May sent me a link to this blog (http://rockson.blogspot.com/). I read it and worship the ground this guy walks on. He has temporarily displaced Jay Chou atop my hero list (but I expect Jay to reclaim leadership when I get home and play my new Jay Chou Live cd).
Jay is as much a genius with his chords as John is. Jay has as many chicks waiting to mother his spawn as John. And Jay is as ugly as John.
No I’m not jealous. Not one teeny weeny bit.
I am outraged. The cable TV company announced this week that all telecasts will stop at 1am and resume at 5am in Jakarta for at least the next 6 months. The reason? To save electricity due to rampant consumption in the city.
I then found out the order came directly from El Presidente himself, Mr No More Corruption, good ol’ Here’s My Phone Number So You Can Call Me Anytime, Indonesia’s favourite Pak An Open Door Policy Is Good PR Policy.
What’s the two-faced twit going on about? Getting rid of graft is good. Getting rid of political deadwood is good. Getting rid of barriers to economic competition is good. But getting rid of late night TV?
This means I now have to take a pass on this season’s Champions League games which, due to the quirky way countries are distributed across the world, televises in this part of the globe at 2-fucking-AM. I’m pissed, because the one reason I bought a new 29-inch Sony WEGA TV last week was because the TV my bleddy landlord provided me can’t tune into friggin ESPN. So let me work out the math here — I just spent 2.5million Rp on a new TV, along with a monthly cable subscription of 300,000 Rp, to enjoy the privilege of watching football at 2am in the comfort of my living room, and now Mr Good Two Shoes has decided that because me and about another 400,000 like-minded fans here are eating up too much electricity so no more TV after midnight?
Who are you people? My mother? What’s next? Ground me for using the Internet after 9pm?
I’d like to see El Presidente himself give up the 9 billion air-conditioning units in his bedroom. That’ll save some power. And oh, how about a ban on water heaters in this tropical country? And while he’s at it, why not pass on that sauna and hydrotherapy spa treatment for the missus? Ooooh, I bet that’ll hurt eh, Pak Satu?
This ban sucks.
Now that I’ve finally caved in, picked up The Da Vinci Code, and gone from cover to cover, I will never be able to look at anything without wondering if there was some deadly dark secret being communicated to me and me alone. And as I gain confidence unravelling the first few mysteries (I figured out this morning, for instance, that the McDonalds logo is like a large yellow ‘M’ in a knowing nod to the same divine M of The Last Supper) I will take on even greater puzzles (Why is every civil servant across the world so damn clueless and without initiative?), knowing that every step takes me further into a spiralling web of lies and deception.
I can already see the dangers. My bible-thumping parents will scream blasphemy and plot to remove me when I point out that their morning house cleaning ritual is paganistic in origins. My best friend will pretend I’m a babbling idiot when I observe that he is working for an organization that secretly conspires to make us use more toothpaste than our dentist recommends (the flouride is addictive)! Even May will recoil in horror when she discovers that I actually recognise the link between my going to a school whose logo was a reversed Swastika and her shared birthday with *gasp* Adolp Hitler!
I fear for my life.
Spinners are the foosball world’s equivalent of Wimbledon FC. Highly effective, but ultimately sending the beautiful game back to the stone age.
You know the sort I’m talking about. Players who send their paddles into freewheeling frenzies by rolling the handles off their palms quickly. The entire midfield line look like they’re on hashcakes at a rave. When they’re spinning head over heels, they throw back any attempt to pass the ball through, sometimes even swinging the ball back into your goal by sheer force.
Which pisses me off because it creates the sort of game where skill has no place. Where is the carefully constructed moves from the back line through the midfield to the attack? Where’s the wall-passing between the winger and his center forward? The slow probing of weaknesses? The sudden turn of pace and power? The drag back and roll? The first-time shape-and-volleys? Where is the poetry?
When spinning creeps into a foosball match, all the Zidanes and Henrys in the world will not prevent the other team from sending one streaking into your goal off flukish contact. It’s a sad, sad day when the beautiful game is dominated by physical power and strength, instead of grace and wiles.
When I read about the CEO of the publicly-funded NKF’s $600,000 annual salary, my first reaction was I wanna be that man.
We moved our office last Friday. The phone lines were supposed to be flipped back on by first light Monday morning. It’s Thursday night, and the line’s still dead.
Par for the course in Jakarta.
When the techie didn’t show on Monday, we called up the Telco. Customer support said the techie was on the way. We called up the techie. He said our paperwork was still being processed. We called back customer support. They said we were speaking to the wrong department. Three days later, the techie shows up, but with a different name.
It’s a wonder they’ve even got a telecommunications network in Indonesia.
