BLU-107 Durandal

coming out of nowhere

2010-02-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

yup, a sudden impulse to post an entry came out of nowhere.

just checked this note from a link on my facebook account. it's a note created by some girl, which is a friend of one of my acquaintance. I know everyone gets so touchy-feely as Feb 14th is getting closer, but I want to keep a little bit of my attention to this one. If you ask why, then it's not about the contents or anything about love. The answer is because she thinks that she has a good English. Is that true? Check this out for yourself:

" a good boy left me alone

at the first time i met you..
you seems like a kind and good boy
u showed me many good things..
u always care to me
u always make me smile
u make me sure that i'm the one whom know you the most
u make me sure that you're the right guy..
until i know that something has changed
i can feel it
slowly but sure you don't care to me anymore
you are so far away..
i can't reach you..
i can't feel your pressence..
...
then one day..
you told me..
that you love the other girl..
oh my God..
it's like a thunder in a sunny day..
i'm shocked..
dissapointed..
sad..
broken into pieces..
i'm sad coz this situation makes me feel that she is better than me
so you left me alone..
....
but now..
i'm happy^__^
i realize that you're not the best one
you're not my man...!
i'm still happy with my life without you..
so...
i can let you go boy...
=)"

okay. comments, anyone?

In my opinion, that was not even a good ENGRISH*, or even ENGDONESIAN**. And she claims that it IS a GOOD ENGLISH. The fact that she FEELS that she has a good English drops the score further.

Spotted a load of basic grammatical errors (for instance, "you seems" - should have been "you seem"), simply translating Indonesian sentences into English in a word-by-word manner without any regard to its context... and you say you got a GOOD ENGLISH.

Next time, practice English A LOT before claiming yourself to have a good English.
With this level of GOOD ENGLISH, you wouldn't pass a score of mere 20 on Madam Kosasih's*** English test. My best score on her test was around 40, but I had a TOEFL Score of 626 last year. All my thanks goes to her Spartan training :D

I've never claimed to have a good English myself, but I'm sure as hell that my English are better than yours. So please, don't humiliate yourself by claiming a good English with that note above.

little notes about something:
* Engrish - Japanese English. Known for their inability to pronounce "l" correctly and spell "r" instead of "l", Japanese people without proper English training tend to scrap the very basic structure of English sentences and vocabularies when they try to boldly speak this foreign language...

** Engdonesian - Indonesian English. Even worse than Singlish, Engrish, or any other hybrid language. Most Indonesian people with little to no English training tend to literally translate Indonesian sentences word-by-word, sometimes with incorrect vocabularies... and they proud of it.
Even those who had some basic proper English training on their school years still tend to translate word-by-word, and even though they had a better vocabulary, little-but-fatal mistakes occur often, especially in written texts. They still feel good with their English, though they couldn't care less about the context.
On the higher levels of education, most people are aware of their mistakes but they forgot (or too lazy) to mind THE WHOLE CONTEXT of the sentence. This is the source of the difficulty to understand (or even to read) English textbooks, as happened to most of my med student comrades.
Last, is the tendency to use the slang or informal form of English which are commonly found on English movies. While it's not a problem on conversations, it sports a big deal of trouble when one shamelessly uses it - without a second thought - in written texts. Just like the one above.

*** Madam Kosasih is one of the senior teacher at Canisius College. With more than 30 years of experience, she puts high standards to her student - and herself, as well. While it feels really depressing to always get scores less than 50 on her exams, I think it's the way she forces her students to always improve themselves. At least, that works for me. Flawless Continental and British form of English is her specialty, along with the manners, etiquette, and behavior of a royal descent. She walks with a dignified and proud aura radiating from her gestures, and teaches her students with a youthful confidence despite her age. One hell of a lady :D

posting again...

2010-02-06T05:32:00.000-08:00

Durandal reporting in, back from the dead ^^

Been a long, long time since the last post. All due to a viral infection that requires my HDD to be formatted - and after the tiring process of backing up data and reinstalling Windows XP, I was granted a selective memory lost. Yes, it occurs in whatever lobe of my brain that stores the memory of my username & password. You know what happens afterward ^^

So, it's been a long time, and a lot of things happened too. I guess I wouldn't tell every single thing (I couldn't remember some important events too, maybe another temporary memory lost surged?), so I'll try to write the events that brought the most impact.

Start from my GUNPLA build. I've started Project Babylon (starring: MG RX-78 NT-1 Alex) since December, but up till now I only managed to finish snap-fitting its left lower arm. Expect a WIVFSP (Work In Very F**KIN Slow Progress) on this one.

You see, a lot of things happened on late December: a sudden vacation plan, followed with an unexpected death of one of my closest relative, sudden cancellation of the formerly planned vacation plan, followed closely by arrangement of funeral rites and monitoring the health of my "left-behind" relatives, finished by a holiday finale of being a photographer on my cousin's wedding. Practically I had NO free time during holidays.
Well, I learned quite a lot about management of psychological burden and hypertension, as well as a little glimpse of myocardial infarct and heart attack. Need to follow it through, since the Cardiovascular Block is on the final part of this semester.

Next, is the campus life. After the not-so-refreshing holiday, the Block of Neoplasma starts at full speed. All materials about cancer is far away from the word "easy" but the lecturers keep stuffing us with chunks of hard, raw knowledge with their own pace like no tomorrow. Do you guys really think that we're that brilliant of a student? Now I'm really against the idea of compacting Medical Education from a total of 6-7 years into a whopping 5 years. Last semester, we had the 5-weeks Block of Infectious Disease which is a RAR-packed form of lectures and practices that worth 2 full semesters in the old curriculum. 1 year zipped into 1 month? after 3 months, I bet most of us retained only 10% of the knowledge, at most.

Finally, about my life. My diary. Haha...
Still haven't changed much, I guess.
I still love guns. Though I can't allocate the time to play airsoft for now.
Still love GUNPLA, for sure. Though I think I'll stop building after finishing all my pending projects (Alex, Zeta C1, and Ball).
Still very much love to read. From lecture notes to visual novel, medical textbooks and journals to interesting articles on the web.
And still having trouble to socialize with other people ^^

Well, maybe what's rather different is in terms of responsibility. Now I'm the second-in-command of my "other family" - AtmaSEARCH.
Well actually I'm glad I lost the election, since I know I'm not a good example of a leader. Besides, the new president has some astounding qualities: good social, communication and networking skills, stubborn (both in good and bad ways), and intelligence - a nearly perfect GPA to boast (*.*).
So I guess, now I'm trying to be a little bit more disciplined and careful instead of being more aloof and careless. And I should seriously pay more attention in improving my communications and socializing skills.

It's all nice and dandy with the new responsibility, new Block (the PBL sessions suck really bad, though), and new spirit, but then recently something just went wrong along the way.

I think I had a crush with a certain girl.
Feelings never come at the best times, don't they? or rather, feelings always come at the wrong times. Things are going to get messy. Should I restrain myself and keep the mess minimal, or just let loose and wreak some havoc on the process? Whatever the options, my scores and achievements are at stake.

I wish this would end like Kaho's path, though. The composition fits pretty well - the characters and personalities, club activity, best friend / rival twists... but I guess there are no happy endings in real life. I think I've read too many VNs ^^

Relationships and me just doesn't mix too well... I should have realized that from the beginning.

"2012: Doomsday"

2009-07-02T00:06:00.000-07:00

Okay. I just watched “2012: Doomsday”… all I can say for now is, I wanted to make some comments about this movie. Comments, not review. So there will be spoilers ahead with 50 or so pictures. Let’s start, shall we?

First, the title looks menacing.
Are there any people out there who has never heard about the predictions, premonitions, psychic prophecy, etc – that mentions about year 2012, where the year is covered with some “veil”, thus it’s nigh impossible to predict. Add with the fact that supposedly, at December 2012, the earth is at its closest position with a black hole, so there will be some gravitational disturbance on our solar system. Oh, don’t forget that the year 2012 is the last year in ancient Mayan recording..
Pretty good composition for an “Armageddon” theme, eh?

So, onto the movie. The movie is apparently called as “A modern Christian Epic in the tradition of The Omega Code”. (Code? What Code? Da Vinci Code? ^^). Sounds thrilling. Combining Science and Religion. My first impression was particularly negative – I’m as skeptical as I’ve ever been with any religious movies, since I don’t believe in any religion, really – but I still try to watch it though…

Basically, the main characters are: an Archaeologist, a Daddy Geologist (or something like that) and his Missionary daughter (a Missionarist? Check for yourself what she wears… if all Missionarist wear the clothes she wear, what comes to mind would be “Missionary Position” rather than the religious Missionaries), and an atheist Paramedic (at first I kinda hoped that she would bring the balance to the movie – since she had some similarities with me, turns out that my hope had failed me though – oh wait, according to this movie, it’s rather God said no).

The movie starts with an archaeologist digging site, disturbed by erupting volcano and the arrival of archaeologist’s ex-wife. Apparently they found something in a Mayan cove, which is a golden cross.

Funny, since Mayans exist long way before Jesus Christ born. About this, the movie only said that it was made during 600 A.D. – so they expect us to believe that there are European Catholic Missionaries (there are no Christian at that time – Martin Luther is still yet to exist) coming to South America during the ages where the religion was only started flourishing. Then, why didn’t the Mayans got sick by diseases that the 600 A.D. European Missionaries brought from Europe? Found one logical flaw here. Columbus would never meet any Mayans or Aztecs if European Missionaries came to South America 1000 years before him. Let’s move on.

Oh by the way, the Ex-wife has a bad accented English. You'll get sick of it later on in the movie.... keep reading ^^

The next scene tries to show us how dire the situation we’re facing on 2012, with a scientific approach. They tried, but to me, I think it failed. The theory of the doomsday threat was explained and announced by the Geologist – with a boring lecture sort-of-a-way. The only skeptical comment was said by someone “Impossible, NASA would have known and predicted the position between earth & black hole before!” So what? And the Geologist shrugged it off easily, as easy as I’m not buying any arguments they placed on the movie. The phrase "CHEAP MOVIE" comes to mind...

