Third Week in January 2011

Hi folks!

Long time no see, last week I was so busy. These two weeks, I've been finally visiting Toastmaster clubs! The first club is Jakarta Motivators, which holds the meeting every Wednesday at Mayapada Building, Sudirman. This club is very friendly, and one of its prominent member (I have no idea whether he's also the founder of the club), Mr. Wardiman Djojonegoro, former Indonesian Minister of Education. The people are sooo friendly, I really like them.

The next day (Thu 13/1), I visited another club called The British Toastmaster, which holds the meeting every 2nd and 4th Thursday in the Mercantile Club at WTC Building, Sudirman. This club is rather exquisite, with nice place and a native English guardian (Mike Nicholson, an HR guy). What I like from this club is the members are rather advanced in English, and that will help me a lot to master the language.

At Saturday (15/1), I went to my French class, and was shocked that my former professeur has gone to Balikpapan, and he would be replaced by the a male and female professeurs. That Saturday was the male's turn. He was OK, but was also rather unsympathetic, since he seemed has this own point of view and wanted to impose it to les étudiants. Mais il est agréable en general.

The following week, I failed to attend the Toastmaster meeting at Allianz and Parousia Hall - Plaza Semanggi. Too bad, but I can catch them up later. I visited the Jakarta Motivators for the second time and I finally met the great patron of the club, Mr. Wardiman Djojonegoro. I also met some good friends (a girl from CIMB Niaga who seems to possess a good heart, and a boy who just moved to Balikpapan but managed to visit his club).

Anyway, the great event was on Sunday (23/1), watching Russian movie! A friend of mine, a Russian who works at Schlumberger invited me and a friend from CCF (my French class) to watch a Russian movie. He also invited one of his friend, a Spanish woman, who worked at the UN. She was really amazing, she speaks French, and she said that she wanted to attend her college majoring in history, until her father advised her otherwise. You can't imagine how tremendous my joy was, when finally I met someone who shares a similar passion to mine..

The Russian guy made us blini (a traditional Russian pancake) which has cultural significance to the Russian, i.e. they make it on special (mostly religious) occasions. He prepared us various filling, such as sour cream, Russian honey, strawberry jam, and cherry jam. And he was a great cook! Here's the pic.

The was great too, the title was transliterated as "Without Dowry" (I have to tell you that the movie had no subtitle, so during the movie, my good Russian friend did this "real-time translation" for us). It was about a girl who came from (it seemed) an impoverished noble family, who had problems regarding her love, as a rich man courted her but left her in the end, and another man who worshipped her but turned out as a madman. A tragic story.. But I was very happy to enjoy a new cultural experience =)

See you next week, folks!

The First Week of January 2011

Hello there!

This is the first week of 2011 and I'd like to share things happened this week. It's been a great week, on Tuesday (4/1) I resumed my piano class after a brief succession of holidays, so my fingers were a bit stiff. Nevertheless somehow I managed to play well and I learn a new nice piece of Beyer. I'd never thought that the guy could compose a nice piece like this one (he usually composed for educational purposes, so don't expect a really sweet sounding piece from him). Here's the score..

On Wednesday (5/1), I stayed up late in my office, accompanying a colleague who's handling SNMPTN 2011 Project, which is the centralized examination for entering national universities. The bank where I work was attending the bidding for the payment system of the aforementioned exam. While idle waiting for the colleague, I noticed a Siamese fighting fish (or Betta) belonged to another colleague. I had known this fish since my childhood, for its fancy coloration and aggressive behavior was such an amusement for children in my country. Children used to put glasses containing a single male fish side by side, and watching the fish - driven by their aggressive nature - flaring their gills and spreading their enormous fins.

On Thursday (6/1) my Directorate held "Rapat Kerja" at Shangri-La Hotel Jakarta. The theme was mining, so everybody dressed up as mine worker, with the vest, helmet, head lamp and so on. Too bad I did not take any picture, it was so fun. By the way, lately the price of chili skyrocketed so high that it reached IDR 120,000 a kilo from the normal price IDR 20,000 a kilo. The increase was driven by massive failure in chili production caused by diseases. When we ate at a Padang Restaurant (which is well known for its hot taste), we found that some of the menu were having significant decrease of the "hotness", which probably due to the price rising.

On Saturday (8/1), I went to Cilegon with some colleagues from another Directorate to attend a wedding. It took almost 2 hours to reach the city, but no regret, since this happy guy held a wedding reception in traditional style, with magnificent costumes and decoration..

Finally, today (Sunday 9/1) I went to Bandung with my uncle and aunt, visiting my sister who's attending a university there. Bandung is located at high altitude, with up-and-down terrain, magnificent views, and cool air. We stopped at Sierra Cafe, which was located at one of the highest point of the area, which enabled us to observed the city from above. Too bad we had to get home on the same day, I wished I could stayed up late to see the night view of the city, must be gorgeous!

That's for now, folks. See you on the next post!
=)

Hello 2011

Hello there

First of all, I'd like to say "Happy New Year 2011" to you guys. I am male, 24, who lives in Jakarta (Indonesia) and currently working in banking industry. I post this blog due to personal pleasure, so I think most of its contents would be at random. My main interests are natural sciences, history, languages, food and music, but you may find more than those in this blog.

So, this year I spent the New Year Eve in Bundaran HI with some folks from Jogjakarta who have worked in local fashion (yeah, sort of) company called Dagadu. These are great and aspiring people, I'm very glad to know them.  There was a great crowd, and the fireworks is just magnificent. I wonder how the gunpowder made such pressure to launch the thing high up in the air, and then exploded beautifully there. The day after we had a family dinner in Plaza Senayan, while today I spent the day mostly in my bed, browsing through wikipedia and playing some old games on facebook. Here are some pictures I took during the New Year's Eve.

That's for today, now I'm gonna sleep. It's already late here..