When Before It Is Too Late

Life has just resumed

Hello from 2013. This is the same miserable person with that common silly dreams of getting back up again from 2007.

Yes, summer 2007.

It was the crossroad of this person's life. He has just put his life back together, looked up, and see the world back in those glory days again. Heartbreak has never consumed much of his time as before. Only the promise of another dream cured the crushed previous one.

Let's cue his life to the movies he saw and the soundtrack that he heard throughout his journey.

Going on

As a male, this guy throw everything he could to secure his place in love. It is an all or nothing gamble in a game where he has no knowledge at all. He might be a nerd, a geek, his fanboyish attitude towards anything aviation doesn't made him any less interesting than he already was. He is a little bit knowledgeable, have some considerable achievements, and not really the bottom most student, rather somewhere in the middle.

Like many other people of his age, he always wanted something more. It never bothered him before, but he arrogantly thought to himself that it was the time to make that decision. Yes, to share a lifetime with another person.

Simply put, it ended in disaster that took 2 years to fully recover. He never looked back ever since.

Summer 2007, it is all he remembered where he ended up in after those 2 years battle with his inner demons. He was in a theatre, surrounded by his family, he was in for a ticket treat to Transformers (2007) by Michael Bay. Boy, surely happy he was. It is his childhood memories after all, and not accounting all the posers and new fans alike, Transformers, the toys that made him different and outcast during Power Ranger era of his childhood has finally returned in a more dignified format: serious live action summer blockbuster.

But it wasn't that thing that was special about the moment. It was this song, played in tune to Sam "Spike" Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) romantic theme. Goo Goo Dolls played the melancholic music, in tune with the character's mood at that time. This guy is a rather shy geek, and so does Sam Witwicky. The difference is, Spike got a lucky encounter, while this guy never has.

So, the lyric went on like this:

I wander through fiction to look for the truth
Buried beneath all the lies

John Rzeznik, the Goo Goo Dolls vocalist sung all the bits from this song. The song clearly has numerous interpretation and meaning to its listeners.

However, geeks would have to admit that sometime in their life, they have fantasized about loving a fictional characters. We understood very well what is morbidity, and thus we question ourselves "is the feeling real?" What is it like to love a real person. We mean real person, not posers or karma chameleon, quick changing, self-serving free riders, which all are part of "the lies."

Some people take the lies despite how intelligent they think they are, because we clearly see it from our own eyes. But lies are never truly what they are in front of their prey, so we'll wait while thinking the worst for their victims. We are not an answer to their victim's curiosity, we are just another question. They just can't see beyond the lies.

Then the chorus, which is also the title of the song, reminds you of how it is being too late. But at the crossroad, the guy already have no idea of what is too late. At this point, he got nothing to lose. So he thought.

hold on before it's too late

The song continues until it reach this doppelganger part:
 

A life you don't live is still lost
So stand on the edge with me
Hold back your fear and see
Nothing is real 'til it's gone
 

If you think of all the choices you have, of what your life could have become if you took that different path, is all lost with time. It seems to this poor guy that all along in the love game, he chose every wrong path and never knowing why or how.

Back in summer 2012, this guy finally realized that during the song (summer 2007), he was going to greatly miss the greatest chance he could ever have. Adding more insult to the injury. Yes, 5 years later and the "too late" part finally came in 2013.

Soundtrack of Your Life

 At that time, he had chosen "I'm Still Here" by John Rzeznik

The typically emo-themed music from this Goo Goo Dolls frontman feels just right to him: 

And I want a moment to be real,
Wanna touch things I don't feel,
Wanna hold on and feel I belong.
And how can the world want me to change,
They’re the ones that stay the same.
They don’t know me,
'Cause I’m not here.

He was never really a popular guy, nor a bully subject. He was between the unseen, the geeks, the nerds that keeps to themselves. People will normally stay away from the association, but he couldn't find any better comfort rather than solitude.

When he wants to take on the whole world's advice of being "real." He was set back. Not only changing fashion was a task, changing your life pattern is a requirement. It taxes your sanity to be accepted by the lifeless people around you.

Being real is not real in its honest, pure, truthful meaning. "Real" as in what the world perceive to be "real." Including fantasies that the majorities were currently indulging in at that particular time.

So, as the lyric goes, it questions the world of who should have changed for real? Who understands him in the world of lies and deception? Or it simply means, he doesn't belong there.

