason why I recommend you to watch it is not because of the plot alone, but because of the casts as well. All the casts in this movie are well-known and experienced Indonesian actors and actresses; some of them even considered as legends. For those Indonesian who read this blog, these casts are: Luna Maya, Darius, Acha, Irwansyah, Wulan Guritno, etc. Oh yeah, the soundtrack and background songs are arranged by Erwin Gutawa as well! I am so going to buy the DVD when it's released! This is the best Indonesian movie so far! Hopefully, this movie marks the beginning of the rise of Indonesia's filming agencies.

I love this weekend.

DaNte's Post 6th for 3rd term

2008-02-17T12:06:00.004+07:00

DaNte's Post

17-02-2008

Happy Valentine's Day... bla3 okay whatever, joy to the couples and catastrophe for singles. At least I got something from my parents. This Saturday was allright, but part of it sucks. Anyhow, life goes on, and here's another ass-kicking post from me ;P (joking). By the way, prepare lots of presents for the 4 people who's having their birthday next week!

Erratic Picture of the Day

Beat that Yoga!

Strange Facts!

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapon combined. Holy #*$@!

Word of the Day

avarice (n) - extreme greed for wealth or material gain

Topic of the Day

Love?

Valentine's Day! Love is in the air... couples are holding hands and being mushy and corny (not horny, well maybe some). It's a nice sight, seeing everyone loving each other from the bottom of their hearts (hopefully) or crushes giving their sweethearts chocolates with fascinating aesthetic design or bouquets of roses or flowers. However, not everyone is always happy in Valentine's Day. Rejection, loneliness, depression, hate, and others still exists in Valentine's Day. Thank God in our grade there's no fights or huge conflict between couples or whatever (I think). Valentine's Day is supposed to be a joyful day for lovers and other people as well. After all, all of us need love , care and affection.

At some point in life, some of us will wonder why do we love? I think everyone will think of this, especially those who are melancholic or pessimistic. If we experience heartbreak, rejection, loneliness, we all stumble upon that question. However, we are all helpless creatures who can't help ourselves from falling in love. We can, actually, but it's just hard. Personally, I don't think you can control your feelings. Everyone falls in love once in a while. But, I have to agree that love sometimes sucks. A famous quote I saw once is "When you love someone you gave them the power to hurt you", which is very true. The person you love can easily break your heart. Love is painful, most of the time. That's why we should carefully choose someone we love, but then again, it's hard to control our feelings.

Why do we love anyway? Because God created us to love. Just like His famous commandment: "Love everyone and your enemies", we are told to love everyone in our lives. Well, it's literally impossible to love everyone we see, but what He meant is just be nice to everyone. However, personally I don't know why God created 'love' and 'emotions' when sometimes it's better not to love or care at all. When we are in a state of heartbreak, the term 'love never fails' is just mere bullcrap, let alone 'love your enemies'. Really, I don't get why God created emotions. But, who am I to question God's will or plan? So, I guess all we have to do is 'bite the bullet' of heartbreak and pain.

I am sorry for my dour depiction of love. Love is not bad at all actually, if we love the right person at the right time. To be honest, love is actually one of the major motivation that I have. I remember trying really hard to get my body shaped because a girl I loved told me to. It was funny. Love can actually be a big motivation for some of us. And off course, love makes us fly. We flyyyy higggghhhhhh beyond the skies and the stars if we fall in love. Especially when the person we love responds to our love. You feel like the whole world is yours. Anyway, I won't spoil all the awesome things about love to all of you. Go feel it yourself!

When you love someone, choose carefully. Let me say this emphatically: CHOOSE CAREFULLY. If you fall in love with someone, it might be hard to get over them. You have to be able to control your emotions and see if that person fits your description of a 'lover'. Love in movies or fairy tales or stories are mostly bullcrap, because they use 'love last forever' or 'true' wrongly and only to gain profit. They don't exist in real life, if they do, rarely. So, choose well.

Joke of the Day

A Member Of Airheads Synonymous

An airhead goes for a job interview in an office. The interviewer starts with the basics. "So, Miss, can you tell us your age, please?"

The airhead counts carefully on her fingers for half a minute before replying. "Um ... 22."

The interviewer tries another straightforward one to break the ice. "And can you tell us your height, please?"

The young lady stands up and produces a measuring tape from her handbag. She then traps one end under her foot and extends the tape to the top of her head. She checks the measurement and announces, "Five foot two!"

This isn't looking good so the interviewer goes for the real basics; something the she won't have to count, measure, or lookup. "Just to confirm for our records, your name please?"

The airhead bobs her head from side to side for about fifteen seconds, mouthing something silently to herself, before replying, "Mandy!"

The interviewer is completely baffled at this stage, so he asks, "What were you doing when I asked you your name?"

"Oh, that!" replies the airhead," I was just running through that song, 'Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...'."

DaNte's Post - 5th for 3rd Term

2008-02-08T13:47:00.002+07:00

DaNte's Post

08-02-2008 (again)

Yeah... It's double post time... woo hoo (very very enthusiastic)

Erratic Picture of the Day

Strange Facts!

In Illinois, the law is that a car must be driven with the steering wheel.

Word of the Day

hmm... learn 2 words in a day!

debacle (n) - failure

Topic of the Day

Reminiscence - Part 2

I remember during 8th grade, me and my friends used to go to the mall every week. My mom even got pissed at me because I go to the mall every week and spend a lot of money. I didn't, really. I spend most of my money only in the movies, and a little bit on food. Probably 100 thousand. But my allowance was pretty small at that time, so I have to preclude from being a spendthrift.

We did many things together. I remember watching a bunch of movies with them. Me, Ryan, Sylvia, Jacqueline, Swedian, Giovanni, and sometimes other people joined us. We watch some boring, crappy, yet romantic (in girl's point of view) movie such as The Phantom of The Opera, tedious-documentary movie such as Fahrenheit 9/11, and I remember watching other funny movies with them, but I can't really remember. Afterwards we probably play bowling or billiard. I remember Jacqueline and her best friend became hyper after drinking 'stuff'. It was pretty disturbing and embarrassing, yet funny at the same time. Jacqueline also told me not to tell her boyfriend (now ex) that she drank without her boyfriend's approval. She was red and her eyes were red as well. Such stupid and useless stuffs we did. Gary Kong, a now prominent brilliant, geeky and girly IB student slipped and fell once when he was going to throw a bowling ball. That was hilarious.

Oh yeah, this girl (I won't mention her name) was very, very famous during 8th grade. Everyone liked her. Even the seniors liked her! Unfortunately she just broke up with her boyfriend at that time, and she was still into her ex. I liked her too. And many more boys says so too. I remember Me, Jesse Lybianto and Gary Kong liked her at the same time, and each one of us gave her a testimonial in Friendster. People called it the "Testimonial War" or something. It was funny if I think about it now. But then after a while I was the only one left to like her. My pursue for her ended up in a debacle after she dated this dude for like what, 15 minutes? (don't worry, they got back together weeks after). That's the strange thing about girls. If you chase them too long, they'll just move on and date some other guy who barely know her well (the dude I told you previously just sms-ed her once or twice or something and they never talk, or rarely in school).

Anyways...

Time goes on, and we all landed on the 9th grade. 9th grade was more or a bit less chaotic and bizzare than 8th grade. I became close with Jacqueline's boyfriend (now ex), and this dumb guy named Jeffrey. My class, 9.4, was filled with crazy people except 2 geeks. One is previously mentioned in part 1. Yes, he is DONNY!!! *clap clap clap*. The other, Gaby.

Our class was pretty hectic. Everyday Jacqueline's boyfriend brought candies to our class, hence the nickname 'Candy Man'. He was also a hair-freak, meticulously styling his hair with wax every morning. He was a pretty lazy and very funny boy. I really liked him, and he was really fun to be with. He's a talkative person in MSN Messenger, and convivial boy in class. I remember he always make fun of this other boy in class, named Arief. No, he makes fun of everyone actually. But mostly Arief. He always call him Black Beauty, Dark Chocolate, and other things related to black due to Arief's skin color. More over, the whole class always mocks him. I know its wrong to verbally harass a student, but it was really funny and he doesn't really care about it. He cares actually, but people don't. It is sad, but amusing at the same time.

There are plenty of things that happened during grade 9 and I am eager to tell you. But I will have to continue the story later, so see you later!

Joke of the Day

A Computer With Attitude

Todd complained to his friend, "My elbow really hurts. I guess I should see a doctor." His friend offered, "Don't do that. There's a computer at the drug store that can diagnose anything quicker and cheaper than a doctor. Simply put in a sample of your urine and the computer will diagnose your problem and tell you what you can do about it. It only costs $10.00."

Todd figured he had nothing to lose, so he filled a jar with a urine sample and went to the drug store. Finding the computer, he poured in the sample and deposited the $10.00. The computer started making some noises and the various lights started flashing. After a brief pause, out popped a small slip of paper on which was printed:

You have tennis elbow
Soak your arm in warm water
Avoid heavy labor
It will be better in two weeks.

Late that evening while thinking how amazing this new technology was and how it would change medical science forever, he began to wonder if this machine could be fooled. He decided to give it a try. He mixed some tap water, a stool sample from his dog and urine samples from his wife and daughter. To top it off, he masturbated into the concoction. He went back to the drug store, located the machine, poured in the sample and deposited $10.00. The machine again made the usual noise and flashed its lights and printed out the following:

Your tap water is too hard
get a water softener.
Your dog has worms
give him dewormer medicine.
Your daughter is on drugs
put her in rehab.
Your wife is pregnant
It ain't yours----get a lawyer.
And if you don't stop jerking off,
your elbow will never get better.

DaNte's Post - 4th for 3rd Term

2008-02-08T12:10:00.001+07:00

DaNte's Post

8-2-2008

I apologize for the delayed post! Last week my neighborhood was flooded and there was blackout for 3 days. Thank God I have an aunt who lives in the Kedoya Elok Apartment, so I was allowed to sleepover at her apartment there for a night. Anyways, let's begin.

Erratic Picture of the Day

that's actually a dog... It's kind of cool, but poor dog...

Strange Facts

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they cant find any food

Word of the Day

Reprieve (v) - cancel or postpone

Topic of the Day

Reminiscence...

This reminiscence goes back around 3 to 4 years ago, where I was oblivious to a hell called the 'International Bachaleurate'. It was when smiles were upon our faces and laughter fill the hallways of the Junior School building. We were enjoying our everyday lives, yearning for the company of friends in school, hanging out in the canteen together, savoring our moments together. It was an enjoyable moment. I really wish I could go back and live in that era again. But time goes on, never to return again. The only thing I could do to satisfy my wants to go back in time is only to remind me of what I did in the past, and think of it when I am alone.

I remember when I was in 7th grade, me and my classmates used to do some very,very idiotic stuff. I barely remember what we studied, really. The only thing I remember was I think it was some shape stuff in mathematics, making some book for english, for sciences... hmm... who taught science... oh we learn about invertebrates... and uhh... that's it? Anyhow... I also remember the Food Technology teacher, Mrs. Bernadette. She used to tell us ghosts stories. Some are creepy, some are funny, some are R-rated. When me, James, and Yansen (who left SPH already) went to the Outward Bound field trip, we didn't sleep and we kept screaming "Nipple!" in the middle of the night. Some guy's bag was also drifted away by the high tide. We all ate some ham which is dominated by ants. We made some raft and when we made it to the shores, we walked on mud and someone lost his sandals.

Oh yeah, I also met Donny for the first time. Man, I was agitated the first time I look at him. He was a loquacious geeky-looking white guy. WAS. In english class, we were supposed to make a chain story, but then someone wrote explicit things and the teacher was irate. In BI class, the teacher was a murderer. She was a sadist maniac who loves to torture her students. She made us HANDwrite 50++ paragraphs with a length of the above paragraph. But anyhow, it was a memorable experience, and it was really fun being with friends at that time.

Grade 8 was pretty hectic as well, I tell you. But out of all the field trips I had (this opinion differs to people who went to the Bali trip in grade 10... Ughh... Screw William for this... haha joking) grade 8's Thailand field trip was the best. I was close with Swedian, Ryan, Sylvia, Giovanni, blah3 people who's in 8.4. It was very fun. During the field trip the girls (Sylvia, Angelica, Giovani and Jacqueline) went to the boys dorm, which is RESTRICTED. It was an infringement to the field trip rules. Oh yeah, I was very close with this super messed up, funny, chaotic girl named Jacqueline Kurniawan. The tall girl in grade 11. She's a tomboy but sometimes feminine. Anyhow, yeah we did some pretty stupid stuff in grade 8. In the field trip, Marshall and I made some very idiotic drama for the talent show. But everyone liked it.

For you who has a curious mind, let me tell you about the drama. I vaguely remember the story though. It was about a boy who had a dad, and he was a criminal of some sort. And uhh... I got a part to be this religious teacher or something... and I was supposed to sing this amusingly corny song called "Romans 16:9 Says..". I think that was the title. And I have to humiliate myself in front of the 8th and 7th graders with this ugly dance I made. I made the criminal and his son repent. I think.

Other groups' drama are crappy and not funny at all, but people laughed when we performed. Swedian was also a dork when we were in grade 8. He made some review questions before tests. Creep. I remember he dated this girl, that made him emo everyday. Really, he was a big geek/creep (I hope he won't read this post).

I could go on and on reminiscing, but I have to stop now. I'll share with you some of my past experiences next time. I enjoy telling stories of the past, because it also reminds me of what I did and the feelings I have at those moments. It is good to think about the past and enjoy yourself in those moments. Good memories should last perennially, and share it with your friends!

Joke of the Day

Advantages Of Breast Milk

The not necessarily well-prepared student sat in his life science classroom staring at a question on the final exam paper. The question directed, "Give four advantages of breast milk." What to write? He sighed, and began to scribble whatever came into his head, hoping for the best.

1. No need to boil.

2. Cats can't steal it.

3. Available whenever necessary.

So far so good -- maybe. But the exam demanded a four-part answer. Again, what to write? Once more, he sighed. He frowned. He scowled, then sighed again. But suddenly, he brightened. He grabbed his pen, and triumphantly, he scribbled his definitive answer.

4. Available in attractive containers.

Optimism Behind The Downpour [The 17th blog]

2008-02-05T18:16:00.009+07:00

*********************************************************************************** Bahasa of the Day

Perabot Rumah Tangga - household ***********************************************************************************

Rain comes and goes sporadically in Java, especially in Jakarta and its surrounding. It has been days since our school released us early due to the heavy rain that yielded a deluge within our school areal. The early release was so sudden since I was just finished watching PeHa Idol. That particular rain was unpredictable for people thought it would stayed as a soothing drizzle. As the result, most of my friends suffer lethal traffic. Angelina's car was trapped for four hours in it without moving any significant inch. My friend Ivan arrived at nine o'clock even though his bus went earlier than the others. Frederick and his brother have to stay at Imperial Aryaduta hotel and can only go home at night. While they sacrifice their time to went home, some people like Jesse and Adrian decided to sleepover at my house. The heavy traffic made picking-ups impossible.

When I watched TV right after I arrived at home (I lived in Lippo Karawaci), almost all TV stations were broadcasting the flood and traffic that occurred in Jakarta live. It really moved my heart when I see the flood that occurred in slum areas, it really did. The flood is almost 1.6 meters and it seeped through their poor houses; destroying their households, making them homeless and sick. I felt pity for them. I mean, what did they do wrong that they have to suffered a complete loss? They broke liters of sweat everyday just to earn a little money, so little that it can only afford their food for one day, and yet they have to loss everything: tangible and intangible object. And when everything is lost, they don't know what they will give to feed their family.

Note that their health condition is treated by cheap or no medication, and the flood just made it worst. Why those despicable dictators and corruptors - worst people who put their country to pitch darkness - did not crashed by this natural dilemma instead? I know that life is unfair, but this is too much.

Yet behind this misery, there is a lesson for the country. Through the innumerable damage, loss, and other problems that are caused by the rain, we hope that the government will open their eyes to this archipelago that is not treated well in terms of environment. It seems to me that the government did not put much effort in establishing cleanliness within our country. Littering trash to sewer is one of the major problems, as well as the one responsible for the fatal flood. Maybe another axion would be the less educated denizens are those who litter, yet their action is because the government did not stress the environmental awareness to them, and to us. Discussing this littering issue would be exceptionally long and I think it should be clear what I am trying to say. Indonesia has too many littering issue to be written as a blog. As Indonesians we, without a doubt, should realize our environment's pitiful status.

Maybe they think that this is unimportant but when it comes to natural disaster, the environment is the determinant. Days after this heavy rain stopped, landslide starts to occur in most villages or slum areas (yes, again, they are the victim) and took people's life. Most of them are children. In my opinion, this avoidance is the reason why Indonesia's growth is slower than any other countries. They do not know that nature holds a significant effect.

Anyhow, let's just see this rain as the time to introspect ourselves upon our action and care towards our environment. We should feel pity for the unfortunate people who are always harmed. We should also show respect to them - without their hard work we might not be able to have rice or fresh fruits! But most of all, we should lend our hands to help Indonesia into a cleaner and greener archipelago. Just like it used to be.

Scrabble-philic [The 16th blog]

2008-02-05T18:14:00.004+07:00

********************************************************************************** Bahasa of the Day

Masinis - Train driver
Insinyur - (Civil) Engineer
Pemahat - Sculptor **********************************************************************************

Life sure changes as time passes by. So does thoughts about things. I once was a boy who despise scrabble whenever my cousin took it down from his wardrobe. Without any practical proof, I tagged that game as a boring game where you only put words on a table - I was only six back then though. I saved this thought and lived with it until the day where we had our awesome retreat in the grandeur place ever!

During the free time before the curfew on our first night my friends and I played this card game called king of pigs, where whoever loses for three times must fulfill an inevitable dare from other players. It was hilarious: Mr. Owen lost and the girls told him to kiss Mr. Eric, and he did it! on the cheek! Mr. Eric suddenly stunned, and his face blushed - I am pretty sure he had sudden trauma. It was funny though. After playing it, I heard this tumult on a small round table. I went there and saw Miss Christine, Gary, Swedian, and Steph T playing speed scrabble - it was an intense game. I helped Swedian with his tiles and I found it was quite fun. So I joined them and we have five-men speed scrabble, and guess what? I won in my first game with just short and simple words. I guess that's what I called beginner's luck. We kept playing and even though I lose, turns out that A2 HL have the most win - 6 to 1 I think. (yay us!).

Ever since that night, my opinion about scrabble changes 180 degrees. Fortunately, there is a scrabble pandemic which attacks most of the grade eleven. We played anywhere and anytime: study periods, Mrs Judy's class, and even the hallway! Recently, we even played in the dance room that is connected with the fitness room. During workout intervals, the boys will go and play a quick speed scrabble. I slowly understand about the rules and the applicable two-letter words (can't believe that AA is a word), and I think I began to win more frequent now. Oh! this scrabble fever is actually a prelude of english-games revolution in grade eleven. Other games such as Taboo, and general knowledge game stuff began to be repopularize within our society. They got a laudable response from us.

I must admit that I love word games (Bookword, Text Twist, etc) since I was in grade nine, but I have never been addicted to it just I like I have been addicted to scrabble! I kept pulling people to play scrabble together and I even downloaded the software - very embarrassing and geeky-like. Just recently, Swedian and me also make a proposal for assembling a Scrabble Club. It got approved. It was just a silly joke we had during class, but it becomes an silly idea that works. This addiction makes me want to buy Scrabble but the Kids Station in Supermall only sell the Deluxe one, which is very expensive. I was planning to buy the Junior Scrabble, but I think the word tiles are very minimum. In the end, I will have to be patient to find the original one.

I would like too talk more about Scrabble, but I think people will puke at this entry if I do so. So, I shall end this blog by saying: I love Scrabble!!

DaNte's Post 3rd for 3rd term

2008-01-26T13:11:00.000+07:00

DaNte's Post

26-1-2007

I wonder, where's the post from the other members? Hey! Don't be lazy guys!

Erratic Picture of the Day

Mr. John Evans?

Strange Facts!

In the movie "The Matrix Reloaded" a 17 minute battle scene cost over $40 million to produce.

Word of the Day

Surreal (adj) - bizzare

Topic of the Day

The Sad Reality of Indonesian TV

"Donny! Mengapa kau begitu? Aku sangat mencitaimu Donny! Kenapa kau tega sekali meninggalkan kasihmu yang rela mati demi kamu?! (translation: Donny! Why are you like this? I love you so much Donny! Why are you so willing to leave your beloved girlfriend who would die for you?!" shouted Kasih. "Diam kamu jalang! Dasar cewek gak guna! Keluar kamu dari rumah ini! Aku sudah mempunyai kekasih yang baru yang jauh lebih cantik darimu! (translation: Shut up you who**! You useless women! Get out from my house! I already have a prettier girlfriend!" Donny yelled. Everything slowed down... Then the camera focuses on the girl. The camera zooms in to the weeping girl who barely had tears on her face, and she weeped more and fell to the floor. Then the view switches to the guy who's face was frantically mad with his eyes staring wildly at the girl.

