life's like this - avianto's journal

Life, currently: Less writing, more taking photos. More on flickr

I am following the herd, some people tagged or asked me to do this, so I comply. Here they are: I’d been living in 4 countries until now; Indonesia (most of the time), Germany, Canada and United States (currently) and visited more than a dozen countries. I hold a bachelor in Architecture but never worked as an architect, I prefer architecture as a way of life not as a work for living. I used to smoke a lot, not anymore right now except for an occasionally collapse of good judgement. Despite used to be a heavy smoker, I never use / Read more …

This entry is overdue a couple of days. I was moving to New York City and will be working with Research Foundation of City University of New York. It will be a new adventure to start a whole new year. This entry is about my long travel from Jakarta to New York. Some of you were keep asking me about this, so here it is. Enjoy. SQ 967, Jakarta - Singapore My first flight was using Singapore Airlines. Not much happening during the flight, it was a short flight, around 1 hour. Landed at Terminal 3, Changi Airport around 10 / Read more …

It’s been a while, isn’t it? It is not because real life™ is taking over but there are many exciting things happened around the online environment too. Microblogging Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku and even Facebook’s status are becoming my main vent of online presence. Writing in those so-called microblog platform is so convenient and easy, so writing a long article in this blog seems like a very challenging task. Not to mention nowadays I rarely had time to think and analyze things thoughtfully. Instead of writing a half-thought entry, I rather wrote a simple and direct thought about… well, everything / Read more …

is the number that has the meaning “good will always triumph over evil” is the code for international direct-dial phone calls to France is the age of Alexander the Great when he died is the atomic number of arsenic is a significant number in modern numerology, one of the master numbers along with 11 and 22 is the title of the first episode of the new Battlestar Galactica television series is the number of vertebrae in a normal human spine is not the answer to life, the universe and everything. It’s still 42. is also the number of years / Read more …

According to Wikipedia: Dengue fever (IPA: /ˈdɛŋgeɪ/) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are acute febrile diseases, found in the tropics and Africa, with a geographical spread similar to malaria. One major difference, however, is that malaria is often eradicated in major cities, whereas dengue is often found in urban areas of developed tropical nations, including Singapore, Taiwan and Brazil. Caused by one of four closely related virus serotypes of the genus Flavivirus, family Flaviviridae, each serotype is sufficiently different that there is no cross-protection and epidemics caused by multiple serotypes (hyperendemicity) can occur. Dengue is transmitted to humans by the / Read more …

After more than 1.5 years out of daily job circle, last Wednesday I officially started my day by sitting inside my new office, Carat Indonesia. Not inside a cubicle, fortunately, but in a comfortable room, around 2x2 m2 with a comfortable chair, a huge desk and a wireframe trash bin that look exactly like a default Mac OS X Tiger’s trash bin (Yeah, I know it’s weird to make a reference about a trash bin - but I just couldn’t help it.). There are still some leftover stuff from the previous resident of this room, I had no idea what / Read more …

It’s the time of the year again. End of year. I’d been overwhelmed with Real Life™ lately and the end of year phase was not really helping me to slow down either. So yeah, sorry for the lack of update lately. There were many issues need to be resolved before the new year comes. 2007 Recap For me, 2007 was a decent year. Not too great but not too terrible. Meet dozens new interesting people, some actually played a great deal in my life now. Doing dozens of projects, some of them were great and interesting while the rest could / Read more …

Sorry for the long absence, I just took my sabbatical time off from computer and internet, well, not entirely but I just tried to get away from technology for a while and of course still busy with life, Ramadhan and Ied. Happy Ied For those who celebrated Ied, Happy Ied, may this year Ramadhan be a blessing and hopefully we all came out as a better person than before. Let us learned from our mistakes and do our best in the next year to come. Bless you all. Ied’s SMS Starting a couple of years ago, since cell phone became / Read more …

No, it’s not the question for Kenneth and it doesn’t have any connection whatsoever with the meaning of that amazing song. It is a catch phrase I love to say when I am talking about ‘Social Network’. What is ‘Social Network’? According to Wikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. I like the radio and frequency analogy / Read more …