He Belonged to Freedom

Of all posers, nobody would deny the awesomeness of showing off about having toured a foreign country, or speaking foreign jives. People yearn for the chance and totally abuse the privilege by being indignant in their indulgence over the new social status and appraising jealousy all around them.

Fate has put the guy sent into another world, where people doesn't define the boundaries between real or fantasy. The place where there are no voice telling every of us to change. Posers cannot see through all the lies that has blinded their eyes.

Like everyone living in exile, he only became wiser.

He began life and finally let it all go. His life was perfect. He was only 22.

He decided to return and sharing his life with whoever wanted to listen to him. He found many people like him, returning from exile, and has seen the different reality.

He kept his dream inside, not knowing that this world never changed. Only a few changed.

And suddenly, it is summer 2009. He was in the middle of Night At The Museum: Battle of The Smithsonian. He saw his hero Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) met Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams). A love for aviation and adventures, Amelia never cease to fill the imagination of every aviation enthusiasts around the world. When he saw her portrayed by beautiful actress Amy Adams, he was reminded about his dream. He couldn't be alone.

He was admired, but not listened. Youth is his fault.

He always believed that he was "too late" for something at that age. Yet the whole world still tells him all the same thing. It reminded him that the world has never changed. Only his dream kept him going on.

A Limit in A Human

On his way to reach his dream, he fell sick. He was too arrogant, filled with a little too much confidence. When he looked up, he then just realised that his dreams are only going further away from him. So he made that big decision to salvage whatever left out of it, and ready to sacrifice the big thing for it: his solitude and his lifetime hobby. He went back to love.

He completely forgot the "too late" part, seeking for the "real" answer coming from this world. Oblivious to all lies and blinded by the sickness, he seek for his dream of love.

But then he found out that he was nothing but on the losers' side that summer 2012. The story revealed that he was like 5 years too late. A chance he greatly missed to the world full of lies.

Believing that the game isn't over, he chose to consider himself as an underdog. He entered the waiting for the fall game. But he is simply looking for a cure he will never have.

So, in 2013 he finally accepted the answer. He was never belong to this world. His game is forever lost, he cannot afford another 2 years of recovery nor he has the chance to build up another dream. He is, forever sick, destined to die in solitude, just like how he was once prefer to spend his free time.

Nothing appreciates this man's life and death other than the mother nature itself. He was born from it, consumes all the sustenance that mother nature has provided him with. Then, when he dies, he returned every single thing to be absorbed back by the world that has once spawned him.

It came in that sad month of April. Because in every April, he remembers this film he treasured with his brother:

Yes, is April again... Every year in April the raining season starts. And every year, every day in April... The haunting emptiness descends over our hearts. Every year in April, i remember how quickly life ends. Every year, i remember how lucky i should feel to be alive. Every year in April... I remember.

Idris Elba brought that epilogue that ends Raoul Peck's Sometimes in April (2005). A story about 1994 Rwandan genocide that kills about 800,000 people. His character, Augustin Muganza lost his family during the event in a very tragic moment.

He shared the Rwandan people's sorrow, we were reminded that there are always much bigger tragedies out there worth remembering, bringing the melancholic side in every of our personality.

So does this guy in April 2013. Not every story has a happy ending, and his story never was, and never will be. For the law of balance, he serve to tip the balance in favour of many other people. Life is a see saw, he has just too much weight.

As always, he compiled his thoughts throughout the years and the moments of despair, April 2005 - April 2013.

Sometimes in April, it rains
Sometimes in April, we endure
Sometimes in April, we face the truth
Sometimes in April, we lie

When it rains
It washes down fading memories
When it rains
It freezes our heart with the feeling we must endure

Sometimes In April...

Career Advice of Indonesia: The Recent Trends

What is the best shot?

And that is the question...

The answer ranges from academical background, family connections, professional certifications, soft skills, speaking ability, looks, activities, hobbies, and many other things that you normally bring to the job-giver. But normally, people pick one of the most sought-after criterion out of those résumé-filling lists. They gave their reasoning, but they are so popular that most of the HR Department of any companies could second guess where do their candidates get their charming tips from.

Cheapest trick.
Is the academic background. People do everything to obtain one, thus forgery of such certificate becomes a business. Well, not to mention that the "real" certificate also costs a lot too, and time consuming as well. People aim specific career, thus they choose the most relevant study subject to their career of choice, hoping that it will buy the company people over.

