I'm so tired...
Listening to: Dakota - Stereophonics
---
A lot of things pissed me off lately. Starting from the most recent one... A post office experience exactly 2 hours ago.

Mark Adams, one of my top 5 bestfriends, was celebrating his 30th birthday 3 days ago. I was talking to him over the phone last month when he told me his anxiety about it. I could relate. I was so panicked when I was about to get 25 last year. So I planned to give him a more special birthday gift this year.

I had two of my recent photography works printed for him last week. 10R each. 25 cm x 20 cm. I knew he'd like them for they were self-made. But I just got the chance to send it over this afternoon.

I took my bike at the lunch time and rode it to the nearest post-office. I never went there so I got a little lost. But I was way too smart to be lost for the third time (shit, yes, I took the wrong turn like about twice). I found the small post office and handed in the big envelope I brought to one of two clerks there. There were only 2 customers there... one, I should say -- myself. The other non-clerk person didn't seem like wanting to post something.

Anyway, he glanced to the front part of my letter and said:
"What's in it?" *hands touching and guessing the letter*
"Pictures and a birthday card," I replied.
"OK, well, I can serve you now, but I can't guarantee it will be sent to the person mentioned."
"What do you mean?" *pissed*
"I mean, the main post office would probably be curious if it was really pictures and a card in there. So the custom might need to check that."
"So let them check. I've nothing to hide there. But what's it to do with your not being sent statement?"
"Well.. the thing is, you're sending something to Australia. And at this moment any package sent to or received from there is under a tight check."
"It's not a package. It's a document."
"They wouldn't know, I'm afraid. You might get a letter from them to come there to clarify your package."
"It's NOT a package, and I don't mind going there if it's really necessary. I'm just wondering why you would have a post office over here if it didn't really function. But anyway, I do not need to pay more if I do indeed get the letter from the custom, do I?"
"I don't know, Miss. We can't guarantee..."

Fuck it, man. I'm sending it now cause I'm already here. I don't feel the need to debate you more cause you don't seem to know ANYTHING at all. If they do charge me more than I need to, I'll bitch the authorities later!
What could be more frustrating than today?
  1. It's Monday.
  2. Lacking sleep.
  3. Arriving at the office to find that I was not wanted in the room where I had to sit while our working room upstairs was being fixed, for the reason that I was blocking the aircon.
  4. Moving to Veve's temporary desk in the main room for less than 15 minutes to be moved again to our own room.
  5. Re-cleaning the desk, books and CD's for the maid was only doing the floor.
  6. Went to Galaxy Mall at lunch to reserve some seats for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie tonight, to find out that the seats left are those in the very front of screen.
  7. Went back to the office and found out that my Adobe Photoshop CS did not work! I had to uninstall and reinstall it but there was some problem in the CD. Looked for Yunus, who usually helped technical problems at the office, but he's nowhere to be found.
  8. Missed Kenny again.
So now I'm sitting here without nothing to do. What else should I do at work when there is no Photoshop? It's my breath here!

I guess I'll need to write this in my activity report:
1. Room cleaning.
2. Browsing for pics and neat-imaging.

Lame.
Fresh from the oven... taken less than an hour ago... Let's welcome, the winners of our forum competition!

1st Place.

















Our trusted photographer, Nyo, unfortunately failed to meet winner. So we'll have to keep his picture in the shadow before the related person reveales himself to public. You can, however, cheer out for him. :)

2nd Place.

















Me -- Carla Ardian. *clap clap*

Third Place.

















Eva Natalia, alias Iyem. YAY! A very respective effort of herself to hit the third place, especially since she realises that her English is somewhat basic. But she tried hard anyway. Congrats, Iyem!!!!

Fourth Place.


















Vebby Anastasia, alias Veve, alias wacky serenade.
No one expected her to come out as a winner, since she didn't seem to be interested in joining the competition. She apparently changed her mind when nearing the contest deadline, and sped up till she placed herself as the top fourth post-er in altoentertainment forum.

Fifth Place.

















Lisa Gunawan, alias Gabus.
Proudly presents: Gabus!!!!! As the fifth winner. Rather like Iyem, she doesn't speak English fluently, but I always admire her willingness to learn. She also made her way pretty quickly in the last minute of the competition, thus she deserves to get Rp 100,000 voucher from Sogo. Congratulations, Gabus!

----- Non-Winners, but contributed significantly in having this post up:
Carla - the author.
Nyo - the photographer.
Bo - the cheerleader.

-----
Bonus photo:















Bo.
Mood: Resting
Reading: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
---
Ggggrrraaaahhhhhhh...
It's been so damn busy weeks!
Unfortunately not in the sense that I was being productive at work.
My boss held this contest of submitting the most good quality posts at our company's new celebrities forum. The 5 top post-ers will get 5 shopping vouchers from Sogo, Matahari and Carrefour. And though at first I was not so interested in joining the crap where I've known almost nothing about celebrities, I want a pair of walking/hiking shoes. So I was determined to win one of the vouchers. If I can get the shoes I want cheaper, why not?
It turned out that it was not a quality forum after all. Especially because of the existence of this member called shadow. There's no doubt that he goes for the vouchers my boss was offering, cause he replied basically almost every post, without even understanding what the post was discussing about. His comments are simply lame, boring and particularly un-clever it made the other members quickly lose their patience. Including me.
But anyway, it was over yesterday (thank God) and the winners were announced today. I'm in the second place (YAY, a Rp 400,000 voucher), and shadow is in the first. Still, it was kinda disappointing that Vera didn't check the so-called quality posts. She shouldn't have mentioned it at all in the beginning if she didn't plan to check it. If quantity was what mattered the most, I wouldn't put so much mind into making clever posts.

