+alveta rorio+ - iBlog, Do You?

Posted by: ndin | 10/08 2006, 06:04

It has been a while since I was so excited about a book. Yesterday's hunt at PIM's Kinokuniya yielded on an intriguing 1000-page novel that gave me the chills. Never heard about Neal Stephenson before, but I see a lot of potential...

First, in the opening, he quoted Alan Turing. Jumping to the back, there is an appendix explaining the Solitaire encryption algorithm, written by the original author of the algorithm. Managed to churn a few pages of this World War II combined with Internet technology thriller last night and already I am having troubles keeping up with the winding yet cheeky sentences...

This is fun!

PS: just got 6 new kittens in the house. One is very stripy cute.. the others are so plain -.-

Rev1eWs | Comments (5) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)

Nobody's Perfect

Posted by: ndin | 10/01 2006, 13:08

Hypocrisy with all its glory is just not that cool and cute anymore when it smacks you right in the face. Really.

I was in a mall for a Ramadhan break fast last night. Along with common peculiarity such as the high number of junior-high schoolers dwelling there, the holy month also offers the anomaly of people queuing for wudhu and shalat. It was only 10 minutes before the Isya' and there are about 10 people in line before me, all waiting patiently except for this woman. A mother, in hijab, bringing along her little daughter, cutting the line right before my turn at the water tap. Of course, being a complete failure of my first year's PDPT program, I let her. Part of it was because of my curiosity of how she would act afterwards. Not only she violated mine and 10 other people's rights, such an example she set for the little princess. If she was such in a hurry to fulfill the Heaven's calling, why didn't she use the bathroom (she only needed to add a bit of maneuver to do the final stage of wudhu there)?

If the one cutting the line was one of the queuing ABGs, I would be more than understanding. After all, they are not an enlightened mother building the morality of the nation.

Another case could be found every day. Most of the subject would be adult male, driving a motorcycle to masjid, with no helmet but with an elaborate set of kopiah, taking the opposite lane, speeding. Another one, a teenage member of a religious organization with a habit of doing tadarus every day, but such a pain when it comes to help his mom doing house chores.

People, please. Live up to the appearance, would you? You are all ruining the art of devilish concealment. Shame on you.

Then again, we may have lost our sense of art, or any other sense for that matter, along with the monetary crisis back in the 90s. Hell.

BLabbEr | Comments (5) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)

Shirt Story

Posted by: ndin | 09/24 2006, 14:48

I have this shirt, or rather.. had. Bought it at Rumah Mode, Bandung a few months ago. The first time I wore it, someone said I looked cute in a vintage sort of way. That night, one of my cats ripped the shi, leaving quite a large hole on the chest

Got it stitched up a few weeks later and pasted up a nice beaded lace to cover the stitches. Wore it again, got it washed, turned out the beads color was smeared into the shirt. Haven't got any idea how to fix it

Weird shirt. Fits perfectly, but doesn't seem to want to be worn...

pRiV@te | Comments (1) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)

Step Up: During a Blockbuster's dry season, a dance flick is better than nothing, i guess. This one feels a lot like Save the Last Dance part 2, although now it's going the other way around. A hip hop prodigy learning to do some ballet, which is much more hillarious to see

The choregraphy and music are okay. It's just fun...; Rev1eWs, the bL1Tzz | Comments (1) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)

The End As The Beginning: I am 22 and just graduated from my Bachelor study. Obviously that counts as a start. Start of a new life, some would call it. Well, this start, like many other, began with choices. As an analyst rather than a decision maker (yep, I put it down in some application form), choices intrigue, empower but also trouble me. Especially now, when anything I would take would define who I will become, maybe for the rest of my life. Surely eenie-meenie-miny-mo would not be suitable.

But then I realize that a person is not defined by what job she took right after graduation or which graduate school she went to. Her whole life, the events occured during the span of her life define her. Life IS a journey and I WOULD, at some point in my life, befriend that thing called 'change'.

Personally, I think I am way too nonchalant about this, but that maybe the paranoid side of me screaming to be noticed.; pRiV@te, BLabbEr | Comment | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)

Q and A: One of my grudges against the grown-ups is the way they answer questions. Let alone the so called white lies taking my perceived as limited knowledge as an excuse, often times the answers given do not directly address the question. Frustating.

Now, with a bit more time spent sucking up oxygen, I realize that the reason for such shortcoming does not necessarily lies on the misunderstanding for the questions. It works both ways, in a sense that the one answering may not understand the questions, or the one asking may not understand the answer. As per usual, though... understanding help to settle with the condition but it does not diminish the frustation.

Given the vast and diversed multicultural universe we have, giving answers without having the same background knowledge as the askers is not easy. The traditional curriculum also discourages open ended discussions which further complicate this dialogue. The ultimate question may be to question the right question, which reminds me of a scene in The Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy; the ultimate answer in life is... 42! ^^; BLabbEr | Comments (3) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0)