The thing is, academic is just one factor, it shall come to nothing with regards to people's qualification. People with the best trick of the trade beats anyone who learned everything straight from the book. But if you seek for someone who would fulfill your demand for respect of that education, look for the alumni clusters, which usually overrun a good number of companies. Aim for prestigious education institution if you seek this.

In Indonesia, at least, people of my generation are confused bunch who look secondary education (university/college) as a safety net. They try to get some sense of security: security for their future career and security for their current state of life (being able to hang out with "those kind of people," acceptable to their parents, and looks safe). Thus they pick any subjects that won't put too much burden on them later on from a seemingly "safe" institution. Few willing to take risks to pursue their true passion and dig their talents further.

Blah...blah...blah...
Soft skills, speaking ability, social skills, connections, they all do help. But they are one of the most difficult traits to discover for every individuals. Some people might overrate their own skills, some might underrate it. Although this blog entry is written in less-than-serious manner, this is actually one important skills to consider when you are looking for jobs. These set of skills are mostly imprinted behavior or impacted by each individual's environment, but they can actually be changed, improved by simply reversing the causality. For example, if you never speak in front of the mirror before, now you should start doing it. If you never feel comfortable with your own voice, record yourself and try to listen it for hours, and many more. Joining a public speaking club will help a lot, since you will meet a lot of confident weirdos that are very willing to help each other.

In Indonesia and every other family-oriented countries, which are identifiable by how much family affair drama TV shows they produce (e.g. Indonesian sinetrons or Latin American, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese telenovelas), these skills are quite the primary.

The thing you love the most
At least for men, one cannot deny how our passion for a thing can't just fade away. It started from the childhood and it grew with us. They say, "boys never grow up, but their toys do, in size and price." That is somewhat true to real men. I drew cheesy planes, fly paper aircraft, and now playing high-fidelity flight simulator. This represents their real skills and their willingness to study a subject with some calling. This is what people call "talent," others call it a hobby or simply an interest.

In most developed countries, companies treat this thing seriously as it really fruitful for the company if they could find a good guy who would undertake painstakingly difficult effort in getting things done, just because they love doing it. In undeveloped countries like Indonesia and the rest of Asia and Africa, they only do this just to follow what those industrial nations do. And people normally cites "reading, swimming, browsing, listening to music" as their hobby, simple, neutral, but pointless, because they were never taught to pursue their passion with utmost calling. Back then, in my Catholic class, the teacher told us about Parable of the Talents, but most of the students just remember that to fill in the exam paper. Yes, during your career, many of you most probably are wasting your God-given gifts or talents in exchange for "realistic" thing such as monetary rewards or social status or parent's demand as in typical Asia.

Here we go... 

Now this is the most important thing: LOOKS. In Indonesia at least.

You can't go wrong if you got good looks. It is an observable trend amongst the people nowadays. See these evidences:   

No talents are required

Boybands and girlbands represents what is worse from industrialization of art from that is music. Originally, people with greatly tuned ear created some melody that is music. In the advent of technology, people began visualising musics, using videoclips, televised it to everybody so we can see what the original artists tried to interpret. But that doesn't sell enough, while the men still rule the world and their pride still high, the industry created boyband to fish out revenue from fangirls, because girls don't go to work. Now girls being the object, whose a common object to receive all the blame and it is socially acceptable to be silly.

But since men's ego took over, then came girlbands, yet with poorer musical taste, more sexual exploitation, and lesser art form. Girlbands that are trendy recently are those of cute, oriental looking, with whiny animic voices. It completely transforms what was once an art form into purely industrial exploitation that is commonly referred as "entertainment industries." It is now, a mass-produced audio-visual entertainment from what was once an elitist consumption produced by select few like Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky.
Girlband and boyband personnel are auditioned, carefully selected for the looks and (recently) attitude and characters in order to better suit its target audiences. For the "musical" side, they were intensively trained to sing and dance the best they could. It could be said that they are no better than you being a bus driver than them performing on stage, after all both of you will be intensively trained for the job anyway. They have a very short marginal utility, due to age constraints (audience preference factor) and from business point of view, should be exploited to the fullest while they still holds some value, thus you can normally see them starring in several heavily marketed mediocre movies and tie-in merchandises.
Now what?
Oh, it is "the more the better." The usual 3-5 singer format is now expanded to include 7-9 personnel, which typically sing a 4-5 minutes song. We never know who sings which part, but never mind, we never cared about their musical talents anyway.

