Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

Just got back from Singapore. We flew from Singapore to Jakarta and went back to Bandung using train. The Argo Parahyangan train was okay. Lots of tourists were on the train. Arrived in Bandung, we decided to take taxi to our home. It has been a while since I took taxi from this train station. I didn't know what to do. So, when we were just off the gate, we were swarmed by unofficial taxi drivers. I knew I shouldn't say something and just straight to metered taxi, which I remembered there were plenty of them on the street outside the train station. But, I responded. Boy, I was so wrong. The taxi drivers offered me their service. I asked them how much. They asked where to and I said the area where we live. They offered Rp. 150,000,- (one hundred fifty thousands rupiah). I knew this is too much. I remembered taking taxi from Bandung airport to our home is just Rp. 70,000. So I told them that. They grunted and started to walk away, except for one guy. He relented that we shoul...

This blog has been distracted for a while. At one point I have not touched this blog for quite a while because I have another blog to maintain. But, then I remember the purpuse of this blog; to share my knowledge about Indonesia (for those who are far away from Indonesia). I was away from Indonesia for quite a while. At that time, late 80s early 90s, there was no World Wide Web. Email was also limited. It was difficult for me to find information about Indonesia. Nowadays, internet is everywhere. But, in my opinion, it is still difficult to find information (about Indonesia) through the eyes of Western culture. Thus, this purpose of this blog. Raison d'ê·tre . The thing that reminded me of this is that my family just got back from Singapore and had to go to Jakarta before going back to Bandung. So,  we had to search for information about hotels in Singapore and Jakarta. Apparently, the number of good information out there is still limited. Perhaps it's because ordinary peopl...

One of the problem being a leader is that you have to be perfect. At least, that's what the public want to precieve you. The result is that everybody is looking at you, trying to find mistake(s) you made. Once they found it, they blow it up like crazy. They won't let you give explanation. They just won't listen. You can only say ... "Yes, I am (always) wrong."

Rexgreymon, my avatar, has chosen to go to #tegaspilih2

This afternoon, I am going to give a talk on technopreneurship at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB). One of the points that I am going to address is when to start. Many people have plans and dreams of becoming an entrepreneur but never actually made it. They wait for the perfect moment to jump. Well, there's no perfect moment. You have to get out of your comfort zone. There's a saying, " Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone ." So jump in. A couple months ago I was a speaker at Innovfest Singapore. One of the speakers, Ike Lee, said that now it's the right time to start a business in Asia. Yes. Right here. Right now. Aren't we lucky? (Well, we means us here in Asia.) And so my soundtrack this morning is Van Halen's " Right Now ." See you in my talk.

For those who are not Indonesians or not in Indonesia may not know that presidential election is coming real soon. 9th of July 2014. And apparently there have been lots of negative and black campaign over the internet. Mostly on social media. Everyday, no correction ... every minute! there is a post on the candidates, followed by flurry of pro and contra messages. Then, the brawl began. Hate grew. Unfriend and blocking accounts took place. Many people wished that they could shut down their facebook account until election is over. It would be interesting if somebody from Facebook and Twitter could monitor the traffic and see the effect. This is a rare event. Anybody from facebook or twitter?

Pemilhan presiden sudah dekat. Salah satu calon yang muncul adalah Joko Widodo - atau lebih dikenal dengan nama singkatannya Jokowi. Banyak orang yang menyukai Jokowi. Namun salah satu kendala yang ada adalah orang juga kurang suka dengan partainya, yaitu Partai Demokrasi Indonesia - Perjuangan (PDI-P). Ada banyak pengalaman buruk dengan partai ini. Kombinasi ini yang membuat orang menjadi ragu untuk memilih Jokowi. Saya juga termasuk yang masuk ke dalam kategori itu. Untuk pemilihan anggota legislatif dari partai, saya cenderung masuk ke golput. Tidak memihak kepada partai apapun. Untuk pemilihan presiden awalnya saya juga berniat untuk golput. Apatis. Tetapi melihat apa yang sudah dilakukan oleh Jokowi, timbullah harapan baru untuk Indonesia ini. Bagi saya, Jokowi adalah hope . Semakin lama semakin saya lebih yakin untuk memilih Jokowi. Maka, meskipun saya tidak terlalu menyukai PDI-P, saya akan memilih Jokowi. Bismillah ...

