:DR’s Corner

Thinking of something for your kid for their birthday? How bout surprising them with some of these ideas?

- TASER X3 triple shot
Good way to teach them about how the police can subdue unruly people without truly hurting them. Hey, isn’t that kinda like teaching them about not always using force to get your way? Diplomacy training for kids

- Mount a 100″ TV in the ceiling
This will definitely make you a mom/dad of the year candidate, and also set yourself up for some obesity/eye problems in the future. Hey, at least you’re gonna keep them home a lot this way.

Technorati Tags: taser x3, birthday gift, 100″ tv

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Is it just my internet connection or has Facebook been acting weird today? Throughout the day I’m met with errors when trying to load pages from Facebook. Sometimes it loads, and sometimes it just fails.

Technorati Tags: facebook

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It seems there has been some explosions in the Mega Kuningan area in Jakarta. The newspapers have been saying Marriot/Ritz Carlton. Haven’t seen any detailed news yet. Not sure if these are terrorist attack bombs or pranksters.

Something’s weird about these bombs. Professionals would’ve picked a better time when there were lots of crowds. Why bomb in the morning when there are only a few people around? Maybe someone has something against Manchester United instead? (Note: Manchester United is sending a team over to play an Indonesian team within the next few days, and would’ve been staying at the Ritz)

Update:
- Looks like real bombs. First one happened at the Ritz, blowing up 2nd fl and parts of the 3rd.
- 2nd one blew up near Sailendra in Marriot, not sure about the extent of this one.
- Coverage has been focused on Ritz.
- President SBY has visit the location to see the extent of the damage.

Update 2:
- It seems the Marriot bomb happened first, followed by the Ritz.
- The explosion at the Ritz was more explosive and damaging, hence the coverage bias.

Update 3:
- President SBY was scheduled to visit the location, but has cancelled the plans and will hold a press conference instead.
- There have been 4-6 casualties, and many more injured. (Including foreigners)
- The President Director of Holcim Indonesia has been killed in the explosion.

Update 4:
- Another bomb seemingly has exploded near the Muara Angke tol gate (TVOne – unconfirmed by others yet, Twitter is full of this news)
- MU possibly cancelling it’s trip to Indonesia.

Update 5:
- The explosion near Muara Angke was not a bomb, it was just a car fire [Link]

Technorati Tags: jakarta bomb, jakarta explosion, mega kuningan, jw marriot, ritz carlton

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BK tests Motion Power kinetic energy harvester
[via: Engadget]
I think this is pretty cool. The government of Indonesia should learn a thing or two from this and implement this all through Jakarta . It would generate tons of energy and save a lot of money in the process.

HTC Hero
[via: Engadget]
I’d love to have this HTC be my next cellphone, but man is it expensive (499 Euro or Pounds, I forgot).

Technorati Tags: htc hero, burger king, motion power kinetic energy harvester

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*sigh*.. one of those days.

Here’s the situation:
- I have an Indonesian credit card, have been using it with no problems for the last few months. I used it last night with no problems at all at a restaurant in Jakarta.
- On the 10th of July (last week), I authorized a charge for my transcript request from my university in Canada. It got rejected.
- I have a recurring charge for Facebook Ads (US based) that goes on my credit card every week or so. And for the last 6 months or so, has had no problems whatsoever.
- On the 14th of July (last night), the Facebook charge failed.

Logically thinking:
- Credit card is working fine in Indonesia up to the 14th.
- Credit card is refused in Canada on the 10th.
- Credit card is refused in US on the 14th (when it was working fine the last 6 months).
- There must be something wrong with this card’s processing foreign based charges.

The call to customer service (please allow me to do this beforehand: @#$^@#$&^@#$&@#$&#$&!@#$&!#$^!#$&):
Me: (Explained the situation above to her)
CS: Please hold, our system is slow
Me: …
<5 minutes later>
CS: Thanks for holding, according to our records, the problem is from the Canadian side, please ask them to try again.
Me: Really? Then how do you explain the failure from Facebook (US) on the 14th?

[Repeat these next 4 lines about 3 or 4 times]
CS: Not sure, please try again, and if it fails, call us again.
Me: That doesn’t make sense, it failed on the 10th in Canada, it failed on the 14th in the US, 2 different countries, 2 different institutions. It must be your system that’s having problems.
CS: It’s the overseas system that failed. That’s what I’m told by our people, please ask them to try again and call us again if it fails again.
[Sigh, apparently these people cannot think for themselves and are just parrots repeating their higher up parrots who just cannot be bothered to get off their asses and check what's actually wrong]
Me: And what difference would that make? Why can’t you just check it now?
[End repeat]

CS: Our system is slow, please call back again if it fails.
Me: …

Conclusion:
- Indonesian customer service is crap, just like any other public facing service here, be it government or private.
- It seems people here are not trained to think at all (as proven by that repeat loop in the middle of my conversation). Maybe they’re required to have their brain taken out before they can apply for customer service positions.
- Customer service in Indo just shoves the problems aside and hopes it goes away (note: no, it doesn’t) or the people needing service get tired enough of their stupidity that they get frustrated and quit trying to find answers through customer service.
- I’m still @#$&^@#&^@#$&@#$&@#$&@#$&@#&@#%&@#&.

Thanks for reading.

Technorati Tags: indonesian customer service, bad customer service, stupidity

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In 2004, when SBY was elected president, the ousted president refused to offer the president elect any sort of congratulatory note, save some obscure comment made in an unofficial manner.

Technorati Tags: indonesia election

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(It seems) that our incumbent president, Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will retain his position for the next 5 years as expected. The only thing I didn’t see coming was a one round election (Indonesia’s election goes up to 2 rounds if any candidate fails to gain 50% of the votes). I actually expected the other 2 candidates to put up more of a fight. I guess that shows just how much I know about politics .

