Some of my friend suggested me to put some of my tweets this morning in one blog post, and here they are, hope it will enlightened us:

Shallow voters are those who believe whatever the most monetarily-eager advertisers want them to believe.

Jangan sandarkan demokrasi pada “political marketing” semata. Percuma kalau bungkusnya bagus, isinya kosong atau bahkan busuk!

The right choice is always better than the political choice!

The more money a candidate spend on his campaign, the more cautious we should be!

Throwing more money on political ads won’t solve anything at all! Throwing ideas and solutions will do!

What should be raised in democracy is public debate! Not campaign spending, nor political ads!

Democracy should be safeguarded by ideas and ideals! Not just cheesy political marketing nor baseless claims!

Political decency is totally different than political toady! Differentiate them!

When political ad spending is way ahead more expensive than the money spent on public debate, our democracy has fallen into plutocracy!

Our value in democracy shouldn’t be judged with how much money we have. It should be judged by how much ideas we generate!

My tweet is not political campaign nor negative campaign, this is what we call civic education within a democratic society.

Another interesting news from IHT:

[…..And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.

But something seized people's imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and last Wednesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

"There's probably no God," the advertisements say. "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."…..]

In a time when the world needs God more than ever before, they managed to rise more than $200.000 campaign to deny God’s existence. Fantastic! Read the rest of this entry »

Thinkgeek.com is amazing!! Found some really cool stuff out there for my geeky appetite…  Here are some of the coolest things they have there:

DEAD FRED PEN HOLDER

One word for this wacky pen holder: AWESOME!! Turn your desk into a crime scene! It’s always cool to have a red dead body on your desk…plus it holds pen too. Read the rest of this entry »

When the decision came out and words were spread around, it was not a surprise for me to see the United States president-elect Barack Obama named as the TIME’s Person of the Year 2008. It is obvious that Obama was on top of the list from the very beginning.

For all his record-breaking achievement and breath-taking moments in the election, it is the notion that he inspired the world and raised hope to millions of people with his infamous campaign theme of ‘CHANGE’ that he deserves all these praises. Now as the inauguration day comes near, the question remains on how well can Obama fulfill the high expectation that the world has for him. With all the mess the Bush left for him, Obama will have to work really hard to clean it up. Read the rest of this entry »

Only one more subject to get through the final exam and I have absolutely nothing to do. So I scrambled the internet and found some interesting stuffs here.

Rec’d from co-worker this list of 21 funny statements made by pilots or attendents in the cabin of commercial airliners. Here are the top three…

1. On a Southwest flight 245 (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

2. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.

4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”

Read the rest of this entry »

As some of you might have noticed the ongoing debates here and here about our department, this post is intended to provide you a more objective view on some of the facts and also my personal view on the subject.

Just a few days ago some of my friend gave me this link over an offline YM message along with an urgent-like words, “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS…!!”.

Well, eventually, I ended up reading the post and I can tell you that my reaction was similar to what the writer of the post wrote on her second paragraph…maybe I can even use her EXACT words to describe my reaction to her post. Read the rest of this entry »

This week has been an extremely exhausting week for me. Most of it because of this whole PRAKDIP thingy; which I’m about to write now

The Diplomacy in Practice (or PRAKDIP in bahasa) is actually one of UNPAR’s International Relations subject, which basically a simulation of an international conference. The similar activity itself is widely known as Model United Nations which has been practiced by many universities all over the world. In Indonesia, UNPAR is one of the first (and might be the only) university who put this diplomacy-in-practice into its intra-curriculum.

The activities of this PRAKDIP (I copied it from Wikipedia to put it simple) is aims to educate participants about civics, effective communication, globalization and multilateral diplomacy. In Model UN, students take on roles as foreign diplomats and participate in a simulated session of an intergovernmental organization (IGO). Participants research a country, take on roles as diplomats, investigate international issues, debate, deliberate, consult, and then develop solutions to world problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Less humorous story from Huffington Post and what I think about it…

At a rally on Saturday in California, Sarah Palin offered up a rather loud argument for supporting the Republican ticket. “There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t support other women,” the Alaska Governor said, claiming she was quoting former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Read the rest of this entry »

Yup. I’m a robotic teacher now. And that is why this site had been hiatus for quite some time.I’ve been occupied with my new job and its hard to find time to just relax, sit and go online.

Currently, I teach primary and secondary students in several schools in Bandung. One thing I learned from my new job: kids absorb your energy! To be honest, this job is exhausting, you have to deal with kids and their unlimited energy all the time. *siggh..* But so far, I enjoy every second of it. Read the rest of this entry »

That is exactly my first impression when I finally managed to finish this game called “Ayiti: The Cost of Life” with a good score.

It is my lecturer, Mr. Sapta, who first introduced me to this game in his Political Economy of Development class. He told the class to play this game to understand more about how poverty becomes an obstacle for education in the developing and underdeveloped country.

The game is about the life of a common poor family who lives in Haiti–named the Guinard family. The goal of this game is to help the Guinard family live their poor life, get them education and improve their living standard. Read the rest of this entry »