Ah. Next scene depicts the Missionary position. Oops, sorry. My bad. It depicts the Missionary slut running around the town. Oh, sorry again. She’s no slut, isn’t she? Okay, so the bitch is looking for a doctor. Almost every village member on her Missionary got sick, and unfortunately there are no doctors in town. Then, along came a photographer that apparently was studying for some time in Medical School. Coincidence? No, said the movie. It’s the will of God. Yeah, only God knows what’s in his head when he decided to help the bitch. Maybe he wants to be in a *Missionary*?

Want to see the first EPIC FAIL of the movie? Take a look at that cassette icon and the well-known red dot as a “record” icon on the TOP picture. Compare with the camera that the photographer used, on the BOTTOM picture. Since when did a Nikon DSLR features a recording system?

Up next is the atheist who seems to like drawing about pyramids and cross… Strange, isn’t it? I didn’t realize that she was an atheist and firm believer of science until finally she spat out that “So many good people died everyday… Where the hell is God?” after she failed to save a wounded guy.

With this kind of drawing when she's introduced, you would never know that she's actually an atheist at first, don't you?

Oh, the process of saving the guy is interesting. He’s wounded, and all the paramedics do was just asking his name, heartbeat, trying to convince him that everything is okay with the power of words alone, and not checking on the wound first. Then, after all the lengthy procedures, they put some tissues or bandages over the wound, and the man began to pray. Sounds funny? Apparently not.

He knows that his end is nigh, so he prayed while clasping his hands with force, until it goes spastic and thus hindering the *awfully untrained* paramedics’ effort to put oxygen mask on him.

At first I thought the paramedics were trying to finish him off as fast as possible… turns out that they’re trying to save him. Well, they’re not really smart, you know. Even the dying guy was smarter than the paramedics!

starting from this point, I've made my decision to watch the movie to exploit all its flaws, not for my own enjoyment. So, up next is a load of pictures, maybe sometimes accompanied with my comments. I tried to make it as funny as possible, since the movie is rather boring. Please enjoy :D

So apparently we have accurate weather-prediction software available for personal computers on 2012… Bullcrap. It’s another EPIC FAIL, by the way. See the “National Space Administration” and the logo? It’s just NASA without the first A (Aeronautics)… what happened to National Security Agency?

Nobody on the village of the bitch’s Missionary. So, severely sick people can walk now? Oh, I forgot. It’s a Miracle from God!

conversation:
Native guy: Sick, pregnant woman needs help. Her boobs just became this big!
Photographer: WTF?! I’m going!

The Atheist Paramedic has a God-fearing mother… who thinks that it’s already the end of the world, so why bother running away. LOL @ the mom’s expression, which is pretty much the same as the statue

This is God speaking via TV. You two need to go to your temple of dreams: Chichen-Itza. Or else, you’ll end up like the guy you couldn’t save earlier (He had the pyramid-and-cross tattoo)!

Okay. Small particles and grasses flying about, signifies the presence of a high-speed wind flow, or even worse, a tornado building up. But why are those green plants stood still as if there are no winds at all? EPIC FAIL. Oh wait, God wants the plants to stand tall! Who dares to refuse His will?

The Death of the Archaeologist's Partner Scene:

Fat boy struggling for life. Archaeologist says "Hold On", Ex-Wife still need to think what English sentence would fit for this situation. Fat boy screams Noooooo… why do I have to die with ugly special effects?

Ex-Wife felt guilty... on to the "a minute of emotional moment with bad-accented English". EPIC FAIL.

Meanwhile, at the pregnant woman's house...

Bitch asks “are you okay”. Pregnant woman speechless. Photographer says “dang, her boobs aren’t as big as he said! F**k that puny native scum.”

Bad special effects, again. Snow? Like that? Are you kidding me, bub?!

Oh, apparently ex-wife got wounded pretty bad. Why didn’t he notice a wound that big while on those emotional moments some time ago? Oh, God’s will. I see.

Oh crap. She’s losing a lot of blood and yet here we are having another minute of emo-moments…

The mother is the major source of common preachers “Believe in God” cheap propagandas… from “why can’t you feel that He loves you?” “God loves you, it’s not a fantasy and not a lie” “you can’t see it, but you can feel it. And that’s God” “How beautiful the life is… The glory of Life, everyday is a gift.”.

For some reason my atheist comrade seems to get convinced with all this preacher talk. You’re not smart at all, indeed - to be convinced by cheap pep talks like that. You suck at being a paramedic, and you even sucked at being an atheist...

It is the will of God that the photographer parked his car near the hill in the middle of nowhere where the pregnant woman lives. And now we’re having a merry ride…

8 hours before doomsday and… Daddy’s going to Chicken Pizza, umm I mean Chichen-Itza. Daddy’s gonna teach the bitch some lesson!
Oh, it’s another will of God that every cluster of character has always been paired with His believers: The Archaeologist, the mother, the bitch, and now… the pilot. “God was not trying to hurt you.” How reassuring. Have you ever met God in person, pilot?

Apparently all you need to get across in between two huge storms is an extremely light airplane and Faith in Him. Maybe the Aviation companies should try this, because there has been a lot of aviation accidents and plane crashes this year...

Right after getting through the storms, the weather is clear in the airstrip. Seems God didn’t help the filming to provide more consistency, eh? Or is it God’s will for this movie to be an EPIC FAIL?

See how EPIC the FAIL is? All of a sudden there’s a car with full gas and key’s inside. For free.

Now here comes the big mystery. God's major believers, the mother and the pilot, are suddenly gone! Maybe the producer called them for more preacher lines in next TV Channel…

The atheist denies her atheism and prays to God… and Daddy comes to the rescue! SEE THE POWER OF GOD?! HOW HE MIRACULOUSLY GRANT YOUR WISHES IN AN INSTANT?!
Cheap propaganda. Nothing happens that easily in real world.

The first thing Daddy says when some stranger asks for help was... "ARE YOU OKAY?"

Aren't we had enough of "Are you okay" lines, already?!
Every character in this movie said that line at least once. Some even said that same lines over and over, ranging from "Are you Okay", "Are you alright", "How are you doing?"

If I were her, I'd reply with "THE HELL I'M OKAY?! YOU F**KING THINK I LOOK OKAY?! GET OVER HERE, YOU F**KING SCRIPTWRITER! I'LL STICK MOSES' POLE* UP INTO YOUR HOLE!"
*the pole that splits the Red Sea... maybe it could split someone in half if you stick it on to someone's ass...

Just when they finally arrived at Chicken, eh Chichen Pizza, I mean, Chiken-Itza, umm... Chichen-Itza, the Ex-Wife dropped dead at an instant. Probably due to excessive blood loss. And what will the Archaeologist do?

yes! CPR! Just like any cheap movies will do! Just for you to know, death due to blood loss can't be resuscitated by CPR... Futile attempt to resuscitate a person who died of a blood-loss, only with CPR... you’ll need a disinfectant, fibrin bandage, defibrillator, blood transfusion, and skilled paramedic... Which is unavailable at Chichen Pizza.

Dead In Peace, Still Hot Inside Though. (DIP SHIT)

Back to the bitch, the photographer, and the pregnant women…

they’re under some heavy rain of ice…

...But why are the weather outside seems nice? EPIC FAIL

Oh, there goes the falling ice again… but it's still kinda nice ride for them... apparently the ice were thrown by an ice-sprinkler machine mounted on a truck in front of them.
If those ice blocks were made by condensation of clouds from up above, the car would’ve been a Swiss cheese by now.

The Death of the Photographer Scene.

Seems like God is a sniper after all, and he had armed himself with a .338 Lapua Magnum Sniper Rifle.

The Last Words of the Photographer:

That’s all I can get for you now. I don’t put the ending scene since it’ll be a huge spoiler…
I want you guys feel the same disappointment I felt when I saw the ending… after all the shit we’ve been through and all preachy propaganda of Christianity throughout the movie, the Ending just doesn’t fit, pretty much unclear, and totally disappointing… Just, what kind of End of the World is that? Even if it's not the End, but rather a New Beginning (Neon Genesis Evangelion comes to mind ^^), what kind of Beginning is that?!

So... After about 80 minutes of watching the movie on DVD all I can say about the movie is… Craptastic.
A whole lot of inconsistency, faulty mindset, cheap acting (includes overacting, too), relying too much on coincidence (or as the producers would say,” relying on God”), f**king bad ending, and… too many religious jargon and propaganda.

Conclusion: Watch this movie if you’re interested in being totally disappointed.

I think this movie just degraded Christianity by a level, at least in my mind. What a cheap way of spreading the Goodwill throughout the world. Nobody would feel positively interested in Christianity after watching this movie. It’s been thousands of years, and their method of spreading their Bible is pretty much the same...

Atheism is the best.

Food for thought...

2009-06-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

after finally returned to my normal emotional state, I decided to have a thing as a subject of my thoughts. no, unlike some of my other friends (not the defective ones), I will not discuss about love or something like that. Romantic love is just... incomprehensible for me. I can't even understand myself when I got that feeling, and I can't even explain my motives or thoughts or reasoning behind my acts at that time. Such feeling is scarily distractive and beyond logic, so I guess I'll pass on discussing about such topic.

Okay. the topic is this: Atheism. ...and Indonesia.

Do you believe in God? I don't.
In western countries, you have the right to choose whether you believe in God or not. Atheism is a common thing and people can gain access to about anything easily regardless of their religious beliefs. Here, in Indonesia, a "religious" and FREE country, atheism doesn't have any legal support. Funny, a free country that doesn't give its people the freedom to acknowledge the existence of God or not...