Last weekend was great, though. I was invited to join a photo hunting with the Surabayan photographers in Kenjeran beach. There were two sessions, sunrise and models. It was the biggest Surabayan photo hunting sessions, they said. Attended by about 30-40 photographers, I sure met a hell lot of cool people there. The knowledge sharing was nice, too. Though the jokes were SO typical men ones (there were probably only 5 female photographers there), it was all fun and interesting. I shot soooo many cool pics it really made my day.
I was pretty suffering from waking up too early, though (4 in the morning), but it was definitely most satisfying.

My body hurt all over as soon as I got home. I guess the "falling" session I had earlier took part in being one of the causes. Yeah... audience, the FOURTH [reported] Carla's most popular clumsiness is ON!!!
I was trying to get a better angle in shooting the sunrise at that time, so I climbed a sort of cement bridge. I was pretty much absorbed in the particularly astounding view in front of me and my camera I forgot that I was standing in an unlevel ground. When I was done with my shots, I turned my body and swayed my foot to find a different place to shoot. The next thing can easily be predicted.
I fell. In front of about 7 random visitors there. Nobody helped me, of course. Instead, a bakso seller mocked me sarcastically, "Lapo seh kok tibo, mbak?" -- translation: Why did you fall, Miss?
Why did you think I would INTENTIONALLY fall, asshole? Didn't you see it was an accident?

I left the stupid laughing people and went on shooting. My knees were bruised bluish purple and they really hurt, but I was too excited to worry about it.

Official report on Jawa Pos, Surabaya local newspaper: [link]
And from fotografer.net forum..

ANYWAY... here are some of the shots I did.


Got this from Juz' page. Just for fun and the questions are really crappy, but I guess the result is pretty correct. :D Except the hiding my true feeling.. I used to when I was younger, but not anymore.

HASH(0x8c8ff40)
You are a cat person. You are independant and very
self-rigious. You have a mind of your own and
are not afraid to show it. You tend to hide
your true feelings and get frustrated (easy).

Who are you inside?

---

Wallpaper of the day
Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
It is not other people that hurt you with their words or acts.
It is you that hurts yourself for letting your heart get hurt.

And oh, how I enjoy hurting myself all the time.
And oh, how I wish I stopped finding the truth.
Mood: Meditative

---
Denni Permadi Gautama.

He was a co-worker at Excellogix, the website publisher company I'm working at at present. On 31 October 2005 he officially resigned from Excellogix, to pursue a bigger career in Jakarta, so we made this little gathering before going home.

We usually have a kind of testimonial time when someone's out. But with Denni, we never have anything usual. He's a person who always bluntly comments (most of the time, negatively) over people's personality or work. And with Denni, we are forced to do the same to him (to defend ourselves). Naturally there have been just too many testimonials being exchanged during his two-year time here. So the session was skipped.

We spent most of our time taking his pictures, together or with one of us. The other members had some design printed on a white T-Shirt we gave him as a farewell gift (+ our signatures), and he was forced to wear it at once.

I guess I'll skip the details and jump to a more interesting thing that we didn't do at the farewell party: testimonial over Denni.

Well, I always know him as a big guy who adores food and computer games more than anything in the world. His brain seems to be made of millions of tiny, delicate, smart computer chips built in the computer and his mouth is as fast and sharp as a two-headed knife. The two things above have made him particularly most peculiar among the other workmates. Not sure if that means positive or negative, but I guess from the amount of things he's got for leaving this office -- the personalized T-Shirt, a pencil drawing of him and his girlfriend from Iyem and Freddy, a self-designed wall decoration from us, and later from me a new website layout for his blog -- he's more well-liked than hated. Or is it the other way around? He got much more things than the other ex-workmates cause we encourage him to leave? Hahaha.. Naw, just kidding.

Anyway, I'd like to thank Denni for taking me home when we were still in night shift. Our houses are somewhat in the same track, but he still had to go around much farther in order to drop me at home. Thank you for helping me out in some complicated PHP codes. Thank you for listening to my rants. Thank you for being a matching debate sparing partner. Thank you for the foods you shared. Thank you for being a relatively, annoyingly but truly honest person (we need more of that type in this country). Thank you for being yourself.

Good luck with your love and career in Jakarta. And bye... for now. :D

Carla.
Mood: Comatose
Reading: Desires & Deceptions by Jasmine Cresswell

--

Sometimes I just make things more complicated than they should be.
Sometimes it seems like the most simple thing in the world is to hug the warm darkness and never wake up.
Sometimes it's just so frustrating to embrace the cooling air.
Sometimes the past and the future are more beautiful than the sucking present; but when the now-present passes and becomes the past, it is judged to be the most convinient.

Sometimes I just want to get my brain out of my head and think of nothing.