Dirty Politics ?

If one asks you, “how do you describe politic in one word ?” How would your answer be ?
Dirty ? Power ? Disgrace ? Interesting ?
The answers might vary, but I guess the first one would be one of the top answers.
How wrong is it with politics anyway ? Why some people despise it so much ?

Personally I’m not against politic, but somehow I don’t see myself involve in politics. Haha.. not when I’m not a good speaker. Not when I don’t deliver excellent speech. Not when I don’t like being in the spotlight just like the glamorous life of celebrities. An observer might be more suitable for me I think.

Speaking about politics, I’m wondering if there’re still “clean” politicians out there. There must be people as clean as the white paper, but once they step in into the politic stage, will they stay as clean as they were and not contaminated by those filthy ? Hmm.. not sure.

Newspaper headlines in the past weeks have been revolving around corruption scandal involving former parliament member from PDIP, Agus Condro. Another dark side of Indonesia politics. He bluntly admitted receiving a sum of 500 million rupiahs after the election of Miranda Goeltom as the senior deputy of Central Bank Governor. Case open! And it was identified that the practice has been there for so long time.. Interesting! Looking forward to the resolution of this case.

The funny thing to me is why Agus Condro didn’t admit it earlier. Why he should wait after so many years to come out with such statement. Hmm.. don’t know, maybe it’s only now that he suddenly receive some lights and is remorseful of what he did. But it sounds more like someone who tries to blow thing up when he doesn’t get what he want. Hehe.. conspiracy theory ?

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Bronze Medal for Maria Kristin!

Sometimes the result comes from the least unexpected. This is exactly what happened in Indonesia participation in Beijing Olympics. Just moment ago, Maria Kristin Yulianti clinched the bronze medal for Indonesia after overcoming Chinese powerhorse Lu Lan in three-set game : 11-21, 21-13, 21-15. Phew.. Anyone predicted this result ? I bet no.. Who would have predicted Indonesia will get the bronze medal given the supremacy of Chinese Girls who have dominated the world of women badminton over the years? Not when Maria Kristin is only ranked 21 in the world, 19 places below her opponent.

Watch the match in TVRI, and must admit that the first set is really easy for Lu.  Maria seems to start slowly, given the impression that Lu is going to stroll to an easy win. But things change in second set when Maria turns to dictate Lu. Tense in third set after Maria stretches her lead to 10 points yet to be reduced to just 4. Finally Maria finds the touch to end the game! A remarkable achievement.

Well done Maria! Keep going! Bring home the gold in 4 years time. Your achievement is far better than our male single players! For PBSI official up there. You should take a look at this! Please do not treat our female badminton players as step-children. Please give them chance to compete overseas to enrich their experience, not only just focusing on male players.

Three bronzes in hand now. Still in contention for Gold in Mixed Doubles and Men Doubles. I’m predicting gold in mixed doubles and silver in Men Doubles.. But I’m more than happy to be wrong. Who knows they can bring home 2 golds!

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Distorting Information?

Into fifth days of Olympics, one routine I do everyday (or twice a day) is checking on official olympic website to have some updates, medal tally, record breaking, as well as Indonesian athletes’ progress. Apart from this, I also check my personal email in Yahoo! by which I usually type http://www.yahoo.com in the address bar of my browser, followed by clicking the email icon. Today, I find an interesting and amusing thing. Distorting or misleading information ?

Look at this screen scrap from Yahoo!

Anything wrong with the above ? Not really.. Just notice that the way they present the information is slightly different from previous days.

A moment later, I visited official website of Olympics, and this is what I saw.

haha… Gotcha! See the difference ?

I don’t know why Yahoo! is changing the way the information is presented. I remember yesterday and days before, they showed the # Gold medal instead of total medal (including silver and bronze). Maybe they want to “save US face” or in Chinese “Ai Mian Zi?” given the fact that each day the Chinese are getting further and further away?

Maybe, some might argue that this is not distorting information, since US is indeed clinching 21 medals to date. But for me, it’s just funny. If you want to stick to # total medal, you should have done it since the first day. Strange, isn’t it ? Never have I heard that sport competition is decided by total number of medals.

Your view ?

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One World One Dream..

The world biggest sport party : Olympics kicked off just two days ago on auspicious time of 08.08.08 – 08:08 PM in Beijing, China. All eight, the most popular number for Chinese people due to the similar pronounciation as in “wealth”.

I happen to miss the opening ceremony screened live by our very old TVRI (shame on private TV stations) due to culinary hunting at Festival Jajanan Bango :-p.  When nearly all the medias report how spectacular the opening ceremony was, I just couldn’t keep myself from browsing the internet to look for the pictures and was really “wowed” by what I saw.

These are some pictures taken from the opening ceremony (from Yahoo!)
Stunning Bird Nest Stadium

Inside the Stadium : Opening Ceremony

Olympic Flame

Fireworks

Simply awesome and beautiful. How I wish I was inside the stadium to see the opening ceremony. It was mentioned that the rich 5,000 years of Chinese history was brought into one night show. It got to be spectacular. Gotta search on YouTube later!

One World One Dream is the theme. Simple yet powerful. The event will be held till August 24 which can’t surely be missed by fanatic sport fans all over the world.

For the competition itself, I’m cheering for the Chinese team to take on the overall champion. While United States is so strong particularly in Swimming and Athletics, I think the Chinese have all it takes to edge the Uncle Sam. Shooting, Gymnastics, and Badminton have a pretty good chance of medal overhaul for the Chinese. Not to mention diving and table tennis.

As for Indonesia Team, it’s not that I’m not nationalist. Although I’m also cheering for Indonesian gold, realistically speaking I think we need to work extremely hard to clinch the gold medal. The chance is there but in front of home crowd, it’d be quite a challenge for our athlete.

The biggest chance will almost certainly come from weightlifting and badminton. I think Indonesia team have a pretty good chance in three events, Weightlifting male 56 kg through Eko Yuli Irawan, Badminton Mixed Doubles (Flandy Limpele/Vita Marissa & Nova Widianto / Vita Marissa) and Badminton Men’s Doubles (Markis Kido / Hendra Setiawan). I’m predicting three golds at most for Indonesia. One gold is okay, two gold is a bonus, three gold is fantastic! No gold ? Under achieved !

For olympics update, visit official Beijing Olympics 2008 website here

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Hello World…

Hello World! This phrase reminds me of the first time I learned how to write a program using Pascal Language in college almost 8 years ago.. Wow! Don’t know exactly why this phrase is chosen. Why not “Hi There..” ? 🙂

This is my second blog having had the first one in Friendster (Check out my old posts here : http://cychlone.blogs.friendster.com/cychlones_blog/). It works just fine, but think that it’s not that flexible to manage and the features are somehow limited.

This blog is just really about simple writings. My opinions, reviews, critics, and all sort of ideas I want to share, not specific to certain topics. But of course it’ll touch most of my interests here.

Cheers,

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