Let's Start Now!

Today is the World Anti-Corruption Day, let's keep in mind and heart to stay away from corruption in any form. Hopefully we can be free from corruption, maybe not now but sure we can!

Sounds too good to be true eh? Well, if it is too good to be true then maybe it is not true. Yes, when we're speaking of the truth then we need to see the reality now. Are we already living in an a corruption free society? I'd say no, because the corruption is obviously there. Sad right? But then, those who say yes are most certainly in denial.

Despite all the ugly truth we're facing, let's be optimistic, let us not kill our hopes. If everyone keep that in mind and heart, a "corruption free" society is not impossible anyway. The major concern for now is that many people are already pessimistic about such idea. Thinking that "corruption-free" condition is never possible to happen, especially here in our country. For me it is not impossible at all, i believe someday it will happen, and i believe there are a lot of people like me out there. Not only believing, but also trying to make it real. The question remains is: are we ready to be the ones who make it happen?

Start from small things.
Start from ourselves.
Start from now.

Bitter or Sweet?

Recently i stumbled upon this old saying:

"Make your words soft and sweet for you may have to eat them later"

We are social creatures, we interact with other people through communication, most of it orally. We sometimes can not control what we say to others, there are good things and bad things as well. Good things we say, whether we really mean it or not, always bring a good responses and make people who hear it fell good. in the other hand, when we say bad things, intentionally or not, we make people feel awful and sometimes hurt.

It makes me realize that the way i speak to people isn't always in a good manner, i also speak bad things to others, what worse is sometimes i speak bad about other people too. Eventually i - want it or not- have to deal with the consequences: i have to accept when people speak bad about me, or they say rude things to me. It hurts, i know.. But then again we always need to experience the pain to know that we don't want it, and others don't either.

I'm not saying that we have to sugar-coat everything we say, at least it would be a lot better if we say everything politely and think about what we're gonna say before we say it. But what about this, when a friend really need an awakening slap in the face? Well, easy.. Just tell the truth, but please don't be rude. (haha, it rhymes ^o^)

Yeah, i know that we are all human, and human make mistakes, but that doesn't mean we're allowed to make every single word that come out of our mouth as poisonous as the viper's venom.


I guess the moral is that we really have to watch our tongue. Well let me put it this way: if i have to eat my words, i want it as sweet as chocolate cake..

let's eat 'em up!!! ^o^

I Accept The Challenge

"Good morning, people! Who's up for a challenge? Let's be original for a day! Can you handle a day without RT-ing other users' tweets? :D"

That is kak mahir's twit that inspired me to challenge myself, yes i want to be original..

Anyway, it is actually fun to tweet anything that comes up in your mind without RT-ing others, though it is very understandable to re-tweet other people's twit especially when we're having the same thought or opinion. Sometimes we feel like: "this is exactly what i wanna say", then we just re-tweet it. Actually there is nothing wrong with that, having the same thought/opinion with anybody else is not a crime right?

Okay, talking about originality in the context of tweeting may sound lame, but lets bring it to the wider context, the case of plagiarism is no different with re-tweeting. The only thing that makes difference is the intention. Those who re-tweet just wanna show that they have the same thought with the one whose twit they re-tweet. In plagiarism, the plagiarists definitely want other people who read it to think that it is their original idea.

See, it comes to me that even if people have the same thing in their mind, the way its is being expressed will be vary, depending on the people's characteristic. Everyone is free to express what's in mind. I'm starting to think that the issue this time is no longer the freedom of speech/expression, it is the originality. So why don't we try to express whatever it is in our mind, with our own way.

Life will be more beautiful with lots of colors no?

The Man Who Sweep The Patio

In some fiction, the stories, usually start with people who haven’t known each other but in some point start to notice that the other person have a particular habit, or signature outfit, or certain personality, or anything else that attract his/her attention. Now, this story is nothing like that. I know this particular person for almost 5 years now. At the beginning of our friendship the first thing that caught my attention is not the fact that he's a good basketball player in campus (to be true, i didn't even know he was), it was the missing connection between his full-name and nickname. It took me some times to realize that "Dhani" is the way others call him, Badia Ahmad Burhani. From the beginning we shared a lot of stories, but then again lately something tickles me. I started to notice this habit let say around 10 months ago. He’s doing it every Sunday morning or afternoon while having me on our weekend calls.

He always says, “I don’t like to see it dirty, full with dry leaves ”, then i will ask him to do it later. Then he will start telling me how fast those dry leaves cover up the patio while only 2-3 days ago the maid clean it up, and he doesn't like it. Its all up to you my dear, but for me you’re always a man who loves to tidy up almost everything, including the patio Yes, I really have to admit for this particular habit, he’s way up there on level 9-10 while I’m only on level 6-7. Oh come on, who would think to paint his own room only to get the sense of satisfaction, or cleaning the bathroom while no one else in the house want to do it. Not many man would do this, maybe not even women. Well at least i have less thing to worry on my future, hopefully i will always have someone i can rely on (especially on tidy up everything).\^o^/

So ladies and gentlemen, here i present you: The Man who Sweep the Patio.

My beloved man..

and he's still looking good while doing it

Here Comes The Bride

At this time of the year most of us probably receive a stack of nicely designed letters, beautifully engraved in smooth and thick papers, sometimes with pictures, and sometimes (well, most of the times) also comes via internet. Yes ladies and gentlemen, you're thinking what i think, those are Wedding Invitation.

so beautiful right? they might be your future invitation

The consequence of receiving these many invitations is a lot. The down-side is that you might not be able to come to every single wedding party, especially when it takes you to fly to another island, even though you want it so bad. The up-side is that if you manage to come to these parties, it become an opportunity to do a brief-traveling all across the places you haven't visit before. Plus you got the chance to meet your friends whom you might not meet in quite sometimes.