It’s been exactly two years since my last entry. It was too long, wasn’t it? Many things happened in two years. Especially in this information age. So where was I? The story so far I won’t bother to tell what happened in the last two years, some stories might shows up from time to time in my next entries, but for now, let me simplified it by saying “It wasn’t what I hope it would be”. But the last two years was not a complete disaster. Not at all. It was a very appreciated learning experience. Some experiences taught me / Read more …

Well, I know that I already bored you with my pathetic rants and raves but excuse me, it’s just my condition right now is not as good as it was. Heck, I don’t even think that I ever been this low. Consider that, I was thinking, how could things get worse? Well, it could tho but what the hell, I will get it thru somehow. I remember when I was “trained” back in college (For those who know the word “OS” or “OSPEK”, you know what I mean), I always joked around and said; “Well, this is tough and painful / Read more …

Another week of ‘nothing happening except it just keep getting worse’. That was one hell of a week, a week where nothing went right and end up with I got hit by a bike (Fortunately, I am okay or was it unfortunately? I have no freaking idea.), my ATM card swallowed by the ATM, a couple of rejection letter (I am getting good at being rejected, great) and still wondering what the hell am I doing now. Never been so low before, heck, I never even been this pesimistic. But shit did happened, quite a lot, and I don’t know / Read more …

I want to get back on my feet again. I want to be able wake up in the morning thinking about the next greatest thing I want to do today. I want to breath the fresh air of life. I want to say positive words. I want to look out from my window and see the great future lies ahead. I want to fly high and beyond the reach of stars. I want to stand still against the tornado with high confidence that I will survive. But the fact is I have nothing now. Nothing. I have no life, no / Read more …

Here I am in Berlin. More lost than ever. It’s rainy and grey today, so is my feeling. Sinked and drowned. *Sigh*. Bring back those good ol’ days Nothing feels right, nothing ever goes my way I threw my future away Now I walk alone out here in the cold… Wandering astray Where’s my future? Gonna need a home You’d expect the same, now wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you? Your journey back to birth its haunting you its haunting you Your departure from the earth, its haunting you, its haunting you Lyric from Bug Eyes by Dredg / Read more …

I will be moving to Berlin tomorrow afternoon. Not because I’ve got a job there, not because I am bored with Lübeck but because I am simply broke. I am still looking for a job now (Here’s my resume in case you or somebody you know interested on hiring me.), so I don’t have regular income. I am practically supporting myself by doing some freelance works, not much but sufficient enough to maintain my survival for a couple of months. But it will be painful if I have to pay rent also. So with the courtesy of my best friend / Read more …

If you think my lack of update since my last entry was because I was relaxing after my defense then you were wrong. Dead wrong. Here’s the situation: I am broke. I have more or less € 11.000 worth of education (not including living cost), a Master degree and a life to enjoy but all of this process left me with a minus bank account (a couple hundreds short), a late apartment’s bill and jobless. What a life. The next logical step is of course looking for a job as I already did but no luck so far, that’s fine, / Read more …

It’s been almost two weeks since the last official birthday announcement of mine ;). Been busy with lots of stuff, something what I usually called “Real Life™”. Here are some recap, in case you want to know, well… even if you don’t want to know, I’ll write it anyway. Thesis’ News Not much. Just finished writing three of my supposed to be five chapters. Those two missing chapters are “Introduction” and “Conclusion”. Yeah, I know it’s kinda strange to work from the middle (I was starting with chapter III) but it worked, at least for me. So yeah, the ‘soft’ / Read more …

… is the atomic number of zinc. … is the number of days in the months April, June, September and November. … is in years of marriage, the pearl wedding anniversary. … is the code for international direct dial phone calls to Greece. … is the suggested year of Crucifixion of Jesus. … is the biggest size of Apple Cinema Display now. … is the designation of Interstate 30, a freeway that runs from Texas to Arkansas. … is the number of tracks on The Beatles’ eponymous album, usually known as The White Album. … is the number of / Read more …

