First Driving Lesson

Do you remember yours?

The first time I was sitting behind the steering wheel was in my mother’s 1980-something white Honda Civic, in which I got so nervous trying to get the car moving that when it moved too fast I’d mistaken the braking pedal with the the accelerator and ended up wrecking the Honda by hitting a tree in front of our neighbour’s house.

Since then, I didn’t dare to continue the lesson – until I started working full time and therefore had to travel to and from work by catching public transport, which pretty much meant having to endure all things that came with it:

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The Hot Babe Who Blogs …

Is Anita McKay. And I had the honor of meeting her in person yesterday. She’d informed me earlier that she would be visiting Indonesia for a holiday (she also mentioned it in her blog) and wanted to have a meet-up with me.

And I was thinking, “Omigod. Gorgeous woman wants to meet up with me. What say you?”

Well of course I obliged happily. Originally I asked to have lunch at Plaza Indonesia since I’m familiar with the route, but then Anita suggested Cazbar at Kuningan. I wasn’t too acquainted with the area and worried that I would get lost (Jakarta’s road and traffic scheme is one of those things in life that frighten me), so I told her I would check my untrustworthy map first – to seek comfort, mind. The map is unbelievably out of date but I don’t blame it really since Jakarta always has a new shopping mall being built every month.

I was telling Rima about meeting at Cazbar and she was like, “You eejit. Kuningan is way closer than Plaza Indonesia and it’s so easy to get there. Where are you coming from?”

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Adopt a Dog

A few days ago, a buddy I’ve known from the Dachshund thread at Kaskus asked me to design a poster for his friend. I asked about what type of poster he wanted and I was wondering how much do graphic designers usually charge for a poster design, when he gave me a URL of his friend’s blog just so that I had an idea of what kind of poster she’d want – and when I did, I felt so sorry and guilty for wanting to charge money to a person who took care of stray dogs and helped finding news homes for them.

I decided to spend more time to browse her blog and found beautiful stories of people rescuing stray dogs, as well as the heartbreaking ones of stray dogs who had been taken cared of but eventually passed away because they weren’t strong enough to survive due to the harsh treatment they’d been getting (either attacked by other dogs on the streets or being abused by their previous owners).

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Orgasmic Experience

Before you start to have dirty thoughts, I am referring to the L’Atelier du Chocolat gift that Ivy gave me as a belated birthday present. The package was so pretty I didn’t want to open it but the temptation was too great that I finally gave in to my desire.

Might I say, the chocolate tasted heavenly, it was almost as good as having multiple orgasms – without having had to work on it, of course.

Then came the t-shirt which I loved. It says “Looking good at 9 am” – I wish that’s how it is in real life but I guess I must precede to the reputation once the t-shirt is worn! (more…)

Mr. President Wants to Go Undercover

I was flicking Kompas newspaper from back to front – a strange habit I can’t seem to shake off – and stumbled upon this tiny article in the Business and Finance section, right on the top left corner, in the Kilas Ekonomi column, which says: Presiden Ingin Menyamar untuk Melihat Pungli (President Wants To Go Undercover To See Wringing of Illegal Taxes).

Having my curiosity piqued, I decided to read further. Apparently, our Mr. President had concluded that the major problems that prevent the growth of Indonesian economy lie in the infrastructure, licensing, taxing and security area.

However, it seems that he was quite intrigued with preman (street thugs) executing illegal taxes to business owners in general. Quoting from the article, Mr. SBY said, “Imagine if our country is dominated by them. Any kinds of preman. We have the 1945 constitution and such, so we have rules here. We can’t let ourselves be dominated by them, otherwise it will create even more difficulties later on. How can we expect things to be low cost and efficient if there are preman everywhere?” (more…)