Presidential election is coming soon. Looking at various social media here in Indonesia, people are trying to convince the others about their political choices. One might say that his candidate is better than the other. Worse, many do black campaign over the other candidate. The thing is, they don't realize that we don't change. Most people I know already set their minds on their candidates. Whatever you do won't change that. Would you (change)? I won't. You won't. We won't. Thus, what is this fuss all about?

Presidential election is coming here in Indonesia. One of the strongest candidates is Joko Widodo or Jokowi. Unfortunately, there are a lot of black campaign against him over the internet. Sadly, many people believe this misinformation. Here is a list of some of them. The SMK car. Jokowi was accused of using the popularity of car built by SMK students and now people are accusing that it is actually a Chinese made car. Here is the real story behind it . Yeah, I know about this since I was doing the IT-version of this (for SMK). Jokowi was issued as the son of Oey Hong Liong . This is a bit funny, because Oey Hong Liong is a rich person and you can find his information to find that this is untrue. He's not that old compared to Jokowi. If this is true, he would have had Jokowi when he was 14-years old. (Need link for clarification) Fake orbituary of Jokowi . It is sad that people are doing this. How do you feel if this is done to your father, son, or husband? Here is a clarific...

While the world is becoming faster, internet-wise, here in Indonesia things are still slow. I still cannot open Google+. Seriously. Nobody believed me. Now, I found the proof. Here's an infograph I found on the internet (need URL). As you can see, we are still a hippo(?). We are even slower than Vietnam. Ouch. With this condition, it is important to design applications. Your application should run on slow speed. That is if you want to grab Indonesia's market. Otherwise, ignore us with your need-for-speed-apps.

I just got back from  InnovFest 2014 reception (dinner). One of the frequently questions I got was if I were from a business incubator. I said I am not. I am just a technopreneur and a mentor for several startups. Then, I keep on thinking, do we really need a business incubator? Business incubators are similar to incubators used for premature babies. They are used to give those babies fighting chance against the world. The same thing for business incubators. They help startups. If you have a baby, would you dream to have your baby going through incubator? Probably not. You want your baby to be healthy and can face the world. But, I have a feeling that if somebody (you) starts a start-up, he (you) would like to get into an incubator. Strange. What do you think?

Today, April 9, 2014 is election day in Indonesia. While many people will not vote, there are more people who are going to election booths. You'll see lots of tweets (twitter of course) and posts on Facebook, Path, and the like. Myself? I have just got back from voting booth a few minutes ago. God Bless Indonesia ...

I have Linux (Mint) as my main desktop and Macbook (Mac OS X) as my mobile computer. To backup these machines, I have an external disk which I formatted using HFS+ format. Following instructions, I disabled journaling for this disk. This morning I tried to copy files from my Linux machine to the external disk. It won't allow me, saying that the disk is read-only. Hmmm... I checked and double checked that the format is correct and that journaling is tuned off. I tried to create a folder and it failed also. Obviously. Then, I decided to open a terminal session and create a simple file on the external disk; "touch junk". It worked! So, the disk is already mounted read and write. I tried to copy files again and it still didn't work. Puzzled. What if the problem is with my file manager? I am using Nemo. I installed Nautilus file manager just for the heck out of it. Copying files with Nautilus worked! Strange ... but at least I have a solution for my backup purposes. ...

The world fall in love with selfie. Even selfie has become a word in English dictionary recently. What you don't know is that we, Indonesians, "invented" selfie. For years young Indonesians - especially girls - take mug shot of themselves and post them in their facebook profiles. They even have certain style that I cannot explain. I just cannot describe it. (Later, when I know how I will update this.) But, trust me, we know our stuff. Selfie is our thing :) I saw an interesting article this morning, a comparison between selfie styles in different cities. Oddly, Jakarta or Bandung is not even in the list. They got it wrong!