Skill? Education background?

A friend of mine scored higher in his recruitment test, answer the interviewer questions' better (according to the interviewer's own testimony), have the interest most relevant to their business. His competition was this girl, scored slightly lower, but she won it. She simply "connects better when talking to me" bullshit was given as the excuse.
I can't say that looks matter here, but sexual preference also sells. And in this race, female wins big time. Most of the decision making power are in the hands of a male, and to avoid sex-bias decision making/opinion, financial institution top analysts and opinion makers are gays or inclining to be so.
I think we are going to see the reverse trend soon when those girls advanced through the ranks and finally made it into the decision making position. Then we will have males becoming the preferred sex in the job market.

You don't even need to learn

I am slightly good looking, not to say handsome, but adequate enough to pass the common "ugliness stare test" during the first meeting. That is probably why I got a rather good standings in the business. It is unfair to my weirdo, awkward-looking friends, but that is life. Fock it!
Now, doing the business, you require some basic knowledge about things you are going to do. But if you got the looks who the hell needs them?
This came from an annoying experience with some nice but quite incapable people. I got to work with some guys from other companies, usually with their IT department. I met with this one helpful and charming girl, she is nice and welcoming, but that is not what I was looking for. To make it short, she didn't know a thing about her IT environment, let alone some familiar IT terms like virtual servers, domain controller, anti virus update log report, etc. Gee thanks. We know she is in the IT department, but her main job is really to welcome guests and serves as the intermediary between us and their geeky technicians (who normally don't speak everyday languages, like I do).
It was a very pleasant view, but certainly not an enjoyable experience. I expect "IT people" to be more knowledgeable. There shouldn't be one guy sitting amongst the smarties just to look pretty and use his/her charm to work things around without actually making things right. Not even knowing a piece or two about computers, well, we should mourn for the jobless genius geeks out there. It is clearly another case of blatant sexual preference and looks.

When in Rome, you don't have to behave like Romans, if you are pretty

It came to me that amongst sexually-deprived society, you'll tolerate women more than you should. Especially, when they are slender, have a beauty features that are trendy, charming, and (look) nice. Even when you go around the most elite office towers along the main business districts of Jakarta, you can't miss those people. People who ogles, gawks, stares, at sexy (mostly) and beautiful (sometimes) ladies.

"That is normal,"

Of course, obviously, it is, but only to the point where you have to experience this: minor harassment. But I observed that some women actually exploit it for their own favour. That is a bold move I say. But when it comes to business, I cannot say anything besides that I usually commend more intelligible and honorable conduct to be carried out at any possibilities. Think of watching porns during working hour, then imagine how disgusting it is. That is what I think when people exploit their sexuality to gain something at work. However, that is only one way of doing it. The other way is to act innocent and play nice, despite knowing the dirty intentions. Slightly less than annoying, but it is still not comforting to know. People who can't be firm on their stance (especially regarding self-respect), can't even be called "professional," not even "maestro," the level which I aspire to be.

My experience varies between businesses. There is one girl who completely pursues a career out of her interest. She clings into her innocent thoughts that "people like her" should belong to that kind of position (e.g. sales and marketing). That's good, but please show us your real deal please, because business is helping other people to fulfill their needs for specific goods or service, not side-show entertainment. I know that sex sells, but it is a requirement to know what we are selling here. Sadly, they easily forgot that thing here.

And another one girl (again) acts like she is pretty innocent about how easy she got her job despite not knowing anything about the subject. So what the deuce is wrong here? I was talking to somebody who is quite smart actually, but her background couldn't speak any better than that: the family owns IT-related business, works in IT stuffs distributor, so the list goes on, building some amount of credibility in the IT field. But we all know about the common problem of every working people: you will never be happy with what you have. So it happens, she didn't gather some amount of knowledge regarding IT subjects, let alone the stuffs she is selling, like what processors do, why we should upgrade our memory, or how DDR3 differs from DDR2.

Opportunity knocks your door all the time!

It is difficult enough for normal, intelligent on average people to get a decent job at a decent place. But for pretty girls, or at least good-looking one, it takes much much much less effort than it normally does. One girl got an offer before she even graduated from her study! So how easy is that? With average intelligence, you can win a career opportunity, even if you have less interest in the subject than everybody else in the market.