...

Yuck

What I just wrote above, was an epitome of a Indonesian television series. If I depicted it through words, it would seem thrice better. However, I am pretty sure all of you know what I am talking about. I am sure that everyone here saw an Indonesian 'sinetron' once in their life. They are a waste of time and energy, I tell you. ALL of them have almost exactly the same storyline. Here's the storyline:

There's a girl who's position was unfortunate compared to other people. She lives with a spitfire women with her rude daughter. Either she's an adopted child or she's the maid in the house. OR there's a poor girl who lived on the streets. Note that the name of the girls have to be something beautiful (Intan, Permata, Kasih, Cinta, Candy, Berlian, etc) or something weird (Eneng), and usually the series' names are after the girl's name.
There's a boy who somehow came to her house, and both girls, the maid/adopted child and the housewife's daughter, fell in love with the boy. Or the poor girl (who dresses adequately, wear decent make ups and sometimes pretty) who lived on the streets inadvertently bumped into a rich, handsome (yeech) guy who became interested in her.
The boy have a relationship with the girl, but the evil girl along with her evil mom tries to separate the two of them. Meanwhile, the poor girl met up with the rich boy and had a relationship too! (joy - -")
The girl somehow had an accident or whatsoever and the evil girl and her evil mom rejoices. On the other hand, another rich handsome guy meets with the poor girl and flirted with her and blah blah blah ....
The girl ends up in the hospital with her boyfriend flirting disgustingly and very cheesy with her, trying to comfort her. The poor girl's boy and the flirty rich boy fought due to jealousy, and the poor girl's boy ended up in a hospital too.
The girl got out of the hospital, but then she made a foolish illogical folly that caused the boyfriend to leave her, and she cries alone in the rain... awww... while praying to Allah. or the rich boys parents was yelling at the poor girl.
Then after long long long useless series with useless additional characters either the couple reunited, or one of them died, and have a relationship with another man. The end. Yay!

I am seriously too lazy to describe the whole story of a typical Indonesian television series. ALL of them have the same story and the actors/actresses act either histrionically or act like a robot. Plus, they have terrible setting, special effects and music. I've seen a series where there's a restaurant, inside a house, and there's this very very lame stage with some lights and somehow a girl was singing and THEY EVEN HAVE A TEXT OF THE SONG!!! Another example, for years the sinetrons ALWAYS have girls crying in it with some lame slow motion effect. For years, the girls cried without tears. They NEVER cried with tears, until around 2006 the directors discovered that humans release a flow of water from their eyes when they weep. Seriously.

I pity those people who actually likes to watch some lame series which last only 5 minute and then there's a 15 minute commercial before they continue the series. Citizens of Indonesia became victims of some mindless, noneducational and morally challenged TV series which featured a tear-less cry and purple colored human blood. Indonesian producers have to redefine their works if they want to raise the quality of Indonesian television to a more suitable entertainment. The current TV series are totally useless and a big waste of time. Surely it is highly not recommended to watch Indonesian series.

The thing about the Indonesian producer is, they always copy each other's work. Everytime a new series was made, another show company copy their work. In the end, all the TV series in Indonesia all have almost exactly the same storyline with the same special effects. We need innovation! We need something morally correct! We NEED DECENT SPECIAL EFFECTS! WE DON'T NEED GIRLS WEEPING ALL THE TIME WITH SOME LAME ZOOM SLOW EFFECT MOTION!

Joke of the Day

This Is Flight Control

As the crowded airliner is about to take off, the peace is shattered by a five-year-old boy who picks that moment to throw a wild temper tantrum. No matter what his frustrated, embarrassed mother does to try to calm him down, the boy continues to scream furiously and kick the seats around him.

From the rear of the plane, an elderly man in the uniform of an Air Force General walks slowly forward up the aisle. Stopping the flustered mother with an upraised hand, the courtly, soft-spoken General leans down and, motioning toward his chest, whispers something into the boy's ear. Instantly, the boy calms down, and sits quietly as his mother fastens his seat belt.

All the other passengers are relieved and grateful; they smile and nod at the General with gestures of thanks as he slowly makes his way back to his seat.

One of the cabin attendants approaches the General. "Excuse me, Sir," she asks quietly, "but could I ask you what magic words you used on that little boy?"

The old man smiles serenely and confides, "I showed him my pilot's wings, service stars, and battle ribbons, and explained that they entitle me to throw one passenger out the plane door, on any flight I choose."

DaNte's Post - 2nd post for 3rd term

2008-01-20T09:51:00.001+07:00

DaNte's Post

20-1-2008

Hello everyone! I would like to inform you that there will be minor changes for my posts. The 'Auspicious Quote of the Day' will be changed into 'Strange Facts'. You should thank me! Your general knowledge will increase each time you read my post.

Erratic Picture of the Day

Strange Facts!

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off - it dies from starvation

Word of the Day

binaural (adj) - of or relating both ears

Topic of the Day

A Deteriorating Future

As Indonesians, we should be proud of our land. Indonesia, is known to be the largest archipelago in the world. It is one of the most lands with abundant natural resources, including oil, gold, and many other precious minerals. Compared to other beaches, Bali's beaches are far more alluring and beautiful. Not to mention the prominent diving spot in Bunaken. It was written in Time Almanac 2008 that Indonesia had a economic growth of 5.22%, making it one of the most developing countries in the world. Moreover, we are currently in the 3rd ranking for the most populated country in the world.

However, though we have abundant natural resources, copious islands, stunningly magnificent beach and sea, and vast population, our country remains in suffering. Around 11.6 million people dwells in unemployment, and millions of people lie in poverty. Corruption exists within the authorities, and many transgressors are still nowhere to be found. Many children barely gets educated, and education for the less privileged is inferior. Even though the economic growth has increased, Indonesia still faces misery.

The price of oil increases drastically recently. This sudden change has a very adverse impact on Indonesia. The price of daily needs increase, including frying oil, rice, soy beans, and many more. Ever since the increase of the daily essentials, the less privileged are striving harder to survive and feed their family. Just imagine, the price of oils rose from around 6000 rupiah to 13,000 rupiah, which is more than a 100% increase.

In the recent news, a fried snack seller committed suicide due to the increase of soy beans' price. He cannot cover the expense of selling fried snacks due to the significant price increase, and should he raise the price of his snacks, he will have no more customers. The seller chose to take a shortcut, and murdered himself.

An irony of this country is we have plenty of natural resources, but we use imported daily needs. Rice, grain, soy beans, and many more are mostly imported from foreign countries, leaving our own resources unknown. Most of the time our rigorously earned and harvested resources are exported, and the money is kept by the department. Thus the farmers are left without being paid high enough. Obviously imported things are more expensive than local products, thus the price of the resources are very high. The farmers and poor people are trapped in an impoverished state because of the selfishness of the resource agency.

We should be grateful that we are able to live our everyday life joyfully and abundantly. We can have any food that we want in an indefinite amount, and we can pay for our school tuition and buy the things we want. There are millions of unfortunate people in our country, and we should not waste our fortune.

Joke of the Day

Once there was a millionaire, who collected live alligators. He kept them in the pool in back of his mansion. The millionaire also had a beautiful daughter who was single. One day he decides to throw a huge party, and during the party he announces, "My dear guests: I have a proposition to every man here. I will give one million dollars or my daughter to the man who can swim across this pool full of alligators and emerge unharmed."

As soon as he finished his last word, there was the sound of a large SPLASH. There was one guy in the pool swimming with all the strength he could muster. The crowd cheered him on as he kept stroking. Finally, he made it to the other side unharmed. The millionaire was impressed.

He said, "My boy that was incredible! Fantastic! I didn't think it could be done! Well I must keep my end of the bargain. Which do you want, my daughter or the one million dollars?"

The guy says, "Listen, I don't want your money! And I don't want your daughter! I want the person who pushed me in the water!"

DaNte's Post - 1st for 3rd term

2008-01-13T17:46:00.000+07:00

DaNte's Post

13-01-2008

School... Urghh... *scoffs*... blah... *curses*... Nah, just kidding :P. Well, there's around 6 more terms left for IB! Woo hoo! Lucky you, I am not going to talk about the holiday because mine is well... pretty boring. My friends slept over and we did some dumb stuffs together, as usual and there's Christmas! Well I pretty much did nothing after my friends slept over, and I went to Bali a week after Christmas. I met Marino and Andreas there and we hung out in Bali. Enough babble about my holiday, it's blog time now!

Erratic Picture of the Day

....... =__="

Auspicious Quote of the Day

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."

Epictetus

Word of the Day

repugnant (adj) - extremely distasteful; unacceptable

Topic of the Day

Ahhh!!! Ghosts! Ahhh! Zombies!

"Oh my gosh! The movie was sooooo awesome!" a friend of mine said to me once. I thought of watching that movie, but only 3-5 months later I got to watch that movie. Well, I finally watched the movie. When the movie ended, somehow I got this feeling of awkwardness and grotesque inside me. "Uhhh... duuuuh...." my mind wandered aimlessly. "Damn horror Hollywood movie, now I'm feeling weirded out," I thought. It took me awhile to get my mind back online. After seeing a genocide of innocent civilians I was sort of blank and grossed out. Especially after seeing a rated R scene where a husband murdered his wife brutally and piercing her eyes with his thumbs in the process. Blegh. Well, it was a pretty good movie, I should say, for a horror genre. Ah screw this, the movie title's "28 Weeks Later". I just watched it Thursday. Yes, it's sad I know.

If you look closely the progress of movies, the horror genre is one of the most produced movies of all times. Plus, the horror genre itself is almost as old as the age of movies itself. But really, as the era goes on, horror movies aren't exactly horror movies anymore. Most have become more graphic and sanguinary with the development of Hollywood props. Some movies aren't so scary at all. They just show scenes of ghosts or monsters or whatsoever mutilating and chewing off human bodies and leave them in search of fresh new bodies. Seriously. If you're dead, then you came back alive, why the heck do you need flesh to survive? How the hell can zombies friggin tell if someone's alive or not? After all, zombies are brainless! Ghosts are dumb looking as well. And why most ghosts are female? If Hayden Panettiere or Megan Fox or Jessica Alba (which is currently pregnant T_T) or hot female actresses ever became a ghost, I hope the horror genre would be banned for eternity!

That is not the most annoying fact about horror movies. Most horror movies are like this:

Protagonist play around in an old, ancient and haunted house or someone was playing around with a friggin infectious virus or he/she was on a trip and they wind up somewhere freaky and dark
Protagonist meets the ghost in the dumb, ugly house or the person who's playing with the virus inadvertently dropped the vial that contained the virus or his/her friend was murdered in the dark mysteriously
Protagonist runs away from the ghost or the virus caused infection and finally an outbreak or the protagonist was chased by the psychotic murderer
Protagonist knows about the ghost's past or why the heck the ghost have a "GRUDGE" or the protagonist tries to survive a swarm of zombies or the protagonist found out who the murderer is (most of the time the murderer must've something to do with the protagonist, a heartbroken, depressed, emo, angered friend or a guy who was ran over by the protagonist's friend)
Protagonist gets killed by the ghost or protagonist escaped the band of zombies and fled somewhere 'safe' (at least for the episode) or the protagonist whacked the killer to save his/her friend or something and thought the murderer was dead
Ghost lives on and haunts other people or the outbreak reached other areas and caused an infection on a global scale or the murderer is still alive and keeps slaughtering the people
The producers decided to make a sequel of the friggin illogical movie, continuing the zombies who dominated the world or the murderer who somehow still lives even though they had been dead for so many times

Yes, that is the chronological order of horror movie scenes. Very intriguing isn't it? Maybe you would like me to tell the scenes of the sequel? Well, you can skim through the list above and you just known the story of the sequel! Yay!

To be honest, horror movies are so useless and noneducational. They are the abomination, or should I say, an 'infection' or 'plague' in the Hollywood movies. They only show you how to murder a person pugnaciously and barbarously, or tell you ways to get yourself haunted by some ugly long-haired ghost with a white sleeping robe (daster in Indonesian). The producers just love seeing audience living in fear and paranoid of the dark, while they gain so much money and satisfied seeing their movie conquer on the Blockbuster. What's worse, it is what mostly dominate the Hollywood.

I am writing this not to discourage or hamper you to watch horror movies. Sure, it's fun to watch it sometimes, but don't let it INFECT you or HAUNT your lives and inspire fear in your heart. They're just movies. ZOMBIES AND GHOSTS DON'T EXIST FOR HOMER'S SAKE! AT LEAST I DON'T BELIEVE SO!

Joke of the Day

Dog-gone It

A dog walks into a butcher shop with a purse attached around his neck. He walks up to the meat case and calmly sits there until it's his turn to be waited on. A man, who was already in the butcher shop, finished his purchase and noticed the dog.

The butcher leaned over the couner and asked the dog what it wanted today. The dog put his paw on the glass case in front of the ground beef, and the butcher said, "How many pounds?"

The dog barked twice, so the butcher made a package of two pounds of ground beef. He then said, "Anything else?"

The dog pointed to the pork chops, and the butcher said, "How many?"

The dog barked four times, and the butcher made up a package of four pork chops.

The dog then walked around behind the counter, so the butcher could get at the purse. The butcher took out the appropriate amount of money and tied the two packages of meat around the dog's neck. The man who had been watching all this time, decided to follow the dog.

It walked for several blocks and then trotted up to a house where it began to scratch the door to be let in. As the owner appeared at the door, the man said to him, "That's a really smart dog you have there."

The owner replied, "He's not all that smart. This is the second time this week he forgot his key."

Microscopic View of Red Rice [15th blog]

2008-01-12T22:31:00.000+07:00

************************************************************************
Bahasa of the Day

Milky Way - Bima Sakti
New Zealand - Selandia Baru ************************************************************************

When I was a child I have been introduced to different kind of rice and have consumed them innumerably. Yellow rice, Hainan rice, and Uduk rice are examples of these variants. Yet, I have never eaten red rice until several weeks ago, even when I know that such rice exists. It is then realized, through lazy research, that inside these little grains are nutritious compounds which not only covering our daily diet needs, but they also promoting our health to a higher level.

Yellow rice appears yellow because the rice grain has been mixed with turmeric; explaining such unique aroma produced by it. The red appearance in red rice, however, is by nature's gift. Though it appears as a pale color, red rice contains not only carbohydrate which supply our daily energy. It also contains fat, fiber, magnesium, phosphorus, protein, vitamin A B C, Zinc, as well as vitamin B complex which is responsible to prevent illnesses (insomnia, constipation, intestine cancer) as it contributes to our body defense. It also lowers down cholesterol and sugar level because, from what I could recalled, it acts as antioxidants: absorbing malicious bacteria and kick them out from our body. Scientifically, red rice can lowers down bad cholesterol up to 30%, and raise the good cholesterol 19%. This antioxidants role can also prevent coronary heart disease as well as cancer too.

We should not be terrified when I mentioned red rice contains fat. Not all fat is ugly, and the existence of fat is actually important to our body since it equipped us with insulation (cold-proof), buoyancy (less energy exerted during swimming), and backup energy. The 12% fat within red rice is unsaturated fat, where it won't give you such flabby appearances since it existed not as solid. The existence of flabbiness body is actually because our slow metabolism (the food you eat are converted into fat and energy, instead of energy alone). In other words, fatness occurs because we rarely do physical exercise. This is also why some people eat so much and yet they are not fat; they are gifted with high metabolism even when they do less exercise.

Again as I said before, red rice contains protein. I think this is good because as teenagers, we do need protein because this is our life's phase where we are very active and do relentless activities as well. We also need it to develop muscle either for fitness or sport purposes, and to remain as hyperactive delinquents. Thus, aside from eating eggs, why don't we add red rice as our daily diet? We get extra protein consumption without ruining our eating habit, and it tastes good.

Anthocyanin is another thing in red rice which I like the most. Originally, Anthocyanin is a pigment that is responsible to give the dark purple color in flowers or plants, which is make sense why red rice have purplish color. The spectra of this pigments differs in accordance to their pH: from reddish brown until purplish. This color gradient can be seen if you purchased red rice from different cities in Java like Sumedang, Bogor, Kadipaten, etc.

Why do I like this anthocyanin? It is because this pigment is responsible as antioxidants, anti hypertension, and most of all it enhance our sight - a very crucial and adored function for a glasses wearer like me. *You can also find anthocyanin in red wine too I think.* Maybe you will think that this pigment is not affective enough since the red color is only on the surface of the rice? Well, think again! Anthocyanin is actually covering the whole rice crops.

However, the availability of red rice in general is very scarce. Its availability in markets are so limited that the price is quite expensive than normal rice (around Rp.7000/kg). This low productivity might be caused by its crop that is classified as an upland rice. Such type of rice requires good weather, location, and even nutrients. From what I know, upland rice usually requires no water and rely on something else in order to survive, but I don't know for sure.

Red rice is an underdog rice whose healthy potentials are not recognized by the dominance due to the existence of modern food such as junk foods. The probable chance of other beneficial mysteries behind these little red grains are still unknown as well. Such anonymousness occurred because other food science aspects are more prioritized by researchers. Now after we realized the list and function of nutrients within these petite rice, I could not think a better reason why I should not consume red rice. In the end, it is all up to us to decide which food serves the most proportional nutrients for our healthy living.

Bandung Kaleidoscope [The 14th Blog]

2008-01-07T16:04:00.001+07:00

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Bahasa of The Day

Griya -[subject] - House ****************************************************************
Merry Christmas 2007 and Happy New Year 2008 !!

It has been 6 months since we started this blog and in this new year may we ameliorate our writing skill in order to enable us to write more heartbreaking and higher quality blogs.
(Not to mention our blogging diligence that must be disciplined)
:) *cheers!!* :)

Yesterday's Christmas break was not the best holiday I have ever had. Probably because our family did not do our annual December "tradition" where we usually flew off to another country or another continent for approximately two weeks. This habitual family time unfortunately cannot be held like usual due to some visa issue which disabling us from entering the country. Thus there I was, homebound and behaving like a lazy sloth who took his morning bath at three o'clock in the afternoon. Let's not talk further about it shall we. However, this holiday gives me some satisfaction because I was able to visit a city in Indonesia that I have never visited. It's quite a shame to live as an Indonesian who has visited countries in other continents, but never visit at least Indonesia's beautiful or famous cities aside from Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya.

Just a brief holiday overview, I spent my first week playing badminton with my friends, having a luncheon with Ibu Vionita and her economics students, and watching movies such as I am Legend and Warlords with them. Right before the first week ended, my homebound period began. I woke up late and all I did was reading stuffs, researching EE, and chatting with my fellow friends who were also acting like a pig. We sure shared the same pain! During the third week, just after Christmas, my parents came and we went to Bandung. This is where the, just as what you will expected from my title, insightful kaleidoscope of Bandung started!

Geographically, Bandung is a city of flower that is located in South East from Jakarta and approximately 150 kilometers (two hours journey via car). Seeing it from a map, this city is constructed with many roads and have even more street names. However, we do not have to worry about getting lost because the streets are connected to other street without any dizzying traffic rules. Its location in high terrain and near the mountain has given Bandung a cool climate (around 22 degree Celcius) along with soothing breezes and cleaner air. Bandung is the perfect city that you would visited to whenever you are tired with Jakarta's intense sun and polluted atmosphere.

Although it is named and well known as a city of flower, you will not see flowers really often in the city. Yet the florists there sold assortment of fresh flowers. After all, most of the flowers that we see in Jakarta are originated from Bandung. You can also see the flower garden in the Lembang area (30 minutes from the town), and while you are there you can also visit the famous Tangkuban Perahu mountain to enjoy a wondrous scenery and relaxing wind, as well as the hot spring 2 kilometers from the mountain.

You will not see tall and gallant buildings or even houses with complex exterior. The only tall buildings you can see is only the malls, and even most of the malls and stores are considered as wide rather than tall. Instead, you will see simple yet elegant design as well as restaurants with traditional Sundanese architectures with traditional melodies which gives you a "cultural ambiance" just by sitting there.

Bandung cuisines are heaven! You and your friend can have a culinary tour just within this city! The Sundanese food is very delicious and even in a certain restaurant they have this hybrid of Padang and buffet system where you can choose the food (per piece) that you desires, along with a stand where you can order traditional mini-cuisines such as Rujak and Es Cendol, and also a Lalapan (vegetables) stand where you have a veggie buffet and for free! My restaurant preference in Bandung would be Dapurku in Lembong street. I forgot what was it called, but there was this delicious chicken that I ate with my parents in other restaurant and you should try it (it starts with a K). However, if you are a chili lover you might get disappointed because the chili (sambel ulek) in Bandung are generally salty. This mismatch of taste might affect your appetite and response towards the culinary itself. (Some restaurant can give you very spicy chili if you ask them to do so).

