Some New Year presents

I have to admit it’s not easy to do something different like spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve in a more simple and quite way, and away from family. The hardest part is not deciding to do that, but to stay in that decision with everyone around me keep questioning why would I want to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve without not going back hometown—while I can—and not going to the places with fireworks and stuffs.

After so many times trying to getaway with somewhat more rational answers, I’ve finally found a final answer, which is “why not?”

So there I was, already in my bedroom since about 9.30 pm, turning off my BlackBerry before the message blasts—with all those template greetings—bombardized. There happened to be a football match on TV, Blackburn Rovers about to finish the game at Old Trafford leading 3-2, continued with other game at Stamford Bridge where Aston Villa won 3-1.

The internet went back normal (fast that was) except for the Twitter which of course would get congested due to its tens of millions of South East Asians users, especially Indonesians (and especially Jakartans), who would bombardize tweeting. It inspired me to scribble this for my Little Sketches blog…

After making phone calls to my parents and sister, I signed off with a scoop of this lovely Whisky Chocolate Mud from a good friend that I kept on the fridge, and went to bed until about 10 o’clock in the morning.

We were having this gift exchange, my church friends and I, so after a lunch meeting with them we all went home with a gift. That’s New Year present number 7, after the peaceful evening (1), the football score lines (2 & 3), the internet back to normal (4), the idea for a sketch (5) and the Whisky Mud (6).

But apparently it didn’t stop right there.

After lunch I got sleepy and went for an afternoon nap, something I’ve been wanting to do for months but had not really had the chance to. It was a very nice nap, flawless 3 hours one (and surely New Year present number 8), and when I woke up and turned on the internet and opened Wikipedia, there was this thank you note from the foundation…

I’ve been a regular visitor of this temple of mind, as the founder Jimmy Wales used to call it, and I’m very happy to know that there are millions of fellow visitors who also care enough to give donations to help it stay as temple and free from commercials. It just gives me this breeze of optimism that we can still find good people… that they still exist despite many sayings that the world today is a lot worse than it was before. I think nature is getting worse—thanks to some of us who destroy it—but the world is just getting tougher, and as a consequence the degrees of good and bad have widened. Those who are not strong and sensitive enough may become worse than the worst people from the former generations, but those who are strong and sensitive enough may survive… if not become greater than the former’s greatest.

Thank you 2011

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004).

Written by Charlie Kaufmann, directed by Michel Gondry.

See the scene here.

Have a good health and bad memory for 2012. Look forward.

20.12

It’s still 12 days to 2012, but I figure out it’s ok to just make a New Year plan now.

Unlike the previous years, I do feel like making more than just one plan… including a plan to have a break from work, something I already had thought last year but haven’t got the chance to do it until now.

So what would I do during that break?

I’ve always wanted to do something like young Che Guevara did in his Motorcycle Diaries. But since I’m not that expert in riding long-distance so I’ll just use my car, a 2002 diesel Toyota Kijang MPV that can run around 8L/100km highway (10L/100km combined) that I’ve been driving for more than 5 years now. I think that will not hurt my pocket, plus the decent size and power will give me extra safety than a mini-MPV that might have had better fuel economy.

My destination is Central Java, somewhere between where I am now and my hometown.

I’d like to revisit Borobudur and Prambanan (to make up for my useless first visit there when I was 9) as well as exploring the other smaller cities across the province like Pekalongan (famous for its batik) and my friend Ba’in‘s hometown, Banjarnegara. Semarang would be interesting too, since I’ve only just stopped by there overnight on my way home from Jakarta in 2002—so I practically know very little about the city, which according to my grandmother is the origin of her grandfather, or in other word, my ancestor. The food there is also famous, and as a food explorer I surely won’t want to miss this.

There’s also the famous Temple of Sam Poo Kong, in regard to the famous Ming Dynasty’s Admiral Zheng He who visited the city in the 1400s and started the spread of Islam in Java. I didn’t even know about him before my former writer, Rina, visited there 6 years ago during its 600 years commemoration. Poor me…

From Semarang, there will also access to the nearby regencies like Demak (the capital of the first Islam kingdom in Indonesia after the fall of Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit), Kudus, Pati, Jepara (the hometown of Raden Ajeng Kartini, a popular women’s education figure in the late 1800s, and the home of many arts and crafts), Rembang, Lasem (that has old architecture and batik), as well as to the nearby Island of Karimun Jawa that has a national park. Semarang is also close to Salatiga, and Ambarawa that has an old train museum, which I would probably keen to have a look. And the best way to travel without fixed itinerary like this is by car, that’s why I think I would love it. I would stop for a day or two, or more, if it’s interesting and drive on when I’m done. No fixed schedule.

