My friend show me a picture. The picture itself, a funny cartoon character, is not important (I like cartoons though). It is the texts that interest me. It says:
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred
2. Free your mind from worries
3. Live simply
4. Give more
5. Expect less
This is a good reminder, indeed. Be happy, everyone. Give me a big smile 
After lunch, I met with some people to do field work. Suddenly the cellphone of one of the worker beeping. There was an incoming short message. Guess what? It was a (unsolicited) message which the sender stated as “Presiden RI”, the President of the Republic of Indonesia. The message says
Stop penyalahgunaan dan kejahatan Narkoba sekarang. Mari kita selamatkan dan bangun bangsa kita, menjadi bangsa yang sehat, cerdas, dan maju.
Stop drug’s misuse and crime now. Let’s save and build our country to become a healthty(?), smart(?), and advance(?) nation (thanks to Nana for forwarding that message to me; sorry for the rough translation; and for a screenshot of the message, you can see on Jay’s posting). It is true that a couple of days earlier, the President has announced the presidential number for short messaging so that people can send one directly to the President, or at least someone close enough to him. Questions: Are these messages that people receiving real? Are there no other more important messages than drug problem? And I wonder how much profit PT.Telkom made just by the President sending short messages. And can it be considered SMS spamming? No offense Mr. President, but sending short messages to other people randomly and unsolicitedly is not quite polite (except in case of emergency or national security?). So people, what will you do if you are the one receiving it? I, myself, maybe saving it to my memory since this may be a rare moment when the President sending me message. Thank you, Mr. President, but not too often please.
UPDATE: Well, it seems that it is really the presidential short message (should we call it, SMS One?) as you can read it in Kompas Cyber Media. And I’ve just chat with my friend. I get a new perspective from this case. That this (or maybe other things too) can be considered special case. Although by definition what the President doing may be categorized as spamming, but we must considered what most people feel upon receiving such message. Don’t you think most of the people will be happy receiving message from “Presiden RI”? What the President and his team need is a “little” thing that fair for ALL the receivers. Option. Whether we want it or not, should be the receivers choice, not the sender. That “little” thing would have made so much difference. But spam or no spam, I will stand by my word above. IF I receive such message, I will keep it. Happily, Mr. President, but not too often please
Okay, it’s not actually “new”. I’ve just re-organized it’s layout and content. For a better look and easy to use, I hope. The biggest difference would be the Google AdSense. Maybe this is the only kind of advertisement that I can tolerate having it on my blog. I have been using several AdSense layout, big, small, back to big, and now I am using two rather big layout. I somehow you feel disturbed by the advertisement, feel free to give me some advice (I could use a good one). Next would be the banner below the profile box. I find it as a good place to put a banner. Maybe not a commercial one, but something like Technorati Live 8. Last, I have change the appearance of my blog links. I’ve made it more.. compact. To save more space and to reduce the scrolling down activity. So, this sidebar now is different. I don’t know anything about freshness. But I certainly hope it will not stop all of you from coming to this blog from time to time, reading from post to post. Thank you.
It’s been a clear blue sky at the morning, but dark-grey-cloudy at noon. Eventually the rain poured down in the afternoon. I wonder if the people in southern area of Bandung got flooded. I hope not.
My friend and I stop by a shop that sells iPod. I think it was a great inovation by Apple. It has functions as well as good look. Although iPod hasn’t been popular in Bandung, I wonder if someday everyone will be using the white earphones.
Today is the opening of Bandung’s Pasupati Fly-Over. A time-consuming project. Built to reduce the traffic-jam problem in this city. But as Sisil said in her blog, the first impression was not good. I hope it will work out fine soon, or it will just be a sore in the eyes.
Twenty-six years old Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) did it again in MotoGP in Assen. He wins for the sixth time, that is the fifth in a row. Although Honda engine believed to be more powerful, it is the skill of the riders that matters. Yamaha should be thankful to have Rossi on their side. Read more here >>
Pronunciation: "in-tr&-'spek-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology:
- Latin introspectus, past participle of introspicere to look inside, from intro- + specere to look
- a reflective looking inward : an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings
When you are walking/running your life, maybe it is best for you to give yourself a chance, a time, to stop for a while and do this. Introspection. Looking inward. Examining one’s thoughts and feelings. Compromising. There are hopes and dreams. There is also reality. Negotiating. Reality should not holding your pace. Hopes and dreams should be challenging, not burdening. Life is not always about running but also enjoying every step you make. Don’t think just feel. You lose something, didn’t do lots of thing. But you also gain more things and do many wonderful things. Life’s like this. Everybody has their own “mission” in life. And everything you do has purpose in it. You are special. To be able to live your life another day, to be able to wake up in the morning, it is a gift. To be able to feel pain, sadness, misery is making you realize that you’re alive. In the end you should be realizing how fortunate, how beautiful your life is. Hopefully. Eventually. Thank God for giving me another day to live in.
