From Dining Etiquette Guide :

Turn off your cell phone or switch it to silent or vibrate mode before sitting down to eat, and leave it in your pocket or purse. It is impolite to answer a phone during dinner. If you must make or take a call, excuse yourself from the table and step outside of the restaurant.

Even a caveperson didn’t use his/her cellphones when they were having dinner.

There’s so much ways to enjoy the road whether you use personal vehicle or public transportation. People often complain that the streets in Jakarta is not very enjoyable. Traffic jams, crazy drivers, lurking polices, air pollutions, holes or noise pollutions are an interesting attributes of our beloved streets. But, we can still enjoy the journey along the road with some tricks and tips. This post is written for this competition.

Ground Rules :

1. Always obey traffic rules eventhough it makes you frustrated.
2. It’s better to lose one minute of your life than lose your life in one minute.
3. People drive slower than you is not an idiot, and people drive faster than you is not a crazy maniacs.
4. Pray for protection and safety to the Highest Authority.
5. For vehicle owners, always check your vehicles. Is it safe to use?

If you can avoid using the streets, then do it :

1. Use delivery service. Almost everything today is deliverable. You can stay where you are doing anything else, while the expert deliver your goods.
2. Use texting, cellphones, emails,  webcams, instant messenger to communicate with others.
3. Go online if you really bored at home. There’s gazillion of distractions there.
4. Need to workout? Have you ever heard about wii fit?
5. Make your home, your workspace or make your workspace, your home.

If you want to use the streets, remember this :

1. Make sure you know the location of your destination. Check where the one way streets are, the popular place of attraction around there. Have the complete address of the location if you want to ask people in the neighborhood.
2. Avoid rush hours or accept the consequences.
3. Learn the behavior. Example : for some reason, Monday Morning and Friday Night is more crowded than other days in roughly the same time. So it’s best to leave earlier or later. Other examples : there’s markets that’s only open during weekend (Pasar Kaget) on several streets, so keep updated.

If you’re using your own car :

1. Carpooling. Charge your passengers at reasonable prices. Everybody is less frustated if they can make money out of their despair. There’s nothing more pathetic than seeing someone driving alone. It’s like as if his friend didn’t want to accompany him.
2. Outsource your driving. Meaning : hire your own driver. You can read newspapers, play videogames, or chatting with your lover in the backseat.
3. Use public transportation. Do you see the gas price nowadays?

Bikers? Here’s some suggestions :

1. Proper helmet is necessary. You still need your brain to live.
2. Don’t think yourself as Valentino Rossi.
3. Or Casey Stoner.
4. Sidewalks is for pedestrian. You’re not pedestrian.

Last but not least, tips for public transportation users :

1. Go Online. There’s a lot of mobile messengers nowadays or mobile browser.
2. Optimize your ears. Whether you use it to listen to your IPod, audiobooks, chatting with your friends on cellphones, overhear what other passenger talk about.
3. Daydreaming, planning or imagining things with your mind.
4. Sleeping.

So, enjoy the road!

1. A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (Obviously, a plagiarism)
2. Seekor rubah coklat cepat meloncat di atas anjing pemalas (Is translation plagiarism?)
3. A fox jumps over the dog. (Short version)
4. A quick big round brown fox spring into the air over the lazy small black dog. (I was inspired by the original sentence)
5. A quick brown cat jumps over the lazy tiger. (Just change the names)

Other resources : One, two, three, four, five, six.

Is plagiarism stealing?

Sunday, August 17th 2008, Indonesia celebrates Independence Day.

Yes, we have ceremony, celebration, marching, pictures, logo, colors, duct tape, flower pot, jokes and games. We even have lunar eclipse and gold medal. Some bloggers write Merdeka, with question mark and with exclamation mark. Some try to find meaning, some rant, some ask questions, questions and more question. Some want their Indonesia back, and other simply write a reflection. The rest said proudly, “Happy Birthday, Indonesia!”

With 63 years from 1945-2008, Indonesian people still struggle to find independence in their existence, in choosing their new leader, and in their work. Indonesian people never stop struggling to find their own independence. When they feel free at last. From poverty, from oppression, and from injustice. When is your personal Independence Day?

Mine is June 21st, 2008.

Why do we even bother trying to feel important?

picture taken from somewhere here

I’ve considered mails from mailing lists such yahoogroups as Bacn as well. What do you do with Bacn?

1. Unsubscribe from Bacn. By default, social networking like friendster or facebook send notification email, but there’s a way to disable this options. Just check their settings.
2. Filter it. You can do it using gmail filter. Using those filter, you can tag it and also you can mark all as read so it didn’t show up as unread and mixed with other very important letter.
3. Delete it.

So, any other suggestions?

Blog Action Day is here.
Theme : Poverty.

And who’s poor? Indonesian people.

How can we make poverty history in Indonesia? That’s the million dollar question.

When other people don’t get you, they see you as: arrogant, cold, and robotic

Apparently a lot more people regret from not doing something instead of doing something. So remember what Nike always said, “Just Do It!”

Picture taken from xkcd

Apparently patriotism is not static. I admit on regular day I’m not very patriotic. How can someone improve his/her patriotism? Here’s what I suggest :

1. Go to Zimbabwe. Yes, the price in our country is rising, but at least our inflation rate is not more than one million percentage. You can’t go there? Well, just read negative news about Middle East in the newspapers.
2. Sandra Dewi, Luna Maya and Gita Gutawa. Aren’t you glad you have the same nationality as theirs? No males? Hmm, what about me?
3. Our foods are delicious and vary. Why do you think there’s so much culinary show on TV?
4. Our internet is still relatively free from censorship. It’s almost happened during all Fitna debacle but Thank God, crisis averted.
5. Remember all those clips in your head where Indonesian athletes prevail. Example : Supriati Sutono during Asian Games 1994, All Olympic Gold Medal winner, Uber Team when winning in Jakarta 1994.

Anything that makes you love Indonesia even more?