And since most people in Indonesia doesn't have an access to gain proper education, they either hopelessly clung to the major religion without thinking about it first, or picking their religion just so they wouldn't be accused of being a communist. First, during Soeharto's reign of "New Order", communism is heavily suppressed, if not exterminated. So, that kind of fear is still understandable. Second, atheism is different than communism. Atheism just concerns that someone or something called "God" exists or not, while communism refers to the equality of the people - a society without difference, including religions and social classes.

Well, I don't believe in a totally equal world without social classes (without ion-voltage difference, our nerves wouldn't be able to transmit impulses - that means, they can't work - and without a working nerve system, we're a little better than dead. and in my opinion, the universe is a magnified version of human body - as human body is a scaled-down fractal image of the whole universe) but I support the idea of redistribution of wealth - from the extremely rich to the overly poor and such.

Back to Atheism. I believe, that religion is something that humans make. And religion is a major barrier to get humans to unite. Some examples:

Case 1, happened to a family I know - a certain Islamic family refused a marriage between their daughter with her Christian boyfriend (no, her boyfriend's name is not "Christian" ^^) UNLESS the guy turned his religion and converted into a Muslim.
* comments: I think it's pretty common thing in any religion. Marriage refused just because of difference in their spiritual belief...

Case 2, I think this happens to most of us - parents gave the religion they believe in to their children, even forcefully indoctrinize their children to believe in that religion - without giving the child a freedom to chose the religion as they like. Well, my family still can't accept the fact that their son denies the existence of God. Yeah, my family is an extremely religious Catholic - especially my mom ^^.

Hah. I think what matters are not whether a human believes in God or not. What matters are the things he do and his intentions. Humanity doesn't need religion, but religion is your freedom to accept or to deny.

Atheism should be approved in Indonesia. I strongly support this! And for once, please SHUT THE FUCK UP, members of Majelis Ulama Indonesia. You're just bunch of uneducated, narrow-minded, religious pricks who can't accept any point of view except your own. You guys need to be injected with a pig blood, you know. You'll be surprised when you realize that pig has so much similarities to you.

CANCEL!!!

2009-06-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

Supposedly, today, June 19th at 11.00 A.M., I shall attend a skirmish or wargames match with my buddies. I'm a member of an Airsoft Forum, and 2 weeks ago I saw a nice place to play Airsoft in Sunter. Since it's holiday and so, I arranged the event along with my 2 buddies, and I made contact with the field's owner - being I'm the only forum member. So, finally we got about 10 participants and the date is set on June 17th. But then, it turns out that June 17th is also the graduation day of some of the participants (it's a delayed graduation due to the incompetency of the government to arrange National Exams), so I changed the date into Friday, June 19th. Most of the participants positively confirmed the change.

But when June 19th comes, what do I get? More CANCEL notifications - just 1-2 hours BEFORE the game start. Seriously, can't you guys notify cancellations sooner?
This way, I have no options left but to cancel the whole event - and thus lost the trust and respect from the field owner, who is also an acquaintance of mine in the forum. He just laughed at me and blurts my "incompetence" on organizing a simple skirmish event with my friends. I got humiliated because of someone else's fault. Nice.

now I feel mixed feelings of angry, ashamed, hatred, disappointment, and frustration... and I can't describe how I really want to turn these guys into my personal cadavers..

next time, try to keep your words, assholes. when you say you'd join, prove it. don't run away like a chicken by notifying "cancel" just hours before...

Supernatural (TV series) & Evangelion

2009-06-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

Haven't watched TV for quite some time, and yesterday I watched the TV series "Supernatural" when my sister played the DVD she just got. The story is about the Winchester brothers whose job was a monster-and-demon hunter. Quite interesting story, with some great action, a little drama, hilarious Hollywood jokes, and - the most important part according to my sister - cute & handsome guys ^^.

So, yesterday I watched the final episodes of season 4. What I found quite intriguing was the similarities of the ideas with Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion. Strange, huh? Well, I'll mention some things that I found to be resembling Evangelion:

- Both features the character Lilith. In EVA, Lilith is the Black-Moon Angel and the source of mankind (Lilim)... in Supernatural, Lilith is the so-called first demon created by Lucifer (remember, Lilith is Adam's first wife who refuses to obey him, according to some religious literatures).
...And both of them play important part in the series: bringing forth the End of the World... or the Instrumentality Project ^^

- Both features being called Angels. While in EVA the Angels are primarily the main antagonist a.k.a. the-ones-that-need-to-be-beaten-by-the-protagonist (Rei, Asuka, and Baka Shinji)throughout most of the series, in Supernatural Angels are pretty much like SEELE's counterparts.
They don't work directly, but performing shady, background, and stealth jobs to make things happen according to the destined fate... or the so-called "God's Will". and some Angels have the hidden agendas of their own, and using humans to perform their job. Pretty much like Keel Lorenz and Gendo Ikari using each other and other people to get their job done.

- Both features the end of the world. And what must be done to end the world is pretty much the same too!
*spoiler warning* In Supernatural, to release Lucifer from his prison, some sacrifices must be made - i.e. by breaking 66 seals which would unlock the prison gate, and apparently the last seal is a demon. The demon dies, the seal is broken, and Lucifer is free and ready to brought the Armageddon. See? that's pretty much like killing all the Angels are the key to brought Human Instrumentality Project into reality in EVA.

- For some reason, the End of the World is pretty much the same thing: New World without war, pain, and suffering, and all negative traits you can think of. All that is left is peace. and... both of the main characters refuse the offer to achieve such world. Shinji wants to live as a separate entity at the final moments of Human Instrumentality Project, and the main chara of Supernatural chose to live as a human in our imperfect world rather than achieving glory and peace at the cost of his brother's life. Pretty much like that...
**Though in the end, we don't know whether Shinji finally returned to Earth and live as a human with the others (the ending scene can be seen as Shinji and the others reverting back to human form and live on earth as they were, but it is also speculatively an end where it's only Shinji's concept of Heaven... nobody is returning to our world and everyone is simply dead. That's the End of Evangelion in my mind... but then again, that's the beauty of the EVA series: you can interpret the ending as you like - ambiguous till the end like V from V for Vendetta ^^), he did make the choice to not merge all human souls into one entity. (after turning the whole world into a primordial soup, Rei had gone through so far collecting the whole souls of humans, and after battling with MP EVAs and Asuka [illustratively] died, and all other stuff, you changed your mind... you're really BAKA SHINJI!!!)

- ah, both uses quite similar names for the Angels! Those who watched EVA would've recognized the name with -el suffix as the name of the Angels, like Uriel, Castiel, etc... and certain angels with Higher Level doesn't use the -el suffix, Zachariah in Supernaturan and Tabris for example - a.k.a. Nagisa Kaworu the gay-ish red-eyed boy with Impenetrable AT-Field and ability to control EVA outside the plug ^^

ahh... I missed Evangelion too much :D
That's probably the best Anime I've ever watched. Not at the quality of the animation, nor the characters, but simply the story and ideas behind them. And I like stories that requires quite some thinking...

Let's hope Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 to be released as soon as possible. I'm curious about EVA-05 and the new pilot... Makinami Mari Illustrious. Still using the name of a WW II ship as a character name, I see. And since Gainax changed my beloved Asuka's name into Shikinami, why don't you change Kaworu's name into King George V Nagisanami, or Shinji's name into Scharnhorst Ikarinami? ^^
or Pen-pennami
and Aida Kensukenami
and Misato Katsuraginami
also Toji Suzuharanami

....
.....
......

ah dammit, Soryu Asuka Langley was a good name!

Project Babylon

2009-06-02T02:02:00.000-07:00

Officially, my next GUNPLA project would be called "Project Babylon".
It shall be my first attempt to combine scratch-building, GUNPLA assembly, hand-brushing, and maybe sculpting and kitbash. Maybe this one is a less ambitious project than my Sinanju Project (which is still unfinished), but surely this one wouldn't be less difficult.

The theme is my favorite character from Fate / Stay Night, Gilgamesh ^^ - hence the Project is called "Babylon". For those who doesn't know about Gilgamesh, here's the pic and link to some details:

"I SHALL PWNZ YOU ALL, LOWLIFE!"

Little details about concept that is going on inside my head:
Painting - simple. just paint it all gold, since Gilgamesh uses a golden armor... but, Which gold? I still can't decide between ACE Hardware's frame color Gold, Tamiya Leaf Gold, Testors Metallic Enamel Gold, or my old buddy Mr.Color Gold.
Decals - need to make custom decals. Gilgamesh's cuneiform markings on his armor and sword should be done during holiday
Weaponry - this one needs scratch build and/or sculpting. Need to make a 12-15 cm long replica of Gilgamesh's sword Ea - the one and only Anti-World Noble Phantasm ^^
and also some kitbashing maybe, especially funnels. I want to simulate Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon with numerous funnels instead of polearm and swords ^^

and the most important thing... which MS should I pick as the basis for the project?! which MS resembles Gilgamesh's attitude and armor?
I still can't decide... MG Zeta Plus C1 or A1 is the major candidate, followed closely by MG RX-178 Gundam Mk II and MG Hyaku-shiki... any suggestions? I don't really like the designs from SEED and 00, so Universal Century shall be the era of my choice...

ahh... hell... I need to study again for Thursday's SPSS exams!

and here's some random Azu-nyan pic ^^

I'm also in a K-On! fever right now :D
Azu-nyan is my current favorite girl, followed closely by Mugi, Mio, Yui & Ui... and don't forget the nutty airhead Sawako-sensei ^^
K-On! is just hilarious... and the music really gets to me!

yup, need to get back to studying! see ya later, my blog!
* Sinanju, please don't be mad at me... T.T

Jakarta Anti-Tobacco Day

2009-05-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

Bunderan H.I.!
Enjoy Jakarta!

umm... what is it to enjoy in this overheated, polluted, flooding city?

well... actually there was a plan for a photography Hunt of Medilens during Jakarta Anti-Tobacco Day at Bunderan HI, but somewhere along the way it got cancelled.