Again, it is because of the principle that sex sells. Apparently, marketing position is ripe for pretty good looking ladies in Indonesia out there. Well, never mind, it is the first requirement when you apply for stewardess/flight attendant jobs, explicitly. You don't have to be smart, you don't have to know shit about airplanes, you just do the walk in, pass the stare test with some small talks they refer as "interview," and voila. We'll never met better looking junior flight attendants than ever. You can see them got scared by minor turbulence, being late in preparing the in-flight meals, some poor attitude towards passengers, missing few safety checks, SOPs, uniform apparels, etc. Because it doesn't matter, but looks does! So welcome to Indonesian working environment!

To get a job

You have to take care for your looks, that's it. I mean, you can't present yourself to other people as you please, but at least put some effort into it. Take the advice in less satirical way, because here is the catch:

It is not nice to get yourself dirty and smelly, then flail around and let everybody get a taste of that odour. Surely that can't be right, that's why we wear fragrances or deodorants. It is actually a part of a collective effort to help other people feeling more comfortable socialising in public places.

So, it should be the same thing to the eyes, not just the noses. We present ourselves to look good in front of other people, and making their times around us more comfortable. So why not polishing our looks? And especially, getting over that...insecurity...*barf*

Is making more money a science?

Making more money, have you ever notice the difference?

For all those of you, non-nonsense guys out there, actually there are two major branch of disciplines if you are into corporatism. One is economy and the other is business (economic term). Much later on, they develop more complicated things such as Finance, Accounting, and then Risk Management, and other complicated non civilisation-developing stuffs. Each of them getting too much unnecessary detail, which makes it become more and more pointless.

I have nothing against economic science, after all, it is the the kind of discipline that I was raised from. It is actually pretty much scientific: finding out how the population could sustain its needs given the known limited resources available for them to be gathered. Every RTS games will give you this one lesson from economy: limited resources will lead to war, that's their only single scenario. Like many other sciences, they have a lot of exact definition a concept but their theories are mostly bounded by certain conditions and cannot always give satisfying explanations for every real events out there.


Other than economy, it is her snobbish, lying, and so all-knowing sibling named business. Like every other science on the field, this is economy's practical knowledge, or more popularly: applied science. But, to honestly define this: it is dumbed-down half-assed scientific studies, so common doofuses could at least get a grip on it to actually put it on the show.


Capitalism and Socialism are few of many great economic theories resulted from thorough studies and deep thoughts. But it is always the practice that bring them both down. The way they done their business is commonly cited as the main cause. Capitalism often found a lot of ways to fool themselves into believing themselves that there is such amount of money, which is actually does not exist. Through its other "applied science," called Financial, it invented many estimates, which most of the times are less accurate than David Beckham's freekick taken 23 metres from the goalie. Socialism pretty much destroy itself when they tried to force-feed everyone with it a.k.a communism: taking away your freedom for bullshit. Instead of spreading the wealth fairly, it is putting the system in the hand of one know-it-all smartass, who we all know is going to ruin it. Communism is not in anyway a socialism, but it is actually one of socialism in business: a bad move.


Credibility always gives someone an access card to ultimate douchebaggery without known limits.

The sad thing is that, business has already been widely accepted. People easily buy the nonsense, because they simply believe in them, and the system works also based on trust alone. There has never been something like this besides religion. It is systematic, because there is a large cult of people willing to uphold such beliefs to be true. Besides, what makes the value of a US Dollar other than your worthless trust? The fear of chaos keeps people from seeking better alternatives, and instead they tend to shift the blame elsewhere, which is the very basic of business science. This is the science of fear-mongering and pointing out on obviously the wrong cases.


Economic activity translates to productivity, which is people doing things to fulfill their needs. In today's world, most needs is exchangeable with money. Money is becoming the main commodity of today. There is nothing to fear about other than having the wrong perception about money. Most non-economic persons absolutely have no idea about what money is besides their school textbooks (which mediocre Indonesian education curriculum explain it badly). And, yes money is a commodity, it is nothing more than a goods, it is a piece of paper, warranted by the government and endorsed by law. It's value is changing everyday like every other goods in the market.


To satisfy demands efficiently, people began developing industries, which improves the production process a lot, that makes once luxury goods become affordable to almost everyone. The potency of industries in fulfilling the needs of many at reasonable cost has become the main key to Socialism. Up to this stage, people are still talking about the economy. But then industries got bigger to satisfy more demands. Now, we came to the part where others are trying to milk from this ever-growing economy machine (or money-making machine).