Writing thesis, one chapter each week. Yeah, right. That was the idea until last week. I was about to send one chapter to my advisor when I thought it would be better if I read it once again. Big mistake. As I read it again, I thought "Wait a minute... This is not what I want to say. What was I thinking? Why did I wrote this non-sense?" Gnah! Anyway, to make the long story short, I've to spent the entire last week to rewrite that chapter again. Nice week, indeed. But just writing thesis with no play will make / Read more …

It's been a while, eh? Been busy with thesis and other stuff in life. The thesis progress is painfully slow, as always. Been working on other stuffs too, most of them are web development kind of work. I'll let you know when they are done. Got my student visa extended until July 2005. What a relief, at least I don't have to worry for another 4 months or so. Still looking for an apartment on my own now, right now I am occupying a couch in friend's living room. Thanks [Gerd][]! What else? Hm, the spring is coming. The temperature / Read more …

I’ve been working on my Research Report for my thesis in some wee late hours currently. I found out that I was better operated after dark and not just because the school is turning pretty quiet but also the environment became enjoyable while there is only me and probably one or two other people around - it’s even better when nobody around. Of course, working at late hours also mean that I experienced lack of sleep, I rarely sleep back at my apartment nowadays, well, to be honest I only went back home to take a shower. If this school / Read more …

Sorry for the lack of updates and thanks for those who were looking for me considering the catastrophy, my family and friends are fine, as far as I know but I might know some people that lost their friends and families and I offered my condolences and sorry for not helping much. It was such a gigantic proportion tragedy and my mind is still trying to comprehend it. If you want to help those people who are in need, I believe there are many organizations that will accept your help and donation. As a reminder tho, I will not recommend / Read more …

Another out of the blue question about your life. “What were you in High School?”. A jock, a nerd, a brain, a bully, a ghost, a teacher’s pet or? I was a jack of all trades =). I was a vice president for the high school comitee, an active member of photography club, not bad in classes (except for the 2nd year, but who’s getting good marks in the 2nd year and still enjoy high school? grin), excellent with math (I wonder where the hell is that skill goes), always going out partying or involved in car drag racing every / Read more …

Ied Mubarak to everyone who celebrates it! Not much to say here unless may Ramadhan make the best out of you this year and for upcoming year. / Read more …

Ayu’s father passed away today afternoon (around 11am, GMT +7). He was an extraordinary person, a great father and one of a few person that I really respect and adore. He will be missed as a great man and father by everybody that knew him. My deepest condolence to Ayu and her family (her mother, Rahma and Nino). I am sorry I couldn’t do anything more than just called but my prayer is always with him. Please, take a silence moment and pray for him… / Read more …

I will still saying the same words like last year: The month of contemplation and self-reflection. The month that slowly lost its true meaning to most of the people. The month of understanding, cleaning the soul and recognize the meaning of being human. It is a great and holy month for people to realize their existence and what is their purpose in life. To all of you that do Ramadhan’s fasting, may Allah bless all of us. / Read more …

I will be leaving Germany tomorrow morning. I will be doing my research for my Master thesis at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Yup, I will cross the Atlantic Ocean this year. I will be staying in Ottawa until January 2005 and will return to Lübeck, Germany to finish my Master thesis. Another chapter of my life, another experience and another journey. Beside doing my research I may look for the opportunity to continue my education after I get my Master degree. Yes, I am interested on getting my Ph.D. Me? Ph.D.? Well, some of you who knew my Bachelor’s / Read more …

First of all, thank you to all of you who wish me luck, I finally got my visa! It’s a working visa, since the regulation said that as a visiting researcher I am basically is an employee of the research department who hosted me, and it valid until the end of January 2005. So, yes, I will leave Germany sometime next week to … Ah, I believe some of you already know where I will be going ;). But I need to get my plane ticket first. Tomorrow I will buy the ticket, it will be damn expensive since it / Read more …

Farewell denise. It’s been great knowing you! Wish you a great life and future ahead. One of my best friend here in Lübeck was leaving this afternoon. She went back to her country beyond the Atlantic Ocean. She is a good friend regardless her frantic behavior and “rush in the end” attitude =). But everybody have their own flaws and I know that her greatness is way much beyond her flaws. So, thank you d for being a friend! Hope to seeing you again! / Read more …

