September 6, 2008 at 2:17 am · Filed under Jakarta, Indonesia, Personal
I had commented on local taxi drivers on my previous post: “Things I disked about Jakarta“. If that blog is not bad enough, then this is going to be one smelly posting about them.
I sat on a Blue Bird taxi this morning, reached my office via TOL (highway) on 59000 rp. I gave the taxi-driver 62000 rp, an additional 3000 rp for tipping. However, my product manager infomed me that the receptionist had called for me, saying that I paid less for the taxi fare. I paid 12000 rp instead of 59000 rp.
In Indonesia (putting the coins aside), you have notes in:
1000 rp, 5000 rp, 10000 rp, 20000 rp, 50000 rp & 100000 rp. And the max is 100000 rp. So if you bring 2 millions rp (and above), imagine the amount of notes you’ll be carrying with you…
So coming back, I remembered very clearly that I passed him a piece of 50000 rp, a piece of 10000 rp and additional two pieces of 1000 rp. So you do know how he has 12000 rp? I have been taking this trip from Puri Casablanca to WTC Manga Dua for 3 months. You think I fish don’t know that I need to pay 50000 rp above per trip? Like it or not, I spent potentially 100000 rp a day for taxi fares!!
He created a small scene in my ground floor reception area by digging in and pulling out his empty pockets, keeps pointing to the 12000 rp notes and gave me that “sorry-but-you-really-never-give-me” smile. You intend to “eat” the 50000 rp, of course it will not be in your pocket, turtle!
Let me just tell you this, there is no way I am running away from 50000 rp taxi fare. A trip from my place to Sinarmas World School in Serpong already cost me 150000 rp per trip, about 300 k rp for the whole journey! I spent about 4 millions rp last month on Taxi Fare. Now, will you feel that I am trying to save my transportation by short-change him 50000 rp??
Their “dignity” and “honesty” made me puke. Ruined my morning, if not the whole day because of this incident. You cannot calm me down and say this is an isolated incidednt, don’t allow such person or services to spoilt my day. The whole Jakarta is filled with dishonest, rude and unprofessional taxi drivers, regardless of which company they belonged to. And I, a Singaporean who will be staying here with my worker permit, has to travel via Cabs. The languages, the dis-organized public transportations, the traffic made it impossible for me to choose another alternative!
I am very sick of these..
September 5, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under Personal
Sujuan said that I now, tend to blog with more pictures.
Of course, my dear. Consider now I am armed with my Nokia E71 (a.k.a Stella), I am able to take very interesting pictures of Jakarta. Those you see everyday and those which the local govt would not want you to see anyway…
This is me and TJ favorite “makan” place which served Korean BBQ. Owned & managed by Korean. The lady boss is a very nice lady.
There will be a “server” who help you with the “BBQ”. Basically, you just order and eat. The “server” will cook, fried, cut and serve you. For meats, you can have pork or beef.
The place is designed to give you the very-korea-feel. Which is no surprise why many korean workers visited this place everyday.
So the “servers” are dressed with orange apron. You can see the whole dining place is very “Korea”. Noticed that there are pipes to every table. That is to suck out the smoke from the BBQ. Idea ah? Well, the place is called:
Chung Gi Wa
Jl.Darmawangsa 3 no 2
Tel: 7261924
5th Aug 2008, me and my two other colleague decided to do something very different. Instead of going to the regular places we always go for lunch, we decided to have Pizza instead. However, to order the pizza in is kinda boring, so we decided to go all the way to Manga Dua Mal and eat. Don’t be confused bu Manga Dua (Bahasa, it stands for “Two Mangos”. There is a few Manga Dua around here. WTC Manga Dua, Manga Dua Square, Manga Dua Mal, ITC Manga Dua..
So actually, there are more than two mangos.. Right? 
We had a small situation when we were about to proceed, we could not get a car. When we made the decision to go, it is already past 12 plus. Those with cars are already on their way for lunch. We could not get a cab because the taxi driver will slap you as the distance is too short. It is like a 20 mins walk (but for Singaporean pace, it is only about 10 mins). So for the first time in my life, I took a “BAJAJ”.
7000 rp (Sing 1 dollar) for 3 pax, 1.5km ride. Not bad ah? It is a rocky ride, but for 33 cents a person, you really cannot complaint. After all, we reached there safely.
We order the Pizza Lunch set for 4. 4 pan of small pizza, 1 long garlic bread and 4 glasses of coke for 60000 rp (Sing 9 dollars and 20 cents only). Cheap like hell man…
We had a small chat, they still don’t believed that I had walked from Jl. Gunung Sahari Raya (our office) to Jl. Hayam Wuruk. I told them that it is only 40 mins max for me. I enjoyed looking at the city & streets while listening to my iPod playing my favorite music.
I walked again to Jl. Hayam Wuruk again for dinner. Along the way, took a few more shots with my Nokia E71.
This road you see here is a 3 lanes road. As mentioned in my earlier post, some taxis and buses will stopped by the left side of the road and stop there, just to wait for more passengers. Imagine the stalls and bikes here took up a lane, then the taxis and buses took up another. Now imagine that there are some bikes and cars wanted to make a left, right or U-turn..
At this hour when I took this shot, the traffic is still not jammed yet. In fact, I started to suspect that the traffic in Jakarta is not really THAT heavy, it is always jammed because of all these inconsiderate-illegal-parking. Taxis and Buses stopped as they like, Food stalls and bikes parked as they want.
If you look closely at the overhead bridge, this is perhaps one of the most artistic bridge I’ve seen in my life. With roof support steel pillars but w/o the roof itself. I called it the-bare-naked-bridge.
