I stole it from a friend who posted this quote on her facebook status, which says:

"If you want to do something wrong, do it right."

I absolutely agree with it since it relates to my other all-time quote: "Don't do things by halves."
So basically if you wanna be evil, just be 100% it. Think of it smartly. Plan it carefully. Try to get as minimum effect (on yourself) as possible.

You'll be called sinful anyway, no matter how big or small your being evil is.

Cheers, mate!
The article I worked so hard for the Vietnamese East and West magazine is up! Both in prints and online. Prints are only available in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. I guess if you want to push it, there may be some in Jakarta, but I'm not sure. If you fly with Lufthansa, you'll find it in this May 2009 edition.

I take the credit of both text and photographs, though some are of the courtesy of Mozaic restaurant.

Download the article here.

YAY FOR ME!!!!
I have a few accounts in some photography sites like DeviantArt (DA), UseFilm and Fotografer.net (FN). I absolutely have no problem with the international art sites. If not a compliment, I will get constructive feedbacks every now and then from the other users, which is good.

However, I am sometimes troubled with the Indonesian photo site, Fotografer.net. I mean I think it is normal to also mingle with the other photographers in the country if you want to progress in the real photography world, right? But I hardly get constructive feedbacks. Even in the former days when I first joined it like 4 or 5 years ago, the comments would disappoint me as in you would think that they were clueless of what to say. And it seemed that people just commented because they had to comment in at least 2 photos before submitting an art (FN's rule). And they didn't give a damn to it.

Nowadays, I see more progress in the attitude of the users and that's why I start uploading photos again. But a slightly annoying thing strikes me again. Not as bad as the useless comments I mentioned above. But it is the culture of addressing people (in this case, me).

Indonesians cannot not address the person they are talking to. If you're not a close friend of a person, you just don't call him/her by the first name only (or last name only). You will have to put Mbak, Mas, Kak, Dik, Om, Tante, Pak, Bu, Bli, etc. I could go on and on and make a book of the various types of addressing people in Indonesia but let's just leave it right there. Anyway, I should emphasize that I have NO PROBLEM with the Indonesian addressing culture. I think it's respectful and polite and there is nothing wrong with it.

But when addressing people is a must, you should always check whom you are talking to first. Like I just submitted a photo on FN this morning. In 15 minutes I got five comments, three of which addressed me as a MALE photographer [click the image to see a larger version].

Now I was wondering... is it the pre-assumption that photographers are always males that made me deserve to be called Bro or Om? Or does the name Carla sound like a boy's name? Or is it simply an ignorance to double check the photographer?

Anyway... I'm not too upset or anything. But if it was due to the reason of the stereotype of male photographers or ignorance, I think it is just too bad. I think many, many, many Indonesians are good photographers. They shoot like pros and they are surely able to compete in the international photography world with the quality of the photos they have. But if such attitude is maintained, I'm not sure if that will last long.

Just like the other type of jobs, no matter how good you are as a cook, journalist, programmer, teacher or how beautiful you are as a model, you'll be out of the industry soon if you don't have the right attitude.
I'm terrible at gardening. I mean I never bothered to try. Just to imagine how dirty my hands would set me off in the very first thought of gardening.

But my new place is too big and dark and dull without plants. So I bought a pot of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums last month. I was happy for 2 weeks, but I got reckless. I forgot to water the chrysanthemums for 3 days and they soon were looking like they were dying. I saw 2 buds that were becoming grey and I immediately tried to save them. I threw away the dying/died clumps of the chrysanthemum so that the soil could provide maximum nutrition for the buds. And I forced myself to water them everyday. I think I saved them. For now.

Then I thought maybe I didn't have a chemistry with flowers. So I bought three more pots of green plants (with no flower). One took a week to dry up and look dying. But the other two are going strong. [Yay!]

So since I had died plants some of which I threw away, that means I had unused soil. Once when I was cooking, I saw that my garlic was running bad. And the brilliant me came up with this genius idea, not to throw the garlic away, but to put it inside the unused soil to grow.

I watered it everyday and in three days I could already see the bud sprouting out of the ground. I was soooo.... excited to see it! This one worked!! I'll see if it stays alive one more week, and I may plant some seeds of chili, onion, lime etc! This way I don't need to go to Carrefour anymore to buy these kinds of ingredients!