Last Days in a Place I Called Home for The Last 6 Years

I remember it just like it happened yesterday. My first step in Bandung, my first step in a place I called home. It was pretty scary at the time. I was expecting it would be more less like my house in my hometown. It turned out that i was wrong. The entrance was and still is a narrow alley right next to a big house which I thought it was the place.
Honestly it was shocking look instead of an awe look. Awe look was when I stared at ITB campus. It was impressive at the first look. But for this house there was no awe look at all. The first thing I thought after I arrived was to get home as soon as possible. I could manage my feeling by visiting campus frequently and stare at those buildings and just wandering around campus.
Amazing, After six years I feel I'm gonna miss this house more than I'm gonna miss campus. Perhaps all of those disappointments make me less missing campus. But I definitely gonna miss several people in it. My kamerads. I'll talk about this guys next time.
Even I only rent a room in this place but I felt more like home. I only spent not more than 2 weeks a year at my parent's and I spent the rest of the year here. Lots of things happened. Remembering those things makes me smile. All those laughs, all those suffers, all those days, all those nights, all of those bad times, all of those good times, all of those guys :) Remembering that I'm gonna leave this place behind makes me sad. But I'll sad even more if I don't take this chance. Sooner or later this moment will come.
I've seen lots of people come and go in this house. I call this home "Home of Gandokers Brotherhood" :D They all scattered across the country. It was nice being with them. It was nice spending time with them. Somehow I believe it's not a coincidence for us to gather at this house. Share happiness and sadness :) It has been a pleasure and honor to me living with u guys. Tanoshikata desu. Sayonara...

Don't ask how much money I get from my current job

Few weeks ago one of my friend asked me about how much leaving money I'm going to receive when I resign. She complained her leaving money wasn't as big as she expected. She complained other things to. All financial-related problems. Her confession makes me think 'Do I have enough money to support in the next months?'. Compare to her I have lower salary than hers. Way too lower. Not forget to mention it's not monthly salary. So it's like temporary job. Wait a minute. It is a temporary job :D See I resigned now.
So back to my question.Right now, my financial condition is under mercy of an institution. Institution which I've been served for years. Institution I hate most right now. They kept my salary for 3 months without any notice when I'm gonna get the money. Ow one notice for sure. They'll cut my salary for taxes. Come on, I know exactly taxes don't apply for salary under 25 millions rupiahs per month. And the money I'm gonna get won't event reach 1.5 millions rupiahs.
Well, there's nothing I can do about this. Even a senior lecturer of this institution can do nothing. The only thing I can do is get out of there as soon as possible to avoid further damage. I hope I still have enough resources to live the next few months.

D-Link DWL-2100 Access Point

This post is related to my previous post about my internet business. We got a new customer. It's just across the street but it could mean a lot. Our new customer is Reading Light (RL). It's a nice and cozy place. There you can read lots of nice books and magazines.
Enough about Reading Light. They want to be connected to internet through our network. Reading Light belongs to a foreigner so this would be a great opportunity to increase our income. We've done a lot things for RL. Our signal couldn't reach there so we must put our access point to a higher place. This put serious effort too. After access point was set and our signal could reach RL there's another request. They want to connect to our network using their own access point. It's D-Link DWL-2100 access point.
We have some experience with D-Link access point and we thought it won't be a tough job. It turned out that we were wrong. This kind of access point is difficult to handle. It can't play role as repeater, it must restart before connecting to another PC and it has quite different administration tool in a matter of semantic meanings. Several options act differently than same options in other access point we had before. It takes two PCs and two laptops to find out the real characteristics of this access point. We would like to try hack it's firmware but since it's not ours, RL could get serious problem regarding it's warranty. So we decided to go with the old firmware.
I must reset this access point several times to make sure that the things we found were it's origin behavior. This is very important so we can use this access point immediately at RL. I'll go to RL again this morning to install this access point. Hopefully it would work perfectly. We've done so much for this customer and we won't fail.