Aside from the cultural coziness, there are also restaurants suitable for hanging out with friends or relatives that is located in Dago Atas area. One of the restaurant is called The Valley. They served cliche contemporary cuisines such as steaks, truffle soup, Japanese food, sop buntut, cocktails, wine, etc. In my opinion, the taste of the food is satisfying but not very high class. But the price of the food are quite expensive (the main course costs around 50.000 and above). But do not feel like you are being ripped by them. My Bandung friend told me that in this Dago Atas area you tend to pay for the dazzling scenery of natural landscapes and optimum climate too. And this scenery truly deserves a two thumbs up! You should try to visit this place once in a while!

Last but not least is the shopping hot-spots. From what I have seen during my visit in this previous holiday, factory outlets are most visited shopping place in Bandung. Most outlets are located in Dago Street. Here, it almost like Orchard Road where shopping centers are neighboring each other except that the outlets sometimes gapped with one or two random houses in between. About the apparels that they sell, they are not cheap nor expensive, and the quality is not world class but very satisfying. To be honest they seems like these rejects from the world class brands such as Adidas, Nike, Puma, Zara, Lacoste, etc due to a very tiny error with the product (small scratch, small knitting mistake, etc), but they are good enough for me! The price of these apparels are around Rp. 20.000 and above.

Regarding personal preferences, girls who usually bought branded apparels or clothings might be less attracted to these outlets since they might see disappointment in terms of materials quality. As for boys, I think it is better to buy clothes from here rather than those branded and super expensive store since we might use it for sports and have our clothes worn-out in a short period of time anyways! Furthermore, somehow these outlets provide better quality apparels for boys rather than for girls - that is, through my perspective.

What is hilarious is the fact that there are more Jakarta cars rather than Bandung cars during the holiday or weekends. Even my Bandung friend said that Bandung citizens wouldn't go out during weekend due to the traffic dillema that the Jakarta denizen has caused.

Bandung, through my eyes, is a wonderful city that is perfect to gain serenity and relaxation. It is suitable as a run-away-from-Jakarta program, where we momentarily throw away the polluted visualization that is worsened with the tall buildings and dusty environment! When you are trapped for holiday in Jakarta, you'd better take a road trip to Bandung. You might as well see this city of flower's through a kaleidoscope which will bedazzled you. It's just a two hours journey anyways!!

Note: It is preferably not to go to Bandung during weekends, since you might suffer traffic jam in the Toll road and end up 3 - 4 hours in car. And if you went back to Jakarta from Bandung after gallant festival (i.e New Year) or during weekend, you might as well go home earlier if you do not want to suffer the same traffic jam.

Season's Greetings

2007-12-17T00:41:00.000+07:00

Happy Holiday guys, eight more days before Christmas and I hope that all of us will experience a memorable event during this holiday.

Regarding 2008 that is very close, I am changing our blog's template into something that is brighter because I am quite bored with the boring dark background!

To my blog-mates, I hope that I could find a better template to replace this default template. But until then, let's use this template!

P.S. (to my blog-mates) You do found out that the Sign In shortcut is not on the upperscreen anymore. To sign in and post blogs, please go to the main page of blogger.com (http://www.blogger.com) Thank you and sorry of the inconvenience.

Life Without the Ivies?

2007-12-09T22:24:00.000+07:00

Today’s the day.

My heart thumped like crazy, making blood rush through my veins. I waited for my mother to sort out the pile of letters which contains various bills, random advertisements, personal letters, and of course, the letter. The letter that’ll determine the rest of my future, my life.

She handed me the white envelope. With trembling hands I ripped the seal and slowly unveiled the folded letter. A few seconds of tense silence passed by; nobody talked, moved, even blinked.

“So, did you get in?” my mother hushed.

“No,” I replied.

As juniors in a fast paced high school program, it would not be long until we have to experience the same incident described in the story above. Around this time next year, all of us would be fluffing away in our college application essays, urging teachers to write recommendation letters (smelling any whiffs of ‘sucking up’, here?), frantically completing UCAS and/or registering for that SAT exam some of us keeps on delaying, or even looking up different universities online for the extreme procrastinators out there. After the college admission appeals are done and over with, what is left to do? The answer is none other than to wait for the reply, of course.

Every person will have different feelings towards these letters. As for me, I would pull strands of my hair out, scream out of fear/ fury/ nervousness/ depression/ excitement before I will have the courage to rip the envelope apart! I will probably be thinking, I have to get into this university – I didn’t spend all that time and efforts on IB and extracurricular activities for nothing! Indeed, it will be such a great shame and disappointment to me and my family if I didn’t go into supposedly good universities, namely those in the Ivy League. My father’s desire is for me to enter Cambridge University. I told him that it is impossible for me to even get considered there – bearing in mind that I failed mathematics last term. Nevertheless, he still wants me to try and get into Cambridge. I’m sure that I’ll get a rejection letter from Cambridge’s dean of admission, as well as other universities parallel to its ranking.

So what to do then, if we get a rejection letter from a university we want to attend so badly? While disappointment and even tears may be inevitable, we should not mourn for so long. The fact is, it is not the end of the world. There are other universities that will provide education just as excellent as that of the universities in the Ivy League and the like. Remember Steven Spielberg? The famous film schools at UCLA and USC rejected him, so he went to California State-Long Beach and made several student films there. I bet UCLA and USC now feels stupid for rejecting Steven Spielberg into their colleges. Think about your own situation. If you are an admirable hard worker who keeps on doing your best in everything, Harvard, Yale, or Princeton will envy the other schools that are going to get you!

I know that the things I’ve said above are definitely easier said than done. I’d still be very depressed and miserable if a college I really wanted to get into rejected me. But hopefully this blog will serve as a reminder that life WILL go on even through its letdowns and we should not beat ourselves up forever for it.

-Agie

Agnes’ Stream of Consciousness II

2007-12-09T22:23:00.000+07:00

The idea of doing homework and studying for tests is absurd knowing that there is only a week left before the blissful winter break; seriously, how can anyone concentrate on his or her dreadful school assignments for five days when one of the longest holidays is nearing – it’s disgusting, I must say – my head is throbbing ever so painfully; I think it might explode into bits any time soon, I think it is partly due to the workload I have for the weekend as well as cranking up the volume of the songs I’m listening to, my head hurts, hurts and hurts and all I want to do is to sleep for the following five days and to wake up when the heavenly break begins when I will have the opportunity to meet my sister again who is residing in the States at the moment as well as my grandparents who’ll be coming on Wednesday - wow my house is going to be extremely crowded but I do miss that sometimes – my house gets too lonely with merely my father, mother, and brother; to some people that’s quite a number of people but I guess I am used to a big, extended (and loud) family I know I’ll have a splendid break with them but I am worried how I will manage to get my holiday homework done – particularly the Extended Essay as I am determined to get it pretty much done during the break so I may not have to focus on it once school starts – easier said than done, I know but hopefully I’ll be able to complete it; I am not sure whether I’ll be able to spend time with my friends over the winter break, I am sorry for the people whom I promised to go out and sing karaoke with during the break but that can hold off until once school starts can’t it oh well raindrops keep fallin’ off my head, but that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red, cryin’s not for me, ‘cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’- if you know me well enough, it is very ironic for me to sing those lyrics as cryin’ is definitely for me – I am the worse crybaby I’ve ever known; it’s not like I can help it so I hope my friends will accept me for the way I am, even though I’m mushy – besides I quote Dr. Seuss that those that mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind speaking about the mind, nah let us not speak about the mind I do not want to ponder again about how complex the mind can be I’ve been so lazy lately in fact, my brain has pretty much shut down ever since the exams were all over; my fingers are starting to ache from all this typing I think I am going to take a nap or read a book called On Beauty by Zadie Smith, so ciao!

-Agie

Those Ol’ Golden Days

2007-12-09T22:21:00.000+07:00

When you think about your childhood, what image crops up in your mind? Is it Pokemon, or Sailormoon? Is it Backstreet Boys, or the “Oops I Did It Again” Britney Spears? Regardless of how your childhood came out to be, there are certainly some parts of it that you’ll never be able to forget. I for one have my own shares of terrific and humiliating childhood memoirs that have shaped the way I am right now.

For as long as I can recall, I never really lived the ideal childhood life that most kids had probably gone through. I was quite aberrant and peculiar in nature, and probably still am. To this very day, I find no interest in Playstation, Gameboy devices, or Pokemon cards. I had 72 Barbie dolls shared with my sister, their luscious polyester hair I snipped delightfully with a small pair of scissors. Everywhere I go, I refused to wear anything but my striking red sneakers, and later during fourth grade, my worn out blue headband with stars comprised of colorful stitches. I was a walking stick during those years – I found those chunks of beef very gag material, thus wouldn’t swallow it no matter how many times I chew. I remember my favorite dish was plain rice mixed with ketchup. My mother got so anxious about my health that she brought me to a doctor who prescribed me some pills to increase my appetite. From then on, my eating problem was quite the opposite.

One of the things I hated the most during my childhood days was the haircuts my mother gave me. She figured she would be able to experiment on me, and thought that I wouldn’t object. Well of course I didn’t object back then – I had no idea how horrible those haircuts turned out to be until after I saw those years later in photographs! She made me look like a guyL. It was very tragic. No matter how many times I told her these days that that look isn’t appealing, she is still convinced otherwise. Practical, she said. Well, I wished I was cute instead of practical. Oh well, I still love her anywayJ.

Amidst all the terrifyingly humiliating memories that I acquired from my childhood era, through it, sprinkles of happiness also cropped up, lightening the old days. I loved it when my dad picked me up and began to throw me up the air – and catching me in his arms again, of course. Even though I didn’t play those electronic games and gadgets, I still found an immensely pleasurable activity to pass time: reading. Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl seriously brightened up my childhood days; their books are utterly scrumdiddlyumptious! I remember reading one book from the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton each day during the winter break in third grade. Reading is love. I regret neglecting literary and intellectual books during middle school and freshman year; as a result, my English competency and skills had stagnated for a while. Picking up the pieces now is rather difficult, as I sadly have no more time to read for pleasure.

It is quite surreal to know that our childhood days has passed, knowing that we have to go through IB and its demanding requirements. Before we know it, we’ll be off to different universities worldwide, creating a new chapter in our lives. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t hold our childhood memoirs dear in our hearts, nor does it prohibits us to become childlike.

-Agie

F.R.I.E.N.D.S: Fake, Rotten, Immature, Egregious, Nefarious, Depraved, Shocking

2007-12-09T22:18:00.000+07:00

Most peers at this age consider friendship to be one of the most valuable factors in our lives. Phrases regarding the significance of friendship such as “Best Friends Forever” are drilled into our minds, creating the perception in our minds that friendship ought to be priceless and close to our hearts. While those descriptions mentioned earlier on are indeed true, I noticed that people have failed to apply those ideas into practice. Instead, I find the deprivation of genuine friendship and backstabbing to increase among the social clichés in this school.

Picture a pair of friends who are supposedly close with each other. Their facebook profiles are swarmed with each other’s wall posts, gifts, and tagged pictures. Their comments to each other comprised of the BFF abbreviation with endless xoxo’s. In another scene, a group of people decided to hate one of the friends mentioned above. The other friend of the mentioned pair associates with them frequently. Whenever the group slanders the particular person, the other pal would join in the conversation.

Although I made that seemingly exaggerated story up, the similar problem is ever present in our school society. I don’t know how many times I have heard people casually talking bad about a certain person to other people – even though they were ostensibly best friends. To make it worse, no signs of guilt were shed throughout this twisted, sad activity. From the way I see it, everyone has accepted this as a means of socializing – not only do they think it is acceptable, they also presume that they can trust other people not to spread the horrible truth of their fickleness. Little do they know that secrets are unfortunately meant to be broken in high school. Soon enough, the targeted victim would know about the backstabbing deeds his or her friend had done and would ask the same thing I had proposed earlier on: where did all sincere friendships go?

While true friendship might be scarce, we should not let the ongoing problem to thrive and deteriorate whatever friendship morals we have left. I know from personal experiences that it is difficult to defend the person whom other people outwardly mock about in my presence. I also underwent a period of time when I didn’t understand the real meaning of friendship – frankly speaking, I too was a hypocrite, following the distorted trend of judging and criticizing people who were supposed to be my own friends. However, I’ve learnt to realize that although there is a great deal of peer pressure, there’s nothing worse than not standing up for whom you love. I think the act of defending a friend whom you hold dear to your heart is admirable, even more so if you have to give up your social status or a group of friends to hold firm into your beliefs.

In by saying the aforementioned opinions, I did not say that this task is easy to tackle. We can’t help but to fall short of our convictions – even I struggle with this problem everyday – for we are not perfect. There are also some divisive issues that lie within the friendship morals; to what extent should we defend our friends? Should we ferociously defend them to the point of death, or can keeping our mouths merely shut be seen as an acceptable way of defending our friends? After all, other people also have the same amount of rights to speak their opinions. Perhaps I’ll talk about this in my next blog – in the mean time, discussions and comments are welcomed for this issue.

-Agie

A Simple Stress Reliever: Stream of Consciousness!

2007-12-09T21:09:00.001+07:00

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Bahasa of the Day

Sendawa - [verb] - burp (usually used for babies who burped when we pat their back)

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Time flies very fast during weekends as it is night already and I haven't done anything useful. All I did are just watching television, chatting, playing games, finalizing English script and researching EE stuff. Argh EE, come to think of it I kind of regret to choose biology as my EE topic since I think my idea is not concrete enough to produce a high quality essay, and actually I am still doubting what my research question is! I am so dead. Oh no someone is interrupting me in MSN. Anyways, yesterday has been a wonderful day since me and my friends went on Bakti Sosial activity where we were doing some painting, cleaning, and decorating - it was memorable indeed. The school is very small like a quarter of Miss Jessica's room is equivalent to one class. The sun's intensity tanned us yesterday but it was good to have a sun bathe once in a while, especially in this IB life where sunlight is scarce to our youthful life. Some people and I were in charge in decorating and although the result is not as gallant as we are all expected, it still looked nice and we looked it with satisfaction since we made them for 3 hours nonstop. We returned to school at one o'clock where most of us decided to go and have lunch at Dragone, the most pitiful and the most stingy restaurant I have ever seen. To know what happened just take a quick glance to Jesse's Stream of Consciousness and also my previous blog entitled "Economical Stinginess" and you should have been agreed with me once you have read it. Ah yes, speaking of food, I just realized that I have never eaten any croissant in my whole life. Since I was little I always picture croissant as this super hard tasteless bread when I looked at the pictures, but just a week ago I saw this anime about a talented bread-maker and he showed the inside of a croissant which has countless tasty layer and it is crunchy too! I want to buy one but I did not have the time to go to the mall, pity me. Ahhh, my curtain is falling down again what's wrong with it! It has been months since my curtain keeps falling down every 1 hours even though I have glued it with super glue; total annoyance. Aside from the sudden desire to eat croissant, now I also have this sudden demand to swim ever since I saw the Sea Games swimming competition that is held in Thailand. I really love swimming and I have swum since TK but then schoolworks consumed most of my time to swim since I entered grade 10. I am thinking to go swimming at school after the holiday but then again I do not want to swim alone. I asked my friends but they don't want to swim with reason that they are too lazy to change into swimsuits and some also said no because they are embarrassed as well. What's wrong with people nowadays? Seriously, I often see a lot of people who are degrading and generalizing swimming as a sport that only show off people loves to do it since they can show their muscle and stuff. I hate it when people said this, just because the majority of their community prefers swimming they don't have the authority to make such idiotic generalization regarding this sport, same goes to rock climbing. Do they realize that swimming yields multifarious benefits? They simultaneously raises our endurance, builds and tones muscles, cures bone problems, and relieves our stress too! Okay, it is decided that I will and I must swim next week! I love my dad because even when he is thousands kilometers away from me, he always contacted and informed me whenever he found a badminton tournament on TV, just like what he did yesterday with the Sea Games. Yesterday badminton match was okay, but today's match is uber tense (haha i remembered Gary and his habit to say 'uber cool'). The shuttlecock was smacked so fast and was returned so beautifully by each players that it stunned me momentarily. Most of all, during that tense moment the players can receive the shuttlecock with style: hitting it from their back as if they are dancing. Now I am truly addicted with badminton and swimming, and I hope this is not just a momentary interest. Today was also a strange day as I randomly asked my best friend about how did we meet and become friend since we barely talk for months when we first become classmates. I am utterly forgot that we talked because he asked me what gift should he gave to my other friend for the "Secret Santa" activity that we once had during grade 8. Until now I still think that meeting is a destiny somehow because there I was questioning why he talked to me, and 30 minutes later we became friends. What was more, we end up in the same class again when we sat in grade 9 - our friendship grows ever since, especially when we also realized that we have the same hobby: playing badminton. It is funny actually when just now we were both arguing about those silly days and we ended up with uncertain information about that history. I am utterly thankful to have him as a part of my life's history. As what I often said within my written works that reminiscing the past is something that can make you smile every time you recall it pieces by pieces. As the majority already knows, I am a boy who loves to imagine and to daydream strange things which usually in form of twisted past events ("if..."). Several minutes ago I chatted with Jesse as we talked about blogs and realized that up to this point we actually already have 61 blogs that are written by 4 different authors but then we were bewildered as most of us have not reached the 12-blogs requirement. While discussing about this pointless issue, we also discussed that our essays can actually be posted as an example of an opposing writing style: factual and emotional. Turns out that our style is blatantly recognized only through a quick glance: Jesse's essay contains facts, theories, logical thoughts, and not forgetting a broad range of mathematical and scientific terms, while my essay is filled with analogies, emotional vocabularies, alliterative phrases, colorful fonts, and numerous adjective which usually considered as verbiage by most invigilators. If more evidence is needed to believe this information just take a quick look to our blogs and see it with your own eyes. We both have the imbalance within our writings, but if those styles satisfy our heart we should keep it up since that what makes our writings unique and give a personal satisfaction whenever we reread it. Who knows what will happened when make an essay together? That would be funny to be imagined about. Up to this point, this Stream of Consciousness is already 1200 words long and it is 10:19 PM already. I think I would better watch a concert on TV because I was afraid that if this gibberish "mind projection" of mine never ends Miss Jessica would reached her boiling point and reduce my grade. I WANT TO EAT CROISSANT AND GO SWIMMING...

-Donny-

Jesse's Stream of Conciousness

2007-12-09T20:22:00.001+07:00

Sitting in a rolling chair in front of my laptop, it has been approximately twenty-five minutes since I posted the previous blog concerning the “Soul Entering the Body” I kept on thinking what topic to propose as my twelfth blog because I was unsure whether the two post of my holiday in China was considered to be two blogs or one. I was hungry and seek any food to consume in the refrigerator located in the next room. I drank orange juice and ate Pepperidge’s cookies as I returned when the song in the computer changed to Dream Theater’s ‘Stream of Consciousness’. I thought of the fact that this might be a sign from the higher beings because the song list was set as random and seems as fate has chosen this particular song. Now as I am typing this, I am thinking about the ways of how your life gets directed through omens such as this just now. This reminded me of the story written by Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” concerning a shepherd boy who has used omens into following his recurrent dreams and finally found the treasure in a place least expected. It must be nice to have a life as the shepherd boy, living off the main city, away from anguish education system such as the International Baccalaureate, to have a life of real adventure. My adventure seems to homework one after another but nonetheless, it is the notorious IB. To think about it, we have finished approximately ¼ of IB, equivalent to ½ of eleventh grade. Talking about fractions and equivalences, I have not finished my math homework concerning partial fractions and old man Pak Wiryanto would be very much irate as usual if he finds any of the students not doing their homework. He will continue his lecture concerning his belief that students in Mathematics Higher Level should do their homework and become a consequent student or else they should just drop to Standards. My mom just gave me bananas to eat so I shall pause before I continue. Now as I continue, my mind is thinking of something to write. But seems that I have again experienced a “Writer’s Block” that has always occurred to me in any writing assignments especially the introduction. Yes, it has been a custom that it is quite difficult for me to write a catchy introduction even if I have brainstormed all the points needed for the body. I think this is because of my slightly melancholic personality in wanting things to be perfect, and I do want a perfect introduction. My temperament is a Phlegmatic-Melancholic, with 60% phlegmatic, 25% melancholic, and the rest being choleric and sanguine. This resulted was taken after a long test in a particular website. I have not done tests from websites recently, due to the busyness of life. I usually like to take them to find out more of myself and what I might be capable of in their perspective. Talking bout the busyness of life, I also have not gone to the theaters to watch a particular movie for a long time. The last time I watch a movie was recalled to be in September as I watched Ratatouille with a friend. Yesterday was also a busy day as I volunteered to do service on a school called Bakti Sosial and it felt nice doing some decorations and painting. I remember the fact that the noodles nearby was nice and it felt better than waiting for the food in Benton Junction’s ‘Dragone’, more like “Drag On” because they seem to purposely cook slow for those who ordered an “All you can Eat”, they should put a sign “All you can Wait” too! I cannot seem to wait for the holiday break for some of the guys have agreed to do sleepovers again in few different places. It has been like a tradition for those who are not going anywhere for the break as we enjoy the days together doing weird activities and watching stupid movies. Those nights were always crazy as we fight for beds and crying out our discomfort of sleeping in squeezed situations. My dad just entered asking if I wanted to go out to eat together with the family, for once he seem to notice my busyness as he usually just forces my brother and I to go out regardless of what we are doing. I replied no and thus became home alone. Yes, I like being in solitude for some reason. Maybe because with my family, I find them to constantly be disturbing the things I am doing, yes, even when I need some sleep. Speaking of which, I find that sometimes I have trouble sleeping these days, maybe because I slept my long sleep in the nap time and inversely, have my nap in the long sleeping hours. I still have physics to be done after this, an extrapolation of data concerning the “Absolute Zero” temperature where the data seems to be just all wrong since Mr. John did the experiment himself. Now we have more things to say concerning the error of experiment. This reminds me of the experiment we did in the chemistry lab where we place specific metals in a flame and it produces a certain color. Sodium and Calcium produces bright orange and Lithium and Strontium produces bright crimson red. The coolest was Copper and Potassium as they produced green and white flame. Through logic, I thought of the fact that these were how fireworks were created and it was true as mentioned by Ibu Mona. Speaking of chemistry, it was such an agony to see that most of the chemistry students failed the exam in addition to the fact that the average of Mr. Owen’s students was lower than ours. That is just sad…

DaNte's Post

2007-12-09T19:02:00.001+07:00

DaNte's Post

9-12-2007

1 week before the holiday! Joy to all SPH students for the Christmas holiday is imminent! However, we still have the EE Working Bibliography and for Math HL students, we will have a test on Thursday. Hence we should finish strong and then we can go crazy or just sleep during the holidays!