Bicycling is healthy. Jogging is healthy too. Inhaling gas from motorized vehicles are not. So it's good to have a car-free hours on a Sunday morning like this ^^

one of the reason was due to the inability of the Medilens members to gather on Sunday Morning (Maroon 5? "Dying slow on Sunday Morning, and I'll never want to live" ^^).
Most of them just had an exhausting exams on Friday, so I think they could use a good sleep till noon on Sunday ^^. Even the club chief doesn't feel well on the day before yesterday, and I myself was not in a good shape too. I've been ill since 4 days ago, but it got quite severe since thursday... after taking antibiotics for 3 days, I feel a little better and I can go for a little walk on Sunday.

After my business with PERKI (about ACLS) is finished, I decided to take a walk on the car-free Jl. Thamrin, starting from Bunderan HI. It's crammed full with people, doing all sorts of things to celebrate and promote Anti-Tobacco day. From jogging, physical exercises, bicycling, wet themselves on the big fountain of Bunderan HI, join a "balap karung" contest, and even smoking ^^. Funny isn't it? There are still a lot of people enjoying their cigarettes on Anti-Tobacco day ^^

Here are some other pictures I take during my solo-hunt:
(All photos taken with Olympus E-500 DSLR. Image resized to 600x450 with Photoshop to fit my internet connection speed ^^)

It's a Hot day, comrade...

Golden Glow

a fluorescent egrang? ^^

BALAP KARUNG!

Don't trip yourself, mate!

Bike Lane. Kids ONLY.

Bike to Work... with NOS

Exercise under the flare ^^

My Bike, My Wife.

Oh, and there were a lot of unique bicycles on the street! From classic, antique bikes from Netherlands-Indies Colonial era, to Harley-Davidson look-alike... and even more antique bike collectors were there, showing off their collections and even wearing Meneer (it's "Mister" in Dutch, pretty much like a honorific for Foreigners back in Colonial era) clothes... I guess they can be considered as an Otaku too? ^^
And here's one of the most unique accessory a bicycle can get: a cannon ^^

A Bike-mounted cannon

Target on sight. Fire at Will!

And there was a tandem-bicycle (a bicycle with side-passenger seat on the left) full of EPIC WIN: the bicycle was repainted in camouflage colors and there are 2 boxes of ammo box with markings on the side-passenger seat
"100 ball rounds + 50 tracer rounds
Cal. .50BMG
Fire-Linked Browning M2 Machine Gun"

too bad I can't take any photo of it - the owner forbid me T.T
but he said that when he finished customizing his bike, he'll put it on a kind of "Unique Bicycle Show" or something like that, and everyone may take some pics... Is there any such thing as "Unique Bicycle Show"? ^^

anyhow... today was fun ^^
Now I need to get back to my daily life of a Medical Student... Studying heaps of books and handouts in limited time... Cramming statistics and practice using SPSS is the menu for next week's exams!

* Sinanju, please wait till I finish all the exams!

Photography: Hobby vs Mall Security

2009-05-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

taken from my note at Facebook...
I'll put on the pictures later...

To make it short, Kelapa Gading held an event called Jakarta Food & Fashion Festival. In an event that big, Photographers lurking around the area is inevitable. From media photographers to hobby photographers like me. Of course, official photographers wore an ID Tag to identify them as a committee of the event.

But to my observation, there's so few of the DSLR-using people who wore ID Tag!
I counted about 12 out of 15 people who brought DSLR along with them didn't wear any ID Tag or dressed with a proper committee shirt.

Among these 12, 3 or so are PRO Photographers (fellow photographers can't mistake the EOS1, big lens, and that "aura" of Pro ^^).

Then about 7 of them appears to be in their late teens or twenties, implying that they're either college students, amateur photographers, or young photography hobbyists - including me (3 of them even brought tripods).

And the rest are some rich people who bought DSLR cameras only to look cool and use the DSLR as if it was a pocket camera. What a waste. Fuck off and die.

Anyway, as I stroll around took some pictures (for my own pleasure and entertainment), two mall securities with their handy-talky cornered me and asking for some credentials. WTF? My arguments were:
1) DSLR are now available for those who want to have it and have the money - not only for those with occupational needs. That means, nowadays people with DSLR doesn't mean that they're occupational photographers. Hobbyist like me who took pictures for myself and wouldn't post a picture to mass media can have a DSLR if they had the resources and decide to buy one. Even those rich, photography-blind, smartasses can have one!
2) You apprehend people with DSLR, but you let loose people with pocket cameras. Okay, so next time if I decide to be an event-spy or unofficial media agent who wants to take pictures of the event without any credentials, I'll just bring my pocket camera. because you let that happen!
3) Due to my argument #2, I asked them back. If photography is forbidden, WHY CAN'T YOU ENFORCE IT? See? you let loose 12 people with DSLR without ID Tags and hundreds of people with pocket camera or phone camera to take pictures as they like! And you do something only to one of them (me ^^). You call that enforcement? I can conclude that you SUCK at your job.
4) Again, If photography is forbidden, you did nothing to inform the people who brought their DSLR unauthorized. Come on, DSLR are BIG! You can't mistake a DSLR bag with a pocket camera bag, can you?

After defending my arguments for about 10 minutes, they let me go easily. "Alright, you may go around." Without telling me not to take pictures anymore or so. See? You really SUCK at doing your job, you know?
I took several more pictures then head home. Along the way home, I managed to see the "No cameras allowed" sign which is hanged on top of the ceiling. and that's the only sign. That's it? That's the only effort to forbid photography on the area? You can't be serious. Who would bother seeing the sign if there are a lot of kiosk and stands on the area?

So, Mister Ad* and Ri**i, you took wrong Hobbyist Photographer to apprehend :D
I suspect you intend to gain some more money by preying on lone photographers like me, yes?
my dear, that's called an extortion.

bad luck, chummy. I wouldn't give my precious money or - most importantly - my PRIDE to be taken down by people like you ^^
if you asked for my money like a beggar, maybe I'll consider giving you some... you really SUCK at doing your job, you know that? :D

and to the management of " LP ", please change the sign with a better one, or just put them down anyway. It's useless. You can't restrain or limit the people's spirit of photography.

Onward Amateur Photographers!

Saturday Night Fever

2009-05-09T06:35:00.001-07:00

Hell. I am tired. Really Tired.
What do you expect when you took a little too many activities? For me, I think I can manage my time and I expect to finish them all according to meticulously designed plan of mine. All I got is a complete mess.

I haven't had a good sleep for months. for the last 2 weeks, I only sleep for 2 hours or so, 4 hours tops. And now I feel I'm dozing off during lectures too often.

Now my minds are unclear and I'm exhausted, but I have a lot of work to do: Finishing my Research that due on May 14th, calling and managing participants of ACLS - there isn't many of them but it's time-consuming since the Contact Person of PERKI is rather hard to be contacted, writing article about AIDS for monthly bulletin, study for Mid-block exam which is next Friday, and... finish building my Sinanju ^^

Oh, I prefer to do the last one mentioned, above all else except sleeping :D
especially after witnessing the conflict between fellow club members which IMO are utterly prodigal... and I just can't calm down when the issues are getting worse - maybe due to my lack of sleep. well, more details of this conflict are to come soon... When I have time (probably tomorrow) to settle my mind and gain peace, I shall write about it as objectively as I can... my current opinion about this case: "You guys want to show off your superiority by making trouble over trivial things? Fuck off and die." [negative-charged emotions are building up inside me ^^]

by the way, my Sinanju's current progress are stalling. I just finished the legs, but I think it'll be the same until next week... I'll have the time to assemble the arms, backpack, and weapons after the Mid-Block exams...

I just want to rant about my bad weekend - because I can't have some rest - for now. Hopefully I can finish some of my jobs tonight so I can have a little rest - 4 hours of sleep is a must... Otherwise I'd start flipping out into Flippy from Happy Tree Friends :D

Sunday Stroll (April 26th 2009)

2009-04-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

Jakarta, 09.00 P.M.

It's been quite some time since the last time I write something, and now I'll write about what I just did today...

After a blasted array of inhumanly merciless exams of Humaniora bloc, I managed to spend some time to take a nice walk around the city to relieve my tension… Well, not literally walking around since walking around at noon in 32-34^oC temperature would be a futile attempt of stress-relieving…

Anyway, since my younger sister has just finished her High School National Exams and she would like to eat some delicious treats, we went to Pacific Place, a mall combined with Ritz-Carlton Hotel Jakarta, where most of the things inside I wouldn’t bother to take a look due to the highly tagged prices. We went there only for one reason: Pancious ^^

Pancious is, well, a pancake restaurant. The name came from “Pancake” and “Delicious” combined in a unique way… but what matters the most here is the taste, not the name. Indeed it’s expensive, but the pancakes are worth the money we spent. Simply delicious. Even the standard, butter + maple syrup pancake/waffle tastes soooo good ^^.
They serve other creatively combined pancake and waffle delicacies, like waffle-ice cream, pancake-cheesecake, burger pancake, omelet pancake/waffle, etc… but no Dolphin Pancakes though ^^. They’re all look delicious, but my wallet keeps me from buying them… I’d just go with a standard pancake, because I’d rather spent my Rp 42.000,00 (about ¥400) for 4 jars of Mr.Color Paint than for 2 pieces of pancake with a vanilla ice cream and few blueberries or oreo chunks… Ah that reminds me, I haven’t made any progress on my Sinanju… Please be patient, Sinanju. I’ll resume on working your arms & legs as soon as I have more time to spend…

After costly dining at Pancious (I envy my sister. She seems to eat A LOT but gains weight a little to none…) we just stroll around the mall & laughing at the ridiculously expensive dress and shoes they got there… and how could these people with too much money bought a pair of shoes that costs even more than 2 PG Astray while right outside, there’s still people struggling to get food as a daily basis.

along the way I came across this book on a bookstore: "Full Frontal PR [Public Relations]"

so this book would like to teach us how to be a Public Relations like Full Frontal, eh? Enforce yourself with Sinanju, and slice everyone who's not listening to you... quite an effective way to be a good public relations... ^^

Then, before we went home, we came across a local supermarket that sells some imported goods. I remember Danny’s article about Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels and soon I began the hunt ^^.

