Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

I found this logo of GBT while cleaning up my disk. Logo was created by MDAMT a while back. 

If you check my things to do at 43people (or 43things to be exact ), you notice that I want to write a novel. Well, it won't happen soon. Apparently, I am too busy (doing God knows what) to write. I tried to push myself by joining National Novel Writing Month . I have to write a 50,000-word story in a month. The number of words is the important aspect. Quality is number two, or ... 73. They have given a warning; " Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. " Well, the word count of my current story is somewhere around 150 words. Oh, well. I can't even write crap!

Andika invited me to join 43people.com. So, I did. My page there is budi.43people.com whereas Andika's is andika.43people.com . What is 43people.com? Well, you just have to visit it and give it a try. Basically, it's a social network where you can tell us who you have met and who you want to meet. Perhaps, people on your network can connect you to people you would like to meet. Related to 43people, there's also 43places.com and 43things.com. You can get the links from 43people.com. For example, when you visit budi.43people.com , you'll see things that I want to do and places that I want to visit (and have visited). Quite interesting, or amusing. See you there ... and if we have met, indicate so.

9th November 2005. Today, we decided to take a bus ride. First, we went to my daughter’s school. Just for the fun of it. Walked around to see how far she has to walk everyday, from her hostel to school. Then, we took another bus ride to Sim Lim Square in the Little India area. We got to Sim Lim Square around 10:0o AM. Apparently, most of the stores had not opened yet. This place has more electronics than Funan Digital/IT mall. We saw the ipon nano, ipod video, and other electronic gadgets. I wanted to buy the ipod video but did not have a price reference to compare. I was afraid that it was too expensive. So, no ipod for me (yet). Since most of the place were closed, we decided to go somewhere else. On the way, we decided to stop at the food court in the basement. I thought, I should get “ teh tarik ” first. This is basically tea with milk. While waiting for the tea, I opened my iBook. There were five Wi-Fi signals. Two of them were opened. I tried the first one, “food court.” Got an I...

Posting ini digunakan untuk menunjukkan pelatihan Churn Management Indosat yang berlangsung di Jatiluhur. Kami berangkat langsung dari Bandung dengan menggunakan mobil sendiri. Jalan tol Cipularang masih sepi karena kami berangkat dari Bandung jam 5:30 pagi. Sebelum sampai ke tempat training, kami menyempatkan diri mampir ke Rumah Makan Ibu Haji Ciganea untuk sarapan dulu. Sayang, sekarang rumah makan ini sudah sepi. Hanya ada tiga meja yang terisi. Bahkan restoran Alam Sari di sebelahnya tutup dan dijual! Wah.

I am frustrated with the service at modblog.com . My blog at rahard.modblog.com is down. This was the second (or third?) time that their service is down. In fact, it has not recovered completely from the last problem. I guess I cannot complain for the lack of service(s), since it is a free service. But, I have been invested my time in co-creating the value of modblog's services by writing by stories and opinions there. I guess they have not seen the value of customers. They should involve customers more in their operation, such as giving a more detailed information why the service is down and so on. Perhaps their customers can give solution(s) to their problem(s). Meanwhile, I am divering my writings in other blogs (such as blogsome , wordpress , and ... other sites?). While at it, the stat server at dnetc is also down. Aw ... sucks. At least, they are more open to their problems. Dnetc is a distributed effort to crack various encryption. Currently, we are trying to brute-force R...

I was reading Ariya's blog when I found a link to a story or history about Georgia typeface . I didn't realize that Georgia was designed for screen. It so happened that I found Georgia is the best font for my screen. I have used Georgia, as much as possible (eg. for my web, blog, etc.), for the last 6 months or so. Now I know that there is a reason why I like Georgia. Now, if I can find a perfect font for my fixed-width / terminal-type font.

These are the picture of ez link card that I used in Singapore to ride the MRTs and buses. I paid S$ 15 for the card and I topped the value up a couple of times, since I used it quite a bit. I also noticed that I can use the card at Mc Donald's to pay for the food. I didn't try it though.