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote of the Day

"Victory belongs to the most persevering."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Word of the Day

Aficionado (n) – A person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an activity or subject

Topic of the Day

Love

"I love you, James," said the girl with sparkling, watery eyes.

"Oh Naomi, I love you too! It's been too long that I haven't seen you," James said both joyfully and sadly. They hugged tightly, and it seems that no force in this world may separate the two destined lovers. They look deeply into each other's eyes and their face came closer and closer in slow motion. Their lips touched each other, and passionately they kissed each other. They were together in their own world, ignoring every single movement, noise, and existence in this world. Nothing matters but to have each other for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately...

These kind of love stories only exist in movies, or romantic novels. Very scantily we see this kind of story in real life. Hollywood directors and novel writers always imbue stories with lies and fake stories that can rarely come true. The truth is, most love hurts. MOST, I say, because the so-called 'true love' in movies does come true in real life. But for the most part, love hurts. Believe me, it hurts a lot.

I apologize for my cynical and dour point of view, but I only want to express my thoughts. From my personal experience, I believe love hurts, even when you think optimistically but in the end, it will just crush you and throw you to into the deepest oblivion in your life. I have been in love a few times, and sometimes I just wonder, maybe if it is better not to feel love or even any emotion at all? Is it really worth it? In the end, you will just get hurt. It hurts when you try your best but in the end the person you love the most betrays you, it hurts when he/she does not appreciate for all your efforts in satisfying them, it hurts when they became selfish and never think about your needs, and it hurts to let them go. So, is it really worth it?

Love, which every movie and novel depicted as the best experience that a human could ever have, actually causes destruction and hatred. Love can be despicable and pernicious to everyone. Let us take an example from Troy. Two warriors fell in love with the same girl caused their countries to incinerate in the flames of war. Another exemplar we can take is the novel 'The Great Gatsby'. The protagonist, Jay Gatsby fell in love with Daisy Buchanan. He did his best and gave everything for her but in the end, he died and his 'true love' left him to be with another man.

I had experience this painful love as well. I did my best to make the girl happy, but it seems that everything I do never satisfies her. She kept on demanding more, without regards to my needs or wants. It seems that she only took advantage of me. I had also loved a girl once, who in the end betrayed me and thought that I was nothing in her eyes. It hurts, really, when the girl you love just left you like that without even a single 'thank you' or even showing gratitude.

But why do we love? Why do we keep on insisting loving the opposite sex even we know that someday we will going to be hurt? Love drugs people and indulges them in a fictional world of idiotic optimism and in the end love will overdose them and kill them slowly, and excruciatingly. But even so, people keep on loving. Loving someone makes you care for he/she and makes you want to be with the person you love all the time. To be honest with you, I personally feel the same way too. Even after I got hurt a few times, I still want to love someone. When you get close and spend time with the person you like/love, you just feel really happy. It seems that nothing makes you happier or satisfies you but to see the person you love happy or spend time with him/her. You feel joyful when the person you love replies your love. You dare and willing to go to great extents just to see your love happy and smile at you.

Apologetically I say that I am truly sorry for my pessimistic way of delineating love. But, I urge you dear viewers to stay strong in your love. Never give up. Heartbreaks are only there to make you stronger and persevere in your love. Do not give up in loving, for the Bible say "And now there is three: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of all is love," (I forgot the Bible verse). So love everyone, despite the pains and troubles, for it will someday benefit you.

Joke of the Day

Yo momma so stupid she sits on the TV, and watches the couch!

DaNte

The Moment 'Soul' Intertwines with the Human Body

2007-12-09T18:36:00.000+07:00

The Moment ‘Soul’ Intertwines with the Human Body 09-12-2007

Question of Thought: When does the soul enter within the reproduction stage that distinguished the being to become living human and not just mere organisms?

It is always amazed when a new baby was given birth and became a new member of the society. Especially when the baby, in reality, was initially a sperm and an egg meeting each other going through mitosis and meiosis stages of cells before it became “human”. Macroscopically, we are actually just cells built up upon each other with an exceptional addition of a soul. But where does that ‘Soul’ come from? The answer can simply be ‘God’ for those believers of an Ultimate Creator. But the question is, “When does the soul enter the human body?” Before we continue, the paragraphs below will describe the things that make up an actual human.

It has been stated by many that the composition of a living human consisted of three fixations: the body, the mind and the soul. Each fixation corresponds in a contribution to have the whole human being to function. Theoretically, without the three following fixations to be present in one being, it is not a human living being.

The body, can be analogized as a container in which makes us tangible and encompass a physical appealing attribute. The body organs such as the lungs, the stomach, the kidney, the sensory nerves, the bones aids us through the way we are created to work and be alive, such that the heart helps the body to regulate the blood circulation, the lung regulates the breathing cycle, the stomach takes up the nutrients for our body’s growth and protection and other organs have its uses as well. Simply, the human body consisted of organs, blood and muscle tissues.

The mind can be analogized as the computer. It sends signals to the human body as well as it records the experience one has endeavored. The mind plays an important role to an individual because of the fact that the mind one that controls the body as well as it acts to protect the body. It gives signals when things are too hot for the body to handle or in general, the pain. It contains memories of the experiences the body has endeavored, the logic to comprehend our world, the creativity to enhance it, and many more things. As referring to the saying that ‘pain makes you know that you’re alive’ corresponds to the fact that without the mind, the human is not alive.

The soul (or the spirit) is in the other hand, a complex entity that maybe our brains cannot grasp its actual description. It is something that cannot be created artificially by humans. The soul is actually the conscious that causes the mind to act or inevitably, the individual persona within each being. To refer to the verse from James in the Bible, “As the body without the spirit, is dead…” theoretically, it is not dead. The mind functions and the body functions, it is physically alive, but it lacks the spirit, or the soul, the conscious in being aware that it is alive. There is a specific term for this case: undead; which literally means ‘not dead’ but also ‘not alive’ in its ordinary way.

To come back to our focus question: “When does the soul enter the human body?” a known aphorism which states that abortion is manslaughter can be discussed. Nine months has been calculated to be the time range in which the collection of cells becomes a human being as they say abortion is murder to human life. In six weeks, a baby’s heartbeat can be detected, which means that the baby is physically alive and growing. Therefore, before six weeks, maybe the soul has entered the cells. From this, we cannot actually pinpoint the precision of time in which the soul or the spirit came down from heaven. We can assume it is already bestowed when the sperm meets the egg three minutes after the intercourse. But to actually prove the enter of the soul would probably need a paranormal in sensing spirits or in the long run, wait for a better technology to do so. Nonetheless, though this question of thought cannot be specifically answered, it can be a good thing to think and consider about for a soul has to come in the reproduction stage sometime.

Economical Stinginess - [5th Blog in term 2]

2007-12-08T15:56:00.000+07:00

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Bahasa of the Day

Cendekia - [adj] - Sharp, Intellectual, Sharpwitted

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To gain revenue from one's business is, obviously, the main goal in most profitable companies. These companies have their own way to establish their companies' efficiency and efficacy of their offered goods/services upon their customers. Yet, only some that make the right economical choice which can penetrate through customers' heart and get their attention to buy their products; leading them to fame and glory. As the demand for those companies increases (more famous), their owners should be happy because they can easily increase the price of their product and people will still buy it. Nevertheless, they should jump from their chair if their companies are rated by the society as the number one choice, where they will buy the products even in any price: total richness indeed.

When a company is utterly demanded by the majority for their astonishing quality, obviously the company would try its best to maintain this quality or even to improve it. This maintenance would eventually take this company to a whole new level of business where the company's name is printed all over the billboards of the world, along with franchises that yields more revenue. However, in this yin-yang universe, there is always a stain which infuriates someone. In this imperfect world, there is just a company that is doltish enough to scathe its customer right when fortune is bestowed upon it. A company that is widely recognized by Lippo Karawaci's denizens as "Dragone."

Briefly, Dragone is a Japanese restaurant with assortment of superb cuisines that can be purchased in moderate price. This has become the economical and main reason why it becomes a lovable restaurant in the eyes of most people. Another reason that contributes to their lasting prominence is because they provide Japanese foods - a type of food that is adored by most people in present generation, especially by citizens in metropolitan cities such as Jakarta.

I personally love Dragone for the reasons listed above. In fact, it is the most visited restaurant by me: since two years ago, I always go there with my friends every Friday. We even know the workers there very well and sometimes we joke around together. We all put our heart upon this restaurant, until that exasperating day...

Just one year ago, this restaurant make a choice that it should have been regretted by them. It was minimizing their foods' portion, and this is obviously detected by ANY customers who often eat here. For example: their Tori Karage and Calamari portion which is very delicious and fulfilling becomes countable and doesn't make your hunger better. This diminishing strategy continues as they slowly make avaricious and unsatisfactory changes to their spices and sauces: they remove the wasabis that are used to be on each tables. This is still acceptable to one's logical reasoning, but they also remove the white sauce that comes with Tori Karage or Calamari; the sauce that is always finished by customers every time it is served to them. How come they remove something that pleases the customer?

My friends and I are okay with this condition and still eat at Dragone often, since we can just ask for the sauce whenever they didn't serve it along with Tori Karage or Calamari (cuisines that we seldom ordered now). Yet, the most irritating choice that makes all the anger in my life focused on this restaurant is their stingy services that becomes stingier over time. This is clearly observed, especially when we ordered "All you can eat" menu.

Their stingy service strategy is like this: whenever we ordered "All you can eat," they (the workers) will serve our orders after we have waited for so long. When we are not having "All you can eat" they usually serve these orders only 5 minutes after we have ordered! They also make the foods that we ordered very slow, where in the beginning sushis are served within quite a long time gap. Imagine that we have to wait for about half an hour just to have our Ramens and Udons. The workers are sometimes acting as if they are forgetful by asking us: "what cuisines that haven't come out?"

I am very positive that their strategy is to make the customers full by giving periods where they need to wait for the food - this way the customers stomach will become full quicker than usual. Furthermore, during "all you can eat" the portion of the main courses are diminished by almost half: Ramen and Udons that are usually filled almost the whole bowl is now served where we can see a tall white space between the top of the bowl to the surface of the soup. Meats such as teriyaki also minimized until they are just as long as my pencil. As for the boiling point, sometimes after we have waited for SO LONG (1 hour or so)for just one meal, one of the worker will say: "sorry, we are out of stock." Are they acting stupid or what? They should have told the customers several minutes after they have ordered!

These behaviors are classified as a misuse of demand. Since Dragone have attracted a lot of people and make them eat there most of the time, it tries to gain more revenue but using less supply. It is a very selfish choice since these choices are intended to benefit only the producer while it decreases the consumers satisfaction. Yet, we cannot blame the restaurant for these reasons since it is business and the reality where money is the goal of everybody.

I personally think that if this "trickery" continues, there will be a time where the economics of Dragone will tremble and plummeting. Maybe it won't go bankrupt, but the demand for it will so low that the income made are very less due to conversion from famous into a notorious restaurant.

The Probable Modern Day "Tower of Babel"

2007-12-01T16:58:00.000+07:00

The Probable Modern Day “Tower of Babel”

Everyone knows the story of “The Tower of Babel” from the Bible when humans endeavor a challenge in making a tower that would reach the heavens and take upon God themselves. God punishes them by varying the single language spoken to numerous languages causing them to be confused and thus, the tower was not completed, causing them to be scattered around the world. The term ‘Tower of Babel’ is usually depicted as an image when we want to be God and in the article below might be some evidence to see that we are getting closer and closer to that; in any case with good intentions.

Skin-aging was considered a common threat to those who wanted to be physically appealing because we grow older and nothing can be done as we are governed by time. Science then came along making lotions and other substances than could replenish the dead skin cells making them newer. Now, through an advanced study in bioengineering, they finally succeeded in a reversal of aging.

As accordance to World Science, scientists report this to be the very first successful reversal of aging, yet only on one organ: the skin. Though it was only tested upon a mouse, the researcher’s said:

“It’s unclear, they said, whether these results can hold up for long time periods, and how one might apply the findings to humans. Yet the work is significant in that it shows a profound “rejuvenation” is at least partly possible in principle.”

Further explanation was given that the experimented mouse went through its lifespan and aged normally, but when the cream was added to a patch of skin, there was a striking outcome in two weeks, where it is reported that the gene activation profile and tissue characteristics of the aged skin reverted to those of young animals.

Such finding within newer technology surely is beneficial to the human race and especially to those whom wanted such smooth skin as babies. Though it might not apply towards internal organs yet (the kidney, the liver, the lungs, and the heart) it might possibly be done in the future. Now, with this new product, we are able to physically appear younger than we are in more of an extent than with the usage of present time products. Do keep in mind, that through these bioengineering courses, though it “aids” the human society, it also leads us to become closer to being God; literally. Suppose in the long run, these finding finally are able to keep the body organs young, yes we can live longer and probably be immortal to an extent. *Assuming no side effects occur* But think about it, these bioengineering technologies does neglect the destined fate from God. An exemplary model would be those who are armless and legless, they are initially destined by God to be as follows, but due to technology, they can still have an artificial limb. Furthermore, research shows that they are able to detect feeling by manipulating the sensory nerves through temperature and other variables, causing a goal to be made be scientists: making artificial limbs that could ‘feel’.
*Please refer to: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071126_prosthetic.htm

The same concept applies to the human organ, where we say destined to die at a certain point of our lives due to the incapability of the human body to function anymore, we can grow or “rejuvenate” a new organ; both artificially and naturally (if one were to think about it) Thus causing us to neglect our fate.

What can we expect to happen next within the more advanced findings? How would God punish us nearing his affinity? The enigma remains.

First reversal of aging in an organ claimed: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071128_skin-aging.htm

P.S. : *again* Today is Miss Jessica's Birthday!!! Though she's 27 years old, and her body organs are probably 27 years old too, her soul is still 7 --" May your immaturity always remains and may you become more blonde, more happy and more generous in giving grades (thus a win-win solution - you being happy, and I being happy too =) hehe ) Have a blessed 27th year...

Living Up to Our Parents' Expectations

2007-12-01T16:42:00.000+07:00

Living Up to Our Parents Expectations 01-12-2007

We are literally made through the love of our parents and ever since the day we are born, we have been treated as an object beyond preciousness. As we grow from an incomprehensible infant to a wandering toddler, we abide ourselves to our parents and became dependent towards them. It then became an obligation for us to respect them and obey them. Parents generally have an expectation for us to achieve to be “successful” in their own various definitions. The predicament that always occurs is that we failed to be on that spotlight.

Firstly, let us point out that we are biologically from our parents and that they have the power to reign upon our lives; literally. We are their projects in life. Like us doing homework and projects, we want it to be the best as it can be; they also want to form us to be the best as we can be. But being children of the younger generation, we tend to be more spoiled than our parents due to innovative facilities. We have game consoles, internet games, malls and so many more things we are able to do besides homework. Not to mention the fact that standards are getting higher as the human mind is more developed, we as children of the younger generation tends to get lazier and spoiled.

Some parents are just stubborn in not wanting to accept the reality that their child is incapable of doing some things, causing them to forcefully drive their child to work even harder through numerous tuitions thus causing the poor child to suffer. A commonplace exemplary of this issue is given by Pak Wir. He mentioned that in national schools, children would eventually be required to choose to major in science or humanities and being in Indonesia, a bias approach transpires in being a science student. They consider those who took science to be a regular challenged student as those who take humanities to be shameful beings. With that, parents are somewhat ashamed in having a child with a humanities tendency. Pak Wir correlated this issue towards Mathematics HL where he mentioned that we should not take Higher Level Mathematics to provide the happiness for our parents as we suffer going through the subject and if we just cannot cope with the studies, just remark our parents saying that we are incapable and drop to Math Standards. We reflect our parents pride and parents have sometimes abused it in trying to make us even better than who we really are.

We surely do not want our parents to be ashamed of their child, nor do we want to suffer in doing things we are incapable of. Therefore, a balance is needed. This article has a bias approach in a perspective to those who consider themselves trying to live up your parents’ expectations. But we also have issues where we go beyond what our parents expects us. There are cases where parents are considerate enough in persuading their child to drop subjects they cannot cope with and let the children choose easier subjects for a better lifestyle; no stress.

In my case, I was brought up in a family with very melancholic parents. Not melancholic in a way that they are sad, tearful beings, but perfectionists. Since I was a cute young boy, I was exceptionally always forced by my father to do better in my school than I was capable of. In comparison to him, I was not much of a success. Last time I came across his university grades as I was cleaning up things in the storage room, yes, it’s a craze where he got all A’s except for English (Yes, his English is quite weak for his first language is actually Chinese, then Indonesian then English). But what really infuriates me is the fact that he wanted me to be much better than him. He wanted me to achieve great grades, be able to speak, read and write Chinese properly and of course, wanted me to be more successful. But it is just too much, won’t one think so?

In the end, we should remind our parents that we are also imperfect beings that cannot accomplish everything that parents dreamed of and apologize. They also should be considerate in knowing that there are some things in life that no matter our children go through, there is a limit in their capability and should also be grateful for other things.

P.S. : Today is Ms. Jessica's Birthday!!! Being 27 and still a jolly immature child at heart :) Let a new resolution be achieved, grow closer with God, and be more generous in giving grades. May you have a wonderful 27th year.

DaNte's Post

2007-11-30T23:39:00.000+07:00

DaNte's Post

30-11-2007 ... again

Well, this is the actual post for today... The previous one was the post for last week. Since I am such a sedulous student of A2 HL English class, I want to finish my blog ASAP! By the way, Happy birthday Ms. Jessica! By the time I post this blog, it should be 1st of December already.

Erratic Picture of the Day
Auspicious Quote of the Day

"reality overshadows belief, yet belief fabricates miracles"

ME! uahahahahaa

Word of the Day

Well... I'll be giving a new one...