After some time, I found the LAST Snyder’s they have… And it’s on SALE (maybe 50% off, I don’t know exactly but the other items on the section was on “buy 1 get 1” promo), so I decided to loot it due to curiosity ^^. It’s expensive (for me). Costs about 3 Mr.Color paints, and it’s the on sale price? Then the real price would cost the same as 6 Mr.Color paints! Damn all the taxes… Money from tax in Indonesia most likely ends up in our corrupt government. All the political bullshit to rationalize their actions of gaining wealth, self-supplying and self-fattening makes me sick.

Well, this post has no intentions to criticize politics or other heavy things, I’ll just continue… Next is a funny pic...

Same item for different species ^^

Next up is the nostalgic sector of the supermarket… they sell traditional Indonesian snacks, toys, and almost-extinct sweets like these:

Warung-style goodies! Ahh... those sweets brings back memories...

My childhood snacks are here! ^^

Charlee and the chocolate Factory ^^

It’s almost 10 years since the last time I had a cigarette-candy, or “lizard eggs” (“telor cicak” – that’s how we used to call the multicolored, smarties-like, candies in Bogor, I guess)^^ sweets, or Charlee gums… brings back memories back from my elementary school days, where everything seems to be fun (“God’s in His heaven, All’s right with the world” ^^)… These items should be cheap – almost as cheap as dirt, since a whole package of cigarette candy should cost no more than Rp 500 (¥4.5) at the local market – but since it’s entered the mall, the price increases over tenfold. What a way to gain profit…

That’s all for today, now I need to get back to work. Medskills, TEMILNAS research, and AtmaSEARCH activities are waiting…

I’m still in high spirits of attending Medical Faculty, even though the Humaniora bloc has blasted my motivations… I just can’t see the correlations of memorizing to the letter from the book of Ethics, or understanding the crappy outdated way of thinking from the Church, and being a good doctor… I personally think that religion doesn’t take part in morals and ethics of a good doctor, or good people.

There are many good people without religions, as well as there are a lot more indecent people with religion.

Ninth Entry: Holiday

2009-04-10T01:04:00.000-07:00

LOG 8
April 10, 2009

part 1: free from humanity
It's easter holiday here, at last I can take some rest from Humaniora studies at campus. The medical education unit arranges a curriculum that aims to make us, 1st year med students, to be more humanistic, caring, and empathic towards people... what they don't know is that the curriculum of Humaniora makes the students- or at the very least, me - to be less human. Literally, since I feel apathy towards humanity issues are better than "save the people, save the world" approach...

and what disgust me most is that we need to study "Religion" and Civics. go to hell, all politics and bureaucracies! even the Church itself is a politic-mongering power with "divine intervention" disguise...

my spirit to be a doctor weakened a little because of this curriculum. Practically all things to be learned from this curriculum is useless, except the Biomedical Ethics and Culture Studies. I decided to attend medical faculty to help people with my talents - NOT to "Serve God" or "Serve this pathetic country"... I don't believe in God, and I don't respect nor trust politicians in my country. period.

I miss the Molecular Biology, Physiology, and even Biochemistry...

part 2: Election
I'll just cut it short: I hate the democracy system in this country. I want to kill all the politicians in this country who wanted the position at Legislative for their OWN sake, i.e. they will definitely CORRUPT - thus, they don't need to be elected, but ELIMINATED, permanently.

part 3: *GUNPLA* ^^
after all the negatively-charged issues above, here comes the balance of my Chi, source of my positive energy :D (sorry for the exaggeration ^^)

finally I managed to spend some time on my beloved beautiful Sinanju.
This MG kit is awesome! Loads of runners and decals, the most complicated (and the most expensive) GUNPLA I have up to now. I'll definitely took my time on building this babe, as she'll be my masterpiece...

up till now, I made little or no flaws in cutting and sanding, but painting is a bit difficult. All those curves and "embroidery" linings doesn't come in separate parts, so I need to put a lot of effort into details... I tried to use Testors Metal red + Tamiya detailing brush for the chest "embroidery", the results was pretty satisfactory but it took 4 hours of regulating respiration rate and staring intently at the part I want to paint while my cerebellum is desperately trying to balance-control the movements of my brushing hand... my hand ended up cramping all night long...

anyway, here's the current progress of my Sinanju:

Kinda reminds me of Alpha Azieru...

Sinanju is truly beautiful, isn't she? ^^

*note:
custom parts used:
AKO Creation stencil decal #13
AKO Creation Metal Energy cable medium

colors used:
Tamiya Acrylic - Metallic Grey, Metallic Blue, Black, Royal Blue
Mr. Color - Metal Black, Burnt Iron, Character Red, Gold
Humbrol Acrylic - Gun Metal
Testors - Metallic Red

***** Happy Gunpla-Building!!! *****
End of Log 8

Eighth Entry: Spilling Bee

2009-03-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

LOG 8
March 20, 2009

“Under heavy fire! Repeat, under heavy fire! Falling back and holding position at checkpoint Alpha. Need reinforcement ASAP. Over and out.”

I’m under heavy fire from incoming events, assignments, and current studies, and am considering to fall back to apathy-mode...

I don’t know how, but all of a sudden I got all these lot of job on upcoming events, a higher position in my organization, and assigned in a national research contest. It’s not that I’m making a fuss about it, but… I just want spill out what I feel about this. And sorting them out by writing this log. It’s gonna be a really long post…

First, to understand what I’m in, I need to make a list of jobs that I got. Here goes:

- Committee Head of Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) – consists of two classes, 1st class on May and 2nd class on September or November. 1st class will be held on May 22nd-24th, Open registration on March 25th until April 20th. Preparations ready for the 1st class, general meeting on March 23rd, and promotional posters will be spread to nearby Medical Faculty on 25th. More details on the next post...

- Coordinator of Science & Education Division of AtmaSEARCH. SE Div has 3 major routine activities: Litview, PF, and my newly announced Case Study. As an organization that moves around research activities and scientific purposes, one might consider the activities of AS are “heavy” or “hardcore” or “utterly prodigal” depending on one’s point of view. Indeed it’s brain-exhausting, but I found myself to be somewhat attached to this organization and the atmosphere is quite comfortable. But yes, needless to say, being a Coordinator doubles your experience of exhaustion than “just” exhausting.

o Litview – due on April. Maybe on the 2nd week. Now prepping my presentation of new rules of litview. Another homework to do…
o PF – due on May ("not May again…"), 2nd or 3rd week, depends on the situation :D. Still haven’t thought much of it, but I need to make it interesting… Hecting and other Emergency skills (Tracheostomy, anyone?) comes to mind… still far from realization though.
o Case study – concepts are now completed. Need to start prepping the test-run. It’s basically like a simulation of a clinical case based on case reports or something like that. Preparations will totally exhaust the “Pathfinder Team” since they need to make scenario, data, presentation, handouts, event planning, and consult them to a valid & reliable doctor… more details of this *interesting* activity will come soon, but my goal on creating this is to provide AS members a decent way of thinking on facing clinical cases, so we’ll be prepared when we face our clinical phase.

- Committee Head of Med E-Search 2009 – an activity of AS held in August/September, or as soon as we have new members from the freshman class. The goal is to give AS new members a heads up, tips, and skills to search and basic-appraise medical literatures such as journals and articles. Med E-Search is under direct responsibilities of Science & Education division. It’s been a *tragic* tradition that the Coordinator of SE Div = Med E-Search Committee Head.
“noo… not another committee head… *sigh*”

- Coordinator of Utilities of Medskills 2009 – held on 1st week of May, Medskills is a kind of workshop/training of – as the name implies –medical skills for Medical Students of former curriculum (now, the main target is the class of 2005 since class of 2004 is now going on the clinical phase). The goal is to prepare the old-curriculum Students for clinical phase or at least, the OSCE test. Unlike us, the students of old curricula have never had training of medical skills before. Some of them even can’t do percussion techniques! (we were taught the percussion skills since 2nd semester)
Back to topic, it’s not really much of a job for now, since Utilities will prove what they’re worth on days prior to the show. It will be REALLY TIRING to carry 52+ Mannequins from 3rd floor of Building A, go down and take them up to the 4th floor of Building B with only 4 members including me!

- Member of Publication & Documentation of Science Fair – held somewhere on 2009. Back when I was high school, I always get the job in Documentations Division of any events on my school (Canisius College! The best All-boys School in Indonesia! …or so we think~). It’s quite a simple job, since all you need to have is a camera, and all you need to do is to take pictures of the events, listen to all your buddies’ narcisstic needs, and you can get pics of cute girls with an excuse of “being a committee” :D. But here, they combined PUBLICATION with DOCUMENTATION. Means, the member - like me - need to make posters, handouts, fliers, banners, committee name tags, etc, AND take the pictures of the events. Twice the job, twice the weight. Four times the tiresomeness...

- AtmaSEARCH delegation of TEMILNAS 2009 – starts on June 29th ‘till August 3rd. It’s an event where research-oriented organizations from Medical Faculty throughout the country send their delegates to compete their skills on researching, scientific poster-making, and essay-writing. Ridiculously, all participants must PAY 1.500.000 excluding transport in order to participate. Where should I look for the money that much??! I bought Sinanju which is half of the fee with my 8-months worth of savings!
("I'm planning on robbing a bank now. Any suggestions on where and when? Seems like the TEMILNAS Committee wants their participants to have some criminal skills as an addition to researching and medical skills...")

