Friday, July 31, 2015

Back in the Habit

So it's about time that we talked about what we were gonna do (actually, what I'M gonna do) when I get back to school. As I may have mentioned a few posts ago, it's only a few weeks' time until I'm gonna have to get back to a life of difficulty, routine, and stress (plus, it's inevitable too. Unless I... nah, screw that thought. That's too dark. And besides, I'm still working on reducing my negative thinking. Gotta improve your mindset, J, gotta improve...).

On the bright side however, I do get to get back with my friends and hang out with 'em which I have never actually managed to find time for over the holidays (I was too occupied by the fact that my everyday “disturbances” (AKA video games and video streaming) were more entertaining than my friends) to speak to. Which is something I must fix. I know that said activities make me happier than hanging out with my friends, but so does marijuana. And coke. And so does... (dammit J, we're getting distracted here) you know what, never mind. My point is, I must hang out again. Not only is it good for my social skills, but I also must try to NOT be an unsociable son of a b****.

Ever wondered how fast the weeks pass during the holidays? (or whenever you're doing anything fun, on that matter) Hence the saying, “time flies when you're having fun”. When you're NOT having fun, on the other hand, time suddenly runs into a traffic jam (of course, this doesn't apply to EVERY time, but it damn sure applies to a HUGE portion of life. Yeah, I know. Life can be a d*** sometimes). I noticed this pattern when I was doing a series of activities, starting from doing schoolwork to watching YouTubers play Mortal Kombat X on the Web (among the many other videos that I watch). You can imagine which activity made time go as fast as an Alcatraz escapee on speeds (if you get the joke) and which activity slowed it the f*** down.

But as I have said previously, school ain't all torture either (then again, it ain't exactly paradise, but sure, it has its perks). I have my friends, I have games, I have many things to entertain me during my time in the area (I COULD lisst them all down, but I don't feel like doing it now. Sorry). I'll be looking forward to it. It's nice to have a good challenge in life once in a while, no? (in fact, I challenged myself to write this down in my laptop, in an environment that I'm not entirely comfortable with (it's hard to keep the place anonymous, but I'll try my best to be at my best behavior and describe the place I'm writing at at the same time), with no adaptor and limited battery power. Challenge accepted)


On that note, I should probably leave now. Someone very important (especially if I don't follow said person's orders, that is) is gonna tell me to pack up in a bit. On that note, goodbye and thank you guys for listening. See ya 'til next time!

Thursday, July 30, 2015

What Happened Part 4

OK, last post about the Jogja trip. Let's just do this already. Now where did we leave off? Oh right, my definition of a "holiday". Let's do this...

Sure, we only ATE at the hotel (as opposed to staying there, as my class did during their stay), but the place in the hotel where we ate was the very same restaurant that we ate dinner during MY grade's stay at Jogjakarta. In fact, while my family and I were waiting for our food to arrive, I was busy trying to reconstruct the memory of my class eating in the restaurant. Sure, I didn't do such a good job, but it's nice to contemplate sometimes (in fact, that's what I do most of the goddamn time, even when in a huge crowd and forced to “socialize”. I'm an introvert guys, deal with it). Plus, they even had free Wi-Fi in the restaurant, so I managed to kill two birds with one stone.

Overall, the holiday was quite unique in its own right (the way we got to Jogjakarta was even MORE unique, as you're about to discover in a few paragraphs. And not in an entirely good way either, but we'll talk more about that later). For one, it was the very first time my family had ever gone any farther than Bandung (in this case, as I have pointed out several million times already, Jogjakarta) via car. Secondly, it was also the first time my family had ever stayed in multiple hotels/villas in one trip (two hotels and one not-so-great villa (once again, no offense, villa owners. I don't wanna get a lawsuit from you guys or some $#!+, but if you're gonna entertain me, add a few more entertainment devices if you ever plan to attract more guys like me (AKA people who prefer to spend their time staying in their room couch surfing/watching cable TV/ streaming videos from YouTube) to the place).