This is called business. It takes care of your basic economic activity management so industries can now think on the bigger scale. It is like Total War game series, where your cities are being partially managed so you don't have to dip your hands into managing each town/village/cities' wheat productions, tax collections, sanitation, maintenance, public events, etc. The people who are in charge for these things are doing its business.


As technology and specialisation progress, economy has become even more complicated. An industry could have more than one specific task to fulfill and also more than one income source. We never give a damn about what happen inside Terran's barracks or Zerg spawning pool while they are producing units. Perhaps they have their own accountants, HR department, Finance department, procurement, IT staffs, production planning & inventory control, etc. They seemed normal, but you'll expect more from their production staffs, the one who will have more influence on the quality and the quantity of the units produced by them. It is not always the case in the real world. They don't have marketing/sales, because you'll clean up their inventory immediately when the units are coming out from their production line.


So what if you produce silly things such as cloth softener? Do you really need such thing? But don't worry, that is where marketing business came to light. When industries are so desperate on competing in saturated market, they opted to create their own market by producing goods that is never needed before, like an iPhone. That is still fine.

But then, too much resources are attention are dedicated to this alone, that now we pay people to talk nonsense about the prospect of the products that they know shit about. These people most probably never visited their factory or have any slightest idea about what is operating system kernel, nor processor cache memory is for, but they talk about how big the industry will be in the future. The funny thing is, people trust them instead of the industry or the producer itself.


Serious people talk business, but their intelligence level are never questioned. Seriously awesome people talk about their stuff, it has never been less than awesome.


Even funnier, they started another activity of creating series of transaction deals between several parties and sell the rights to execute that transaction to interested buyers. Is this even in the economy? What kind of stupid people relies their economy on such bullshit? But that is business, the science of making more money. They'll always find a way to make more money from stupid people.

Web Services in Indonesian Language (Bahasa Indonesia)?

10 bloody hell years too freaking late chaps!

I'll start at 16 years ago. It was 1995, translation service is a business back then. English was hip, United States has just won the cold war and is experiencing its great times. We studied English like science, it is stiff, numb, orthodox, archaic, textbook, and the tutor itself communicate in heavy accented English, yet near-perfect grammar.

Mid 1990s also saw the dawn of internet services, well not quite, but computer is the next big thing! I was given this brand new Compaq Presario 4780 with Intel Pentium MMX (233 MHz clock speed). That processor was hip at that time. SDRAM had been released recently, my PC has 32MB of it. Hard disk is 3.2 GB, quite big, took years to fill it up with datas and files. It has CD player, and stereo audio capability out of its Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card.

All was okay, but for a 9 years old child, whose first language is not English, learning to use them is quite a challenge. Most people would chose to interact with then very popular, console game machines like Sony PlayStation or Nintendo 64, which although use English as interface language, are more intuitive.

So, after 16 years, or 12 years for most other Indonesians, dealing with all English-based computer interfaces and internet sites, we are more than getting used to it.

Therefore I was like:
WTF is "tautan"? What is "gambar latar"? "beranda"?

Google is the worst offender. I downloaded Google Chrome browser, and they without any confirmation, gave me Indonesian interface! To be able to change it to English, I need to download the language pack. Holy crow!


News update! Even expedia.com now have its Indonesian website: http://www.expedia.co.id/


Although most of the terms used there are sensible, however I must point out another shitty thing about being specifically spoon-fed with your own cultural stereotypes and attempt to segregate internet users: REGIONAL CONTENT LOCKOUTS.


The hell? When I said Google is the worst offender, just try to remember when you are looking for an awesome Youtube video, then when you clicked on it, a message saying that the video is unavailable in your country shows up. Bam! Because you are not opening a computer in a specific geographic location, you cannot view it! Sometimes the content owner wanted to release it a later date, and they don't want people to leak it all over before their grand launch. But sometimes, you will never be able to view it at all unless you traveled to another country and connect to the internet from there.


Look at that expedia.co.id, the Indonesian expedia, they only had AirAsia group flights there. While the expedia.com have everything but Low Cost Airlines. Here is a clue for visitors: why not open AirAsia.com instead? Surely, they will have more promotional fares and other discount offers, while travel agents have to stick with their agent rates.


What we really need:

Surprisingly our government is correct this time. They require consumer goods and "brick & mortar" service providers to use Indonesian language in their products, labels, instruction manuals, agreements, etc. That's what we badly need, Malaysian language, although has been used long before in many international product distributions, are not fully understood by many Indonesians, with the exception of those living in Southern Sumatra area.