I’m excited, challenged, afraid, and angry at the same time.
Excited because this is my first participation on a national-scale competition, pretty much like when I was participating the Contest at Atmajaya as a participant from Canisius College about a year ago.

Challenged because I want AtmaSEARCH to be *at least* the finalist – to be specific, I want MY piece that brought AS to the finals! :D – or even win the competition.

Afraid because I realized that it’s not only MY name that I’m betting here, but also my partners from AS, AS itself, and even the University, and I know that I’m SUCK at public presentation and I lack knowledge since I’m still a 1st-year Med Student!!! See how slim my chances for winning? or even to make it through to the finals?

Angry because… well, everything. Now any subtle things can annoy me like hell, and I feel my limbic system is overly charged or overstimulated. From a little mismatch with my research partner, the ridiculous cost of participation in TEMILNAS that I need to pay, the monopoly of internet connection in the house (so I need to use CDMA modem and again it costs me money), the unethically abstractive and confusing studies of ethics, religion, culture, and logic…

It’s been months since I had a good sleep, and I slept only for 2 hours or so in the past few weeks, I don’t even dream since last week, I’m tired of getting into meetings until dawn and discussing trivial and important matters for hours, or studying about ethics I can’t comprehend and religion I no longer believe in, and I’m really really ANNOYED when people keep chasing me and telling me what to do!

*** Medical Intermezzo: Researches proved that REM phase during sleep is responsible for what people remember as “dreaming”. On REM phase, muscle tones are low but brain activity is as high as conscious state. It is speculated that REM phase is a way for CNS cells to keep themselves healthy and working, and recalibrating synapses to maximize the process of learning. Elder people has lower frequency of REM phase during their sleep, as opposed to the high frequencies of REM Sleep in newborns and infants whose brain is still under rapid development. Researchers conclude that lack of REM sleep in adults causes emotional fluctuation, irritating behavior, and even psycho-somatic sickness due to the decreasing chance for brain to refresh.***

~I need to take a break…
seriously, I need to be less serious…

but I can’t let that happen, since I’m responsible to these lot of jobs & activities, and I can only literally rest when they are all finished, because I promised and I WILL see through all these jobs that they are DONE perfectly well.

So I guess, I’ll just calm myself down and get back to work ASAP. Stuff all these emotions back in the box like usual and I should be fine – for the time being… I’m lucky it’s not an overflow of memories about ‘someone’ I kept inside and I don’t intend to let her out. If she broke loose, I’d be in a mental retardation state by now~

Now.. what needs to be done is to properly regain my physical health… any suggestions? Don’t say “REST” since I don’t have time for that…

End of LOG 8

Seventh Entry

2009-03-02T05:57:00.000-08:00

LOG 7
March 2, 2009

Remember the "she" I mentioned on the post earlier?

I met her today. I just saw her this morning, to be precise, I don't know if she noticed me too or not.

Damn. I don't have feelings and urges towards her as strong as before but the memories are still fresh in my mind. How we used to chat from midnight until morning. How we used to eat in a restaurant, order few foods and drinks ("few" here isn't exactly few. she eats a lot ^^) and spend most of the time talking and laughing, then after almost 5 hours non-stop chatting the waitress kindly "forced" us out of our seat and continue chatting elsewhere ^^.
How she used to cheer me up when I'm gloomy. How I tried my best to impress her but end up looking clumsy. How she respond to my changing moods. How I react to her decision to be undecisive and wants everyone (literally, everyone) to be happy. How she became upset when I told her that it's TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE and countered me that I should not view the world as black and white. How I started to realize the colors of the world - and now reduced back into grayscale.
Or when she used to laugh loudly in her room - so loud that I, who was still half asleep in my room, fell from the bed. How I used to sit on the roof at night, waiting for her to return home after attending a college preparation class at BTG. Or how lonely I feel when she returned to her hometown with her dazzling Starlet. Or how her face looked like when she's upset, confused, happy, surprised. Her face before making a decision, and after she decided to not decide ^^. How her voice changes when we talked about something serious. And her scent. I used to know if she's around me by the scent. It's not that she stinks but I just know her scent. Can't be pheromone since anyone else doesn't notice. Doesn't work well these lately though. Maybe her scent has changed. Or maybe I'm the one who has changed. Or both of us. Whatever it is, it should be connected with our current nearly-diminished realtionship... How her face looked like when she gave me my first chocolate from a girl on Valentine's day... and how I end up photographing the chocolate and put them on a "shrine" on my table...

Enough of this. I don't want to remember that anymore.

After a tiresome Pleno Meeting today, and my worries because my sister is now in a hospital and my dad is sick - and both of them show the symptoms of Dengue Fever, I just need something that clear my mind up. Not more of those nostalgic memories!

I'm a fan of Techno and New Age music anyways, so I'll listen to them and dance all night (like I used to do when I was waiting for her ~ ARRRGH!)... The memories aren't as overwhelming as it used to be but now it's PESKY as hell!

anyways, tonight I'll listen to some DJ Sammy, "Ray of Light", Gorillaz, and something new: Hatsune Miku. Yep, that's the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku.
This one is wonderful for new-age / techno listeners who want a refreshing tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L0g7GBVPLA

Miku's electronic voice (an artificial voice works really good on techno / new age) and the upbeat but soothing mix, carries me away.. and matches my nostalgic mood somehow... Info for those who doesn't know, Miku Hatsune is an icon of Vocaloid, a kind of artificial voice software. That means, you can make a song without any singer by filling inputs such as lyrics, notes, beat, etc. Then let the software process it for you, and voila! A song with Miku's voice completed! It's way more complicated than "Microsoft Sam" computer voice for handicapped users...

found Miku at dannychoo.com
** Danny Choo's Otaku side of the Force is strong. I can't imagine how a Stormtrooper has a huge influence of the Force like a Jedi... Ai no Corrida! ^^ **
some danny action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7X9MQi7uOU
he's a one lucky bastard ^^

Sixth Entry

2009-03-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

LOG 6
March 1, 2009

I know it’s Monday, but I’ll fill the log with what happened yesterday, Sunday. Some sub-topics will be present, because there are three major things that stuck on my head… here we go:

1) Sunday Morning

Yesterday was one of the days when I became suddenly nostalgic and remember the past as clearly as watching the laptop screen. Particularly, I became MOST nostalgic of the times when I was 1st grade of high school (or 10th grade). It’s the first time I had to live without my parents around because I continued my study to Jakarta, and my families were still in Bogor. I was really excited and happy, but when it comes to do everything (literally, everything) alone, I feel it’s kinda hard and tough.. To make it worse, my grades aren’t that good: I barely managed to get the minimum achievement score (7.0), and it was also the first time since I’ve known Biology that I scored 7.0. Back when I was junior high in Bogor, I always get above 9.0 in Biology. So I must say that it’s a big, depressing hit for me. Add my lack of social skills and reclusive nature, I feel lonely most of the time.

It all changed on a Sunday morning. “She” came to my life – oops, I mean, came to my room, hands me over a piece of cake, and asked me to celebrate her birthday with the others. “She” is 2 years older than me, was a 3rd grader (12th grader) of a different school from me (my school was an all-boys) and she has the figure of a “good elder sister” though she’s shorter than me. What impressed me most was her personality. She was talkative, brilliant, cheerful, laughs REALLY loud, optimistic, and she always lighten up any gloomy situations. Not to mention that she’s quite beautiful (beauty is a matter of personal preference) and has a nice body, she EATS A LOT. ^^ She eats more than me, who is a big eater at that time (now my portion is about half of what I used to eat – I could eat up to 6 slices of medium-size pan pizza when I was on junior high, now I’m content with 2-3 slices. On the other hand, she can eat a whole large-size pizza. And somehow retains that slender body. I’m jealous!!)

Starting from that Sunday, I often spend my time with her. Just talking, chatting about trivial things, share our experience, laugh at my clumsy and bad jokes, and sometimes the both of us just sit on the couch in silence. I can’t open up myself in other people, hence I can’t talk a lot with others, but I can easily talk, chat, and share from dusk till dawn with her. My feelings for her started to change from respect and admiration, to something else. To cut it short, I loved her.

This is where all problems began. Love always bring trouble. Again, to make it short, I screwed things up and ended my close relationship with her. Not that it went with explosive outburst of anger and fight, but it just ended in silence. On another gloomy Sunday, 2 years since that “first” Sunday, I decided to “end” our close relationship (she ‘loved’ me in a different way: She considered me as her “cute” another little brother - I hate it when somebody considers me as “cute”.) because it’s affecting me too much and I need to be independent (from that Sunday up to the next 8 months I shared ALL my anxiety, fear, and anything else with her – and I always need her to cheer me up, and that’s BAD). Then again, my decision was a bit wrong since I missed her even more and I screw my school further, and finally my scores were that bad that I had to repeat the class. All because I can’t keep my rationality and most importantly, control my feelings.

Now our relationship is just a mere shadow of what it used to be. I didn’t feel the “pain” when I look at her or her photos like I used to feel, sometime after the “gloomy” Sunday. I learn from my mistakes. Now that I know that emotions and love is distractive and destructive, I’ll keep their concentration inside me as low as possible. I will never trust anyone so easily. Patience and objectivity should be a part of me that I must train more. She made me what I am now. Thanks for giving me a really valuable thing to learn, bee. See you soon. Next time we spend another time to chat I will not be your weak, clingy, and foolish “little brother”.

~ I remembered something I made when I was in vain after my “defeat”…
“But things just get so crazy, living life gets hard to do. I would gladly hit the road, get up, and go if I knew, that someday it would lead me back to you. That someday it would lead me back to you. You may not know that maybe all I need. In darkness she is all I see. Come and rest your bones with me. Dying slow on Sunday Morning, and I’ll never want to live.” [adapted from Maroon 5’s Sunday Morning]

2) Sunday Stroll – Spent my afternoon walking down the mall. I just observe anything happened around me. Some of the notable ones are these:
a. Wearing without thinking

Found someone wearing a black T-Shirt with a writing that reads out like this, “FUCK FOR YOUR LOVE”.