I've never been a big fan of being stuck in a tight space (in this case, a car) for extended periods of time (my parents told me it took around 8 hours to get to Semarang), unless I could be sedated for the entire journey, of course. We normally travel to such places via airplane, but my parents were all like, “f*** the plane, we gonna economize, baby.”. I don't blame them, but I guess if saving money means taking about 16 hours to get from Jogjakarta to Jakarta (seriously, that's how long the return trip took, and apparently the GPS navigation system estimated we arrive back in Jakarta by 2 PM, when in reality, it took until about 9 PM), then we gotta do what we gotta do. Speaking of which, they're also planning to get to motherf***ing BALI using a car once we manage to, so that's yet ANOTHER thing to look forward to in the future. Hooray...

Thankfully, now we're back at home, where I'm typing this, away from all the traveling bull$#!+. I should probably enjoy this while I still can, considering it's only 3 weeks until I'm due to be back in school, surviving yet ANOTHER onslaught of work for a year (excluding holidays and weekends). But until then, this is Jason, and see ye until the next post. Peace!

What Happened Part 3

My dad decided that we should have another post up today to compensate for the fate of tomorrow's Internet connection, so yeah... here we are. Anyway, let's just do this already. So, this is what happened next.

Amazingly, I also found a pretty decent place to eat while at Jogjakarta (OK, it wasn't really a restaurant, per se, but a food exhibition of some sort, like an outdoor food court (rhyming accidentally), and it fulfilled most of the criteria for a good Indonesian restaurant. It had great food (notably this really awesome Indonesian burger. Shame I forgot to tell the vendor not to put any hot sauce in the burger. Thankfully my dad bought several ice teas to extinguish the metaphorical fire in my mouth while I was eating said burger, but it was good nevertheless) and strategic placement (right next to the hotel). However, if there was something I could change about the place, it'd be the atmosphere (the atmosphere was fine, but I prefer indoor places, to be honest) and the background noise. I couldn't even hear myself over the noise of the host at the time (it was an exhibition, remember?). Other than that, it was actually great.

We also went “cave tubing” at Jogjakarta, which I had to say, was a pretty OK experience (I know it's anticlimactic for me to say it was an OK experience, but you know the type of guy I am). On the plus side, I got to witness going swimming in an underground cave for the first time, learned a bit about the local wildlife whilst in the cave (notably bats, fish and REALLY pesky bugs, but it was interesting nevertheless), and most importantly, got a photo of my dad taking a selfie (#selfieception). Unfortunately (for the rest of my family. I was totally fine with what happened next), we didn't go to any more activities like that for the remainder of the trip (see?).


But for ME, the most memorable experience of the trip was (hint: it's not the time when I ate at McDonald's or KFC, although that does qualify as a great experience. And sadly, that experience wasn't “lounging in the hotel room for hours on end” either. Nice guess, though) my visit to a hotel for some Dim Sum. I've been a pretty big fan of Dim Sum to start with, and secondly, this hotel was the very same place that I stayed in during MY grade's time in Jogjakarta. This was the most nostalgic I've ever been throughout the course of the entire journey (the second time was when we revisited the mall in Semarang that I told you guys was connected right next to the hotel on the return trip from Jogjakarta, but the only difference was that we only visited the mall to get some lunch. That was more anticlimactic than nostalgic, really, considering the fact that we visited the mall and got instantly depressed when we remembered that the hotel was right next to us. It's a hard feeling to describe, OK?).

Well, that should be it. This should at least please Daddy a bit, considering his mood if it doesn't. All I can say is that although this blog writing is somewhat of a necessity for my life (Internet surfing and $#!+), I will say that a side benefit to that is that you guys can at least see the life of my family. Maybe. I'll just leave the paragraph there before things get more complicated, so yeah... See ya next time!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What Happened Part 2

Right. So we back. Without further ado, let's just get right down to it already. Now, where were we? Oh right...

As I was saying, And FINALLY, our last stop was Jogjakarta. This place was rather nostalgic, considering I've visited the city and went through a few memorable experiences: The first time I've ever spent a week away from Jakarta with my grade, the first time I ever toured a city, the first time I've ever spent time in a hotel with people who aren't members of my family (rather, it was my friends and teachers), the first time I ever went on a plane trip with my class, and most importantly, the first time I ever got scammed (to be more specific, by a haggler who managed to persuade me into buying a book for around Rp. 100 000 (about $10 or so. Check the exchange rate or something, I'm not sure) for a book that originally cost around $2 (about Rp. 20 000). If there was something I learned, it was to be more stingy with hagglers. In fact, you could say that in a way I “bought” the “experience” (it's like “buying” XP in games with in-game currency, but in real life (I know games don't allow you to purchase XP, you have to gain them, but you get how I'm trying to relate this to real life here).

