Lost in Currency?

When we talk about national identities, what will come across our mind ? For me, they’d be Flag, National Anthem, National Language, and last but not least, the Currency. Those are the pride of the nation. We have our own flag – “Merah Putih”, our own national anthem “Indonesia Raya”, our own language of “Bahasa Indonesia” and “Rupiah” as our currency. I have no dare to claim that I’m a truly nationalist, but in my opinion, in regards to currency, we should use Rupiah in our day to day domestic transaction.  But somehow I found an astonishing fact when I was browsing the internet to search any flight promotion (Yes, I’m searching for air ticket again for Medan trip later in December) :p

This is the screenshot from Batavia Airlines website for the ticket reservation.

Look at the fare for the ticket. Wow, in US Dollar! How can that be ? At first I thought I made a mistake in the homescreen of the site where there was question whether we browse from Indonesia or other countries and also on our language preference (Bahasa Indonesia or English). I chose Indonesia and English. I thought the USD rate was due to choice of English as language. But then when I switched to Bahasa Indonesia, there was no change in the currency either. What a surprise!

In my opinion, any transactions should use Rupiah currency, with exceptions for international related such as flight and maybe some transactions in area of border line, lie in between Indonesia and other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

I find Batavia’s decision to change its fare from Rupiah to US Dollar is particularly driven by business reason, in the wake of weakening Rupiah following global financial turmoil. Perhaps the costs borne by the airlines are mostly in US Dollar so that they have to find way to balance their books, one of them is by charging in US Dollars. But again, it’s rather unacceptable. If other companies follow this way, the demand for dollar will continue to rise, people will ditch Rupiah for safer haven in US Dollar which in turn will exacerbate the downfall of Rupiah. As I write this post, the latest exchange rate at Yahoo Finance! is USD 1 for IDR 11.050, representing an almost 20% depreciation in just one and a half months.

To my surprise, our Central Bank Governor was quoted about the worrying fall of Rupiah yesterday (when Rupiah passed IDR 10,000 barrier) and his response was “There’s nothing special”! Wow what a statement. Although it’s due to impact of global financial crisis, the government ought to do something to prevent further steep fall. If not taken properly, sooner or later, this will impact companies with foreign currency debt. More and more companies will fail, retrenchment to follow, unemployment will rise. That’s the domino effect. I’m not an economist nor a financial expert but trust that the officials up there know what they are going to do.. hopefully..

Strangely, it’s United States who has the financial crisis, but US Dollar continues to strengthen against other countries (except Yen). What a jinx you are Uncle Sam! You’re the one on crisis, yet you drag other countries to drown with you..

Check & Re-check!

Sounds like one of the infotainments which are now spreading like mushroom in the rainy season ? No no.. this one is not about celebrities’ gossip, divorce, marriage or whatsoever. Check and Re-check, area that I’d like to highlight is the quality of the news, articles or writings published for public consumptions. Sometimes I wonder if there’re some sanity checks performed for the writings before they are being published. Well, I expect so, especially if they are coming from reputable organizations. If the writings are published in personal blog (which is understandable that there’s no stringent checking), it’s considered okay in my opinion.

Today I receive an email from Mandala Air about year-end airfare promo ( I subscribe for the marketing offer news since I love to hunt for cheap ticket ). This is the screen-shot of homepage :

Note the “not that serious” but amusing error in above information ? Hahaha.. If you can’t figure out then perhaps you can ask a primary school student to tell you about it. Notice now ? Well well.. How many days are there in September ? 30 right ? Then how come the offer is up till 31 September!

This one is not so serious. I ever encountered much more serious and horrendous errors, also from reputable organizations and in other formats as well, such as newspaper article (including top national newspaper publisher).

Despite all the checking and editing process, sometimes errors are still there. I think that’s why organizations are setting up quality checking and assurance function in daily operations. Imagine if this function is not there ? One consequence for sure that we will surely see more errors! 🙂

Singing When You’re Listening!

Are you a music listener and a bathroom singer as well ? Haha..
Sometimes when you’re listening to your favourite tunes, do you happen wanting to sing it along but somehow don’t know the lyrics ? What do you do then ? Try googling, with keywords : “Song Title Lyrics”?
Well. that’s what I did. Very cumbersome and troublesome. But that’s not the case anymore after I found this powerful winamp plug-in called MiniLyrics!

I accidentally knew about this plug in from my pal Johnson when paying a visit to his place. Amazed by the discovery, tried to search in the internet and tada.. got it!

MiniLyrics is a winamp plug-in that shows the lyrics of the song being played in winamp by connecting to the internet. How does it works ? Well, it uses the ID3 tag in the MP3 file you have and connects to the internet to look for lyrics database. One special thing to mention about MiniLyrics is that the lyric shown is not static. It scrolls down automatically following the part of song being played. It really pampers those who like to listen and sing. Amazing, isn’t it ?

Here’s the screen shot of the plug in..

Curious about its capabilities, I try another song.. Indonesian Song from Letto.
It turns out to be : No Problem!

French song ? Ce n’est pas problematique.. (seems like out of French grammar.. hehe..)

Now.. asian song.. How do you reckon? It works as well. Try Jay Chow – Cai Hong (Rainbow) and Jang Na Ra (Sweet Dream).. It shows the roman pin yin lyrics! Yiha… Powerful isn’t it ?

Interested with this plug-in? Get it here and start “Singing When You’re Listening!”

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 ?

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!

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 ?

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

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,