Function changes

I’m not going to use this blog as my mirror blog anymore, instead I’m going to put my stories here. Some of them are projected to be published in some local magazines.

Please do comment if you think you like my stories.

Bomb attack (again)

Another bomb attacks hit Jakarta, that left 9 people dead and several others injured. The bombs brought deaths and horror to Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels. For Marriott, this is its second bom attack. I would ask “whatever happened with Marriott Jakarta?”

Normally I would express my anger and condemning the calamity, but now I just don’t know what to express and tired to follow any news about it.
Nevertheless, I’m extending my sincere condolences to the victims.

I pray and hope God forgive us all.

A thought and an idea (again)

I took quite sometime lately to pay attention and take notice of other people around my home or in public crowd places. The more I tried to understand, the more I felt like I’m an alien who stranded on earth and trying to live alongside humans. It’s just so hard to understand humans and in my case, to understand indonesians.

Two of the common (IMHO are the most fatal) indonesians  stereotype are:
1. Most of them are ignorantly walking on a thin line between brave and idiot.
2. Most of them are not interested to move into a more civilized & advance society. Modern indonesians are only skin deep.

So I came up with an idea to film and take pictures of the two things above and put them here. I hope this could be one of not so many efforts to waking up indonesians from stupidity.

Right then, camera stand by!

About Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen

OK, I’ve watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or Transformers 2 on the first day it released in indonesia. It was a perfect day, my wife and I got good seats despite we were kind of late coming to the cinema.
Too bad that perfect day was screwed by the quality of the 2009 most anticipated movie (other than Star Trek that was also a disaster).
So after lots of people told how they hate the TF 2 movie, I think I’ll say one or two words too.

I HATE TF 2! It’s cheesy and messy in every aspects. There are too many mistakes, loopholes and they didn’t give the robots effective roles. It makes me to think that those directors and the writer team were not having deep understanding of the Transformers story.

If the title is Transformers, fine! So the story is about the Transformers race right? But they put too many human interventions & politics in the movie. The role and dialog for the leading roles (that is the robot race!) is so minimal and if I can give a percentage of dialogs in TF 2 it is 70% human-human, 20% robot-human and 10% robot-robot. WHAT IN THE CYBERTRON IS THAT?! Might as well named it Sam Witwicky Adventures rather than Transformers.

Also adding the damage to TF 2 is the appearance of the Autobot twins Mudflap and Skids. Their role is so unimportant and swallow. Apparently Michael Bay didn’t learn from the mistake of George Lucas with Jar Jar Binks. I hope as most of the fans are, those two characters are erased and for filling the hole they can put Wheeljack or Sunstreaker.

For the rest of the Autobots, they are so lack of their true character just as in the first movie.

The appearance of the Constructicon is also disappointing. No dialogs and appearance for individual robot. What we see was some construction vehicles suddenly combining into Devastator. I’m sure we all hoped to see a huge Devastator standing straight and charged the desperate Autobots but no. The design of Devastator in TF 2 is so so not up to its 1980s counterpart, instead they made it walking on four limbs just as a gorilla. The worse thing is, they put Devastator just to suck sand and climbing a pyramid and easily defeated by US Navy.

The biggest disappointment is the appearance of Soundwave. It was so out of character and all he was doing for the whole movie is just floating there in space. For the mission he intended to I think it’ll be better if they put Laserbeak rather than Ravage.

The writer team are thinking to also put pretenders in the movie (the girl who turned into robot then to girl again until finally dead as robot?) but sadly they got it all WRONG!!! I suggest they take more time to understand what in Cybertron is a pretender shell.

But there was some good scenes like the appearance of Sideswipe in the opening scene, Optimus Prime battling three Decepticons. Yes, that’s it. But in overall it is just bad!

It’s just too many for me to say and I won’t have time to make music if I keep saying about this movie (and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek). So there we have it, my opinion to Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen.

My music memories pt XX

Not many of my friends or those who knew me, realized that I’m a music fan ever since I heard it for the first time. I love music and especially when they’re good and unique.
So I was in my late elementary year and preparing to enter my junior high when 2 Unlimited released their music. Most of my friends thought that I’m a metal and hard rock freak so I didn’t think they would believe or sharing the passion if tell them that I like High-NRG genre, especially 2 Unlimited.
Also happened that during my elementary graduation holiday, I took a trip by car with my older brother and my dad. 2 Unlimited tape was one of the tapes that we always play.