I took the quiz from blogthings : "If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?" Here's the result (and probably it is quite right! I've got fans that are freaky that sometimes they scare me!): The Movie Of Your Life Is A Cult Classic Quirky, offbeat, and even a little campy - your life appeals to a select few. But if someone's obsessed with you, look out! Your fans are downright freaky. Your best movie matches: Office Space, Showgirls, The Big Lebowski If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

We were so tired from our trip yesterday so that we left the hotel at 10 AM. We decided to try the MRT. Newton (NS21) was the closest MRT station to our hotel. So, we walked over there. We were going to travel a lot, so we bought ez-link cards. (Note: I am going to scan the card and post it here. I am on the road right now.) These ez-link cards were prepaid cards that can be used for MRTs and busses. The cards were preloaded with S$10. We tapped them at the entrance and it opened the gate. Newton station was empty. Only the three of us and another passenger were waiting. There were flat TV screens with information about the MRT. The next MRT to Marina Bay (going South) was going to arrive in 2 minutes. We waited by the sign that shows where the MRT door is going to be. It arrived on time. The MRT was clean and relatively full with people. All the chairs were taken. We had to stand up. Information about the direction was announce through the speaker, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. Ther...

Our trip was started from Bandung, our home town. There was a Merpati direct flight from Bandung to Singapore. Thank God for that. We didn’t have to go to Jakarta to go to Singapore. Although it was a high season, the flight was only half full. But, I heard that the other way around was full. The aircraft was clean. I think the seats were just repainted. The plane left Bandung at 9:00 AM, Monday. We arrived at Changi around 1 hour 45 minutes later. Changi was relatively empty. It was unusual for me. It was nice to pick up our bags. We didn’t have to wait long for custom either. So the whole trip was a breeze and pleasant. I hope it will always like that. At the airport we had to wait for the other students (scholars) to arrive. Somebody from the school was supposed to picked my daughter up. While waiting, I decided to change my Rupiah into Singaporean Dollars. It was "humbling" (to say the least) to see that for Rp 1000,- I got S$ 0.170. Rupiah is the only one with zero in f...

My daughter is going to school in Singapore. She's got a scholarship. I am going to talk about education later on, but this time I want to talk about our trip to Singapore. We decided to go to Singapore together as a family (the four of us: my wife, my daughter, my son, and myself). For the next few entries, I am going to talk about my experience in Singapore. I've been to Singapore quite a few times actually. But, they were kind of spread over time (since 1982, I think) and I didn't put an effort to observe things. This time, I want to observe. So, enjoy the story ... [Update: Here's the link.] - Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 (not uploaded yet) Also link from Tommorow.sg

Well, I was frustrated with the CMS I found (so far). I decided to write my own perl script to manage my web page. It's a mess, but usable. You can see the artifacts at budi.indonesiaforum.org . Or maybe you can't, since my stuff is under the hood. Maybe someday, I'll share the script. (I just have to find time to put it under the web, which was built by the script itself . Kind of an interesting situation.)

I must confess that I have a soft spot for Def Leppard . I played Def Leppard's Vault CD over and over again when I wrote my PhD thesis a while back. Their songs are - in a way - blue. One of may favourite songs is " Unbelievable ." Well, tonight I was trying to write (many things; reports, articles, books, blogs, ...) and searching for songs on my iBook. Unbelievable was the first song I spotted on my iTunes list. Needless to say, I am playing it over and over again as I was typing this blog entry. (In another tab I have the lyrics.) ... You don't say that it's over (ahh) Never thought this could die But you speak without words Making me feel so damn good, 'bye It's unbelievable ... So much for writing. I am stuck with this song. My mind wanders around ... trying to understand the feeling of saying goodbye to someone, after trying so hard. Ouch!

Most of the time I use Firefox to compose entries in this blog. I use Firefox on my desktop running MS Windows and GNU/Debian Linux, and also on my iBook running Mac OS X. Well, right now I am using Safari on my iBook. It seems that the GUI editor in Blogger.com does not support Safari that well. The buttons for bold, italics, and the like are just not there. Not that I am using that buttons that much (I usually code HTML by hand with vi), but it is just strange to see Blogger.com does not support Safari. I though Safari is mainstream enough to be supported by blogger.com. Or perhaps, Safari is not good enough? It is not a big deal for me since I have five, yes ... 5, browsers in my iBook. I've got Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera, and Flock. Most of the time I use Camino.