Meanwhile, for our younger generations, who seemingly are being fed with broken English by their foreign language-traumatized parents, please keep the English version as default in computer interfaces and websites. The Indonesian language as an option is perfectly fine, it will be even better, if they are not using superficial terms when translating.


My browser's spell checker will keep correcting my British English spellings to the American one, however I couldn't care any less, since the most important thing is that the audience could understand the content. By providing Indonesian language contents, it doesn't instantly mean your company can reach more audience. Another clue: most Indonesians that surf the internet intentionally expose themselves to English as one of ways to study the language.

We are not Europeans, we are proud of our language, it is spoken from Sabang to Merauke. It might sound cheesy nationalist propaganda. But when I visited Timika, 5 hours flight away from the capital and still be able to communicate with the locals, it will surely gives you a special feeling about this language.

While Europeans, having their own tiny country, desperately trying so hard to preserve their own not-so-unique language and culture from each other, only making life difficult for businesses everywhere. Why do I need an extra pages for Magyar, Sami, Suomi (tolerable for Nokia products), Latviešu, Eesti Keel, Makedonski, or whatever it is, for a camera that is being sold in Indonesia? That is a waste of natural resource and waste of cost. Heck, even their total population are not up to the number of Jakarta's everyday commuters.


There is Google in Javanese, as a Javanese, I found that pretty funny. I still spoke Javanese at home and in my family., but the roman version of Javanese is a bit off. If anyone ever wanted to print additional manual in Javanese, please see my European argument.

Textbook Lessons for Real

I used to diss Dell business case in many of my business class textbooks. They lauded it as an "exemplary success" in many study cases published across many publishers (Pearson, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, etc). It was 2004 then, but in 2005 they'll still say that it will be the next big thing if HP don't look out. Back then, China manufacturing corporation is not on the hype list.

It was the time when manufacturing everywhere can be "low cost." While at it, citing "low cost" by "eliminating middlemen" makes Dell have some "competitive advantage" over other competitors in term of cost and customization of the product. It is a complete bullshit lauded by many non-practicing professors and overrated scholars of the subject who probably never shop for a computer. Almost every computer can be customized, even the overpriced Alienware rig is customizable.

So, making business lessons interesting and wall-street headlines as interesting as gossip flash news. They crafted unintelligible lines such as

"Downsizing is sexy."

eeeew.... 


Cost-cutting is trendy back then. It goes as far as:


"Small is beautiful"


No, they are not talking about your hips, but the huge unemployment the article has created over the time, and in the end, reduce the overall domestic consumption, which hurts business. It argues the epitome of "flexibility" and "agility" of a company's reaction towards dynamic market condition. Being small, they are more maneuverable than their giant-sized rivals. But do they? What sort of reaction can a small company make when there is a giant meteor slams on your tiny office?


Business Analysis gotta be down-to-earth.
 
For non-lobbyist users, Dell is the worst service ever, their heavily praised "centralization" manufacturing & distribution center, and "elimination of middlemen" for the sake of cutting cost, has alienated many customers. Dell South East Asia is located in freakin Malaysia, 4th largest country in the region. Typical brilliant US entrepreneur's idea. If one's computer is broken in Vietnam or the Philippines, we ought to wait for parts from Malaysia (through Dell's representative in Vietnam) and wait for 2 freaking weeks to get it done. Acer and HP in the other hand, entrusted their local partner to handle the job and get it done in a day. Dell users, please kill your warranty already and find some cheap chop-shop technician to get it done! So, what business can wait for 2 weeks? What can kill them?

Apparently their inability to innovate is one thing that kills the "American idea on saving costs." Let's be blunt, Americans are never good at saving costs. When we tell them to save cost, they'll blame something for being too expensive and make a fuss about it.


Here is the list of what they'll most probably do when asked to save cost:

1. Fire workers or "downsize"
2. Put pressure on suppliers to reduce selling price
3. Eliminate services/functions and outsource them
4. Lobby the government for concessions

That is about how creative multi-billion dollar companies are. Even money-printing companies do the same exact thing. They'll fire people when they are pessimistic about the economy.


Ask people to do what they do best!