Here's the deal, I have (too) many email accounts. Each mail for different purposes; teaching, business, (community) public services, personals, and testing. Aside from my gmail / yahoo accounts, these email accounts reside on many mail servers, some of which my own. On one machine I have multiple outgoing email addresses and one (or two) incoming emails. The different email addresses are mainly aliases. I use all kinds of email clients. Currently, I use mutt and Thunderbird. In the old days, I used elm, mutt, Pegasus, and Eudora. In the old email clients I can set the outgoing email address to whatever I want. Currently, this is not working with Thunderbird. It is limited to ONE username per server. (Maybe it is a way to protect users from creating fake email addresses?) How do I force it to use multiple user one one server? (Update: this is solved by "Manage Identities" configuration in the Account Settings.) Anyway, should I roll my own Mail User Agent (MUA)? or ...

I guess I congratulate WhatsApp too soon. Not long after WhatsApp is bought by Facebook, the system went down. (At least a couple times here in Indonesia.) As I mentioned in previous post, many Indonesians are using WhatsApp for many things (as a backup of SMS/text msg). When you depend on a system and the system is down, you're angry. And in this particular case, looking for another solution. Fortunately, there's Telegram . I am pretty sure that MANY Indonesians are installing Telegram right now. I do. This is the moment for Telegram to seize the day . I am pretty sure that their traffic will increase significantly. (And perhaps for Twitter or Google to buy Telegram!) One of the features Telegram puts forward is secret chat. With the new Snowden-era I am sure that many would like this feature. Although, Indonesians are not so into privacy. Cost - in this particular case, Free - is the main feature. Second is small footprint (so it can run on inexpensive devices). Way to g...

Facebook surprised many people by buying WhatsApp. Some people questioned the move, but I think it is a good move. Here's why. In Indonesia, BlackBerry and its BBM used to be the number one messaging platform for mobil users. Since there are more than 100 million mobile users in Indonesia, the market for mobile messaging is significant. BB captured the first market. At that time, it is the only available solution. Then came WhatsApp. We embraced it right away. The reason is that we do not have to use BB devices to run the application. Remember that BB devices used to be expensive (but, people bought them for social status and lifestyles) and you have to use BB services. Not nice. That makes non-BB users addopted WhatsApp quickly. Personally, I don't like messaging on my phones since I tend to get quite a number of messages. I leave that to my emails. (I receive 500 emails/day.) But, people are organizing many things with WhatsApp. I have no choice but to use WhatsApp. It...

Tomorrow, Monday, I am giving a presentation about (my) failed startups in an entrepreneurship class (EE, ITB). I started many tech companies since early 90s. These days I do mentoring for startups (and thinking of starting up); on and off campus. Thinking of what I am going to talk. Hmm... I just tell them stories how I started my first ones in Canada and why they failed; the (inventions) ideas are to early. Then, I will talk about my startups in Indonesia; what works and what doesn't work. Let's see if we can have a good discussion. I hope I can inspire them to become entrepreneurs and at the same time they can avoid mistakes that I made. See you in class.

Here's a short news from Indonesia. Kelud (or Kelut) erupted. This is a volcano in East Java. The eruption is big. Here, in Bandung - West Java, the sky is cloudy and a tiny layer of ashes are covering the city I hope the people in the are safe and can get through this. Our prayers are with you. Before this, recently, Sinabung in North Sumatra also erupted. We're living dangerously in Indonesia. Related post: Kelud and Sinabung (from the Atlantic)

It's still rainy season in Indonesia. Well, in most parts of Indonesia. Everyday is cloudy. Gloomy. Rain pours everyday. And the result is flood. Arrrggghh. The feeling is similar to having too many snow during long winter season. Depressing, isn't it? Now it is time to listen to Carpenter's "Rainy Days dan Mondays."