Scattered across the globe

It's around 1 AM when I wrote this post. I read one of my friend's blog and found out that he, there's no explicit statement but it's got to be him, gets scholarship to Japan. Omedeto gozaimasu. Yesterday I got a news that one of my friend also got scholarship to Siena, Italy. I can only say "Wow, whatta year". So many of us are going or already abroad. Based on the story of older classes I knew this would happen someday. Our classmates would scattered all over the world to find our own life. Amazing isn't it? Two years ago they were sit right next to you and now they sit thousands of kilometers a part from you.
One of the older class told me that the chance to go abroad is not as big as the old days especially since the 911 incident. But the statistics is quite impressive even though it took place after 911. For instance in 2001 class there are or there will be 1 in Korea, 1 in Germany, 2 in Japan, 1 in Australia, 2 in Italy, 1 in UK, 1 in Netherland, 1 in Abu Dhabi, 2 in Singapore, 1 in Malaysia and 1 in US. Still there are possibilities this number would increase years to come.
What does it feel out there? I've never experienced it though. Based on stories I've heard is not as glamour as it looks. Hardworks, discrimination and homesick color life out there. So why bother if we can live a prosperous life here? If we ask those people who are going or already abroad various answer will be achieved. I asked some and some answers came out. One(s) want just the experience, one(s) want to go after the knowledge offered, one(s) want to expand his/her vision, one(s) want to settle out there. Well we are all grown up by now. Decisions are made in full consciousness and responsibility. It's all matter of choice. Sometimes or most of the time one's decision won't fit for another. So no matter where you are, no matter what road you're going to take it's your life. Make the best in it.

The Simpsons Freak

This is an old cartoon show. First time I watched when I was at 3rd or 4th grade elementary school and I always like it since then. I can sit tight and watch episodes of The Simpsons in a day. My friend told me that The Simpsons creator also created another cartoon called Futurama. He said Futurama is like The Simpsons. Too bad I never watch it so I can't say anything about this cartoon.
The Simpsons rocks. It educates in a different kind of way. And the most important is it's funny. The education part of The Simpsons is not on the behaviours or manners of its characters. Trust me if there's a town in this world like Springfield the earth will turn upside down. If you're still learning English please don't imitate those words spoken by the characters in The Simpsons unless you're intend to increase your bad words vocabulary. So what is it really that this cartoon teach? The education part could vary among people. For me the education part lies in the dialogs. The characters reflex to answer a question with funny answers plus backed up with some funny scenes make this 2D cartoon lovable.

Rest in peace, lil baby

I heard that shocking news just now. My sister's baby died right after the delivery. So sad. He was suppose to be my second nephew this year after Alka. But apparently Allah choose a better life for him. He relieve him from this miserable world. I should be happy for him coz he's in better place now. But still, this selfish feeling to have him in this world makes me sad.
Sometimes I wonder about mistery of life. Why does some have to die? Why does someone have to live? Why does someone get so lucky and why does someone has such a bad luck?
Ahh nevermind that's why we call it life, right? So I hope you find a peaceful life my dear nephew. Rest in peace lil baby. Amiien.

It's just determining someone's gender based on name, how hard could it be?

Determining someone's gender based on name won't be a difficult task if you know the name pattern. This task can be difficult to accomplish when you're not familiar with the name pattern. Since I'm Indonesian heavily influenced with American and Muslims influence. Indonesian names or British or American or Islamic names would be familiar for me. So I can determine the gender easily. But when it comes determining chinese or thai or vietnamese name I found it quite difficult.
I just made two mistake. First mistake I thought a thai girl as a guy and second mistake I did the same thing to pakistani girl. Thank God they're not angry. Well at least the thai girl didn't. The pakistani girl didn't know yet because I haven't made any contact yet. Thanks to shailendra for telling her gender. I think because India and Pakistan have the same root made him knows the pakistani name pattern just like indonesia and malaysia.
Since Indonesia has hundreds of tribes and almost each tribe has their own language and could be they have their own name pattern. The same bias could exist even when you have to determine gender based on other tribe's name pattern. For example Endang in Javanese is considered as a female name but in Sundanese is considered as a male name with a different pronunciation. I had experienced this difficulty when I have to write a letter for a person named Endang. Since I'm in bandung which is the capitol city for Sundanese I can't determine what title I should wrote Mr. or Mrs. Although Bandung is capitol city for Sundanese there're lots of Javanese here. I'm a Javanese too and living here in Bandung.
Next time I have to be careful in determining someone's gender based on name especially if I don't familiar with the name pattern.