The solution is, not to try saving cost. The drive of American success really lies on this thing called innovation. We should have asked them to innovate. "Hey Mike! Please show me your magic on this boring-looking plastic box." And instead of him, it was Apple who did that. But even back in 2004 (6 years after Steve Jobs return to Apple), there not even a single mention of Apple there. In 2003 their iPod was already in the hype, but like most things IT, Wall Street analysts are too scared for another bubble. And college professors, academicians will naturally echoes the sentiment.


Uh-oh


Obama and his predecessors loved to blame their economic misery on low cost manipulation. Since Bush Jr. administration already done the 4th and the 3rd, Obama's political party belief simply do not allow him to use the 1st. So he used the 2nd: Put pressure on suppliers to reduce selling price. They are printing more paper money to reduce their value, and their costs in the end. Like most cost-saving measures the American tried to do in the past, this is bound to be a failure, for sure.

Reminder for today: How to Win the World

Back in the day when you can take someone's possession without feeling bad about it, the only sin that is greater than that probably is "making the rightful owner silent" about it. In other words, kill the poor bastard, but that's the only way people can think about at that time.

Then you can become a ninja, killing people without being noticed. Maybe pirates, who can pillage and going rampage, for the fun of it. They are the badasses of their time. The goals are all the same: taking what is not rightfully yours a.k.a. stealing, looting, robbing, snatching those things you wanted, whatever it is.

Today there is a new kind of warfare that many non multi-tasker are so hype about: the internet wars, the web wars, communication war, whatever it is. But they think that modern wars are fought in cyber world besides the physical world, where the classic blood and gore is still the main serving. It is war in the information age, thus we call them information war. People won't stop inventing new terms for the concept that we all already "get it alright?" Because it is somehow cool to be the first to coin the term. It is like spam fest or gaming statwhores.


Before we finish it, they already change the shiznit to something they call knowledge era. It was known for the IT buffs that Information Technology is a means to process raw data into information and from information into knowledge, therefore we now have evolved into the latter. Suddenly, a lot of minds exploded, they thought this is beyond normal. To evolve from one epoch to another in mere decades is highly unthinkable... before..


It took like centuries for people to develop technologies such as steam engines, a working machine finally. This is the ultimate weapon of that day, making repetitive action faster and more efficient, increasing production, speed, and capacity. They can power bigger ships, move bigger guns across the battlefield, and yield more death tolls.


Centuries later, people found information network. It is said that world war 2 was mostly won by intelligence. It what makes KGB and CIA so big after the war, they are simply very important and the big guys realized how important they are during such event. We enhance the way we exchange, process, and keep information using technologies, which is the very purpose of IT science. The awesomeness is like combining a ninja and a maphack system, the assassin knows exactly where the enemies are and where the poor bastard target is, and what is their behavior pattern, making his job far easier.

So, instead of walking on the ceiling or doing awesome acrobatics, ninja are no longer slim and athletic, but they can be a fat lazy trap-setting assholes who lays there watching it all day to see if the fools took the bait and gotcha. That's great! It is very hard to find athletic people, but to make lazy fat guy as efficient as badass ninja is quite a brilliant idea!


People are now dragged to the idea of getting the information firsthand, while it is still hot and fresh. News is one of the freshest source of information, they are like commodities today.


If we were really in an information age, then why large IT companies are facing difficulties? We see Yahoo! and HP are failing they have swift change of leadership in such short amount of time. Then we no longer hear the hype of Cisco, Sun Microsystems, or even IBM, where the hell are they? Even hardware makers are becoming fashionable, like Apple, a proof that technology has been deprived of its marketable dignity. They choose fashion instead! How is that, to think of one day in the future, a spaceship can has its own "attitude" like your fancy gadgets, triple Thiokol iMaIn-Space 89S bio-powered rocket boosters, organic lime green and blue ocean breeze paint jobs.

Anyway, behold on the power of the...

Mass Media

They are as powerful as they are resourceful. The business relies on supplying the needs of the trendiest commodities of that era: information, fresh and hot ones. They hold power over public opinion, and many have total impunity from greatest power ever known to man, even God himself became a victim to the mass media. It is all for the sake of freedom of information.

You cannot escape media portrayal  and their after-effects. It is all about hotness and freshness... little concerns the accuracy. Oh jeez, that's too late already. Was this news legit?

No one knows for sure, nobody even know how to check for accuracy of a news. But no one can deny if a news is hot and fresh. Now now now... to win the world, we need to have some:

 

Organic news accuracy checker

This will be a great business and we will be profiting from it! It gave us power and control over things that run like hell in their hey days, which is nowadays.