You go to IT seminar and they give you this bag with a lot of free stuff in it. Mostly brochures about products and a nice dvd with softcopy, and a t-shirt that write whatever. Then, some colleague just got home from his holiday and give you this small, cute, and useless scented candle. At night, you go to your friend’s wedding and receive a mini glass that has writing saying “As We become one forever”. Before go to bed, you chuck all this free stuff to a drawer with free notepad, free pen, and spiderweb. It’s a small thing if you’re an introvert but if you like social gathering, this free stuff thing has got to stop.

1. Just say no politely. Smile and tell your giver that you didn’t bring any bag. Or if he give you bag, tell him you didn’t bring any car or you should take public transportation.
2. Dump it. Say sorry to mother earth for this violation and dump the free stuff mercilessly.
3. Digitalize it and then dump it. Take a picture or get a scanner (for postcard, birthday card) and put it on flickr. If you want to reminiscence you can watched that photograph instead. It still can tell thousand words you know.
4. Don’t dump it, shred it to pieces. Time to use those nasty shredder in the corner of your office to clean brochures, free registration form, and thank you notes.
5. Give it to your friend that need that stuff. A friend maybe need a notepad to write her groceries, and another friend maybe need a scented candle for her bathtub.
6. Give it to your friend the collector. Believe it or not, there’s people out there that collected wedding souvenir. So give it to them to add their collection.

A little cold heart will be helpful while being sentimental doesn’t help at all. But I want a free space, instead of free stuff. How about you?

There are so many piracy in Indonesia. Books, Movies, DVD, and software. It’s not copyright that held firmly in Indonesia but right to copy. Truth be told, there’s no way you can really stop piracy. But, for those who indulge himself in piracy there’s some side effect if you’re not careful like :

• Clutter around your DVD player because you bought your dvd but never watch them like ever.
• Game that consume your time to complete every level.
• Program that you cannot upgrade, but instead you wait for the crack version of that program.
• Gazillion Bytes for mp3. And some even have the same songs. Yes, how many you bought those mp3 compilation and
• Time consuming on picking the right movie or mp3 and even test if the disk have some stratch or not. You even wait in line to wait for the next customer.
• Your harddisk is full with ebooks that free but you didn’t have time to read it yet.
• A pile of CD, DVD, and also all possible media for you to keep CD and DVD like CD tower, CD bag, lot of plastic cover.

Yes, piracy is cheaper than original one. But with what do you trade it for? Time (to watch DVD or to choose thousand of mp3 to fit on your mp3 player), health (all physical activities that you can do instead of sitting like a couch potato watching DVD), and sanity (because you have to watch all that DVD, CD cluttered all over the place)