This is also one of not so many 90s music that I love.

ps: thanks to djmiquel for sharing the video.

Wildstix’s log, stardate 62772.4

Some people on earth considers today is Earth Day, but I think we should expand this idea to a more general and simpler. I don’t know exactly how since I’m not an environmentalist, I just knew it.
Today, my wife and I walked from our church to the street food outlets nearby and we saw some people burning the trash. It caused a terrible smoke, clearly polluting the air and in turn it also increasing carbon in our atmosphere. My God! Those people are burning trash right on Earth Day! This is what I meant of expanding the idea.
The earth is getting warmer and it will heal itself, but the healing process won’t be nice for mankind. Some say we almost hit the jackpot, some others believe we’ve hit the jackpot but not yet to the full capacity and we still have time to make it right. I don’t know about you scientists, but I think we’ve hit the jackpot and we’re getting its full impact right now.Why?

I live in Jakarta, Indonesia and there has never been any reports of twister or tornado in Jakarta or surrounding area. But in the last four years, there has been numerous reports of twister cases in Jakarta and adjacent area. The latest one happened yesterday.
The twister hit, collapsing dozens of homes and ripped the roof a gas station (I saw the picture). It was not supposed to happen here but it did!

Just ask yourself, where are we right now?

Wildstix’s log, stardate 62744.2

Happy Easter! Jesus is King of kings!

My wife and I went to Easter sermon at my church, Gereja Kristen Indonesia-Pondok Indah and we expected a vibrant Easter but what we got is far far far awaay from Easter theme! Jesus forgive me.

It was so gloomy that we thought we are having Good Friday sermon. The liturgy was awfully constructed and the music arrangement was far off from what supposedly energetic and full of joy of Easter. We couldn’t get in tune with the sermon since the beginning and I went out several times, just to calm myself. I was upset and angry by the way the sermon goes since I-again-was expecting Easter sermon. Jesus forgive me.

The sermon was entirely misplace and by far, the worst music arrangement for Easter sermon! I don’t know much about liturgy but there’s a voice deep inside my heart saying “This is not quite”. I tried to stay silent but I couldn’t help to cried it out. Jesus forgive me if I’m wrong.

The incident of 2009 Easter sermon at GKI PI has risen up a motivation for me. I feel the calling to share my talent for the next Easter sermon music arrangement and if Jesus willing, to share my knowledge to construct the liturgy. Jesus guide me!

Wildstix’s log, stardate 62735.1

Today is the election day in Indonesia and my name is not listed in the voter list. What a joke!

I haven’t decided wether I will go or not, but I’m planning to make sure that no one is using my name for cheating.

In the next 72 hours, we will see if this election will be a process for the better or a highway to Indonesia downfall. God help us!

Wildstix’s log, stardate 62726.1

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I’m a long time fan of F1 GP. Since the days of the six-wheeled P34 of Tyrrell F1 team until now and being a long time fan of F1 I would be lying if I don’t have any favorite teams. Two of the longest team that I really like are McLaren and Williams. The others are Tyrrell, Lotus and Jordan, for their innovations and sadly, they are not exist anymore.
For 2009 season, I think I would like to see more of Brawn Mercedes. They still have much to prove but seeing their spirit and hard work, that reminiscing the F1 Golden Age era, I can think that they will be a great team in F1.

Wildstix’s log, stardate 62724

My band rehearsal last thursday went very well, we managed to rehearsed some of the existed songs and found a matching lyric for our new single. Needless to say, the rehearsal was great and so vibrant!
Unfortunately, the studio that day was so cold since we forgotten to adjust the air conditioners to a more moderate temperature after putting it to a lowest temperature for sometime. I didn’t realize the effect until the rehearsal was done and that night, I was in agony of “masuk angin” or the earliest symptoms of flu (not yet catching a cold, though).

I started the next day (friday) with a “kerokan” (there’s no exact translation for this method of flu treatment), or let’s just say, message using coin or tool. At 10 am, I had a recording session for 6 hours! Luckily my wife accompany me during the session so I can fully concentrate on my work while she helped me with my drink and meals.

This month is also the sixth month if my wife’s pregnancy. Our unborn baby is getting active, especially when I got near.