Judging by his appearance, his attitude, and the T-Shirt he’s wearing, I can conclude that he’s not a smart or educated person. He seems to be PROUD with his T-Shirt and frequently emphasizes his “FUCK FOR YOUR LOVE” sentence on his T-Shirt to his buddy who looked as dumb as he is, and said the F-word quite a lot.

Literally, the sentence is a total disaster. What does the sentence mean? Unclear. It could mean, “One should FUCK for one’s LOVE”, or “Go to Hell with your Love / I don't care for your Love”, or “FUCK is a thing we should do to get LOVE”, or simply a sentence made by an un-educated person who wants to look cool by acting or trying to speak like western people WITHOUT giving any regard to the meaning. Funny. All human was given a brain, but why is there only so few who uses their brain?

If I could do anything I want at that time, I’d rip his brain off and give it to someone who needs one. Maybe I’ll transplant them to an anenchepalic baby who was born (literally) without brain. The point is, the guy (erranda: read "guy" as "idiot") does not deserve to have a functional brain since he doesn't bother to use it. It's a shame that I couldn't photograph or record a video of the guy and his friend.

b. Never put your car in Valet Parking’s hands

Or at least, never trust your car to Valet Parking in Indonesia. On the way back home, I walked around the parking lot. On the 2nd floor of the parking lot, there’s a reserved area only for Valet Parking. For those who doesn’t familiar with the term, Valet Parking is a kind of service available at malls or clubs, where you can definitely get a parking space to park your car by “lending” your car to the Valet Parking assistant. Just give the keys to the assistant, and he’ll park your car for you. When you’re done shopping, use the Car Call station and he’ll bring you back your car from the parking lot... and also the keys ^^. Sounds quite nice, isn’t it?

Yesterday, I saw MOST of the cars parked on the Valet Parking Area are turned on, and inside, the assistants are using the car’s stereo and air conditioning to relax without the owner’s permission. Some of them even brought their girlfriends INSIDE the car to ENJOY themselves in the luxurious car. They seem oblivious to the fact that the car they were using was NOT their car and they have NO RIGHTS to spend fuel and energy of the car since they DO NOT OWN it. They are supposed to bring the car to the parking space, and then return the car to the rightful owner. They are paid for that, nothing more. By using the car as if the car was theirs, they earned what they DON’T deserve.
Despite the relatively high rate of “accidentally” stolen cars or missing car audio on cars, or the nearly 100% risk of your car being used by the assistant as it was his car, underwent Valet Parking service in Indonesia, a lot of people still use the service. Oh people~

End of LOG 6

Fifth Entry - [*]

2009-02-27T08:23:00.001-08:00

LOG 5
Feb 27, 2009

I'll just put what I put on my facebook note here. When I feel like it, I'll write more about my life - past and present, my way of thinking, and things that make me what I am on other entry.

"you reap what you sow" has been a popular quotation.. if you bring bad things around, or do indecent things to others, the bad or indecent things will come back at you. Otherwise, if you do good things to others, you'll also receive good things. “Law of Karma”, “Law of Action-and-Reaction” has pretty much the same core.
Some incident occurred not so long ago reminds me of that quotation, and also a bit of my past that made me what I am. On the incident, a poor guy finally "harvest" what he had sown. It's nothing good, so you'll get the idea of what happened to him if you apply the quote & its meaning. It’s also disturbing to remember the thought from my past, flowing back from the grave (from my Unconscious Mind to be exact, and I’ve repressed them for years. I just got Freud lesson this morning ^^).

A little background story. Back in junior high, I was this kinda weird, enthusiastic boy. Though I'm not that sociable, I still have a very positive view of the world. I can trust people easier than I am now, and I was way more talkative. But still, I don’t have that many friends. It’s true that I had a bad temper, but I could control my anger much better than when I was on 6th grade. Basically, I don't want to be hated by others, but I don't bother to get close to others either. Especially to befriend those athletic, popular, good-looking guys who formed a “gang”. It's not because I hate them, but I just don’t feel comfortable around people. We had different idealism anyways. And I did nothing about that. If the quote applies, I should receive NOTHING since I did NOTHING. That’s what I want. I don’t do any harm to others, and I want others to do no harm to me. Don’t bother me because I won’t bother you. Simple and fair deal. But in the end, what did I get? Pretty much the same like what happened to the poor guy on the incident. Others look down on me, condemned me, viewed me as a haughty, bothersome brat because I don’t want to join or cooperate with their “gang”, and put me on seclusion. To make it more painful, all started because I stood for my acquaintance who got bullied and I refused to be used by other people. And the ones I helped turned their backs on me. Since then, I swear to myself that I should calculate events more correctly, think more objective, and I should never let my guards down. My hatred towards those sociable, athletic, good-looking, and popular guys and anyone alike them, started from that point. From that day, I began to doubt humanity and pity socialization. At first, I hate myself for being different than the others. After some time, I figured that I was not the only one at fault, but THOSE PEOPLE too. And I hate them even more than I hate myself because the society LOVED them more and refuse to see their ugly, pitiful side. I started to question this concept of being a proper human that everyone else believed in. I don’t want to make myself sound heroic on the story – in fact, I hate heroes and I’ve always been on the “dark” side – but I need to put the background of my way of thinking and reasoning on the topic.

Now about the incident. Well it’s true that I definitely NOT on the side of this poor guy – he got what he deserved, and apparently he hasn’t changed much since grade school, and I did have a past grudges with him, so I admit that I felt happy that something miserable happened to him (I also admit that I have something wrong in my conscience) – but I can say that I’m not on the side of the “Opposing Force” either. True that this poor guy did bad things to you, guys of the opposing force. True again that you guys should do what you did to this poor guy. And it’s still true that you guys did the right thing. Indeed, you guys DID the RIGHT THING! But I will never side with you guys. You guys think, act, and do just like my enemies from the past. You guys never look into yourselves. It’s not about what you did to the poor guy, it’s because you guys do it before you guys take a good look on yourselves.

You hate this poor guy because he talked bad behind you. You guys did just the same. You guys put an ugly picture of the poor guy, wrote all his “crimes” and made them public so everyone could condemn him too. Since there’s so much of you, you guys united to fight off the poor bastard which is a single man. Repeat, A SINGLE MAN. Against the lot of you. You guys are pathetic just like him. You guys screamed out at him to be more like a man, but you guys fight in numbers. Against one target. Your grudges against him are all PERSONAL, why make it go public?

You’re all a bunch of guys who has the “power” and influence in your community. You guys are all loved by the rest of your community. You guys are idols, the ones given acclaim as admired people from the society. You guys feel like you are the heroes. The right ones. The good ones. The normal ones. Because of that, you feel like you have the right and power to put justice on anyone you consider heretic. The weird ones. The eccentric ones. The unsociable ones. And you’re all proud to punish the heretic.You guys said that OTHER PEOPLE can never FEEL what you guys FEEL because OTHER PEOPLE did not became the poor guy’s targets. True. But you guys can never FEEL what it is like to be the poor guy.

You guys never taste the bitter fact that everyone around look down on you. You guys never taste the loneliness of someone condemned by his society. You guys never know what it feels like to be WEIRD. To be HERETIC. To be ABNORMAL. To be the DREGS of the society. Yet you guys put judgement on this poor guy so easily.

The same types of you guys put their judgement on ME, back then, pretty much the same way like you recently did. I’m sad that people like you guys exist everywhere. I met your types even in CC, where friendship bonds with brotherhood. I’m enraged to know what you did and the way you do your things because it reminds me of my past. I’m disgusted to know that you guys – anywhere and whoever you are – never change. And you guys still expect the poor guy to change.

I don’t intend to judge you guys the way you brought judgement to the poor guy, but I’ll definitely take different measures in certain circumstances. Just for you guys to know, you’re all not much better than the poor guy you despise so much. And I’m not much better than you are.

You guys may take my note as nothing, or something offensive to your so-called pride, or some reference to change yourselves. Well, I don’t expect you guys to change (I doubt your types’ capability to change), so I don’t expect much from you. Whatever choice you guys take, it’s yours. Don’t regret them once you pick them. As for me, I just want to live peacefully with as minimal disturbance as possible. Should you guys chose war, again, it’s your choice.

"you don't exactly reap what you sow - sometimes more, sometimes less. and some other times, it's totally different than what you sow"

End of LOG 5

Fourth Entry

2009-02-19T06:08:00.001-08:00

LOG 4
Feb 19, 2009

Getting tired easily from daily activities. More assignments and meetings ahead. I just can't help but thinking, how am I suppose to spare my time for my own health? I had time to jog, do some weight training, or even run 5k when I was in high school. Now... I barely had time to have some stretching. Last august, I could climb to 8th level using stairs without much effort. Now I got exhausted on 5th level. Seems my cardiac capabilities are horribly worsening. To make it worse, my weight has been increasing steadily since last october. Combine less physical activity with increasing frequency of snacking, this is what you get. Though my waist size hasn't changed much (currently I'm 76kg, trousers size still less than 35 - when I was on 11th grade, I weighed 80kg and wore size 38 trousers!) but this pile of fat on my belly is pretty threatening.

Time to get back into shape. I want to restore myself to its former physical glory ^^. Well I used to run 5 km in 35-40 minutes back when I was 12th grader (treadmills 2-3 times a week)... Starting tomorrow, I'll strictly follow my diet plans. Cardio sports should come as soon as I can spare more time on the next block. For next couple of weeks, I'll increase my morning exercises.

I lost 8 kg in 6 months back then on high school, and I think I can manage to lose 4-5 kg in the next 6 months. College is way busier than high school, so I don't put so much of a target. I need to be realistic!

Hopefully, this project shall refresh my mind from all distractive noises of medical school clutter... Good luck to me!

