Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

This is another story of my trip to Singapore . My family dan I decided to go to Singapore this weekend. We decided to take the route through Batam island. Our trip started from Bandung . We took GA-Citilink flight from Bandung to Batam. The flight was full with family and people on holiday. Some schools, private ones, in Indonesia have started the holiday. The flight was smooth. We arrived in Batam and took a taxi cab stright to Batam Center , where they have ferry or speed boot to Batam. The fare was Sing$ 14 returned (both ways). I think there’s a Sing$ 3 tax. We also had to pay “fiscal”. It’s some kind of tax for Indonesians leaving the country. The fiscal is Rp 500 thousands. If we leave Indonesia from other places, such as from Jakarta , the fiscal is Rp 1 million. It’s quite expensive, really. That’s the most expensive component in our trip. We arrived in Singapore at Harbour Front. The place was packed with people. Apparently, several speed boats arrived at the same ...

As I said earlier, I wanted to write more in this blog. Alas, there's a new distraction. I joined Asia Blogging Network . I started to blog there. They even gave my own space there ("Art & Tech"). It's going to be more difficult for me to write in this blog. Hmm ... I would write serious stuff there, but more personal stuff will be written here. That's the plan. Let's see if I can stick with the plan.

I was reading comics at phdcomics.com . Ha ha ha! The comics are so true and funny. They brought back memories of my grad school years. Ha ha ha. Well, you have to be there to understand the joke. Grad school years are so cruel. One thing I noticed in the comics is that the "actor" (the PhD student?) has a beard. You know, it occured to me that I had a beard when I was doing my PhD and so did my friends who were also doing PhDs. Wierd. Is this a commond thing? The comic is so acurate in that sense. You know, I've never met a person who had no problem doing his/her PhD. Hmm... It's something to think for those who want to enter grad school. Now, I am on the other side of the fence. Ha!

Gadzillion years ago I had a web site called "The Ultimate Indonesian Homepage." Okay, okay, I was exagerating. It was not gadzillion years, but it was a long time ago. It was in early world wide web year when even Mosaic was not born yet. The web site is aimed at people who are looking for information about Indonesia. At that time there were little information about Indonesia. I thought the web could help tourists or visitors to find information about Indonesia before they go there. It was a simple web site - heck, the biggest excitement was flashed text, ha ha ha - but it was a good one. It was even listed in some books. After I went back to Indonesia, I still managed that web site with different domain name. At the end, with the help of Chandra Liem, we settled with myindonesia.org. I was not too busy, so I had the time to update the web. Remember that there was no content management system at that time. So I had to code the web site in HTML directly. Hah. Now, time has ch...

I've been neglecting this blog. It's not intentional. It's just that I've been focusing my energy, time, and thought to my other blog (the one in wordpress ). There, I write dailly. Many times I write more than one blog entries in a day. The lack of update in this blog is just a casuality. Then... I notice is that I am losing my English vocabulary. Oh, man! I don't get to use my English as much I wanted to. I can use English in my daily activities but I consider this rude. Why should I talk to Indonesians in Indonesia in English? Wierd, isn't it? I should use Bahasa Indonesia. Not that it is not uncommon to mix-and-match languages. I've seen people use English and Bahasa Indonesia in a mix-match fashion. I don't like it. I don't know if they do it (mixing the languages) unintentionally or they just do it to show off. I said unintentionally because it is possible. I happened to do it many times in the past. English words, phrases, idioms and such jus...