—

My other trip plan is East China, to Hangzhou and Suzhou via Shanghai like I posted earlier, which I hopefully be able to do it sooner, like next spring.

If the timing allows, I might be able to watch Shanghai Shenhua as well as enjoying the city and hopefully the fast train to Beijing. From Beijing, I will stop by in Hong Kong to visit my sister and her fiancée before returning to Jakarta. But if I’m more comfortable staying longer in Hangzhou and Suzhou then maybe I’ll go to Hong Kong straight from Shanghai.

To add one more big plan, of course I would like to finish at least one advertising work that can be my work for the year.

Next, the small plans.

Wow, I think there are quite some of them…

To start with, perhaps a plan to significantly be less active at Twitter and Facebook, and allow more time for blogging.

There are 3 blogs I’d like to start next year. The first is a long-postponed new blog to replace my current portfolio web, which couldn’t accommodate videos :-( It’s kinda hard to let it go since the overall look is clean and tidy, but I do need to upload videos, and rather than have 2 separate portfolio blogs I think I’d prefer just one—since I still have some other blogs outside my portfolio. Besides, the operating system takes too long to just display one image, while blogs run faster to display many images at once. So yes, I’ll be migrating.

The second blog is a blog I’ve long promised my writer to make… some kind of library of the DVDs I’ve been collecting intensively since 2009 (plus a few more I’ve bought earlier). I looove films, and it just won’t hurt to have a blog about film. I would probably meet new friends that have the same interest like me, and at least I would just share the films that I have, that you probably have never heard about. That sounds nice.

The third blog would be something that I want to start with my mother, and hopefully she will continue later. It’s a blog about food and cooking, something I admire so much about my mother which I think may have been better if also shared to other people—since me and my sister don’t seem to be able to “preserve” these family recipes. Hopefully with a little luck there’ll be more than just recipe, but also photos and videos. It depends on how successful I can persuade my mother to perform on camera, hahaha… It would be fun, I guess.

Another small plans for next year are to reorganize my room, maybe getting a smaller table for my slim computer and remove many stuffs I no longer need… and I would also want to finish 1 book every month. It would be nice if by January 2013 I can read 12 more books. Regardless the knowledge I would gain, I probably just want to learn more about commitment. It’s something so far I’m very lack of… being too comfortable in the free zone, floating here and there with no destination, maybe this free zone—without I realize it—has turned into a comfort zone. And I need to move on.

“Like” me (please)

This is a perfect example of technology misunderstanding and misutilizing.

The “Like” button on blogs and Facebook is actually made available to enable common people to express their appreciation without always having had to say anything. It helps people maintain the distance of their connection, and maintain the audience to stay on topic. And like many developments of digital technology—with its directness and no filtering like conventional media—it is there to make transparency possible. So any attempt of manipulating it by telling people to “like” your post or “like” your page wouldn’t be right.

Secondly, like all technology, digital technology is there to make independence more possible. It is there to make life easier… Easier for people to pick what they want and unpick what they don’t want. We no longer have to receive email forwards of things we’re not interested to, those who want to share something only need to post it on their blog or Facebook wall (or tweet it) and let those who want to read about it to read further by clicking it, and allow those who don’t want to know more to continue their surf. No hard feelings, no need to say hi just for the sake of saying hi, no need to do anything unnecessary. Free, efficient and simple. So, to be brutally honest, telling people to “like” your post or “like” your photo is actually an invasion of their independence, of their space.

Sometimes I had been careless and tolerated it, though. It’s not right and it can send the wrong message, that’s why next time I’ll show no mercy. But BMW :-)

Breakfast at McDonald’s

A few months ago I saw a series of interesting Ikea HK TV commercials on YouTube, and lately when we’re looking for a director for one of our projects I remember of those commercials and browsed the production house’s website.

I found another commercial by another director, done for McDonald’s campaign here in Indonesia (by Leo Burnett Jakarta) whom I happened to miss to see on TV. It’s for the newest McDonald’s breakfast menu which serves from 5 to 11 am.

I saw the print campaign 6 months ago and was interested to give it a try, and having seen the beautifully filmed commercial again I decided to try it this morning. The Sausage McMuffin with eggs was delicious. I ordered it without the coffee, of course, since my heart is a bit sensitive to it.

At the end of the TV commercial, after the guy finishes ordering the meal and goes to the dining table he meets a girl. It feels strangely funny that after I finished ordering my meal and go to the dining table, I met a girl. She seems like from a post-graduate campus near my office building. Suddenly I wanted to sing the commercial song’s chorus, “Oh bahagiaaa…” which means “Oh how happyyy…”