Earth Hour 2009

Quoted directly from http://www.voteearth2009.org/home

On March 28 you can VOTE EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour. Or you can vote global warming by leaving your lights on.

The results of the election are being presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. We want one billion votes for Earth, to tell world leaders that we have to take action against global warming.

Vote Earth Hour 2009!

Turn off your air-con and computer when leaving. Turn on the power saving feature of your system. Do not leave computer overnight just to put up status “sleeping..” when you’re not doing any activity with your system. And do not forget the date and time to switch off your electricity for one hour as your vote. As symbolical and trivial the effect it may cause, you be surprised how it’ll impact your surrounding to realise that they should also care!

Note: The time listed on the poster is regardless of your timezone. Just follow the exact time on your local time: 8.30-9.30 PM on March 28 of 2009

Updated:

The earth hour had passed. In fact I had been turning off the electicity in my room from 5th PM through 1AM since I had been out of home for most time. During the earth hour, we gathered in the living room of my boarding house, played cards and sang to guitar which was fun!

I read an interesting comment at detik.com regarding the earth hour that a participant actually didn’t really care much about the environment but she figured she and her family would just follow the program and in fact, the family managed to gather around by turning only one TV in the living room which rarely occured.

Another interesting logic was told by my friend that actually the program would not make the electrical consumption lower significantly since society is too used to well lit environment. What happened during the earth hour was that as you cut the food supply to some animals and once you gave them back their food, they got so hungry and ate everything. Remember that electrical appliances would need more power during their initializing process. Imagine what happened when the program was about to be over. Everyone was turning back their appliances as how the positive effect was reversed negatively to less than the original effect.

I would agree to the logic. I’ve been honestly thinking the same that one hour per year is just too minimal to decelerate or even negate the global warming process. But I would believe more that this is a wake up call to everyone, that we should start to care as a part of humanity. As the same logic with smoking and smoker, ignoring the call is just being as some stubborn smokers that killed other people slowly without even realizing it. Education is there to let us to think not only by our silly ego, “Every other people throw the trash everywhere, why should I care?” If you’re still abiding by the same logic, what is your education for?

Earth hour was not only about one hour which ended once the clock strikes 9.30. Instead, it had just begun, if we could do for only one hour, we should be able to do more. Start with every simple action and remind each other, and we should be able to make some differences. Shouldn’t the scholar thought be, “If I don’t even care, how would other people care?” You’re just doing something for your family and your future descendants.

Sandwich Tower Competition

Venue: Sandwich Time at Spin City, EX Ground floor, Jakarta
Date/Time: Mar 13, 2009, 19:00-19.05
Agenda: “I can eat sandwich in five minutes” competition
Prize: 2 million Rupiah

Although this kind of eating, trying to be a pig, competition is quite common, at least for me it’s quite interesting this time since two of my friends were participating.

The rules and the goal of the the competition were pretty simple:
- You have to finish the sandwich tower within 5 minutes and make sure there’s nothing left within your mouth
- You may start only when instructed
- You may improvise on how to eat the sandwich, per slice, sinkin the bread into the water first, or whatsoever trick you can think of

As it might sound easy, it might be not since the sandwich was not only huge but it was pretty hard to chew with the thin timeframe. As a result, none of the participant did win. The near miss one finished all the sandwich but sadly still had some within his mouth so he only got the award not the money prize.

Again, there’s nothing to lose since by the entrance fee of Rp. 25000 you’re getting the sandwich, normal price at Rp. 75000, plus Coca Cola.

Some pictures from the scene, enjoy!

The huge sandwich tower

The crowd!

A participant, namely Sumatris, is trying to hard to chew and finish the sandwich

Eat Eat! Chew Chew!

Opportunist hungry audience tries to satisfy his curiousity by grabbing some bite of the unfinished sandwiches

Insane audiences and participants allegedly addicted to the sandwiches afterwards

The loving day in the heart of weekend – Changi Point

If I ever have one thing to complain about weekend, it’s how it’s gone in a blaze of light as fast as we realize everytime it arrives. Sunday noon, suddenly I’m taunted that the eerie howl of monday has once again been able to be heard. Weekend is once again almost over.

This weekend was a bit more extravagant than usual though as it came with the loving day, Valentine day, celebrated across the world mostly by couples, families, and even those hunting for love. “Will you be my Valentine?” cards could be seen sold here and there. Some nice-couple competitions are being hold trying to find the most romantic/compatible couple forcing couple on getting to “Guess what the air-drawn pictures are!”, “How long can you withstand your couple’s weight on your arms?”. PRC Chinese flower girls were ramming on the road citing the chinese words I could hardly comprehend as “Do you wanna buy these beautiful flowers?” If I were some naughty men, I would be tempted to say, “You are also beautiful, can I buy one for you?” But as I could always remember, I have another hand ready to pinch on my arms if I ever to engage in any move, so I’d refrain *ahem*.

As grandious as it’s celebrated here that I can only have my eyes see nothing but ladies encircling their arms on their gentlemen, giggling at the beautiful flowers just offered by their lovers, while the men also hold parcels from their dear ladies, inside those trains, buses, I remember that the V-day celebration in Indonesia always got challenged by some extreme Islam practitioners which are *thoughtless*. Irrational logic “Why do we need to celebrate loving day. Everyday according to God is loving day,” just doesn’t sell enough. “If we celebrate mother’s day, does it mean we only love and loved by mom on mother’s day?”, a good point offered by Richard yesterday. It’s so hillarious that I can puke. Perhaps the next thing I know, they may start banning Sundays as it’s God’s days, or even ban kids from playing Lego. It’s good though that many Moslems in Indonesia are well educated and far from radical thoughts, then there will always still be voices of disapproval of any new breed of narrow thoughts thrown again to the mass.