Eviternity (n) - eternal existence

Topic of the Day... well, again

Friendships

What is friendship? Is it just an insignificant and useless relationship? or does it play a very important role in our lives? Friends does play a very significant part in our lives. Even with all the wealth and knowledge you have, without friends it all means nothing. Without friends, you cannot share your pain, joy or anything. Friends keeps you company at all times, no matter you are enjoying your life, or when you are at the deepest sorrow of your life. They are there for you. Friendship does not always be a very happy topic. It could be very hurtful and sad. I would like to share certain experiences relating to friendship to all of you.
I have abandoned a friend of mine once. He was a close friend of mine from my old school. We were really close, and I liked him as a friend. He was a hyper and crazy person. We had a lot of fun time together, until one day I have to move to another school. The unbelievable thing is, I was very inconsiderate and I just left without even telling him anything! I didn't have his phone number, and it was a school holiday. We didn't have any contact after I moved to SPH, and I think I saw him one time, when I picked up my brother from school. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to recognize me (due to the 360 degrees transformation from the dorky me to the hot and handsome me) or he just doesn't want to see me.
I have been left by a friend once. We were really close during grade 9, and then something lugubrious happened. I liked the girl that he used to like, and we had a mutual relationship. We became further and further away, eventually during the holidays, we didn't really talk at all. Somehow we became closer in grade 10, and then another thing occurred again, which caused us to part ways. Our relationship didn't recover very well after that event. Fortunately, we are quite alright now. I think of him as a very special friend, and I really want to be close to him again.
But, I do have a joyful moment with friends. I have a very close and special friend of mine since grade 8. We knew each other when we were in grade 7, and we were in the same class. I became interested in getting to know her and we became close soon afterwards. She was always there, and every time I have something in my mind, I usually tell her right away. I was happy to be her friend, and we are still close up until now. We share each other's feelings and thoughts, and we often talk about it.
I have friends who are very funny and entertaining. They are in my English class! :D Although they may not be as close as my friend as depicted above, but we are quite close. They always support me, and we have a lot of fun times together. Most of the time we do peripheral and stupid things. We laugh a lot, and we get excited doing things together a lot. They are my sports friends as well, because I play a lot of sports with them. We share similar characteristics and interests.
Despite the sadness and troubles of having friends, we should connect ourselves with a lot of people. We should be amiable, flexible and convivial at all times so we can easily relate with other people. The more friends you have, the more powerful and influential you become. However, you should choose your friends carefully. Do not befriend people who will exacerbate you.

Joke of the Day

Quite A Development

When I had a job at the photo-developing counter of a pharmacy, the film was sometimes developed incorrectly. If this occurred, we did not charge our customers. On one occasion, a man came to pick up his pictures, which were marked $0.00, indicating that not a single one of them had turned out right. The customer asked to see the photos, and when I noticed the odd splotches of color all over the pictures, I apologized profusely. "Oh, no, these are fine," he said happily. "I'm a microbiologist, and these are my bacteria cultures."

DaNte

DaNte's Post

2007-11-30T20:39:00.000+07:00

DaNte's Post

30-11-2007

From now on, I will post my blog entries as 'DaNte's Post' only, since I tend to forget or procrastinate my Friday blogs... *smile* Anyways, it is couple more days before holiday! Woo hoo! But sadly, some of us aren't satisfied of our exam results. But do not worry! Keep on fighting and study hard, for it is only the first exams! Let us begin our post

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote of the Day

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."

Burton Hills

Word of the Day

Premonition (n) - A strong feeling that something is going to happen

Topic of the Day

A Stress Relief

Every single one of us has our own ways of escaping the reality to drift in our own dimension. Each of our own ways are unique, no matter what form they are in. Some watches movies, some sings, and there are comprehensive ways people express their thoughts and emotions. I would like to share how I escape reality!

My best escape from reality is the computer world. Actually... almost 70% of my time is taken by the computer world (yes, I am sad T_T) but there's just lots of things (mostly useless things) that will occupy you and will not get you bored. Computer games are mostly my greatest escape from reality. To me, computer games just absorb me into a whole new and different world. It makes me forget thoughts and forlorn emotions. My favorite computer games are Warcraft and probably GameBoy emulators :D. You might think I am a dork for this, but it is just how I relieve stress. However, computer games may make me sentimental as well. If the enemies are aggravating, the computer's running slow, I may get cranky and release my anger to the people around me. It is nice to forget things but being too much into your own world will make you excessively emotional and rude.

Another escape of reality is watching TV or movie! Movies are a powerful tool to influence the minds of many. They can be very alluring and influential. My most favorite TV show of all times is HEROES!!! WHOO HOO! *Ahem* it makes me forget everything, and often makes me dreaming of what powers would I want. Yes, yes I know I am really childish, but I just wish that I have an extraordinary power. It will make our life much easier, unless of course, a villain is seeking to cut your head and take out your brain for self lucrative.

Another escape mechanism of mine is to play sports! I love sports, especially basketball. They are the most exhilarating and entertaining sport I've ever played. Playing basketball with friends just makes me forget about everything else. When playing basketball, you just try your best to excel and score the most. When you focus, you just forget about everything else. A substitute (yes, its an economic term) for basketball is probably soccer, or well, any kinds of sport! That is why sports are very exciting especially with the company of your friends.

I think that is all my escape mechanism. It is very crucial that every single individual choose their escape mechanism. It will help them relieve stress and flee from the troubles of the world! Woo hoo!

Joke of the Day

Farm Yard Follies

There was this zebra who had lived her entire life in a zoo and was getting on a bit so the zoo keeper decided as a treat that she could spend her final years in bliss on a farm.

The zebra was so excited, she got to see this huge space with green grass and hill and trees and all these strange animals. She saw a big fat weird looking brown thing and ran up to it very excited, "Hi, I'm a zebra. What are you?"

"I'm a cow."

"Right, right. What do you do?"

"I make milk for the farmer."

"Cool." The zebra then saw this funny looking little white thing and ran over to it. "Hi, I'm a zebra. What are you?"

"I'm a chicken."

"Oh, right. What do you do?"

"I make eggs for the farmer."

"Right, great, see ya round." Then the zebra saw this very handsome beast that looked almost exactly like her without the stripes. She ran over to it and said, "Hi, I'm a zebra. What are you?"

"I am a stallion," said the horse.

"Wow," said the zebra. "What do you do?"

"Take off your pajamas, darling, and I'll show you."

Fridays with DaNte 4th post 2nd term

2007-11-19T20:07:00.000+07:00

Fridays with DaNte

16-11-2007

This week is… uhh… 2 weeks before exams… T_T HOW EXCRUCIATING! We must study… study… and study! Good bye social life, good bye PlayStation 2, and good bye Dota… boohoo…

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote of the Day

"Dreams will only exist as a dream unless you wake up and make it happen"

Edward Budiman

My own quote, hehehe.

Word of the Day

Dreamscape (n) – A scene with the strangeness or mystery characteristic of dreams

Topic of the Day

My Personal Awesome Laudable Stream of Consciousness

Today is Friday and what I do in Fridays is take a rest but then there’s so much things that I want to do such as playing computer games, hang out with friends, play basketball and a whole lot more however my time is all taken by my girlfriend (:P kidding) in the next room, I wonder if the people next class are doing a tedious project or work because we are doing something really arbitrary and aberrant so its really unfortunate for them if they are doing something boring like math classes that I just took before this lesson with Pak Wir who taught math for around 40 years or so until present time where technology have almost dominated the world and people keep on utilizing these technologies in order to make life easier unlike Indonesians do, they just keep living in monochrome and the governments are a bunch of selfish idiots who always corrupt the country’s money and never care for the rising issues in Indonesia such as the Busway project which caused an even slower and aggravating traffic jams in Jakarta and problems for us good citizens of Indonesia but not all citizens are good because some are ugly and annoying like James who’s sitting in front of me right now, I don’t like him because he annoys the *@!#*$(#@#%^! Out of me but I am only kidding by the way, James is a nice friend and he’s very laid back and loud as well, very loud just like Meta who’s being excessively loquacious and she is very confident, in my opinion, sadly for James he was being verbally-harassed by Meta, she made a big scene in our English session right now and she is disrupting any stream of consciousness because of her extreme and perturbing voice that insistently attack my ears, okay enough erratic babble about Meta, I want to watch Heroes Season 2 and when I go home I will watch that season right away because I just downloaded it.

The Stream still continues, but before you fall asleep I should stop it :D

Joke of the Day

Your mom is so stupid that she tells YOU your momma jokes.

… no comment… haha

DaNte

Violence at Schools - [ 4th blog in term 2]

2007-11-18T16:38:00.000+07:00

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Bahasa Indonesia of the Day:

Palsu or Tiruan - [adj] - Fake, Counterfeit
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Violence within the education institute is always attracting anger. This because education's real purpose - to equipped people with smart common-sense and judgment, as well as polite and civilized behavior - has been tainted and "reversed." Thus, educations that give birth to aggressive characteristic are considered as a betrayal upon the educational purpose.

However, violence within the educational world not just recently happened but it has long been an inseparable part. Maybe this issue is not really portrayed within our school's community, but if we broaden our view to other schools in Jakarta alone we can identify variety of these sadistic cases among the students. Based on newspaper articles that I have recently read, these brutalities is unlike the normal teen fight such as backstabbing or outcasting people - they have turned into bloodshed battlefields amongst peer. Maltreatment done by seniors and gangster fights are just what we called as "basic and common" examples regarding to student's death. Broaden our view again; we can see the worse scenario such as the Virginia Tech incident that receives the world's pity. Are these the kind of future that we have dreamed for our generation's education? This continuous chain of violence through time is actually indicating us that actually violence has become a tradition that is globally preserved, grown, and solidified. This world where we lived in is having a deformation into primitive epoch; more primitive than the stone age itself.

Most of the gangsters in Jakarta schools are publicly exposed due to the coincidence where the victim's parents informed the school. But the violence within many other school remains unveiled and unnoticed because the solidarity between gangster members is very tight to make them open their mouth.

As we can hypothesize, these over-adolescent infractions are mostly due to peer pressure, envy, or grudge. Yet, the schools will never know the whole picture or the core of this hostility which befall upon their students. Moreover, some schools are blinded with material gains that they could not care less to observe their student's activity or by pretending as if they don't know it's happening, while some are just being overprotective and fanatical in creating a secure second-home for their students, which not only worsen the student's psychological mind map, but it also give limitation to their youthful age that should be filled with momentous happy moments - the golden year of their (or should I say our) life. Perfect schools are scarce these days. It means that revenges and brutalities in form of bullying or intimidation from the seniors to their junior are standing still as perennial customs.

In addition, these noted incidences are only from the media and this is a lot. Imagine the unpublished cases! These are just small tides from a big tsunami that is called student's violence. If only there are honest witnesses from related students, the number and type of violence will be utterly shocking.

Surely we can talk and relate these school's aggression enjoyably and in a wider spectrum; our community. Look at the bigger "model" of these bloodshed battlefield throughout history: Poso, May Riot, and Bali Bombing. Not to mention the social conflicts within a smaller scale that often producing excess death. These are our true faces, and it is the bitterest truth of all that we are actually (I just heard this from TV) Lupus est homo homini - one human becomes another wolf for the others. Don't we dare to think that these bigger conflicts doesn't have any correlation to what happened in schools these days. As I said before, it is a sign of educational deformation!

Basically, Indonesia's society is actually a "mother" who give birth to multifarious communities with various necessities (gangster, false teachings, communist, etc). This school's violence is not something that stand on its own. It is created from societies who DO take care of this violence.

On contrary, violence is not something that we cannot separated from the school's community for it only grows in fields where they are given a space to grow and blossom. Emphatic schools which declare wars and consistent observations will not provide space for the harmful flower to blossom.

The easiest solution for this problem is to give punishments to the doers. Yet, this is a very blunt solution since the punished ones will plant more grudge and will present worse brutalities right after they have been set free - it would become an endless cycle. Moreover, sometimes the students did this because of their unfortunate backgrounds, overrated peer pressure, or because they couldn't bear the injustice that befalls upon their life. For example: ignored by the majorities, become the teacher's bias victim, pranked continuously, etc. Our country do need to reevaluate these negative externalities, and repair the damage that has spread even to the mind of the youth.

We must believe, especially within the education world, that to prevent is the best option. True educators should also be able to straighten student's destructive behaviors into constructive ones. Maybe school gangsters cannot be eliminated, but their potential to gather for their multifarious needs can be guided and eventually transformed into a community of activities and creativities for social needs and benefits.

Because of this, the world of education must also have the best ability to maintain justice and regulations through good exemplars. This have to be the uppermost commitment.

This goes for Indonesia's society as a whole as well, with hope to abolish all external issues that only worsen our country: domestically and internationally.

Interhouse Soccer Tournament !! - Tense Soccer, Intense Sunlight - [3rd Blog in Term 2]

2007-11-15T19:14:00.000+07:00

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Bahasa Indonesia of the Day:

Kabur - [verb] - Fade, Blur
Kabur - [noun] - Escape, Fled
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Yesterday was very loud and lively. It began with assortment of deafening cheers (and growls) that filled the gym with enthusiastic moods, proceeded with wild soccer kicking and goaling, and ended with our feet that can barely walk but with smiles that never fade. It is a good refreshment and relaxation in this painful IB world.

As Krakatau as I can be, the day from my perspective was wonderful even though all I do is just watching, cheering, and wandering in the field. Summarizing yesterday, the krakataunians (that's what we call it) from grade 11/12 was beaten real bad and did not win any single game. The game was real tense though because we made quite a lot of goal attempts that, unfortunately, missed by small inches. But as bright and hot as the sun, our cheering was never ending and WE WON THE SPIRIT COMPETITION!! We also took the 1st place in the Junior School, and 2nd in Senior School (Poor Reds; miscounted and have to hold the 4th place. Sorry Miss Jess haha). Yellow is so winning this year trophy.

Out of all the events held yesterday, I really enjoy watching the small tots played the soccer ball quizzically. Some of them are actually good!! especially the goal keeper of Krakatau who caught every single ball that was launched by the opponents. The water balloon war in the grade 11/12 field is also memorable: some of us managed to make Mr.Sam and some of the players wet! All is tense, all is fun...just for that day.

Pitifully, the side effects of the 5-hour event were seen today to both students and teacher; pain ones and strange ones. Firstly, the majority of people suffer sunburns in variety of levels - from red patches until full skin pigmentation - which make most of them vulnerable to be poked. Secondly, both players and supporters' energy are completely drained and all of us are tired as if we suffered Monday fever. I can see myself and my classmates were in almost-sleep condition in every classes (some of us did sleep heavily like fainted people). The teachers were also in a lazy mood today, and turns out that they're more tired than we are because right after the tournament, they have teacher's chapel and filling thick questionnaire papers. Thirdly, players are suffering physical illnesses such as sprains and blisters, and most of them are felt by the players this morning.

Last but not least (I make a special paragraph just to tell this one), yesterday's intense sunlight have caused certain people to suffer jet lag and personality alteration! This is the weirdest sunlight effect that I have ever witnessed in my life. This effect was clearly presented through a certain teacher that taught me early in the morning: Initially, his physical appearance was painted with blushing red, his face expression was showing an obvious sign of tiredness, and most of all his personality during lesson is the most noticeable of all. He usually taught us enjoyably educational with his clever case exemplars and he always answered his student's question seriously. Today however, he taught us normally but he became cheesy and cheesier as time went on: he answered questions with cheesy jokes and slipped some quick but numerous intermission of his cheesy jokes during his explanation of certain theories; creating laughter that is mixed with fear, fear that this particular teacher was suffering an emotional breakdown. When we asked him why he did those jokes, he answered youthfully (see, he even act more youthful than usual): "I can't stop myself from doing that."

But still, even though he was cheesy we still love him and he is still our best economic teacher ever! (now you know who is this anonymous teacher).

All in all, the soccer tournament was very enjoyable and it has established tighter bonds between each others, especially between members of the same house team. Yes it has shown wild and gruesome effects to all people, but its presence has created another page of memories in our high school life; the golden year of our life. Come to think of it, it is these kinds of sceneries and unexpected moments with your close ones and the people around you that make this life reaches its completion.

p.s...KRAKATAU ROCKS !!!

Say Hello to Volleyball - [2nd Blog in term 2]

2007-11-14T15:15:00.001+07:00

Minor Announcement!!!~
The beginning of term 2 and the blog seems to become duller and duller by day. Bloggers started to slack a little bit during their shifts (including me who still owe 2 blogs). This is utterly sad yet unavoidable.

Starting from this blog, inspired from Dante, I want to add a "word of the day" section in each of my blogs in the future. But mine would be Indonesian vocabularies. I know maybe this decision is equivalent to desperate attempts to make the blog less boring to be written or to be read, but who knows that these vocabularies will help some of us such as the expatriate audiences as well as those Indonesians who are struggling in their Bahasa class (you know who you are). You will never know when the smallest thing you see is the key to survive one of your biggest moment in life.

I will try to include various words (verb, adjective, adverb) and also some Indonesian phrase or idiom. I hope I can give the most precise definition of the words later on.

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Bahasa Indonesia of the day:

Jenaka - [ adj ] - Funny, Quizzical

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In this life, there are just things that you just cannot avoid them from encountering with you whenever and wherever you are. Just like mosquitoes who always chase and bite you whenever you hanged out with your friends in Indonesia, or like the haunting curiosity of your math result whenever you just submit your test paper to your teacher. This is both annoying and relieving. It is annoying because you just get bugged with the same thing (or person) with the same nuisance condition. It can be relieving because if you certainly know that you can ace the test, then you can hum joyfully while waiting for the test to be graded - it's a problem free! And you know what? I am suffering with this mandatory event.

Firstly, we say goodbye and congrats to the basketball season & teams who have done well in the tournaments, and say hello to volleyball season. So here I was 2 days ago, changing into my PE uniform and waiting in Gym 1 after school - It has been so long that I wanted to learn to play volleyball, ever since the Interhouse Volleyball Competition (which was won by Krakatau yay!) - holding volleyball and ready to try to do a service. All of the participants are waiting for Pak Ricky to come but after 10 minutes we didn't see him anywhere; all we can see is just Bu Riri and the girls team, and Mr.Owen who was stretching in his red jersey. I asked him what is he doing here, but I didn't receive his reply clearly. It was a very awkward scenery.

Five minutes later, Mr.Owen suddenly told us to move to the other side of the gym (where the badminton nets usually set). All of us startled and slowly realized that he is our volleyball teacher!!! Turns out that he will help Pak Ricky in this season. He is the encounter that I could not avoid in my IB life...

Since morning, his presence never subsides until the clock reaches 5 o'clock. When I go to school by bus, around 6:40, I always saw him with his son walking to the school. 20 minutes later, I go to his class (he's my homeroom teacher). Then almost everyday I have him again as my chemistry teacher, and during Thursdays I have double period of him after lunch (making it a 4 non-stop periods). Not forgetting that whenever I go to my locker (which is almost everytime) I always see him as well. And now, he is my volleyball teacher too! This should be a quality time indeed.

I must say that Mr.Owen is good in volleyball and he is very humorous as well. His presence as my volleyball teacher relieved me quite a bit because we meet very frequently; making us quite close. Thus, he knows my capability and personality, and he can understand if I was making mistakes. Nevertheless, I won't be shy to ask his assistance (since I'm a novice in this sports and there are lots of skills that I need to learn). I'm not comparing him and Pak Ricky, because I like both of them and both of them have the humorous personality and qualitative teachings. It is great to have both of them as volleyball teachers.

Just as a brief story, we (the volleyball participants) have had lessons for 2 days and they are filled with unusual drill as well, especially during the 2nd day. In the first day, we just refresh and perfecting our passing skills and test our capability by having a game. The second day, we have speed and technique drill; normal stuffs. However, we are also taught how to receive the ball my diving! We have to literally throw our self to the floor as if we're diving and stand up swiftly. We have to do this repetitively across the gym and trust me, it is a pain near our stomach area. I even get a bruise and a papercut. Overall, they are very interesting days!

-I'm starting to like volleyball, even though I still suck at it

Hence, It can be deduced that:

My Homeroom Teacher = My Chemistry Teacher = My Volleyball Teacher

DaNte's Post - 3rd for 2nd Term

2007-11-11T10:34:00.000+07:00

Fridays withDaNte!
11-11-2007

Another arduous week in my IB life! I failed a friggin' math test and I'm having another one next week. So please, everyone! Pray for my test scores! Help! Anyways... basketball season has ended as well, so its not a physically-tiring week but more of a mentally-tiring week. Let's begin our post.

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote

"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity."

Thomas Wolfe

Word of the Day

Defame - damage the good reputation of...

Topic of the Day

To Treat a Girl - Part 2

As you all know in Term 1, I posted a blog which talked about tips to treat girls. I am going to continue it!

Girls, girls, girls. It is usually what us hormone-filled male teenagers think about. We think about girls with pretty and cute faces, minimal clothes, big melons, maybe money? and so much more aspects about girls. But do we treat them nicely? Do we treat them they way we're supposed to treat them? Do we actually know what they really want?

Girls demands time. There is nothing that could erase that fact. NOTHING AT ALL. Girls wants a lot of your time. Phone calls, hang outs, company, dates and such. A girl feels special if boys spend a lot of time for her, no doubt about that. However, too much time spent, say 23 hours a day, with her may think you're a compulsive maniac who doesn't have a social life at all. Spending time with her alone will not make her entirely special, however. You should also spend time to work on her birthday gifts, spend time preparing for Valentine's Day and spend time bringing her books to her locker. So, girls basically require a lot of time to satisfy them.

