Nothing about Everything

IMO, for the majority of heated debate on globalization, there are 2 sides of globalization that rarely mentioned together. Globalization as method of wealth redistribution, and globalization as method to capitalizing comparative advantage. In theory, if you're relatively poor because your work result is undervalued relative to world average valuation, you can benefit a lot from globalization. Once the whole world has access to your work, it will be valued higher. You will be richer. The bad side is that if you're relatively rich because your work result is overvalued compared to world average valuation, globalization will lower the valuation of your work. You will be poorer. Is this mean that people from rich country is always at disadvantaged when joining globalization? Not really. Rich countries can benefit from globalization because of the second aspect of globalization, which is comparative advantage. With comparative advantage, people can concentrate on doing what they do...

First Media is the new internet service provider in town, and it's playing a joke on me. I planned to install First Media cable internet service as another redundant internet connection. But none of the 3 locations is connected by First Media. The first location is on a major street. I'm disappointed but if they decide not to serve that street, so be it. I can live with that. The second location is on a somewhat middle size street. They actually have a connection there, but the connection ends on the building next to mine . The cosmic joke is on the third location. Almost every building on that street is serviced by First Media, except mine which is right in the middle of that street. So all buildings whose number below mine are serviced and all buildings whose number above mine are serviced, except mine ! I am feeling sour.

1. Per today (April 7th, 2007), speed of 42KByte/sec (using 3G) is still achievable. This is awesome, especially for me who is used to CBN XL 7 KByte/sec speed. 2. After I'm connected, web access is redirected to Telkomsel homepage. There I can click on package I want to choose . 3. The billing is based on time spent connected to internet, after choosing the package above. 4. At anytime in the session, I can see the time I had spent online or time left on the selected package. After each session, I received SMS stating the time I had spent. --- Update: 9 April 2007. Disconnect incidents are too many, about once every 15 to 30 minutes. Update 24 April 2008. Cbn XL unlimited 3G has been reduced to laggy 3KBytes/sec.

Overall: Pretty good. 1. In spite of 3G theoretical bandwidth of 384 kbps, CBN XL bandwidth is limited to 64 kbps (that's kilo bit per second), which translated to 8 KBps (Kilo byte per second). In practice, it's around 6 to 7-ish KBps. But early on March, it was around 20KBps according to Sony Ericsson update manager.. I guess they cut it down. 2. The connection is pretty stable. Disconnect is rare even when your 3G modem moves around Jakarta while connected.. Maybe 1 out of ordinary disconnect every 2 days. That's excluding a what seems to be a pre-programmed disconnect every 24 hours period of connection. I guess it's their method to enforce the so called dynamic IP.. 3. Sometimes it's difficult to start connection. When that happens, wait for a while and repeat. I give up trying to find the culprit (either from CBN or from XL). Some other time, you can connect but you can't resolve any website name. Reconnect until you're assigned to the correct DNS. 4....

I hate this one specific ex-officer. Based on what I gathered, ever since he lived in this one exclusive residential estate, permits involving every construction project in that area become his business. The procedure to get a permit is very bureaucratic, EVEN WHEN WE GIVE MONEY to his staffs. You really don't want to know how worse it is when we hadn't give any money yet. Even after we get the permit, we must still endure a painstakingly long procedure to have the gate keeper allow any delivery even if it's delivered using a fucking small 4-wheels truck. Such delay may cause problem in a project profit since no material means no work can be done. And this whole permit business is not even acknowledged by government. Basically, he unofficially control this area and pulling out rules from his asshole and apply them as he sees fit.

In my somewhat limited experience, vendors of materials in Indonesia, particularly in construction industry, is rather bad in complying with promised specification. There is one high profile company whose product did not satisfy advertised specification. What they did is quite scandalous given it's position as a market leader and it's name affiliation to a highly reputable multi-national company with highly significant presence in it's field.. People whose work specialize in that field can easily identify the specification change. On the other hand, although the change is visible with naked eye, it's quite subtle. I don't think I will ever realize the change if noone point it to me. Sadly, not many field worker point it to their supervisor. Maybe they they thought they don' want to complicate their daily work because of this "whistle blowing". There is another company, whose brand is very strong on the Indonesia's public eye (depending on province)...