The above shot shows you that transportation in Jakarta can really come in various kinds. You can have Buses, Taxis, Bajaj, Bikes and Bicycles..
There is this special service by a company where their motorists will ride you (it is not a car, so I cannot use the word “drive” right?) to your destination. Just no air con, hard seat and plenty of sunshine and smoke. There are even private motorist who provide you this kind of service.
For those who could not afford to have a Bike for this kinda occupation, they turned to Bicycle. They include a additional seat behind and they “slowly” ride you to your destination. No air con, hard seat, lots of sunshine and smoke, all bundled with a longer time to reach your destination.
Idea ah? Haha..
September 5, 2008 at 9:10 am · Filed under Work, Network, Jakarta, Indonesia, Technology, Personal
I must admit that I was quite disappointed with the fact Google only released their beta browser in Windows XP / Vista version… This is sad, where is the Love? Consider Googling has becomes quite tightly integrated in our Macintosh-Lifestyle..
Google gave the news off on Monday that they will be releasing a browser of their own, in comic style. I’d compiled it and make it into .CBZ format. It is really interesting to have software company to release information on their up coming product in form of comic.
If you have comicbooklover install in your Mac, you may want to download the compiled version HERE.
Hey, .CBZ format is generic! You can read it on Windows too.
Nevertheless, I still do my best to grab a hold of it. It is really easy to download a version of it, all you need to do is the type the same address to get to Google : http://www.google.com & you will see a link immdiately that ask you if you want to download “Chrome“:
I was quite upset with the entire setup. Consider the fact that I am living in Indonesia, my google.com keep pointing to google.co.id (Indo Google), as you can see from the picture above. As an result, I got a Bahasa Chrome..
I sincerly believed that Google Software Engineers (the best brains in Silicon Valley), will include languages setting in their browser. However, due to serious language barrier, I really have problems navigating around the menu. I dun get much help from my local friends too. Translation is never clear.. Side track a bit.. If I ask for a cup of coffee from the maid, my friend will help me to translate my request.. And the end result is:
*The maid got me Coffee packets instead* &*$%@# 
Eventually I gave up. So I uninstall my Bahasa Chrome, and I point my browser to http://www.google.com/chrome to download a English version.
To my dismayed, due to the fact that I configured my XP to support Chinese unicode software & installed East Asian Languages, my “supposed-to-be” English version of Chrome had turned out to be Chinese version…
I really have no idea why it is so hard to download a actual English version of Chrome? I may be the only person with such bad luck. However, the fact that now it is in a language I am well-versed in, I am able to get to the preferences to change the settings. And thru these, I am able to find out more about Google Chrome.
1. Google Chrome will be available in more than 40 languages.
2. You can assign Google Chrome to open a few of your favorite sites when you start it up.
3. No biased, you can add in your favorite search engines….
This beta version can be downloaded for “FREE”, and its code will be open source too. I think I like Chrome, much better than Firefox in Windows. The general view of Chrome is really awesome. I like it, even without adding additional theme.
And of course, I run it via Parallel Desktop.
September 4, 2008 at 11:10 am · Filed under Jakarta, Indonesia, Personal
I am not trying to find mistakes with the local government, consider they are not exactly having the best times. Situations are bad enough as they have Lawmakers (Ministers) and Governors being implicated for corruption
(better known as graft with locals) on daily basis. My “Jakarta Post” newspaper are 75% filled with corruption news of the local government.
However, I can never understand why and how they can ignore the level of pollution they are enjoying in their city. If I am armed with a DSLR, I will tour around the city and bring great shots to post it up on my flickr account.
Below are just a few shots I took with my lovely Nokia E71 (a.k.a Stella), right outside my work area
:Look closely, you will really see the “pain”…
The water in the drain.. is not moving to anywhere..In fact, I don’t think they have a drainage system here. So the water cum the rubbish, cum the whatever ingredients included inside.. will stay floated and slowly become clotted. And yes, you are looking at the clotted layer of the ^&*#$
It has been there, if I am not wrong, longer than me in Indonesia. Imagine the smell now..
September 3, 2008 at 3:39 am · Filed under Network, Indonesia, Technology
I came across this not too long ago from Joy Of Tech:
You may ask yourself, what so funny about it? Default: Linksys??
If you don’t get the joke, that is because you never setup a wireless network before. And again, you don’t have to be a network engineer to know how to do it. To setup wireless network (especially with Macintosh) is really quite simple.
Usually, these router retail packages are quite flashy. They have lots and lots of specifications printed on the box so you can have more information. And most of the time, a basic consumer will not understand more than half of what is written there. Nevertheless, you will see something very common:
“INSERT CD FIRST“, such stickers are printed big and pasted on one corner of the retail box where you cannot avoid. Beside, the CD are meant for Windows installation, not for Macintoshs.
So how do Mac Users setup a Linksys router? Here are the steps:
1. Connect the router to your modem via the supplied Ethernet cord and the port marked ‘Internet’.
2. Connect the router to your Mac via Ethernet (cable).
3. Open a browser to http://192.168.1.1
4. Leave the Username empty and type in the Password 'admin'.
*For more information on Router Default Username and Password, please refer to the table below:
There you are, into the heart of the Router where you can set your personal configurations. Enter all your ISP’s settings, set password to your network and name your new wireless network something other than ‘linksys’.
You only need to enter your ISP information only if you are running from ADSL modem, or using ADSL Router. Most network are using DSL Cable Modem so it is auto connect. And here is acutally one big problem. Many home users tend to stop there once they are able to use their wireless network. They kinda forgot to set a password, let alone changing the name of their wireless network.
So if I know your default network name is Linksys, guess what is my 2nd step? Understand the joke now?
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