One Of The Things I Can’t Live Without

…is the Internet. Especially now that I have several projects which include the use of the internet to expand their market and flexibilities, thus I have decided to subscribe to Cable Internet.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, a while ago this new ISP (Internet Service Provider) called FastNet (a part of First Media cable provider) came up with their new internet cable services which started off from Rp. 99,000 for the speed of 368 kbps.

Since I’m already a subscriber of First Media cable services, I decided – after a long thought-processing and consideration – to take the next obvious step – which is subscribing to their cable internet service. Before this day, I was a desperate user of Telkomnyet Instan. Yes, that yoke who charges Rp. 10,000 per hour for a ridiculous speed of 21,8 kbps.

So on Monday I made an appointment with First Media Customer Service for the installation of FastNet at my house, which she booked for Wednesday the 30th scheduled between 9 am to 12 pm. As I have read from many other users who have subscribed to FastNet 768, it is as proven that the installation take two days after the appointment is made.

Although I’d been waiting since 9 am, the cable guys were nowhere to be seen, even when the clock struck 12 pm. Previously I’d made a couple of confirmation calls to the Customer Service and I also asked the ETA of the cable guys but the CS officer told me that I just had to wait. Hmm. I have heard several complains on forums and blogs about First Media Customer Services who seem to lack communications within each other so I told myself to be patient.

Nevertheless, I got a phone call around 12.30 pm saying that the cable guys were on their way to my house and they wanted to make sure I was home. They turned up at 1 pm and soon got busy with the cables and the modems and what elses.

After thirty minutes of installation, one of the guys who was installing the modem to my computer (his name was Winarto, the other guy struggling with the cables outside was Slamet) taught me to test the connection, and here’s the result:

I admit that opening sites such as Blogger or Yahoo has no longer become a time-consuming experience for me. Even for a site like blogger, I had to reload for at least 5 times (until I gave up) before the page actually came up because usually I just received a blank page with nothing in it whatsoever, which was why blogging into my personal blog had become a struggling activity which involved exercising my fingers (due from over clicking the mouse in such furious state).

After the cable guys bade their farewell, I rechecked the connection a couple of times again and this is the last result that I received:

Well, let’s just see how this one holds up, shall we?

A Perfect Cut

My beau and I got our haircut yesterday – yes, apparently we do everything together. The last time we got our haircut, we did it together as well.

I have been wearing my hair short for the last three years, even though I used to have it long past my shoulder, but since I came back overseas I found that I couldn’t handle the humidity in Jakarta and so after gradually going shorter from past-shoulder length to shoulder length (which only lasted for 6 months, mind you), I ended up with the shortest length in which I called it the Miranda cut.

And just in case you don’t know which Miranda I’m talking about, it’s the cynical corporate lawyer from Sex and the City. The reason why I honored the cut with such description was because no matter what instructions or image referrals I had given to the hairdressers, they always ended up giving me the masculine, lawyer-type hairstyle which definitely looked good on her, but didn’t do justice on me, because she happens to have an oval shaped, high cheek-boned face whereas I have this round, chubby face that make me look like I have permanent baby fat.

But the Miranda cut always grow on me – day by day as I look at myself in the mirror I hear myself thinking, “Aye, not bad, not bad at all,” posing this way and that and tweaking the fringe a bit more with a hair wax and at the end of the day feeling hopeless because instead of the hair looking messy-sexy (as Miranda’s would), it goes flat and limpy  – so not sexy at all!

If that isn’t bad enough, people around me seem a tad bit too eager in telling me how fugly I have become whenever I got my hair cut.

“Why did you get a haircut again? You look even less of a girl now.” Gee, thanks.

“Oh my God, what happened to your head? You know, from your legs up you might look like a girl (I happened to paint my toenails that day) but from the waist up, no one can tell what gender you are (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle)” – this actually came from my manager at work whose face looked like a butchered pig.

“Why don’t you grow your hair longer, at least up to your shoulder, you know? Then you won’t look so … macho.” which make me feel like I’ve grown Arnold biceps.

But I love my hair short – it’s one of the things that define me as the person I am – practical and simple. I know I will never have the time to do my hair everyday, as I’m the get up and go sort of person who rarely touches the hairdryer that even my dog gets blow-dried more often than I do.

And even if I tend to ignore what others say about me, they kind of get to me too, especially on bad hair days when my hair doesn’t want to behave.

So it’s amazing to find out that the only person who loves my hair short is my beau. When every other person in the world tells me how terrible my haircut makes me look, he instead tells me that I look so much cuter and age five years younger, and that makes me realize, time and time again, that he’s the only person who sees me the way I want to see myself.

So haul along the Miranda cut, I’m up for it!