Girls demand attention. Time alone is not a pure satisfactory. Attention is the pair of time. If you spend time with her on a date, but you kept looking at other girls, obviously your girl will hang you or kick you in the nuts. I think this is more important than time. Without attention, your relationship will last ephemerally. Again, girls feel special when boys pay extra attention to them. Girls will feel special when boys say "Hey, I like your new earring," even though it is not so visible. It means that you pays attention to her. Girls wants you to pay very specific attention to her!

Girls wants affection. Most girls wants you to hug, hold hands, kiss, cuddle, or whatsoever. Some may like to do so in public, some in private. No matter what, they still wants you to get touchy to her. However, there are some areas that girls don't want you to touch, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Some girls like suprise attacks as well. When they least expect it, kiss her. She'll be very happy.

Well, I think that's all you need to know for now. I hope this can be useful for all of you.

Joke of the Day

A man entered a restaurant and sat at the only open table. As he sat down, he knocked the spoon off the table with his elbow. A nearby waiter reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a clean spoon, and set it on the man's table. The diner was impressed. "Do all the waiters carry spoons in their pockets?"

The waiter replied, "Yes. Ever since we had that efficiency expert out here; he determined that 17.8% of our diners knock their spoons off their tables. By carrying clean spoons, we save trips to the kitchen."

The diner ate his meal. As he was paying the waiter, he commented, "Forgive the intrusion, but do you know that you have a string hanging from your fly?"

The waiter replied, "Yes, we all do. Seems that the same efficiency expert determined that we spend too much time washing our hands after using the men's room. So, the other end of that string is tied to my dick. When I need to go, I simply pull the string to pull it out, I go, and return to work. Having never touched myself, there is no need to wash my hands. Saves a lot of time."

"Wait a minute," said the diner. "How do you get your ying yang back in your pants?"

"Well, I don't know about the other guys, but I use the spoon."

The Raging Ascension of Technology

2007-11-07T00:08:00.000+07:00

We inhabit in a world where science seems to dominate our surroundings, environment, lifestyle and everything that relates to the tangible natural world. Individuals these days indulge themselves in the uses handphones, television, computers, internet and many more electronics in all sorts of mechanical connectivity. From the beginning of time, man has acquired knowledge in maneuvering their surroundings for the better comfort through the principles of science. This form of science is the called ‘technology’ where literally, it meant “the study of skill”.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is known to be the man who stubbornly flied a kite in the midst of a thunderstorm. This is in fact, to determine whether electricity can be used as a form of energy and can be stored elsewhere. He can probably be considered the first spark of mankind in the very first form of electronics. (A pun is used where Benjamin is referred to be ‘the spark’ as the topic correlates to electricity)

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) is known to be the next step in technology as he was known to be the man who invented the light bulb after innumerable failures he encountered in attempt to construct a single durable light stored between glass figures. If one takes time to consider, without his perseverance in trying to create a single light bulb, our current world would not contain objects such as the computer, the television, digital cameras, and surely many more. A correction, without his perseverance, the objects of our current will be delayed in the coming of time – it would not be forever non-existent in the face of humanity.

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), though has lived in the same time frame similar to Thomas Alva Edison, has contributed to the world through its first connectivity of a wired machinery – the telephone. Yes, again it took hard efforts and perseverance in trying to accomplish this invention for he did not succeed in the first trial. But after numerous attempts, he is finally able to transmit voice through wire. In the end, this founding aided the use of wires in electronics to transfer electricity as well as the commonly used handphone.

These people have contributed their lives in making the world a better place through the use of technology. Furthermore, there are more people who attempted to help the rise of technology, such people known as Bill Gates might be known to be the person who changed the world. Each technology being marginally better than the ones before are the general and possibly the only thing that had happen to technology in the past century. Temporarily, the exceeding growth of technology still remains and has reached a very surprising stage: Nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence

The basic definition of ‘nanotechnology’ is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. In its original sense, ‘nanotechnology’ refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high performance products. (CRN)

K. Eric Dexler was the man who popularized the word ‘nanotechnology’ in the 1980s as he was talking about building machines on the scale of molecules, - a few nanometers wide motors, robot arms, and even whole computers, far smaller than a cell. Today, the uses of nanotechnology improved exponentially to the extent where mostly everything is engineered by these setups. An exemplary would be innovated laptops where the hard drives, internal memories and circuits are configured with advanced nanotechnologies in which causes complications for those who manually hack computers. Even so, with the aid of nanotechnologies, bigger storage becomes smaller and smaller. A ‘nanotechnolized’ hard drive is at the size of a thumb or even smaller. Through this invention, more innovative inventions can be made.

The use of nanotechnology does not only imply on external electronics specifically, it also aids those within the fields of bioengineering where small robots are inserted to the body to fix internal biological problems. Problems such as diffusing a virus and such are also one of the capabilities of nanotechnologies.

Nonetheless, technology itself will never stop to improve as they will keep on rising to a new level after achieving something. Deductively, nanotechnology, the current extent of technology will not remain as so for many new things will come through more findings of new technologies, for that itself is the cycle of technology – keeps getting better and better.

Fridays with DaNte - 2nd post of 2nd term

2007-11-02T21:30:00.000+07:00

Fridays with DaNte
02-11-2007

We just received our report card! Not everyone got decent grades, but it's alright! It's only the first term! *quoting Ms. Jessica* This week was also the starting of the SPH Cup Tournament, however we lost the tournament. Twice. Sob!!! We played against PSKD (last year's PH Cup champion) and Kanisius (this year's SMAK1 Cup champion). They were tough opponents, but we managed to not let ourselves lose easily. We did our best anyway, and there's a lot of things we should improve. Let us begin our Friday night then!

Erratic Picture of the Day
I made this picture... Very picturesque, right?

Auspicious Quotes
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."

Mark Twain

Word of the Day

Vigilant (adj) - keeping careful watch

Topic of the Day

Purgatory: Fact or Myth?

Recently, my mom just attended a church seminar about the spirits that dwell in this world. We only see these kind of spirits in the horror movies, horror series or whatsoever but believe it or not, they exist. Personally, though, I don't really believe it, but this topic intrigues me. However not all of these spirits are evil. Some spirits just mingle out and about in this world, waiting for someone to pray to God to give these individual spirits mercy and grace. By the way, I do not mean to be bias to certain culture or religion, I am writing this on sheer interest, and I would like to share this with you all. So what exactly is purgatory?

The Catholics believe imperfectly purified spirits, or spirits who does not repent fully, will be purged in purgatory. God pardoned their minor sins, but they still have to pay for the cost. As I read from a website, it was mentioned that God did not see sins equally, and God will not punish people equally as people who committed a more nefarious sin. The scripture stated that "it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27). They will be cleansed and punished for their sins in a purifying conflagration. The process of purgatory will completely pay off their sins and this will allow them to receive God's promise of eternal life. Most people believe that the purgatory is a fiery place, but this fact is still unconfirmed.

The process of purgatory does not only depend on the sins of the spirits though. It was believed that people have to pray and ask for God's mercy to release them from this purification. By praying for them, they may finally rest peacefully for eternity. Hence the Catholic church often have a so-called "Spirit Mass" or "Misa Arwah" in Indonesian. The mass prayed for the spirits of the dead so they can be released from purgatory and reconcile with the Creator once again. That is why most people will attend this mass to pray for their dead relatives or ancestors.

The term 'purgatory' does not appear in the Bible, however that doesn't mean it does not exist entirely. The term incarnation and trinity does not appear in the Bible as well, but many doctrines taught in it. It was mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3:15 that "He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire". This cannot mean that spirits 'he' or whoever 'he' is, will go to hell, since no one will be salvaged there; it also cannot mean heaven, since there are no sufferings in heaven. In the book of Maccabees, which had been cut by Protestants, it was mentioned that "In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin" (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not required for those in heaven, and prayers will not help those in hell. This leads into a probability of some people is in a temporary unknown condition. From this verse it was said that prayers for the dead were approved as well. This statement could somehow confirm the existence of the purgatory in our lives.

I would like to remind you all that I only write this only for sheer interest and knowledge, not as a taunt or to raise any controversy, nor a mockery to any religion. I myself is still dubious about the existence of purgatory itself, and I am not trying to convince you all that purgatory does exist. But, we all know that God will forgive our sins and He will always accept us no matter what. Therefore we should reconcile and be a compliant follower of Him so we will be saved through his grace. After all, it is a much safer way than being burned in purgatory anyway.

Joke of the Day

A gentleman entered a busy florist shop that displayed a large sign that read, "Say It With Flowers." "Wrap up one rose," he told the florist. "Only one?" the florist asked. "Just one," the customer replied. "I'm a man of few words."

DaNte

Historical Holiday: A Candid Experience of One’s Ancestry - China [Part II]

2007-10-28T22:39:00.000+07:00

After these tiring days, our large group of thirty individuals was split into two separate destinations; one heading towards Shanghai and another towards Mei Zhou, the land of the Chinese dialects of ‘Khek’. As a prerequisite note, it is known that China is a vast country filled with different dialects, (the majority of dialects known are ‘Khek’ and ‘Hokkian’) just as Indonesia has innumerable tribes, ranging from the Sundanese, Bataknese and others. My mom’s family are ‘Khek’ and we are going to the village of where her grandfather came from. It was a short flight from Beijing to Guang Zhou, there we have to walk (yes, walk) from the airport to the train station through the main road which was approximately 500 meters. In the journey, a person with very similar appearances to a friend walked across, and it was quite hilarious. Skipping to the train station, we took a bus instead and had an eight hour drive to Mei Zhou, a distant town from the main city. We eventually arrived in front of our hotel, possibly the only five star hotel in the isolated little town. Surprisingly, it was 200 yuan (converted to approximately Rp. 240,000) for a presidential suite and for such a luxurious facility. We then had a supper in the market below on the road side. The famous ‘Yam Mie’ (noodles) known as one of the authentic delicacy of the Khek, was served everywhere, even in the late night. Another surprising fact that it was really cheap in comparison to the amount of meal they served. Fifteen portions costs about 40 yuan (Rp. 48,000). This made me deduce of how low their standards of living are, and how could one possibly survive there?

The next morning, we were picked up by our long lost blood family that remained in China. To elaborate, this was the story of my family from the words of my grandmother: My great-grandparents (from my mother’s side) had just given birth to a daughter when an invasion occurred in China. They wanted to flee, but their in-laws restrict them for they assume that they won’t return if they brought their child with them. They left the child in China and bravely ventured out to Indonesia. (This moment of time, the brothers were also brought with them, all except one, who was again restricted to leave. They all went all over Indonesia, some went to Timor, and some went to Pontianak). My great-grandparents again gave birth, this time to a son, my grandfather. After several years, they also adopt some other kids. For the rest of their days, they did not return to China, not to see their daughter, but instead, moved to Jakarta and has settled there after the marriage of my grandfather.

In 1978, there was a medical crisis of grandaunt in China, my grandfather went there for the first time to aid her by bringing her to a doctor, outside the village. It was a horrible journey there, especially in 1978, no actual roads were built around the area of the village, no mechanical engineered vehicle and the largest obstacle, the mountain. And that was the first and last time they saw each other. Now, 29 years later, my grandfather forbade us to visit the village for its troublesome journey. He himself won’t even go to China. Here we are, now, 29 years later, meeting our last blood family existing in China.

The road towards the village certainly is long and the fact that there were no roads back then gave the horrible impression. There was a small long path leading to the front of the village, at the foot of the mountain on the other side. (No wonder, my grandfather said not to go). This particular blood grandaunt strokes my memories of the past of the face of my great-grandmother (her mother). We were greeted with innumerable explosions of firecrackers (a traditional method in alerting people of an occasion) Yes, some tears were shed, and I became known to cousins I never knew existed. Days were spent together in mostly talking and shopping together. Saw pictures and portraits of my grandfather in the room. Their village was particularly intriguing. It is a small land, divided into rooms of family members and the center was a place of praying and the living room. Such isolated location with such primitive lifestyle, no wonder one of the remaining brother (who was not allowed to go out of China last time) said to my mother that she was lucky her grandfather bravely went out of the country at that time. (This again reflected to me, for I might not exist if my mother did not meet my father in America).

Goodbyes were mentioned, and some promised that we would meet again and would visit us in Indonesia. Our vacation continued with another bus journey, this time for about eight hours to the place where the British once ruled, Hong Kong.

Our segregated family members from Shanghai were gathered towards the same hotel in Hong Kong. That next morning, the majority of the family members went to Hong Kong Disneyland, my own family on the other hand didn’t, my father refused for our family have been to Disney World in Florida few months ago. Thus, that following day, I wandered in the streets of Hong Kong. My mom went shopping with her friends as well as my dad followed her around, I eventually followed around with no aim within mind. I tried to find a replacement 5x5 rubik’s cube in Toys R’ Us, but they only sell 3x3; that is just sad…

It was finally time for us to go back to Jakarta. On the other hand, my father went on a different flight, back to China for business and in the Hong Kong airport, we separated. In the airport, I stumbled upon an old friend whom was once enrolled in SPH and we chatted for a while and found out that we are in the same flight back home to Jakarta. In the flight, some more movies were watched, such as ‘License to Wed’ casted Robin Williams and Mandy Moore as well as a fascinating documentary of Chelsea, the soccer team. Other than that, I taught my cousins who bought the 3x3 rubik’s cube until we arrived in Jakarta. That would probably sum up my holidays, my almost two full weeks of holiday.

Historical Holiday: A Candid Experience of One’s Ancestry - China [Part I]

2007-10-28T22:20:00.000+07:00

As the Lebaran holiday approaches, a dinner with the big family with relatives from my father’s side was held in a usual authentic Chinese restaurant where “Big Daddy” (Grandfather) announced that he wanted his grandchildren to go witness the improvement of his village in China. One of my uncles then added the fact that in majority of the grandchildren have not been to the eminent Great Wall of China whilst giving a weird statement saying that one is not truly Chinese until they have been to the Great Wall. Thus, it was then decided that there will be a trip around China for the holidays which consists fifteen of my relatives.

We left on the tenth in the morning where the flight was delayed due to mental difficulties of the cooperation of the airport staffs in handling the immigration. Our group was the last to enter the aircraft with passengers staring at us, yet we could not care less for it was not our fault the immigration was done in such dull manners. Approximately four hours later, we landed in Hong Kong to transit for three hours before continuing to Fu Zhou, the city where my grandfather (of my father’s side) grew up.

We arrived at the airport at night when we saw that our grandfather picked us up using a huge bus. Two hours later, we arrived at a tall house isolated from the city. It was located in some rural area where not many houses were built. This is the new improved house of my grandfather. We then settled in our provided bedrooms, I shared a room with my other cousins prior to playing cards throughout the night. Towards the next few days, we were shown the construction of his deed in improving his village, the schools he established and his factory where he produce different kinds and sizes of pipes and different thickness of tires built in layers to be inserted within the pipe. Additionally, we were also told the intriguing structure of homes in surrounding areas, my grandma’s house particularly: The tall structure of the house was specifically made for the next generations. For example: the first floor is for the grandparents, the second floor has three rooms for the first son and his wife, the second son and his wife and the third son and his wife, as the third floor might have several rooms for several grandsons and their wives.

The next city to visit is Beijing, the capital city of China. As you readers may recall, it is where the World Olympics will be held in 2008, in their currently constructed stadium known as the ‘Bird’s Nest’ and the ‘Water Cube’. In a private tour, we ventured upon many historical heritages protected by the country and the world as well: The Summer Palace, the Underground Palace, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall of China. Here we inherited immense knowledge concerning many dynasties of China and how each of them fell within time, the symbolism Chinese used in objects correlating to their beliefs. These attractions were very much fascinating as much as it was very much exhausting. Walking around hundreds and hundreds of hectares everyday causes one to be physically weary and the fact that it is a Chinese tour, the history was informed with the Chinese language, thus, causing mental weariness of translating for the sake of comprehension. Additionally, we walked for five towers through the Great Wall of China which can be converted to approximately four kilometers in average (please note that it is not a walk on a flat surface such as the mall, it is a constantly changing gradient of surface). By the end of the tour, a sad moment occurred. My beloved 5x5 rubik’s cube was lost in the tour bus due to the mistake of our tour leader exchanging buses. (It was supposedly be a private tour bus, but somehow a miscommunication occurred) Now, my rubik’s cube would most likely by in the hands of a dim-witted Beijing child, never to be solved again…

News During the Break

2007-10-26T21:48:00.000+07:00

This term break feels like the most enjoyable holiday out of all the other holiday. After suffering the painful introduction of IB, its devious assignments, we actually have a break!!! Even with the holiday homeworks, most of us just don't care it anymore for in the end most of us has managed to condensed the 2 weeks homework into a 2 days work. Several just ignore it and didn't do it. Haha

Yet, even if we have a happy time, the world is still revolving and so does the news that keeps revolving around tragedies articles such as death...

So here I was, embarking to Singapore along with my parents and other relatives. I was so bored to death in the plane because I didn't feel like reading the novel that I brought on that day. Without further thinking, I asked the stewardess for the newspapers she was distributing. I read and skipped articles and I found quite many interesting news. One news was regarding a house that is built in form of a humongous toilet bowl in the middle of a tranquil garden. The reason of this architectural model is because the owner of the house was born in a toilet! Subsequently, he is also wanted to raise the awareness of clean toilets! However, only a couple pages from this extravagant event lies the news that is filled with tragedy. The word that means "the shooting of teachers and teenagers which ended with the killer committing suicide." In other words: the 2nd Virginia Tech incident.

The unfortunate event took place in SuccessTech Academy, Cleveland, Chicago, and it was done by a 14-year-old boy Asa Coon. His intention to kill is due to his suspension 2 days before the bloodbath. At the day of the shooting, Coon suddenly entered the hallway and fired several rounds; causing (at least) 2 teachers and 2 students to be injured. These 2 teachers are the teachers who are involved in his earlier suspension regarding his in-school fight. Luckily, the principal announced a "code blue" signal immediately; alerting all people in the school to hide and to lock classes. As the result, they are saved indeed.

After roaming from floor to floor shooting, when he reached the 4th floor, Coon went into a classroom and shoot himself with his .38 and .22-calibre guns. Investigators had deduced that the reason Coon committed a suicide because he realize that the police had surrounded the building and he has no way out.

However, after all investigations police still don't know exactly what is the motive of this shooting. Asa Coon records told us that he is an infamous delinquent in his school who once was put in a juvenile delinquent center and used to be suspended for attempting to harm other student physically.

How about our perspective? Can we also deduce that this is mainly a just-for-fun activity for him because he is a brutal delinquent? Or maybe because of today's teenager problem - peer pressure? After all, a student heard that Coon bellowed "Shut up, shut up, I hate this school" while he's shooting all over the hallway.

You see guys, our world is worsening by night and tragedies' origins are beginning to vary: from adults to teenagers who just have their puberty. Children's naughtiness is not all about breaking porcelain or throwing toys anymore, it is now all about killing! It gets into my mind that the more modern and innovative our world be, our way of living becomes stupider. From my perception, in developed countries like USA, parents sometimes scold their children without thinking the proper usage of words: they slander, slap, and sometimes spit.

Moreover, our educational that constantly blossoms and gain more versatile knowledge plus the advance (and sometimes overrated) establishment of school rules equals students whose patience have reached their limit due to the stress of many factors such as the rules that sometimes nonsense, become paranoia, and cannot suppressed their devilish plan of killing and torturing people. Nonetheless, peer pressure that becomes common in every teenager's school life, plays a role as a catalyze in the breakdown of teenagers' good mind set.

I hope that teachers and counselors will detect this notorious issue and the affected students, and know the action that should be taken. They should know the nature & characteristic of those students and choose the appropriate action that the students actually want you to do but they cannot say it out loud because maybe he will be bullied or pranked if other students know about it.

The way-of-thinking development of young teenagers are mostly affected by their teachers, since they spent 2/3 of their day in school.

Good teacher or bad teacher? that is the question!

*just a fun fact: why does this shooting-and-suicide incidents always occur to schools that has the word Tech on their name?

Fridays with DaNte

2007-10-26T20:35:00.000+07:00

Fridays with DaNte 26 - October - 2007

School! We are back to school... YAYYYY!!! I am so excited... NOT! It was a very quick holiday, and it went really fast. I wished it was longer... but I had a pretty good holiday anyway. Anyways, back to the reality! The first week of the holiday was well... quite hectic. I had to finish homeworks that were supposed to be done during the holiday. I had minimum amount of sleep, and mostly all because of HOMEWORKS!!! WHOO! And I didn't procrastinate... *smile* hey why is my nose growing longer? Anyways... let us begin then.

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it is about learning to dance in the rain." Anonymous

Word of the Day

Impoverished - very poor

Core Topic of the Day

Since no one wants to continue the chain story... I'll just write a topic of my own then.