Technorati Tags: susilo bambang yudhoyono, indonesia election

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At the beginning of Wimbledon 2009, nearly everybody (including me) was seemingly ready for Roger Federer to break Pete Sampras’ record of 15 Grand Slams (well, maybe except for the British people who were expecting Andy Murray to claim this one ). And for the first few rounds, it seemed that nobody would be able to withstand Fed-Ex’s determination to get to No.15.

Somehow as the tournament went along, Andy Roddick’s story started to grow on me. For so long, he has been one of the most consistent men on the ATP tour, and yet a lot of people seem to have written him off, partly due to his big serve making him seem like it’s the only thing in his game, and partly because of the rise of the other names like Nadal, Murray and Djokovic.

One thing that Roddick never did though, was quit. He just kept on persevering, re-inventing his game bit by bit, and just played the game. When he reached the semi’s, few would’ve thought he’d have a chance against Andy Murray, the British crown favorite and rising star. I thought to myself at that point, “Roddick probably cannot win this one, but if indeed his game has evolved and he’s playing better than ever, maybe there’s just a slight chance that it’ll be Federer vs Roddick on Sunday, coz the guy just keeps on fighting”.

Well then, Roddick did indeed beat Murray to earn the honours of facing Federer in the final, and what a magnificent one it was. 5 sets where neither man backed out, and ending with a 16-14 set. On that day, I really wished Wimbledon could award a “double champion” pedigree, because I really thought both men deserved it. But in the end, it seemed destined that Federer would win no.15, and he truly is a Greatest Of All Time candidate.

At the beginning of the tournament, imagining someone other than Federer winning Wimbledon 2009, with history so close for the making, would just sadden me. But seeing Andy Roddick and his never say die attitude, incredible work ethic, and amazing perseverance, fight toe to toe against Federer, I honestly wouldn’t have felt to bad had Andy won this match.

Hats off to you Andy, you truly have the heart of a champion.

Technorati Tags: roger federer, andy roddick, wimbledon

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It’s been so quiet here I thought I’d start blogging again now and then.

Technorati Tags: jewelry, julie rochili, roger federer, wimbledon

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I thought I’d finally vent my frustration here about this incident 2 months ago (March 17th to be exact).

My wife picked me up from work, and we decided to go have dinner. After dinner we went to Puri Indah Mal, and parked near where we usually
park. Since I usually drive myself, and that night was picked up by my wife instead, I didn’t remember to carry my laptop bag with me and left
it on the rear seat. We got there around 8.15PM and went to Ace Hardware to get some stuff. When we got back at around 8.50PM (around
40 minutes later), my wife found out that the rear window of her car has been smashed to pieces, and my laptop stolen.

Of course, for some reason, the security patrols who usually are there in abundance, weren’t there at the time of incident. I had to walk for 5 minutes to find the closest security guard, who proceeded to call more of his friends. To make a long story short, the parking lot was monitored by Secure Parking, who outsourced their guards to some group called Sigap, and neither of which could explain nor would be held responsible for what happened.

The loss of my laptop and broken car window wasn’t really my main source of frustration (I know I was reckless in leaving valuable stuff there). But how things proceeded were the mind boggling ones. Here’s what happened:
- I tried to get CCTV recordings from the security, who said that the guy who could access the files already went home, and it had to be done the next day since they had to get a manager in. (Hello, this happened in the last 30 minutes, if you can catch the person’s face, it’d be easier to catch them sooner).
- An entire squadron of security guards, Secure Parking people and others just stood around, with nobody knowing how to proceed and what’s the next step. My wife had to call her brother who had some connections with the police before anything got sorted out.
- After the police came, they started looking around, and nobody was allowed to touch the car because they thought fingerprints of the thief
might still be there.
- The parking attendant had the number of the car next to us, which was the main suspect according to the police.
- At nearly midnight, the car was at the police station, some police officer went to get the CCTV recordings, and up until then I sensed no
urgency from ANYBODY, not even the police. It’s as if, it’s just a regular occurrence and they needed the money they were sure to get from
us for helping us by showing up at the crime scene. And that part about not touching the car, well that didn’t help because nobody dusted for
fingerprints or did any kind of forensic stuff whatsoever on the car.
- The next day, we find out that the CCTV camera actually caught the burglar on tape (turned out to be the car parked next to us).
- They even tried to charge me for parking during my way out with my wife’s car and broken window (I had the ticket signed by the head attendant, reading “Parking Free”). I had to talk to this guy, and explain to him that “the damn window of my car is broken, my laptop is stolen, my ticket says free parking, and you still want to charge me for parking ??!#@?$?”.

Well, imagine this happening in Canada: – burglar’s face caught on camera and – plate number recorded by attendant so the
police know it, and no arrests made, no communications from the police, and nothing whatsoever from the Secure Parking nor mall people?
Pretty unthinkable even for the dumbest of authorities wouldn’t you think? But here in Indonesia, that’s apparently just the norm.

I’m pretty much over the laptop lost part, but the idiocy, inefficiency and mind-bogglingly useless police force, parking attendants (might as well change the name to “Insecure Parking”) and security guards still remains a pain in the butt for me. My guess, and what many people have told me, is that the police, guards and those people at the parking lot are pretty much involved with the thieves and robbers anyway, and won’t bother arresting one of their own kind if they get some sort of bribe. I’ve talked to some tenants at Puri Indah Mall, and I’ve been told also that stolen laptops are a quite common occurrence there, more so than any other mall. Just another day in corrupt country where police and thief are one and the same.

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