What i like from a wedding party is the essence of the party itself which is to share the joy and happiness and gratitude to everyone, in return, all the attention and happiness and everything are also dedicated to the bride and groom (well,mostly for the bride), so basically everyone is happy.

Aside from that, I personally think marriage life will be a lot different with single life, or life with parents and siblings. Not that i have personally experience that, but you can simply tell by seeing those who already married. I don’t have problems with people getting married, in fact i want to get married, a bit later though. I am truly happy seeing my friends happy but then again my question would be: does happiness caused by marriage? For some people maybe it does, meanwhile for the others it doesn’t. But then again who am i to measure one’s happiness.

Maybe after all it's the wedding party that make people happy at the first place..

Rp 50.000

What does a Rp 50.000, - bill mean to you??

For most of us, it might be a quite small amount to spend daily, mostly for meals, or snacks, or gas for our bikes/cars. Some of us maybe even use it for going to the cinema, and still not enough.. In other occasion, we even need a lot more than that to dine in a fancy cafe or restaurant.

For an old man, who's still trying to sell newspaper at 8 in the evening to anyone he met, with such a desperate and tired face, that amount means a lot, yes a lot. That is the amount he need to buy medicines for his severely ill son.

What i'm trying to say is that for many of us, i'm sure, Rp 50.000,- is an insignificant amount. Its already fly away from our purse without us even realizing it. But for some people out there, who might be not as lucky as we are, this amount sometimes means a lot to them, and i believe many times we forget about it. We spend so many time mostly complaining about what we don't have, or about our job, or basically about anything that don't meet our expectation, that we forget to be grateful of what we already have. We easily forget that there are many people who don't even have things that we're complaining about.

All of us need to be reminded once in a while.

Travel Notes: Banyuwangi

Its been so long since the last time i updated this blog, i havent even write a piece this year, as my first writing in 2011 i'm going to present a travel notes, so here we go..

After Surabaya, Kediri, Tulungagung and Malang, last April i had another chance to do a trip to East Java. This time to a town located on the eastern part of the province. Yup, finally i visited Banyuwangi.

Is it far from Surabaya? yup of course!
Does it worth the journey? lets just say yes..

So this is how i ended up traveling to Banyuwangi..

It was around March, when i joined a training in Samarinda that i got a text from my friend Isma Amalia telling that she's getting married on April 22 in her hometown, Banyuwangi. at first i thought its not very far from Surabaya, but then my lovely boyfriend told me that it was THAT far.. He said it was still around 6 to 7 hours by bus or train from Surabaya.. Holy cr*ap! It IS far..

Long story short, finally we decided to come to the wedding, since both groom and bride are our friends, besides we have a spare time to come. We took a Friday morning flight, i departed from Banjarmasin to Surabaya, and he from Balikpapan to Surabaya. We met at Juanda International Airport and directly heading to the city. We spent the day enjoying the biggest mall in Surabaya - Tunjungan Plaza - with nice lunch, movies, and coffee (well, not really coffee since i had green tea freeze and he had hot chocolate); and night wandering around Gubeng Train Station, tried to find street-hawker and ended up at a park (had no idea what's the name) eating meatballs and es degan plus walking in the drizzle. We finally met up with Rima and Oi, Aulia, Susan and Diar at the station at 10 p.m., then we directly headed to the train which fortunately depart on time.

There's not much to tell about in-train-activities, since we spent most of the time sleeping and the rest chatting. Finally we arrived at the the station at 6 a.m. where 2 cars were already waiting to bring us to Aulia's house. There we spent around 1-1,5 hours grooming ourselves for the wedding then had breakfast. Then another trip started again, from Aulia's house in Banyuwangi, we still have to go to Temuguruh Village, where Isma and Ubay's wedding took place, the distance is around an hour driving. We missed the Akad but we're already there before the reception and had a moment to meet the bride and groom before.

here comes the bride (and the groom, and the parents..)

At the Village Hall we spent the time waiting for the wedding couple chatting with our friends and also taking pictures. They finally arrived then the photo-session began, we waited for our turn of course after the families and relatives, then we had our lunch and watched Rima's performance.

this is us taking pictures with the bride and groom (anyway it was very hot up there on the stage, i couldn't imagine how isma and ubay manage to keep smiling for hours there)

At around 1 we left the Hall and went to the Masjid to pray and change our clothes. Our next destination was Alas Purwo Mangrove Conservation or known as Bedul. Since there were a lot more to join the group, we went there on 3 cars and jostled inside. It took us around 1,5 hours to get there, long enough to make some of us asleep or got leg cramps. When we got there, Aulia and several others directly negotiate the tour package for the all of us. We went for a tour on 2 boats, at first the boats took different route but ended up on the same place, which is the Segoro Anakan. The place is very beautiful, one must come and see the beauty directly, because no proper words to describe it, Subhanallah.. We spent some times here enjoying the beauty, the sand, the view, the sunset, basically everything, yet we should end the joy because we need to go back to Banyuwangi and catch the night-train back to Surabaya.

imagine the all of us inside 3 cars

the classic-version of our photo

That's some snaps from the Banyuwangi trip, hopefully i can bring more travel notes in the future.