Now move on with your life. And I’ll do the same with mine.
I got this Musical Baton from Nana. I am not sure what this is, but since I do have some spare time I said “Why not?”. So here we go.
My music collection contains of many kind of music. From old song to the latest. There are pop, rock, jazz, ballads, instrumental. There are Indonesian, Western, Japanese. Bottomline is I don’t listen to a specific kind of music. I hear whatever I like
Total volume of music on my computer:
There a couple of hundreds songs in my computer. But I do have more songs on CDs.
The last CD I bought:
The Corrs Live in Dublin.
Song playing right now:
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
There are many, but I have to choose 5,
Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
When I blogwalking through Joi Ito’s blog, something caught my attention. There’s a “movement” in the blogosphere to help the campaign Make Poverty History. On their site, they said that “It’s a chance for ordinary people to call on world leaders at this year’s G8 summit and tell them to put a stop to the needless deaths of 30,000 children every single day.” For your information, the G8 summit mentioned will be held on July 6th, 2005 in Scotland. For me, this is quite extraordinary for us in the “virtual world”, the blogosphere to be able to participate in something big such as the G8 summit. Thanks to Technorati and Live 8.
I don’t know if this will work, but I always interested in the issue of helping developing countries. I just hope that my participation in this campaign may help, even for a bit, and may the voice of the blogs will be heard.
Have you ever wondered, who/what is the most popular blog in the world? And how can it be measured?
Well, I find something in Technorati. It seems that they ranked blogs, measured by links as they said in their page: “Popular Blogs. The biggest blogs in the blogosphere, as measured by links.” Fair enough. Although there are many reasons to put a link to your site, but indeed the more links you have on your blog, it can only mean one thing. That your blog is popular. So here is the top 10 most popular blogs (in blogosphere):
For your information, the number 1 blog has 15,458 links. Amazing. And some blogs that I read actually are quite popular. Jason Kottke in number 14. Scobleizer in number 30. Joi Ito in number 54. Stopdesign in number 69. Seth Godin in number 89. For comparison purpose only, Indonesian blogger Priyadi are in the number 4,751 Technorati rank. Goblogmedia rank in number 52,726.
As for this blog, my blog, I only rank as the number 206,775. It doesn’t matter actually since I don’t blog for fame or fortune (yet?). But it is quite fun to see my blog ranked. How about you?
UPDATE: Something just crossed my mind. I am curious. Who/what is the number one Indonesian blog according to Technorati? If anyone happens to know the answer, would you mind sharing it here?
As I browse through the Blogger template collection, I found an interesting one. There’s a template named Minima, designed by Douglas Bowman, the same person who design my previos template (Rounders). This could be the template that come closest to what I’ve been writing in “is it possible?“. So, I’ve decided to give my blog a new look. Here it is. Still under many development of course, but I hope all of you can enjoy it. And as I’ve always said to Budi, “In minimalist design, there’s almost no difference between the genious and the lazy” Ha!
UPDATE: I’ve also change my blog’s font, from the original Georgia to Arial. Although lately I’ve been using Trebuchet, I find it disturbing in a long post. So I’m using the font that I used in my school-days, Arial. Back to the old days, back to the minimalist.
Ga kerasa, ternyata udah ada 3 posting saya yang ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris. Antara sengaja dan ga sengaja batasnya tipis. Kadang-kadang memang saya merasa lebih nyaman menuangkan pikiran dalam tulisan berbahasa Inggris (terlepas dari grammar yang berantakan dan vocab yang ga banyak). Ada kalanya saya merasa bahasa Indonesia tidak efisien untuk menulis. Ah, tapi saya rasa dalam berbahasa dan menulis, efisiensi bukan yang utama bukan? Menurut saya, bahasa yang baik adalah ketika maksudnya bisa tersampaikan dengan baik. Jadi kalo saya nulis dalam bahasa Inggris kacaw, atau saya nulis bahasa Indonesia yang agak slang, asalkan kalian yang baca masih bisa ngerti, no problem kan? (tuh malah kecampur antara Indonesia, Inggris) Atau malah kadang-kadang bisa juga kecampur dengan bahasa Sunda hahaha, ya sudah lah.. dinikmati saja. Just Relax, everyone!