Joy to Jakarta, for a path extension of its most infamous public transportation, Busway! The Busway now has a more diverse route all over Jakarta, including the West side. Soon a single lane 'CREATED' by the government will be available exclusively for the Busway. There are more ways to travel around Jakarta, at a cheaper price! This Busway will surely have positive impacts, and will completely obliterate our most aggravating problem in Jakarta, traffic jam! Traveling time will never feel more expedite than ever before, and you will enjoy your trip everywhere in Jakarta. Busway, the best public transportation in Jakarta, is committed in creating a more convenient way of traveling.

Well, anyone who actually believes such an anti-thesis of reality is basically, sorry to say this, stupid. In reality, the recent construction of Busway lanes have created myriads of traffic problems everywhere in Jakarta. The Busway lane took one lane in the road. For instance, if a the road has 3 lanes for every transportation, the Busway lane took one. Imagine this, for a 3 lane road there's almost always traffic jams. What will happen with 2?! Every single day I have to endure the pain of traffic jams during school trip departures and returns. Today, on a Saturday, trips actually take twice longer, even more. My usual 10 minutes trip to a lesson had changed into a tedious, resentful 30 minutes trip. The usual time taken for me to travel from my house to the Taman Anggrek Mall was around 30 minutes, but now it morphed into a ludicrous and useless 1 hour 20 minutes (approximately) trip. The Busway lanes are open for everyone, but its barely useful. The lane was higher than the road, hence people cannot directly go into the lane. Does Busway actually have a significant role in our society? I guess not.

The governments of Indonesia have a very myopic view of this situation. The new government, Fauzi Bowo, mentioned that "I haven't come up with an instant solution for this problem," in Kompas, last week. "Busway is created to reduce the amount of traffic," Fauzi mentioned (as far as I remember). What happened in reality was the opposite of what was planned. The traffic went rambunctious as days pass. This stipulates the first failure of Fauzi Bowo to handle a crisis in our city. Through inductive logic, we can simply jump into a conclusion; All Jakarta governments are the same, egoistic and brainless money-stealer. But, keep in mind that I might be wrong, for I am not a trustworthy primary source of political information.

In other countries, such as Singapore and England, they charge people who enters a certain zone in a rush-hour. This system reduced traffic up to 30%, so efficient that they are expanding the zone in the near future, as I heard from Eric McSylar (not the real name). I've also heard that Indonesian governments or political characters have traveled to a variety of foreign countries. Why cant the Indonesian government apply foreign country's laws and policies for the benefit of their home country? Is applying a rule so arduous that even political authorities cannot spend time to think and create a lucrative policy? The governments cannot even solve the simpler problem of Jakarta. In the toll road cashier gate, there are often traffic jams, as you all may know. Why? For %#@!'s sake it's a friggin TOLL ROAD! It's not supposed to have ANY traffic jam (sorry for the sudden burst of emotion). Malaysia, one of Indonesia's closer neighbor have applied the 'Touch 'n Go' system in their toll roads. The system works like this: you drive, you put up your card within the range of the card detector, and you leave. You don't even have to open your window to detect your card. Why can't the government create such a useful system instead of putting big ugly orange buses that takes a whole lane?

We cannot know for sure what the Indonesian government might be thinking. Maybe they have a grand plan for the Busway, or maybe they do not want to deal with us. I believe our city does not need any more public transportation, since there are throngs of public transportation. It's even better if the government substitute the public transportation with brand new ones. If the governments does not make any improvements, we will soon see the deterioration of this beloved country of ours. I do hope the brainless and inconsiderate governments somehow open this website and read what is written here. Sorry if this post is similar to that of Gary's or anyone else's! I just have to write my thoughts and ideas about this crisis somehow.

Joke of the Day

For weeks a six-year old lad kept telling his first-grade teacher about the baby brother or sister that was expected at his house. One day the mother allowed the boy to feel the movements of the unborn child. The six-year old was obviously impressed, but made no comment. Furthermore, he stopped telling his teacher about the impending event. The teacher finally sat the boy on her lap and said, "Tommy, whatever has become of that baby brother or sister you were expecting at home?" Tommy burst into tears and confessed, "I think Mommy ate it!"

The Time Traveler's Wife Review

2007-10-21T14:50:00.000+07:00

After weeks of neglecting my dutiful task to read for pleasure (note the paradox), I finally finished reading a book which I borrowed from the library. It’s called The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It tells an unusual tale of a couple whose love endures and conquers over time as one of the partners is an involuntary time traveler. You might think, same old, same old. Many books and movies have dealt with the same theme of the “victory of love over time”, but in my opinion, none of them has made this topic as brilliant, exciting, and insightful as this book has done.

One of the most intriguing things about this book is that it leaves the readers a sense there is more to love than love itself. Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire have the most extraordinary relationship ever as Henry’s uncontrollable time traveling bars them from having a typical romance. This caused problems that challenge the strength of their love for each other, one of which being fear of the known – and the unknown, for that matter. I do not wish to spoil the story of the book, but there are many scenes which describes how Claire, as a child and teenager, already knows that Henry is her future husband due to the fact that he frequently goes time traveling to Claire’s youthful epoch. Along with many other scenes, this book demonstrates how love prevails over factors that seem to be beyond of our grasps - factors such as age, death, and time. Such idea gives readers a new perception on love which is different from that of what they normally perceive. However, as imaginative and enchanting as the story might be, I believe this book also handles love realistically. The author did not attempt to avoid conflicts that may arise from relationships; in fact, Henry and Claire’s relationship contains flaws that are far from the concept of perfect love. There is a time when one of them cheats on the other; there are times when dishonesty and hidden secrets are discovered from each other. Nonetheless, they struggle and persevere to overcome their faults, which develop their love and further emphasize the mentioned theme above.

Although this is a fictional tale (as I am sure none of you are able to time travel), the foundation regarding love remains universal for all of us. What we can relate to and learn from this book is that we should try our best to love everyone unconditionally, looking past their differences, weaknesses, and faults, and to help improve them through the means of supporting their virtues and strengths. It is hard, and sometimes it feels impossible to do so. But imagine a world without a single shred of love; can anyone survive in such a world? For those love skeptics out there that doubt the book and my opinion of it, yes, I agree that love is not as triumphant or glorious as it sounds like in most stories, but each and every one of us should strive anyway to love other people with our utmost efforts.

Thus I encourage you all to read this book, particularly girls who are usually interested in romantic novels. For those of you who are wondering the style of which the book is written in, all I can say is that it is beautifully written, with flowing, poignant words that will really set your imagination working wonderfully. Trust my words for it. =)

~Agie

Agnes' Stream of Consciousness

2007-10-21T14:43:00.000+07:00

Note: This was something I wrote a few weeks ago in Ms. Jess’ class.

I am sitting on a chair, writing aimlessly on a piece of paper with this sleek silver pen my dad bought me when he was overseas I think this ‘Stream of Consciousness’ is a pretty fascinating idea because really, I do not have to think hard about anything whatsoever and I like the idea of writing without having to think I love how Ms. Jessica’s room smell of coffee and is really cold – it makes me feel as if I’m at a foreign country like Canada, oh, I would love to go to Canada or Europe for a vacation and road trip even though Europe will be cooler due to its longer history, oh, I love how traveling makes me feel – I feel like I’m beyond the grasp of reality – free from all the hassles that I know I must go through if I stay in Indonesia which leads me to the topic of universities; I really want to go to St. Andrews University right now – a part of the attraction is perhaps due to the fact that Prince William used to attend the university but it is also because it seems very prestigious and exclusive as it is located in Scotland, and I like to imagine that it’s a place where not many people have gone to and thus I will be able to discover hidden places that no person has ever set foot across – it also reminds me of Neverland and Peter Pan, I really love the concept of not growing up and living in an idealistic realm where I can venture out and fly, fly, fly whenever I think of happy thoughts (which will happen all the time), dashing through the cool, fluffy clouds, breathing in the fresh air above the jungles and forests of Neverland, playing with dainty fairies – I know not growing means that I’m not living at all as growing up is a vital essence of life itself and if I decide to fly to Neverland (providing that it is real in the first place) I will be forever barred from the essence of life itself and I’ll become a stone which exists in the world, but quite worthless okay so now Meta is walking around the room and James is being really loud and is causing an amok and I’m getting distracted –I’m also craving for some cheese pretzels I ate in the beginning of class- Meta said something about “faggots” and I think the word is very peculiar because it rhymes with maggots, this reminds me of the Iran president who claimed that homosexuality never existed in his country while there was a homosexual couple who were executed and condemned for being who they are and how dare did the president make such claim but I do feel sorry for him because he got invited to talk at the University of Columbia in the US, only to receive ridicules and be the target of mockery even in the introduction when he was introduced to talk in front of the students and staffs I think even though he’s an aberrant to the society people should respect him considering that they were the ones who invited him to the seminar in the initial place – talk about disrespect, I hate it when people disrespects me it’s perturbing and I’m getting sleepy now I’m tired of life, I’m tired of IB I just want to flee away from all this mess but really I would be satisfied if I just get my sleep but nooo I’m going to have math tuition this after school speaking of which got me thinking about math and I really hate math okay I do not wish to speak about it anymore I think the Starbucks tumbler in front of me is really cute I also think this other guy is really cute and no, he’s not in this class but I guess I do like him but he’s probably not going to like me in return – not that I should care anyway.

Another Note: How’s THAT for a single sentence! =D

Lindsay Lohan Broke!

2007-10-21T14:28:00.000+07:00

I was mindlessly browsing through the internet as a result of boredom when a headline caught my attention. It claims, “Lindsay Lohan: Broke?” Typically I wouldn’t take heed of gossip news particularly towards overrated celebrities such as her, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton. However, this article managed to catch my eye as I couldn’t imagine how a Hollywood celebrity can be broke. Here’s an excerpt of the article:

“… the Hollywood it-girl is completely broke after blowing her fortune on her lavish party lifestyle!The troubled actress has apparently spent a staggering $7.75 million (yep, that's nearly 8 million dollars) over the last few months.

Now Lindsay has been forced to sell both her luxurious properties - her $1.1 million New York apartment and a $3.15 million apartment in LA.So what exactly has she been splurging her money on? Apparently a lot of stuff:

A million dollars on one hotel bill
A million dollars on clothes
Over $500,000 on partying
$500,000 on 24-hour chauffeur service
$350,000 on luxury Mercedes and BMWs
$137,000 in rehab costs
$70,000 on tanning and hair-styling

A source close to the star said that Lindsay is hoping to fix her financial problems by getting some new film work. "The only reason she's coming back to L.A is to earn some money fast.

"The trouble is, she's been criticized by important people in the film industry for being unprofessional on set, which could make it difficult to find a director willing to hire her...”

I could not believe it. It is incredulous to the extent that it is actually pretty funny. Although this might be tragic for her, I do not feel any remorse or sympathy. If she has any indication of a brain, she would have not squandered that much money (such as spending a million dollars on a SINGLE hotel bill). I think celebrities are so vulnerable to ruining their lives due to self obsession. They have forgotten that they are - like it or not – normal people whose money can disappear within a matter of days, hours, even seconds. Lindsay could have lived a life without having to work anymore; the millions of dollars which she possessed could have made her fully capable of that. Or she could have done something virtuous with her money: she could have donated it to the charity, or she could have financially support an underprivileged child. Could have, could have, could have. It is foolish of her to misuse most of her money on materialistic and perishable things such as clothes, partying, drugs, and what not. Now she must bear the consequences she reaped, and she has no one but herself to blame. Shame, shame. Hence, let that be a lesson for all of us, that even though it is fine to indulge in worldly splendors from time to time, we must not let it go over our heads, okay? :)

~Agie

Fridays with DaNte! Last Post Before Holiday (Written during the holidays actually ^^)

2007-10-09T14:22:00.000+07:00

Fridays with DaNte! Whee!

Yay! it's the holidays! It is the time where us IB students exult after a term of torment and hardwork. However, the heartless and unmerciful teachers of IB Diploma sentenced us with homeworks during our peaceful holiday. ANYWAYS! Let us finish this *cough stupid cough* blog. *Ehm* yes... lets go.

Erratic Picture of the Day

Auspicious Quote

"Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He who is content. Who is that? Nobody."

Benjamin Franklin

Word of the Day

usurp (verb) - take illegally or by force

CHAIN STORY!!!

"...ke.....p...." A distant voice vaguely resonated in my head. I faced towards the direction of the voice, but I didn't see anyone. "Wa..... u..." said the enigmatic voice. I tried to understand what he/she is trying to say, but my brain was dormant. I ran towards the direction of the voice, suddenly I see a brilliant light ahead of me. I sprinted towards the light, and suddenly the light intensified and it covered the overwhelming darkness. Then I saw a face. A big round face. It was Mr. Edward Ancient. "Wake up. You are a lazy person. You have no future! You cannot even do math, which is simple, easy and beautiful. Use your eyes!" he said in an ominous voice. I woke up from the atrocious nightmare. I screamed "Ampun Pak Edward!!!" to the top of my lungs.
"What has got into you Kwan? You are disrupting the class!" Ms. McBlonde yelled at me. She continued reading the extremely tedious book called 'The Great Gatsby'. The story consists of a young affluent man and a shallow woman. They get together, have a brief moment of romance, man died, woman ran, an epitome of nowadays' love life. Sigh... the love life... what am I going to do with 'her'? I wish I have a love life with her. I want to share my life with her... share my love... my heart... No, I'll give her all of my heart.
But why would she want to be with me? I am just an idiot who never excel in my academic or athletic life. Despite all my friend's auspicious comments, I still see myself in a dour and low image. My truly kind and magnanimous friend, Edward Hothandsomecoolsexyman, said that I am very well-rounded and I am not a failure. However, I never listen to him. He is very nice and caring to me, and to everyone he knows. I think he is the most kind and loving out of all my friends. He's also the hottest and most handsome out of all the boys in the school. Edward has a myriad of fans, and even male fans. I think I might be one of them. He is just so hot. Oh my gosh! He is sooo smoking hot... I am just soooo turned on by just looking at him. He is intellectual, handsome, hot, ssSssSssSssssSsSsSsexy... rawwRRrR, kind, versatile and wise... ughh... he is HOT! UGH!

........

I am so sorry. I was in a 'moment'. Anyhow... I don't feel like I excel in anything... I am a failure, a big failure! I should just die! ... Wait! I've heard this before, I think I've heard it from my uber pessimistic friend named Ivana George. I don't want to be like him... His nickname in a messanging service is always about him and failures such as loser, execrable grades, fail, and etc. No... I must be courageous and self-confident! I must gain kudos amongst my classmates and I must excel in school. I am not a failure... I am the ANTONYM of LOSERS! I am... KWAN MCDONNY! THE BEST STUDENT IN THE WORLD! MY STUPID FRIEND EDWARD HOTHANDSOMECOOLSEXYMAN IS THE BIGGEST AND MOST HOPELESS LOSER OF ALL TIMES!
Subconsciously, I stood up and yelled those words. Everyone was staring at me, looking at me with confused faces. I glanced at my surroundings, and then I awkwardly and slowly sat down. Edward was staring at me, and I looked at away. Few minutes later I found myself inside the principals office, waiting for the principal to come talk to me. The principal's name is Daisy Buchanan, similar to that of the girl in Great Gatsby. "You're academic performance have dropped significantly, Kwan. You used to be an eminent academic challenger, but what happened?" she asked sternly. I was silent. I know why, but I am too embarrassed to tell the reason.
"I... I think I'm in lo..." I shyly said until the dumb girl, named Nandeeta Creates barged in the room. She is the ghetto girl who always wear skirts that only cover 1/10 of her thighs. I think everyone in the school have seen her... nevermind. "Welcome Deeta, have a seat and I'll be right there with you soon," Mrs. Buchanan said.
"Ughh..." scoffed Deeta.
Mrs. Buchanan looked at me and said, "And you were saying..."

JOKE OF THE DAY!

A patient, while recovering in the hospital from a heart attack, met this over-zealous evangelist. After listening politely for more than a half hour on how thankful he should be to have been spared, and how he should repent at once, he asked if all of his sins had flashed before his eyes during the heart attack.

The patient responded, "Don't be ridiculous, the attack only lasted six hours!"

The Life of Kwan McDonny - Scene 4

2007-10-03T20:46:00.000+07:00

I pick up my brown sling bag, hang it carelessly upon my left shoulder, and hasten my pace to walk out of the room. The topic of love confuses me and I do not wish to spend another second thinking about it. Pssh. I draw a conclusion that love is just a scientific reaction as a result of metabolism. So why does everyone think love is so magical? There is nothing magical about chemical changes in the body. I snort and strides confidently over to Ms. Jessica McBlonde’s classroom.

That is, of course, until I accidentally spot a beautiful someone amongst the bustling crowd. My heart feels like it is skipping over a jump rope at a rate of a hundred times per minute. My legs abruptly freeze to the ground and I am not able to lift it up. My hands are starting to get clammy just by looking at her, even though I am 10 meters away from her. Yes, to make it clear, it is a “she”. And boy, she definitely stands out from any other girls I’ve ever met. As we walk past each other, I discreetly breathe in the subtle, sweet, floral scent that lingers at wherever she passes by and beam over the triumph of having that wonderful opportunity. Realizing how idiotic my beam must look like, I quickly glance around to see if anybody has notice what I did. A couple of people return my panicky stare, but I don’t think they saw me whiffing and beaming ridiculously at that girl. Or did they? Oh man, this is beyond embarrassing. I decide to rush even faster toward my English classroom, but it’s kind of hard to do when 400 hundred other people are trying to reach their class destinations as well through the narrow staircase.

I finally arrive at my classroom, where it supposedly acts as my love-free haven. Plopping myself on a chair next to where my friends are sitting, I feel safe and relieved. However, as Ms. McBlonde starts off the class, my mind is led back to the topic of love and “her”. I evaluate the reactions that took place when she was around me. Is that what they call “love”? Perhaps it’s not love, but it’s definitely an infatuation. Even if the feelings are just products of a biochemical and metabolic reaction, why did it make me feel so… weird? I can hardly believe myself. Five minutes ago I was scoffing at the thought of love. Now, am I actually considering the thought of loving someone? I, Kwan McDonny, sadly admit that I am a moronic hypocrite.

Apparently Ms. McBlonde notices that I am not focusing in class as I am reflecting this enigmatic thought over my head. She says, “OK. Seems to me like not everyone is giving their full attention to what I’m saying. Fine by me, considering that I have the power to give you guys low grades and detention. Right Kwan?” My thought burst, sending me back to the reality of English class. “Right,” I muttered. First Mr. Ancient, now Ms. McBlonde. Darn it. Why am I always busted at such inconvenient times? I try to put the thought of love and “her” away from my mind so that I may concentrate on The Great Gatsby.

…But I still can’t take my mind off “her”.

Chain Story I - Act III

2007-10-02T20:36:00.000+07:00

The minutes approaching period two seems quite commonplace taking into account previous class of math. Eleventh graders are either seen to be very depressed and solemnly quiet, or swearing wonderful vocabularies behind the back of Mr. Ancient. In the central staircase, I saw the higher level math students being perfectly calm and cheerful as usual when suddenly, Tom McMushroom appeared from behind wailing, “Fail…fail..fail!!!” As he smashes his empty plastic bottle and one of his shoe. Both of us struggle through the staircase as we finally arrived at the jade doors of J308. Tom suddenly rushed towards the back rows where Ang McBald and Jesse McDream sit to ask several complicated equations from the previous test and found out that it only requires two short lines to finish each problem. Tom was stunned and started banging his head on the hard cold table with tears sprinkling out.

The teacher, Eric McSylar, known to be the ‘Father of Humanities’, cheerfully stated that there is another topic to learn and questioned if we are ready. Gary McGay assiduously lists all the topics existent in the economy world as well as towards other humanities department in endeavor to flaunt the teacher and other student’s attention. Even so, James McAnnoy bellowed to shut Gary’s garrulous nonsense and Mr. Eric himself ignored both students.

“What is love?” Mr. Eric questioned. “Ugh…this is me…” Gary inaudibly whispered. The tediousness of the topic caused several chatting between students in class. Some say rumors is that Mr. Eric finally fell in love with a female economist. This concludes that his falling in love towards this particular lady is considered to have more benefits than other related business in his life. I could see that McDream is feeling the pleasure in rubbing McBald’s head while James and Dita quarrels in such immaturity concerning the ownership of a pink pencil they found on the carpet.