I’ll be leaving Lübeck tomorrow to Saas Fee. I will be my professor’s personal assistance and attending his lectures and seminars for EGS on their Summer Residency Program. It will be some busy days and of course it will be fun and enlightening since the lecture and seminar are just exactly in the area of my study interest. So unless I could find internet connection there I don’t think I can write anything here until I come back. Anyway, have a good weekend everyone. See you soon and have a good time! / Read more …

… is to apply for visa. Well, to where? Can’t tell you right now but most of you probably already know where I will go for my study abroad ;). And if you didn’t know already maybe you can take a guess. It’s a country that as an Indonesian you will need a visa. It is not any of the Schengen countries because I won’t need a visa since I have my a Germany student residence (Aufenthaltsbewilligung). So any wild guess? Anyway, I am really looking forward to get my visa as soon and as painless as possible. Being Indonesian / Read more …

I am exhausted… Totally tired… But I am relieved. My first year at ISNM is officially finished. Well, still need to finish a couple of small things and assignments but no more classes and lectures. Our open house went well and I am quite satisfied with the result. Next step will be secure my place for my study abroad program (Third semester at ISNM means that you must have some kind of credit study from outside ISNM and usually with other universities or company outside Germany). Where? I can’t tell you right now as it will be a surprise ;) / Read more …

Been very very busy lately. It’s the end of my second semester (still one semester to go) and we all here are busy preparing for our school’s Open House. Editing film, preparing IR beacon, finishing project website, finishing game design project and lots of lots stuff need to be done before Friday. Go to the projects list page and see how many projects that I involved with. So yeah, just steal some time from my lunch break. I have to get busy again now. Laters! / Read more …

I love you and thank you for your support through out these years! You are really an awesome mom! I am so proud of you! Now you are getting older and wiser I hope that I’ve made yourself proud to have me as your son. Love you!!! / Read more …

This update had been delayed for ages. Well, better late than never =). I presented you the new layout for this journal. Some major changes including: * Change the way to navigate, right now I have only three links (it’s expandable) to major section: journal (this main page), archives (all the links to previous entries are in this page) and colophon (it’s also known as ‘about’ section). * Adding small icons around, I just love small icons =). * Change the XHTML structure. Well, it’s not visible but it is more structurized, honest! * 100% pure built with Mac, so / Read more …

It’s gonna be some busy weeks ahead from today. A couple of assignments (Digital Film Production, Game Design, Digital Library and not to mention my own independent study) will surely occupy me enough. After that, the examination week and after that, my second semester will be finished. Quick, eh? Well, until then… wish me luck with all of those assigments. / Read more …

Lack of updates always mean that I am busy… (or lazy). But for now I must say that I am really busy with lots of stuff… school stuff mostly. Readings, assignments, lectures and else… And all of them really taking quite lot of efforts and not to mention that this semester is my last semester with lectures. Yes, the second semester is almost done and after this we are on our own to do study abroad and write the master thesis. Well, until then hopefully I could manage all of this schedule, it’s really overwhelming… wish me luck ;) / Read more …

How many keys do you have in your keychain? I just realize that since I arrived in Germany I have loads of keys in my keychain and it’s not just me, seems like everyone I know also have loads of them in their pocket. Let me see, I have a key for my bike’s lock, a key for my apartment’s main door, a key for my apartment, a key for my mailbox, a key for my school’s door, a key for my locker and a key for my friend’s bike lock. Total: 7 keys… Quite a lot, eh? Compare it / Read more …

Summer is here (hopefully). So it’s time for the Summer Edition. Well, I know I promise a new layout but I’ve been very busy lately and didn’t have time to play with new stuff so instead of ignoring the incoming summer I just made a couple of change (Thanks to CSS technology, it just took me less than 10 minutes minus the image editing of course). Yes, today is very warm… It’s hot in fact, let see if the weather will be this gorgeous in the incoming days. Laters. / Read more …

This is weird. While the weather turn out to be okay, my body can not comprehend with sudden change of temperature (from 8°C to 21°C in just one day) =(. So yeah, I am catching a little bit of cold now. Sneezing while the weather is gorgeous is not very exciting but yeah, I think I will recover soon if I could get some good rest (which will be hard since I’ve lots of things to do considering school and others). Anyway, hopefully this kind of weather will be here for a couple of months to come, after all it / Read more …