End of LOG4

Third Entry

2009-02-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

LOG 3
Feb 17, 2009

Man~
Seems I'll get busier with each passing day ^^
Division Coordinator is a tiresome job...

Next to do on the agenda:
1) Create list of things that need to be discussed on SE Div. informal meeting next thursday/friday
* find out the members, create communications network
* SE Div. Programs on 2009/2010 Period
* New ideas (case study & argumentative skills training) & improvements on current program (litview, PF, seminars / training)
* Arrange hierarchy...

2) Find journals / articles for PBL discussion. Topic: development & growth of an infant.

3) Prepare the plans & committee members for upcoming seminars/training

4) Re-Study organogenesis (no, it's not the GENESIS Cannon from Gundam SEED ^^), nutrition & growth of infant to child, read Histology, skim through Langman's Embriology

5) Prepare the copied papers for my PBL Group members

6) Clean up the mess on the room if there's some time left

7) strengthen my mind - I can't let the alluring Sinanju took the best of my sanity ^^]

8) Regular physical exercises - now down into only few sets of sit-ups & push-ups in the morning... last year I could spare some time to jog...

studying in medical school makes you need a lot medical attention - by means, med school makes people more susceptible to sickness, both physical sickness and mental sickness... *sigh* I thought doctors are always healthy due to their education. I guess I'm wrong... Well, I'll just have to adapt.

More upcoming tests and AtmaSearch meetings on the next month... and I still have to cram the whole book of Langman's Embryology in 2-3 weeks, not to mention another dose of Holy Sobotta Atlas of Anatomy, some Sherwood's Physiology, and quite a lot journals & full-text, small-sized books of Neonatal&Pediatrics Care...

let's make a little calculation here... I have 24 hours each day, and I spent 7-8 hours at campus (sometimes 10 if there's an AtmaSearch meeting), 1-2 hours to go back home, 2 hours [gross] to bath-eat-and-daily chores, and usually I have 5-6 hours to sleep. So, I have about 7 hours to study the whole lot of Life Cycle block [anatomy, embryology, physiology, histology, etc], plan AtmaSearch activities, finish PBL & Skills Lab material, and gathering informations...

I'm sorry Sinanju... You'll have to wait until next holiday where I can spare the time needed to materialize you into this world...

End of LOG3

Second Entry

2009-02-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

LOG 2
Feb 15, 2009

Alright. I have 3 major hobbies beside reading (reading is a must for any medical student): Airsoft guns (this is one reason why some of my friends doubt that I'm going to be a good doctor ^^), Photography (I'm not quite into photography like some of my cousins, it's just a hobby and a way to express myself), and Model Kits (currently I'm into Gundam series model kits - more of these will be posted on upcoming entries).

I don't have a good pic of my AEG, so I'll just put my two latest GUNPLA models:
** I can't put a picture on this blog, so I'll upload my pics into photobucket and put the links here ** I'll try to pull out some of my HTML knowledge, though. more to come soon! **

- 1/100 MG Wing Gundam ver. Ka (Repainted in reddish metal black, green for frames, and hull red) - I call this one as "Wing Devil"
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb114/cryptlord_cc/My%20Wing%20Zeries/_0060051k.jpg
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb114/cryptlord_cc/My%20Wing%20Zeries/_0060080k.jpg

- 1/100 MG Wing Zero Custom (Repainted in silver, metallic light blue, and metallic pink) -
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb114/cryptlord_cc/My%20Wing%20Zeries/_0060065k.jpg[/IMG
http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb114/cryptlord_cc/My%20Wing%20Zeries/_0060078k.jpg

My next GUNPLA Project is 1/100 MG MSN-06S Sinanju. She's big and cost almost 50% of my savings due to the weakening of Rupiah in world currency. I'm planning to repaint it in dark colors, customize some of her weapons, and putting a nice sum of little details - all things you'll do to make a masterpiece. ^^

Oh, forgot about something important. Yesterday, when I went to a local hobby store, I met a family from other city in Indonesia. They consists of a father, a mother, and a 6-year old boy who was looking around GUNPLA boxes. He wanted the parents to buy him a Master Grade. In shock, I told the father that MGs are quite difficult even for me, a GUNPLA hobbyist since grade school. The father said, "Oh, he's used to it. He had more than 100 gundam models back home. He can even take on a Perfect grade."

In further shock, I shout inside, " WTF?! How lucky this kid is! He should be thankful of that! He has a really wealthy parents who would buy him any toy he wants - even though it's a bit over for his age.."

In contrast, I need 7 months of saving my allowance to allocate resources to buy the 7000 yen Sinanju. This 6 year old kid, he bought 13.000 yen worth of GUNPLA in one day and without thinking, and his parents doesn't even budge. "As long as he's happy," the mum said.
In further contrast, right outside the hobby store there are 4 7-year old kids singing for money to buy some food.

What a country. In his oh-so-obvious political advertisement our president said, "The number of poor people in Indonesia decreases due to 's good job of battling corruption and fighting for Indonesian people's sake." What a load of bollocks. If he consider himself as a "poor" then what he said is right: He gained a castle-like complex in his former residence, and gained a lot of fat. Just take a look at our dear president's photo from '06 and '08. Spot the difference. Should be some 20 lbs worth of fat.

OK, back to topic. Though at first I admired the kid and his family, soon as I regained myself after the astonishment, I notice some things that made me thankful that I was born in a middle-level society:
1) the kid is ANNOYINGLY SPOILED. He asked his mom, what does she think about 1/100 Gundam Virtue (costs 4000 yen). The mom answered that it's okay if he wants it, but it seems that he already had one, so isn't it a kind of waste if he bought another? Then he started crying loud and shout at his mum, "YOU ALWAYS MAKE COMMENTS WHEN I BUY GUNDAM!"
Hey, weren't YOU the one who asked opinions first?
2) Because he already had TOO MANY GUNPLA collections back at home, he can't appreciate how great it is when your parents told you that you can buy anything you want. He cried out loud on the ground because he already have most of GUNPLA sold here. Poor kid. I pity you.
3) After looking around the corner, he managed to pull out another box: 1/60 Gundam Exia (costs 4500 yen). Now this kid's looked like some serious, adult modeler, by checking up the parts and blabbing out some technical data. I'm impressed. He wants that too. The dad says alright, and bring the 2 big boxes to the counter. Then, I just can't help but trying to "test" this kiddo. I told him that Unicorn Gundam looks cool, and start to talk about it. Surprisingly, he knew about [my beloved ^^] Sinanju! But he said that Sinanju's design is bad and it's not cool (yeah, like you know anything about something cool). After I asked if he likes Unicorn, whether he has it or not, and give a little "push" - he grabbed the Unicorn box (costs 5000 yen) and bring it to the counter. The dad, still smiling, he lift the boy and praised him for his "expertise" in Gundam. Yeah right. Didn't he notice such a terrible thing? Do you?
THE KID LISTENED OBEDIENTLY TO A SUGGESTION FROM A COMPLETE STRANGER!
again, I can only pat my chest and said, "Poor kid."

okay, after action report.
- I made quite a selling at that hobby store (if I didn't give the kid the suggestion about Unicorn, they would've gotten away with only 8500 yen. thanks to me, the hobby store made a whopping 13500 yen in one day ^^)
- The kid may seem lucky to have such a rich family. But I pity him because he's so weak. Maybe not physically, but he couldn't even resist a suggestion from a stranger like me. What will he say in the future when he had grown up a little and his friends invite him to a drugs party? Not to mention his annoyingly spoiledness and inconsistency, thanks to his parents who taught him everything, but forgot to teach him how to say a simple "no". Or to made him realize that he's the one who did wrong. Based on the father's story (I talked a lot with him while the kid's crying and picking his next GUNPLA prey - lousy dad, eh?), he's rather confused by his son's attitude. Why does his beloved son loves to shout out and use inappropriate words to his parents when he's upset because of small trifling matters like picking which GUNPLA - though they have never teach him to shout at others?
It's because YOU never had the guts to tell your son that it's wrong. Come to think of it, the dad has more fat than our fatty-edematous president. LOL

Phew. that's a long story wasn't it?
I'm glad that I'm born in a family who hold pride, honor, justice, and responsibility as our main belief. We may not be rich. We don't have a big house, classy cars, or large sum of money. But we have things that others don't. "Money is not everything, Wealth is always deceiving. What matters is what's inside our hearts," my parents always said. Now that I've seen another proof how destructive wealth is - especially to the mental development of a child - I'm proud to be what I am.

To those who aren't wealthy or surrounded by misfortunes, keep your head high. Appreciate what you have now, rather than grumbling because the others 'seem' better than you are. They're not. You have the experience to make you strong to face anything the world can throw at you. I envy you guys. I'm not that strong.

End of LOG 2

First Entry

2009-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

LOG 1
Feb 15, 2009.

been a long time since I made a blog. The last time was a Friendster blog, which are now deceased because I erased it since I was lacking things to put inside.

Now that I'm back in blogging, I've decided to put things that are connected to my campus life and my hobby inside this blog. It'll begin with a date just like this post, and will pretty much look like a log, since blog stands for "Web Log".

There are 2 other entries following this "introductory" entry, the theme would be "Valentine's day" and my hobby. Speaking of which, I haven't introduced myself. I'm a medical student, live in Jakarta (Indonesia), part of a family of 6: My grandpa & grandma, mom & dad, me & my sister. I like science, researches, and anything about weapons.

I'm not an "open" kind of a person, I don't trust people easily, I lack on some social skills, I'm not good at public speaking, I always use negative approach on things, I don't feel comfortable among the crowd, and I tend to keep things to myself.

Those are my views of myself, I'm not good at describing the good side of me due to my negative approach and views. One thing I can be proud of myself is because I'm not scared or hesitate to be different. In fact, I'm proud to be different.

That's all about me. Those who knew me may have different opinions, I let them judge me as they like. Now I've got to move on to my next entry.

End of LOG 1