I’ve been putting effort into nothing since out of slumber but practicing dancing of my fingertips on the top of my lettery board, chit-chatting with my pals and commenting back the appearing sentences on my facebook galleries. I was quite happy then the yesterday’s Valentine celebration went quite well. As late as it may be, but as rememberable as it is, Happy Valentine Day! Pictures attached here are the place, we went yesterday (thanks to Cyndy for letting me know such place), Changi Boardwalk at Changi Point: a very nice place to enjoy the sunset, beaches, salty water, old boats and live the life slower, apart from the hocus pocus of the city. Cheers!

Port to Ubin: the flower is not from me anyway

Timer is ticking!

Sunset: Thanks to the unknown scout passing by to help taking this picture!

The boardwalk

Even birds celebrate Valentine

Gallery can be visited here: http://picasaweb.google.com/eternally4ever/ChangiBoardwalk14Feb2009

St. Peter 2001 Mini-gathering

Agenda: Chit-chat, small talks, reunion of St. Peter Senior High graduates of 2001-2004 term
Time: Saturday, January 10 2009, 11 AM
Venue: Nihon Mura, the Cathay, Singapore
Participants: Adrian, Susana, Joyce, Atika, Jeppy

As what has been too occasional, the promised time at 11 AM appeared to be delayed as while I had arrived, the rests were still somewhere else, eventhough the fact that my home was the furthest among all. Here are the impressions and updates based on the order of arrival:

Susana: The infamous Ms. late is always late!! She arrived 30 minutes after and her only excuse was “I woke up late at 10.30 AM. This is already some improvements, like you didn’t know me. I would come one or two hour late before.” She’s now trying hard to get herself a degree after finishing her diploma in Malaysia. I just hope she’s not expelled from classes everytime due to being late. And somehow, she’s more fashionable now!

Atika: Arriving 15 mins later when Susana already got herself a set of takoyaki – Susana had been screaming hungry to me all the time, geez! -. Atika’s excuse: “Had to go to get the copies of my uni papers.” Well, she could woke up earlier, not at 10.30 AM when her home was just foodsteps away. She’s still dreamy, silent, and hard-working as she used to be. She’s about to finish her master degree, blazingly fast – cheers!

Joyce: She’s arriving very late that we decided to dine and ordered our set of sushi ahead of her. But she had acceptable excuse: “had to go around the Singapore in the morning to get my laptop fixed”. Joyce is getting her degree very soon. She arrived at 1 PM and we were surprised to find another person tailed her.

Jeppy: Everyone didn’t manage to contact him since he changed his celly number but somehow Joyce accidentally ran into him. So Jeppy was there with more “trained” body. He finished his uni already and looking forward to his first job in Sony Corp.! As usual, he still had so many interesting stories to share.

So we were finally there, chit-chatting, listening to Susana’s believe-it-or-not-funny stories, listening to Atika’s based-on-experience comments, paying attention to Joyce’s smart feedbacks, and laughing to Jeppy’s jokes before finally everyone’s on his / her own way at 3 PM for each personal affair. That was loads of fun and I’m really looking forward to a bigger gathering as Steva, Noviyanti, Minnie, and Ivix didn’t manage to come. And how about the plan of year-end grandeur gathering, guys?

SG Jan 2009 Gath of St. Peter Senior High graduates of 2001-2004 term

The 1st Daylight of New Year

I finally woke up like nearly 12 PM in the noon after a bunch of series of falling-again-as-soon-as-I’m-awake. Then finally sober, I found myself in front of my notebook with little sunlight flowed mildly into my room. I browsed a bit, scrolled down the status of my long friend list in Yahoo messenger comprising mostly of happy new year greetings or idle sign. I mumbled in my own status of saying Happy New Year, please take care of me as well this year – in Japanese. I also got a few other new year greetings through IMs and SMSes, and suddenly a messaged popped up from a friend saying another friend’s dad passed away early this day. What a timing! I know her dad has been sick for long but at this moment of time? Utterly surprised, I came to believe again that this 2009 would be harder.

I found myself engaged in a conference with some Network-minor friends stating they would pay a visit later on the day which sadly I would not be able to go with them. I’m glad though my friends are still even this close even after a year of parting. I typed a messaged of condolences to her, but after all it’s a very typical one. It’s hard to even play with words in a moment like this. I just really hope she would be strong and soon can be very cheerful again like  she had always been.

I tried my new toy later – Picasa – which in some points are stronger than Flickr. I saw the pictures of last year’s new year eve comparing to this year new year’s eve and uploaded them into facebook and friendster.  How I was in totally different place with totally different persons, but one. I should be blessed for this, for the one is still with me even until now.

I looked at one picture of everyone in new year BBQ of 2008. I know some of the rest of my friends in the picture were having BBQ and ate like crazy until they puke, also this year. Me? I got clogged up in the crowd, sitting and standing on a very sweet spot, watching the reknowned merry-merry new year celebration of Singapore. The firework – I think – was awesome, just wish it could be longer – maybe none can compare to Beijing Olympic’s opening until now though. It’s just, when was the countdown? Did we somehow miss it?

The hype of the year end holiday is almost over. We’ll soon return to our daily routines and even possibly harsher working environments. We can brag, we can hope, we can dream anything, but in the end how we go through the new year is what determines the prequisite when we come into another year. Happy new year everyone! Dream a lot, do even more!

The crowd - Before 2009 Marina Bay Countdown

The fireworks!

The memoir!

Another one…

Something special for Hans :p