Monday, October 29, 2007

New Room Layout

Pending a life-changing event, I decided to start the new layout for my room (shortly, our room) to just try out what we have been talking about for a while. The bulk of the bed eats up a lot of space in the room, and so we decided to push it into one of the corners, and adjust everything else from there. Well, I'll let the pictures tell the story :).

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Online Hyperlinked Personal Advertisment

There are some who write for themselves, and hoping to share thoughts simultaneously to friends and strangers. There are also some who write hoping to be read by the masses, and there are some who write to express themselves, opinitating on a topic. Some write just to entertain themselves and their friends with jokes and anecdotes. All this, made into reality, or hyperreality, in the form of the various blogs on the net. There's even a service called Twitter that takes personal journaling to microscopic levels, with people blogging through SMS talking about which loaf of bread they bought at the grocery store.

The various online social networks like Multiply, Friendster, Facebook, and all the thematic derivatives (career-oriented or interest-oriented) become the new face of humanity, ever more so than the clothes they wear and the music they listen to in presence of company. Self-expression has reached levels of high-volume information, where you can find out more about a person from their online profile rather than conversing with them (which they did in the old days). The thirst for individual expression has become part of the entertainment industry, from ringbacktones (which are total nonsense for the old guard) to status messages on your instant messaging applications, to putting your website address on your car or t-shirt.

People want to know much more other people, and want them to know about them, on a much larger scale, in a shorter time. And then forget about it.

Eventually, it's still the people we meet every day (or maybe not every day) and know in depth, where we know how they walk, how they eat, how they sit, that become the most important relationships we have. We bare our souls in chatrooms and place all our interests on our profile, and share our opinions on a blog, yet they are countered by faceless netizens (although they have avatars now). The internet thus is the like the radio, where it intices the imagination to fill in the blank spots. It's like a sufficiently platonic social platform, fully personalisable, although, popularly, some take it to the next level.

Me? I'll stick to blogging.. .and trying to ace higher Movie Triviascores on Facebook.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Obviously Because.

Haven't been writing here for a while, obviously because.
Have been getting less sleep, obviously because.
Have dreaded every morning before showering, obviously because.
Have felt frustrated before even starting anything, obviously because.
Have asked 'What's the point?' to the air at random moments, obviously because.
Have pulled long sighing breaths, obviously because.
Have complained to motorcycles on the road for no apparent reason, obviously because.
Have made my fiance worry about me daily, obviously because.

obviously...

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

3 Years Going

This post is 2 days late, yet it still markes something significant - I have lived in the blog space for 3 years, ever since starting my job at my current company, where everything started anew. Last year I commemorated it with a fictitous post placed 2 years in the future... now, I'll try to envision the future 3 years ahead. This post is a tribute to the best things in life that have happened to me since, and the worst also... and that we always have to feel grateful.

Jakarta, October 3rd, 2010
It's 9 PM and I'm still at the office. There is so much work to do; there's nobody else to do it but me; that's one of the risks of running a cost-efficiency oriented small business. Reports here, presentations and proposals there; the papers are just stacking. Well, virtually stacking, I abolished 70% of paper use in the office a year ago, and invested in laptops and several projectors for the whole office. File-editing collaboration online is finally showing its benefits; the online office suite provided by Adobe is also much more fun to use compared to Google.

I better wrap this up soon, or else my wife will kill me (again). My daughter is in her unintelligible speech fase, and she needs all the language stimulation she can get to help form her future vocabulary... and I miss them both. My wife and I have an arrangement; never bring work home unless it's absolutely necessary, so I'm toiling away the hours here so once I reach home, I can concentrate on home issues more effectively. The period of stress and mental breakdown (well, almost) of a few years back comes to mind, and we both agreed that our future well-being, for each other and for our daughter, comes first than any kind of paycheck. Money is such a transitory thing, it just passes your hands to another, and for things that are transitory as well. Of course, enough money helps a better life, but it shouldn't dictate our lives either. At least, by running my own business, I have more control on such things.

It's been 6 years since I started this blog, and a lot has happened since then. Hopefully I'm a better person than before, and I hope I've done more for the greater good... somehow. I am happy, but a good lesson growing up is that you can only be truly happy if you can appreciate what you have.

Ok... time to go home, and leave the work for now. Good thing the office is only 20 minutes from home :)