I am back! After a couple of days dealing with only the real world now I have to find my own flow in my so-called-normal life, which is my school life. Timmendorf’s Playa del Tango was a success event, it’s over and done gracefully but it was in the past now and I just put it on the box and let it flows in the stream of time. It’s over and nothing can be said about it anymore. Now I just realize that I have lot of things to catch up and I’ve better do it soon, at least this / Read more …

I have a very interesting discussion about ‘talent’ in Godote’s Forum. I used to believe in ‘talent’ but nowadays the concept of ‘talent’ seems a little bit annoying and useless. What if you have talent? Makes you better than other people? How to ‘measure’ your talent? Scalable from 1 to 10? And what happened if your talent scores lower than the other? Is that make you ‘less’ talented? See the absurdity of the concept of talent? Why don’t we just do what we like or want to do and put a real hard work on that? I think that probably / Read more …

Well, I have decided to change some small things on this website of mine. First of all, it’s all about consistency. By now you probably already notice the new navigation bar on top of the website and it will show up in every avianto.com websites like this journal and my photolog. Second, avianto.com is a participant in May 1st Reboot. So, new layout is on the way. Third, I also change the size of the photos in Photolog. They will be bigger now. Hopefully they will be load as fast as the previous size… Let me know if you feel / Read more …

One of the good thing about attending the international school is meeting many people from different background and cultures. It is an interesting way to learn good international interaction. But… It’s really a pain in the neck when someone use that cultural differences as a shield to their own ignorance and stupidity. They always use that cultural stuff as their argument why they are acting like an asshole. They always asked to be respected for their own culture but in the other hand they are not even pay any respect to other culture that probably too different to them. They / Read more …

If you’re naturally kind, you attract a lot of people you don’t like. William Feather Find that quote from one of Dunstan’s entry. And that exatcly the way I feel this time. Being kind was not one of may natural habits a couple of months ago. I used to be called rude, cynical, pesimistic and other “unkind” habits but since some shaking experiences and a totally change environment I’ve been thru months ago I do really trying to be kind. Kind to the world, people, my life and everything. But today I really feel a little bit annoyed with / Read more …

It’s 29 in German… And that is the age that I achieved yesterday. The last bastion before jumping into the 30’s. Lots of questions popping in my head as I reach the border of my 20’s years. What did I already achieved? Did I’ve done something significant in my life? Did I actually made some differences? Those kind of questions always be my major questions in life, universe and everything else. So, I’ll do time travel to the future just like everyone else… one minute at a time. / Read more …

OK, so I fixed my Photolog and also made a new layout for it. It was hard to update the photos every day since I found that my camera is rather cumbersome for me to carry it everyday. So I am thinking about buying a cheap and small yet compact digital camera so I could carry it around everyday and keep my not-so-compact one for some very serious events. So, until then I am truly sorry for the lack of updates on the photolog but enjoy the new layout =) / Read more …

It’s second semester already. Already attended 2 classes, which are quite interesting. So, the summer semester was already began but the weather still kinda sort-of-winter… Nothing much interested beside my school lately. Some ripples in the wave of life, my life, other’s life but it still manageable. As long as we always move on… Life will be just fine… / Read more …

My mom sent me an sms saying that my house in Jakarta got broken into yesterday. Casualties: 2 TVs, LD and VCD player, 2 of my used cell phones (without chargers), some of my mom's jewelry and my computer (except the monitor which is quite huge to drag along)... Quite a lot, eh? It happened sometime yesterday when my mom was away because she went to Bandung to visit a funeral. Well, just as I received the sms, I called my mom to make sure that she's okay and not shocked... It turned out that she's okay and she said / Read more …

Some words that I should have said before... The Reason Hoobastank I'm not a perfect person As many things I wish I didn't do But I continue learning I never meant to do those things to you And so I have to say before I go That I just want you to know I've found a reason for me To change who I used to be A reason to start over new and the reason is You I'm sorry that I hurt you It's something I must live with everyday And all the pain I put you through I wish / Read more …