Don't you miss my clumsy stories?

Well, I thought I had taken that label off of me long time ago since I have become fully efficient, organized and careful.

Not tonight, though.

It was raining when I was about to leave the office for my French course. Being rather late to the class, I rushed to my Honda motorcycle, opened up the seating to get my raincoat inside the compartment, absentmindedly dropped my bike key in it and in seconds clicked the seating closed.

Then an obvious question popped up:

"How am I going to start the engine with the key inside the locked compartment?"

Sluggishly, I walked back inside the office, told my boss the story and asked if I could borrow his motorbike instead. Then I went straight home and skipped my class once again.
7:21 pm
This post is to give you an advance notice that I will be submitting posts in Bahasa Indonesia in the next couple of weeks in relation with my wish to enter the Festival Jajanan Bango blog contest. I mean, combine food and photography and writing, how can I possibly get away from this Rp 100 million in total prize contest?

Okay, wish me luck.
11:08 pm

Okay, after so many denials and much reluctance on joining different social networking sites (except facebook which I find very useful in finding long lost old friends), I was down to Twitter, too, eventually.

That is after I asked a few people who invited me what Twitter is good for. No one gave me a satisfying answer. Vitria, one of those who invite me there, says: "I'm confused as well. So I'm getting more people to be as confused as I am."

The best answer was from Baby Waskito, saying that it only functioned as a status update.

I have no idea why people would want to bother making an account that functions as a status update of what they're doing right now. But one advantage that I notice is that it is open for public view, where in facebook - depending what your setting is like - most of the time your page is only for the eyes of your approved friends.

So I signed up on Twitter to the advantage of letting my fans (and future clients) know what I'm doing mostly in regards to my photography activities.

Here's the link to my twitter account if you wish to follow me.

http://twitter.com/cbardian
3:06 pm
I'm not sure whether it is wise to be friends with your boss.

There are indeed a lot of positivity that can be gained to cheer up the working environment. Boss happy, employees happy; it means a maximum result. You can stretch yourself dedicating more for your job even when you don't need to.

But being friends means you have the liberty to say more of what is in your mind. And I always thought I knew the line. And I still stand to the belief that I didn't do anything wrong. I may have been a little bit outspoken (which I always have) but no bad intention was to follow my statements.

Too bad these statements have brought situations where it was unpleasant for him, and now me. And the talk comes back to boss-employee relationship again. Who pays and who is paid.

So are you friends with your boss?
8:48 am
Sorry for the long delay. Life has been mysteriously hectic (that includes the fascination over TV series Lost and Prison Break so I couldn't get myself away from the telli).

Anyway, I've made a big decision to focus only on photography. In a month or two I'll be resigning from my present journalist job and will be a freelance photographer. [It feels weird to address myself so... professionally... but feels good anyway] So that's why I've been busy updating my portfolio and preparing pricelist and learning about copyrights etc.

I'm almost there and I'm dead anxious to see how it will come out. But I have a faith on myself and am pretty sure it will work fine if not great.

In the mean time check my website and see my photoblog I just made (powered by wordpress). And let me know what you think of it. Let me know also if you want me to be your photographer. ;)
12:12 pm
It took me 3 days to finally see the view from my hotel room at Hermes Palace. Wasn't bad, but wasn't exactly spectacular, either.

Work

It was hectic today. Fabio and I were at breakfast at 8 something when he got a call that 2 luxurious hotels in Jakarta were bombed. They were the Ritz Carlton Hotel and J.W. Marriott Hotel.

Speculations emerged soon after the bombing which killed 9 people, 2 of them being completely destroyed. Some security analysts said that although it was too early to decide who was behind this, there was a possibility that Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) was behind this. Politicians linked the bombing to the election since it was just a little while ago the Presidential election of Indonesia was conducted.



In the mean time, Indonesian football enthusiasts were deeply disappointed and angered by the occurence that soon after the news went worldwide, famous English club Manchester United had to cancel their trip to Indonesia given the fact that they were supposedly to be staying in Ritz Carlton hotel.



So we spent the day going for rounds of live interviews with the government of Aceh while in the mean time making calls to some analysts so that Fabio could write it in the 30 minutes to one hour window time he had within one interview and another.

Change of ticket

We survived the day, nevertheless. And I've decided to stay longer to see more of Aceh. Vincent did not like the idea, but I hardly saw anything during my three-day stay. I just had to change my Garuda ticket so that I could go home on Sunday.

World Bank Aceh staff

I like them. They're sweet, friendly, very accommodating, and helpful. Some of them like photography and so I shared some of photography tips with them and they almost immediately thought that I was a pro photographer.

"I am not," I said, "But I will be."

That's a positive thing to say about your future career. Hehe...

This is Dhea. She works at the front office and she definitely has an interesting face. I also found out that Dhea and the other WB girls seemed to collect cute stuff and display them on their desks. Look at this one over here.

Food

One of the most important things in my travel is the specialty food of the region I'm visiting. I made some research in advance and decided that I wanted to eat Ayam Tangkap, just because of its name. Ayam means chicken and Tangkap (verb) means to catch. Wasted name like that caught my interest. I mean of course you have to catch the chicken first before you kill it and cook it, right? Anyway, below is Ayam Tangkap.

Review: I have to go rough this time, I'm sorry. But ayam tangkap is not that much of a special food. It consists of small pieces of chicken that are deepfried along with some herbs of I don't remember what kind (I don't think I've ever heard it before). I liked the fried greens but the chicken was just.... ordinary.
6:46 am








Those are some pictures I took on day two. It was a busy day and I didn't go out much. I've got one short comment, though.

Culture.

One of the things that made me curious about Aceh is to see how the sharia law is implemented here. Indonesia may not be an Islam country, but it has more Muslims than any country in the world. However, the spread of them is not the same in each region. Bali, for example, is dominated by the Hindus. While Aceh is obviously dominated by Muslims - not quite the moderate ones judging from the fact that it is the only province in Indonesia where sharia law is implemented side by side with the government law.

In an interview with the culture department of Aceh two years ago, I knew that the sharia law was imposed to the Muslims, and not the non-Muslims. However, I feel the need to respect their culture.

Whilst staying at a nice hotel with a nice swimming pool (plus with the alarming signal I got when I stood in front of the mirror and saw that I had three layers of tummy), I thought I'd go for a swim. The problem is: I only have a bikini. So I asked one of the World Bank/MDF staff here, Friesca, if it was okay for me to wear a bikini to swim.

"I think it's okay. But you need to tell the receptionist that you're going to swim so that they could close all the curtains that see through the lobby area and the restaurant."

Really?

I immediately thought it was not worth the embarassment. If they're embarrassed, I think I should too. No?

Warung Kopi

Warung kopi (coffee shop) in Aceh is very popular. It is not the same with the filthy small warung kopi in Java, or fancy warung kopi in Bali, leave alone the easy-access-of-weed coffee shops in the Netherlands. But it is a warung kopi a size of decent warung or restaurant with a 32-inch flat screen TV. I was told that it was a place where people hang out the most.

What I wasn't told was that women don't normally go to warung kopi.

So I arrived there with Fabio and two other men from the MDF to find out that I was the only woman coming there. When the waiter came over, he took a note on everybody's order and of course I would like to have the famous kopi Aceh.

One of the guys said, "Really? You drink coffee?"

Interesting.

I am still to find out whether Acehnese women do drink coffee or if it is the privilege of the men.
1:04 pm
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