I don't know why but this week my mood is pretty bad. Although I do get angry from time to time, I rarely explode in front of everybody. Well, not that rarely but I may say relatively rare. Anyway, a couple of days ago I cracked. I threw a fit of anger and do lots of yelling. What particular about this anger is that I don't really know whether the situation deserve such an extreme reaction or not. In addition, by being angry I lost a key advantage in doing business with them.. The event is really simple. That particular day, the quality of materials delivered to me is really pathetic. It's so pathetic that I, the one who usually tolerates many defects by allocating the materials usage so that defects become irrelevant, end up rejecting up to 90% of what they sent. All supposed to be well. Bad goods, relative to their price, get rejected. It's fair. But the supplier had the guts to talk to his friend, saying that I should not order those items if I don't know how to ...

There goes again another blog posting I wrote due to my effort to anonymized the parties involved.. Anyway, I'll just post the footnote. Footnote: In Indonesia, resolving a receivable due (by parties who do not really trust each other yet) is done by exchanging mone y or giro with invoice and/or delivery order. The seller usually send his debt collector to buyer office to do the exchange on site.

Since my comment on someone blog is still stuck in moderation mode, I decide to post it here. Mika, After giving it some thought, I still unable to find simple things that we (read: ordinary outsiders) can do to make people more prepared for flood or preventing flood. Many schemes need cooperation of people in charge, or a simply need a LOT of people. One prevention scheme I can think of that requires a lot of people is: an alarm system to notify possible floods in various part of Jakarta. It requires a comprehensive survey of Jakarta. First we identify pockets of water that happen when raining. For each pocket of water, we calculate the average height of the ground of water pocket relative to sea level. Then for every pocket water nearby this one water pocket (name: A), we identify the minimum amount of water required before water in A flow to another pocket water. Note that, we can also treat dam as pocket of water. Note also that we can consider usual places where clo...

I am currently considering a change of career from construction (the messy, high temper, callous, corrupt prone industry) to IT (the full of compromise, image managing, strategic obsessive industry). Pursuing that, I applied for a sales position in my old company, selling a supposedly high end solution. It's gonna be a radical change, especially in comparison to my current job of selling a "normal solution" to practical people who don't like strategic talk. Anyway, in my current line of work, I have the honor to meet people with shitty sales skill, mediocre sales skill, good sales skill, excellent sales skill, and KICK ASS sales skill!! This kick ass sales guy is so amazing that I'm gonna tell his tale for this blog. In the middle of December, Semen Padang Tbk (a public company in Indonesia) sent invitation to companies/shops who buy the most Padang cement in Java island of Indonesia, to take a vacation in Padang city and visit Padang cement plant for 3 days. Cons...

I was reading "The guys guide to geek girl" when I found one tip (of finding a single intelligent girl) I can personally testify as effective. The tip is to post intelligently in a forum or mailing list . Yes, it works. If you're insightful or consistent enough in your writing, people of all genders are bound to email you personally, especially if your view on an issue is very similar to theirs. Depending on the community, you will soon get email from one or two girls, hopefully single :-). But do remember that if you write better than most, some girls might treat you as if you're an old, untouchable guru. They will not initiate a close friendly discussion with you. If that happen, it is you the one who should initiate a personal communication. Of course if you're specifically interested in someone, you can zero in her posting by disputing or clarifying it. She will feel appreciated.

Today is a slow day that I have the time to review the paperwork generated from our vendors. One particular vendor stand out as one of the most hillariously stupid vendor I have ever dealt with. This vendor, who shall remain anonymous yet will be nicknamed "sky" (a very representative name with many layers of meaning due to translation, words play, and it's own choice of nickname..), has a bad choice of volume discount. For items with a packaging of 10 per package , they insist on giving discount only for more than 10 , not 10 or more . Let that statement sink into your mind.. So if I buy 10 items, which is conveniently packaged into 1 "box", I don't get any discount. If I buy 11 items, which is in a form of 1 "box" and 1 annoying additional item, I get the volume discount. Now, considering that the item (roughly 12cm x 18cm x 7cm or 5in x 7in x 3in) is delivered on a motorcycle inside a cube which side roughly 50cm (25in), the process of retriev...