"Love...what is love?" I asked myself. I've heard countless things concerning love. My mind retracts all kinds of information from my brain’s memory, vision, judgment, logic and feeling and their distinctive characteristics about love. “Love is basically an emotion, right?” I asked in my mind, but if you were to think it through again, love is more than a basic emotion. Unlike simple emotions of anger, hate, fear, happiness, sadness, and other emotions, love, is expressed in such oblivious ways that it is sometimes expressed in weird ways. Tough love, for example, it is expressed through some pain for their own good as people mentioned. “Love…makes the world go round…” one of the songs sang by the PowerPuff Girls, rang in my head. Yes, people caring towards each other and showing love between mankind does make the world go round. Makes us feel that we are alive, don’t u think so? Other common kinds of love are expressed through and become a relationship. My mind hurts thinking about that because love relationships tend to get very intricate and complex. Sigh, if you think about it, it is true, what McDream once said, that love is more complicated than math. This is by fact due because it is not absolute. Doing particular steps into obtaining love does not necessarily guarantees that it would be successful. I tried to think of more things pertaining to love…“People do crazy things when they’re in love” is a quote from Disney’s Hercules as I recalled when the bell signaling the end of session rang loudly with announcement synchronizing within the tune.

Time relatively flies when you perceive dumb things. I did not catch much what Mr. Eric mumbles about love. McBald tries to talk in Chinese with McDream by mentioning weird Chinese sentences with grammatical error and wrong structures of sentence and naming the colors for some reason, but nonetheless, the bell signaled the beginning of our break. Third period is English with Ms. Jessica McBlonde and may something decent and virtuous happen in the day.

Chain Story I - Act II

2007-10-02T16:41:00.000+07:00

Oh darn, and the first period of the day is mathematics. I am screwed....

[The First Period: Mathematics]

Dashing to the toilet to grab some tissues I am, just in case that my sinus excreted during lesson. I then make my way to my Standard Level math class, which is with by Mr. Ancient Edward. When I want to turn the doorknob , Mr Olwen is behind me and told me to cut my hair - Oh boy, it's not the 1st period yet and I am very screwed. Once I enter the room, I can see the peach-colored class filled with chit-chats from the girls in the back row (talking about how hot Peter Petrelli is, and how sexy Sylar is in HEROES season 2). I walk towards my seat in the front row with all the other boys, drop my folders into the ground, and take a sit. Before I could talk to my friend, Adrian McMoney, the second bell screeched harmoniously and the class suddenly became as silent as the clear blue sky outside. Mr. Ancient close his laptop, as he will start our lesson (that's what we all think). We supposed to learn into a new topic about Complex Number, but his deep and strong voice said: "Ok guys, today we are going to have a sudden test about the previous chapters. I want to check if all of you study at home."
When the echo of his last word vanished, everybody became speechless and the birds are chirping perkily outside. I then feel the deadliest aura emanating from nowhere. After taking so many seconds to realize this unfortunate reality, I turn my head to Adrian McMoney and he did the same thing. We said nothing to each other, but we know what we are trying to say: "we are dead..."

The girls are whining; hoping to extenuate the teacher's heart and will have the test postponed or even canceled. Yet, their charm became oblivious when it reaches his sturdy heart. Instead, he replied the girls coldly with stabbing meanings that are cloaked behind his phlegmatic sarcasm: "If you don't what to take the test, it's okay for me. That means you are smart and you don't need to be in my class right? Marvelous! I can be more relax since I will have less students! Splendid!"
The girls became quiet with raging fury painted on their face.

Without hesitation, he distribute the test papers quickly and we depressively working on it. The test turns out to be a calamity (Actually, all of his tests are calamities) and it gets even worse when it is a non-calculator test. Mr. Ancient is well-known to the students for his cleverness is making question; he makes difficult questions with answers that are VERY easy - it is so easy that you can bang your head to the wall when you know the answer. When he have distributed all papers he speak to us for the last time during that day: "Remember! Use your eyes, don't use your brain."
I scratched my hair relentlessly throughout the test, after reading question after question. For 20 minutes I used most of my brain cells just to recall all the things that I have learned and to organize it which formula is used in each questions - it gives me the feeling when people is constipating during their "session" with the toilet. After killing so many brain cells, I managed to answer most of the questions and I bet my luck in other questions. I finish the test 10 seconds before the bell rang. I never felt so relieved to hear the annoying bell.

Once I have submitted my paper (he took it from me when I was still writing my name down) a friend of mine, Ivana George, came to me with sheer melancholy: "I'M FAILING !!! OH NO I'M FAILING!!" I feel like slapping him right at that moment because he always says that after all tests and it turns out that he always get high scores. "Stuff you!!" I replied. He keeps defending his sarcastic melancholy, but I decided to pretend that he's not there. I packed my stationeries and I serendipitously saw my hairs scattered on the table and covered 1/8 of the table. When I have packed everything, I said goodbye to Mr.Ancient who gives a super sinister smile while looking at some of the test papers. All of us walk out the class with assortment of depressed emotions sketched on our pale faces. I walk through the emergency staircase; heading to my next class...Economy. Once I have reached the third floor, Mr Olwen saw me and shocked: "Wow McDonny, you have cut your hair ?!!? I am touched by your fast rate of responsiveness towards my warning ha-ha-ha"

Fridays with DaNte - 4th Post... or 5th? I forgot... hmm

2007-09-28T21:48:00.000+07:00

FRIDAYS WITH DANTE!
28 - 9 - 2007

Well its another Friday! It's just another Friday until our first holiday! wheeeee aren't you excited? I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting the holidays after a term of arduous and abundant assignments. Anyway, I just want to tell you all about the new format of 'What Would Jessica Do Blog'. Our members will write a certain story, and the next day the other member will continue the preceding member's story. This change of format is temporarily, though, however we haven't decided the duration of this temporary change. I, Dante the mighty, will start the so-called 'chain story' and my dear blog members will continue the story!

Erratic Picture of the Day

The male brain...

Auspicious Quotes

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Plato

It's true! Especially for us IB victims T_T

Word of the Day

Folly - a stupid mistake

THE CHAIN STORY!

The Beginning...

I walked hastily through the empty hallways as time ticks it's seconds away. In a few seconds, I will be sentenced for a punishment. In a few seconds, I may ruin my fame. In a few seconds, my notoriety amongst the authorities will arise. Now I am sprinting to my limit, hoping that I will make it in time. I was breathing heavily and my heart was racing rapidly. The loud sound of my steps echoed throughout the hallways. I reached the somewhat ominous double green door and I abruptly opened it. It was too late. The people was assembled, sitting uniformly side by side and it was serene. "You're late," the huge person standing in front said.
"But it was only a few seconds! It doesn't matter!" I replied.
"No, you had your chances earlier, now you are not forgiven,"
"Oh please! Spare me! I've had enough punishment," I pleaded desperately.
"I warned you yesterday already! Today is your last chance. Today is your level 2 law violation and hence you will receive an extended punishment. Similar to the one you always receive, but this lasts longer,"
"Oh no..." I moaned.
"Now sit down and listen, do not interfere my session anymore,"
I am doomed. I have infringed level 2 rule twice, and I am on the verge of temporary abeyance. Well, I guess it's my own mistake. I should have woken up earlier every morning and slept earlier too. My colleagues near me laughed at me for receiving a temporary abeyance. I sat down quietly and tried to listen to the authority addressing his believes. However, time seems to much slower and seconds after seconds, my vision blurred and narrowed down. "Kwan! Wake up and listen!" the authority raised his voice.
"I've had enough of you Kwan McDonny! You have shown extreme tardiness, your performance dropped and all you do in class is sleep!" he said irately.
" Sorry Mr. Olwen," I said in an apologetic manner.
"You better," and he continued his speech.
Well, this is my everyday homeroom moments in the Shining Hope School. It is very gloomy, prosaic and unproductive. They kill you slowly with their so-called "International Diplomatic Intelligence Organization of Texas", or IDIOT for short. Most of the teachers bombard you with assignments and tests, without even thinking about your social life or your leisure time. The assignments are evaluated and graded by them with very demanding criteria and tests consists myriad of topics, stuffed together into a single test paper. The most sadistic and unmerciful of them all is the mathematics, led by two dispassionate gods of numbers named Mr. Ancient Edwards and Mr. Wheer Thomas. Oh darn, and the first period of the day is mathematics. I am screwed....

MY DEAR BLOGMATES! CONTINUE THE STORY :D sorry if the story was not interesting.

Joke of the Day

A Couple Of Blondies

A blond is driving down the road. She notices that she's low on gas so she stops at the gas station.

While she's pumping her gas, she notices that she locked the keys in the car. So when she goes inside to pay, she asks the attendant for a hanger so she can attempt to open the door herself. She goes outside and begins to jimmy the lock.

Ten minutes later, the attendant goes outside to see how the blond is faring. The blond outside of the car is moving the hanger around and around, while the blond inside of the car is saying, "A little more to the left...a little more to the right!"

Ms. Jess! Please do not feel insulted :D

Laudable Taste of Masterpiece

2007-09-25T22:54:00.000+07:00

“Laudable Taste of Masterpiece”

Due to the fact that no issue is being perceived in my mind lately, added with no argumentations of theories and lifestyles, the blog below will not consist of critical thinking or intricate vocabularies. This is unfortunately due to the hectic days with unanticipated series of unfortunate events happening.

Last Friday, I was requested by a friend to aid her in her biology lab report concerning the rate of diffusion. This particular friend is quite incapable in subject areas of all sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and probably even other sciences such as aeronautical science and computer science) as well as mathematics. Even more, she claims to be having minute complexity in dealing with her fine English abilities. Nonetheless, this finicky academic failure ( --“ joking) has invited me to a late lunch on the following day in gratitude for enhancing her biology lab report.

It was a fine ordinary day on Saturday. I followed my routine in going to school to attend the badminton afterschool that is held from eight until ten in the morning. My first unfortunate event happens after badminton practice when I played the bicycle into doing drifts around the school paths. Yes, this is also to investigate circular motion pertaining to the subtopic of ‘Motion’ in Physics. As I tilt the bicycle on a sharp turn, the stand was flicked due to the friction of the ground causing the bicycle to leap towards the air and landed on my right leg leaving quite significant scars. Though there is no notable physical pain, it has become quite difficult to walk, when your other leg had just experienced muscle cramps.

I literally had lunch with goats. (The term ‘goat’ is used to identify a double humanities student; quoted from beloved Pak Wiryanto) It was somewhat a celebration in completing the biology lab report where all the rest of the people are students of a double humanity. Time flies when you enjoy eating authentic western food (with exceptionally high prices) By the end of the main course, the “skillet” was served.

Yes, “skillet” - few days before, this word was introduced by the same particular friend followed by the saying that “if one has not tasted skillet, one has not live” or the like. I on the other hand have no idea what “skillet” is. Is it fish? Fruit? Meat? Dessert probably? This was kept enigmatic until that very lunch.

The skillet is a very unique dessert. To elaborate, it is hot chocolate cookie dough with a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream and additional chocolate syrup topping. I asked this particular friend to feed me and this was the description as well as the impression of the first taste:

“The four centimeter curved diameter of the silver stainless steel spoon was first contact with the irregularly drooling tongue. Then on above it is the soft and tender burning cookie dough melting one’s tongue causing the silver stainless steel spoon to lose its taste and finally the shivering cold vanilla ice cream with lines of temperate chocolate syrup having intact with my sensitive back teeth, causing some brain signals of how excruciating it is yet the flavor is densely thick with chocolate that when swallowed, the throat experiences peculiar feeling of both hot and cold substances of densely rich chocolate flavor.”

In correlation to the movie Ratatouille where taste is identified through a single rhythm of an instrument, and when combined with another food causes what we classified as music. The skillet sounds like a dense elegant harmonious orchestra of both a serene feeling and agitated tempo; respectively. The taste of the skillet truly is wonderful…

This would probably sum up one of the events in my recent weekend, may the next blog return to be a critical thinking piece of writing. Thus, Tuesdays with Jesse

Of Life and Futility

2007-09-23T13:24:00.000+07:00

7.57 PM. Here I am, settling down to my somewhat cushioned chair, typing on my worn out keyboard. Songs performed by singers and bands such as Sufjan Stevens and A Fine Frenzy quietly fills the chilly air, as though warming the room. It’s quite late at night, and I haven’t finished all of my homework. A scary thought, as I have 17 assignments to be completed over the next week. How I am going to survive IB, I still don’t know. I sip my coffee tenderly, letting the comforting drink run slowly down my throat. As sad as it sounds, coffee serves as my ultimate IB companion.

Despite the mounting piles of work that needs to be done, I don’t stop my mind from wandering away. I love reminiscing the “good ol’ times” - periods when homework wasn’t an issue to us students, when tag was the “it” game for lunch breaks, when sleeping early was still an option (although I rarely seize this opportunity; I was such a fool - these days I would die to obtain a decent night of sleep). Such memories lift my heart laden with tense and fearful thoughts of school, social politics, the future, and what not.

Reality sucks, does it not? I wish such a place like Neverland really do exist, for I would love to forever dwell in it. We all have to go through so many obstacles in our real lives. For example, IB is one heck of an obstacle I would never wish even upon my most hated enemies. All those dramas concerning friendship, all those issues we have within our family makes me wonder if life is worth it. As a melancholic person, I use to be a perfectionist. A single blunder on a school project can reduce me literally to tears. However, I have come to realize that none of the things I use to care will matter in the future. Will receiving the highest grade for a particular biology test matter in the future? Is being dubbed as “the most popular girl” in high school significant in a decade’s time? I think not. So why are we all striving for these futile and worthless goals? Who cares about IB, who cares about high school, who cares about life?

Random story: A friend of mine Edward and I had this conversation a while ago. I told him I was feeling suicidal, and would love to jump off from a bridge. He told me to call him if I ever decide to do such a thing. If he couldn’t persuade me otherwise, he’d jump off with me. Not a bad deal, huh? Kidding. Although I would love to disappear from all the crappiness this current world, I do still care about my afterlife, thankyouverymuch :)

(Note to Ms.Jess: Although this is Sunday afternoon, I wrote this blog around Thursday night. I’m sorry I had posted this so late during the week – I didn’t have the time to post on Friday and Saturday. Lame excuse, I know.. I’ll try my best to be on time next time!)

Fridays with DaNte - 4th Post 21-09-2007

2007-09-21T22:14:00.000+07:00

Fridays with DaNte!
21-09-2007

It's another Friday! Time surely flows very hastily. Events occur one after another, creating an instantaneous kaleidoscope . Next week will be a very preoccupying week for me. A throng of homeworks and tests are due on the upcoming week. Anyway, let us begin!

Erratic Picture of the Day

WARNING! PG +13 CONTENT!

Auspicious Quotes

"Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the souls of men."

Victor Hugo

Word of the Day

Ineptitude (noun) - unskillfulness resulting from a lack of training

Topic of the Day

A Big Mistake!
Part 1

I would like to share with my respected audience about my personal experience. I do hope this can be beneficial for all of you. The story that I want to share with all of you is one of the biggest mistake I've ever done in my whole life. It was an aberration that I regretted. The remorse will remain in my memories until the last brain cell vanishes. I am hoping that all of you may not repeat the mistake that I did, and will do better than I do.

It was kindergarten. I was an innocent, cuddly and cute adolescent. I had not witness the pain and sorrows of life, nor the joviality and alluring sins of the world. All I could think of is meddling around and sit in front of the TV for hours, watching cartoons all day. As I was naive at the time and all I could think of is my demands, I often became irate and frantic when my demands are unfulfilled imminently. I would weep and scream to the top of my nose just to satisfy my needs. This would soon be a big mistake of mine. My selfishness, greed and ungratefulness will bring me notoriety and abasement.

As I walked through the gates of my kindergarten to go home, I saw a girl. She was a cute and attractive girl. I still could remember vaguely up until this present time. Her name was Jessica. I was attracted to her, somehow. I guess it's what people call 'puppy love'. Her looks attracted me and I had the intention to approach her. However, I was a bit shy at the time. But after jettisoning my fear and doubts away, I came and stood next to her.

I REMEMBERED THE CONVERSATION VERY ELUSIVELY... SO IT'S NOT 100% TRUE

"Hey, what's your name?" I asked.
"Jessica," she answered calmly.
"Want to be my friend?" I asked enthusiastically.
I waited for the reply.
"No,"

Her reply was firm and steadfast. She didn't say anything afterwards. I stood next to her in silence and my emotions stormed wildly. I didn't know what I was doing. Before I could think of what to do or what to say, my body reacted faster than my brain. It acted on it's own will. My fist was penetrating the air, and eventually collided with the girl's stomach. The girl cringed in pain, with her hands trying to forebear the pain in the stomach. A teacher saw my misdemeanor, but she prioritized the excruciated little girl. I went home quickly.

The next day her mother came to the school. She saw me and she poured all her emotions on me. She showered me with wrathful statements, and reproached at me for my misconduct. I stood in a corner, crowded by the tumultuous crowd who were curious of the lady's contemptuous remarks. I thought to myself, "What have I done?" "What is wrong with me?". I regretted my actions and asked myself why did I do that.

I was dominated with my emotions, and as I said, I demanded for people to fulfill my needs. I was irate of the sense of rejection I felt. Since then, I became more docile and less demanding. I also learned to treat a girl in a gentleman manner. Fortunately for me, the girl decided to condone me for my misbehavior and befriend me. It became a tremendous turning point of mine, and I became an entirely new boy.

People! Please learn from this foolish mistake of mine. Do not be selfish, and be immature by demanding everything you want and becoming irate if you are rejected. And always remember, NEVER HIT A GIRL LIKE I DID!

Joke of the Day

A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money.

The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, "Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel.

"I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents.

"The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5:00 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I'd accumulated a fortune of $1.37."

"And that's how you built an empire?" the boy asked.

"Heavens, no!" the man replied. "Then my wife's father died and left us two million dollars."

DaNte

Inauguration of the Creation

2007-09-18T17:48:00.000+07:00

Tuesdays with Jesse

“Inauguration of the Creation”

Ranging across human’s exponentially rising intelligence and reasoning comes across one of the most debatable topics obfuscated through their individual plausible thinking; the creation of the world. Both scientists and believers, the two most distinctive types of reasoning has sought higher into the realm of philosophy to obtain what is true, or more precise, what they believe is to be true. How can we be sure of which is true when both sides have immense proofs yet tenacious enough in not accepting others’ input.

From a religious perspective, as Christian, it is written in Genesis that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Within the next seven days, he managed to give details and enhancements through his omnipotent supremacy. Questions then arises of why God wanted to create the world and humans followed by remarks such as an ordeal saying that God’s omniscient fixation would allow him to know that the would he created perfectly would fall into sin. It is blatant that we certainly do no know why God would create a world potential of having sin. Some say that it was due to tedium that brought God into creating the world. But some also cannot rebut this statement by saying that we should not question God’s authority; if he wanted to create a world, though he know there would be sin, then let him so. A simpler interpretation would be if we would like to cut something out of paper, even if we know it would not be perfectly straight, it would not stop our own authority in wanting to cut it. Nonetheless, this view is in contrast to what science should say.

Evolutionists, or generally scientists would likely reason the world through facts; plausible facts, of course. They presume that the knowledge they obtained through science would reveal the past itself. The innumerable laws contained in the realm of physics in account with the principles of atomic relationships in chemistry; all these were deduced to the “fact” that the world was created through the notorious “Big Bang” that ensues approximately millions of years ago. Additionally, with the assumption where the empty universe started with nothing but an unstable point of energy (stable for eternity, but then explodes) expanding filling up the everlasting space. This is of course, chemically impossible, for a chemical reaction would most likely react instantaneously. In accordance to the findings of Penzias and Wilson (1965), a static model of the universe was undermined by the ‘3k hum’ of an unidentified background noise and a hydrogen atom. Their finding and the correlation with the laws of physics and chemistry awarded them with an accolade of a Nobel prize. Referring to this, a hydrogen atom is chemically unstable where it needs to react with another element with opposing force of energy. Then what was the force of energy? It is concluded to be God himself; at least, for some religious scientists. Many other forms of science tried to reason the enigma of our world. Thus, still ensues the strives of human knowledge for the future.

To end the discussion, it would be quite reprehensible to be credulous in one of the two descriptions above or to ignore them. Take a moment to think critically and take there two, both plausible remarks into account. I myself believed partially on both. For I consider my truth to be that God created the would through the Big Bang that lasted seven days (Yes, this means that I believe that God intentionally created the Big Bang himself, but contrary to what scientists thought of being millions of years, the omnipotent God, would be able to shorten the time, or maybe even because his time adjustments are different than us humans). Whatever or wherever your truths lies, be ensured that you know you have the right to have the faculty of wonder of your whole existence; in this period of time, in this would, in this whole cryptic fixation.

“The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.” – Sophie’s World

quizzes - I AM BORED

2007-09-18T14:00:00.000+07:00

You Are Somewhat Mature

You definitely act like an adult sometimes, but a big part of you is still a kid at heart.

While your immature side is definitely fun, you're going to have to grow up sooner or later.

Are You Immature?

Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman

Inside you've got the passion and ideals of a teenager

And your intensity for life is what attracts most of the men you date

You also like to party - and quite often you're the life of the party

You've brought the best of your younger years with you... at least most of the time.

Are You A Girl Or a Woman?