But let's not dwell on the past here. So as I was saying, this was yet another trip to Jogjakarta. We spent the next four nights living in a hotel room in a pretty sweet hotel (that probably could've been phrased better, but whatever). Overall, it was a rather fun trip (sure, the hotel wasn't directly connected with a mall, but it had several more TV channels to watch, so there were a few upsides and downsides). That would've gone even better IF my forgetful ass remembered to bring his smartphone to the hotel. Which I didn't (in fact, I was forced to borrow various phones from other members of my family in order to fulfill my insatiable lust for video streaming. Needless to say, I wasn't all that surprised to hear my family asking why I didn't just use my own goddamn phone).

We participated in several exciting events whilst in our trip. Firstly, whilst in Semarang, we went to a giant-ass statue of Mother Mary (I appreciate their emphasis on religion in that part of the city. However, what I do NOT appreciate was the... never mind, forget I ever said that in the first place). We went to try some of the local cuisine (which I wasn't really a big fan of, despite being a goddamn Indonesian in the first place. Or for SOME places, at least. The reason I wasn't really keen on some Indonesian restaurants was mainly due to its food, location (so I can get back to my home ASAP) and restaurant atmosphere. Fulfill those both, fulfill my opinion of a good Indonesian restaurant. Very few Indonesian diners have fulfilled these for me. But hey, different people, different taste. In my case, I usually fall for what you adults might call “junk food”: Burgers, chicken wings, pizza, and basically almost all types of stereotypical American food).

That should be all, I guess. We'll continue tomorrow.

Monday, July 27, 2015

What Happened Part 1

Well guys, guess I'm back in the habit. Again. After all the stuff that had went down over the course of the past week, a lot has changed (hint: one of these changes include my dad instructing me and my brother to get back in the habit of writing blog post, so if you were trying to discover the reason why I'm writing this stuff in the first goddamn place, well, here's your answer). As some of you readers may remember, I wrote a "vacation itinerary" about my family's road trip to Jogjakarta. In case you were wondering what went down during that trip, let me give you a quick rundown of what happened. So to make a long story short, let me tell you about the important parts...

We went to Semarang, our first stop on the way to Jogjakarta. Stayed in a rather sweet hotel there. Very convenient too, considering that there was a mall attached right next to it (it's one of those hotels which has a mall that connects directly with a hotel, so they share entrances, hell, you could even take the mall's freaking ESCALATOR to get to your room in the hotel), and if you might remember, I'm the type of guy who is most comfortable when he stays at his shelter (AKA his house/hotel room/place he is currently living in) with either YouTube or cable TV to keep him company.

After two days, we departed from the hotel to a villa as a halfway "mark" for our journey. Overall, the trip to that villa was pretty nice, IF you counted a TV with only local TV channels to watch from and crappy Wi-Fi a requirement for a “good stay”. So if I had to be perfectly honest with you, it sucked ass. Needless to say, it wasn't that hard to wave goodbye to THAT place. No offense to you, villa owners, all I have to say to you is that you should probably provide better facilities for people like me next time. Just a recommendation.


Oh right, just a small footnote before we continue, many of you people who have managed to find a way to live without the disturbances of your Internet connection/cable TV (speaking of which, my parents who are probably reading this and thinking what an ungrateful piece of $#!+ I am), I'm sorry if I sound a little spoiled for you, but really, those are the only entertainment features I really care about. Anything else is not really that important. In fact, I wouldn't mind sleeping on the soil in a f***ing HOBO CAMP and still be happy as long as you get me Wi-Fi and a device that can fully use the Internet (preferably a laptop, but a smartphone will also do the trick) or cable television. I don't need no goddamn XBOX to keep me entertained or some $#!+ like that. Just good Internet connection or cable TV (preferably the former). That's all this guy asks of you. If you think he's too stuck-up, well, f*** you too.

That's all I can show you guys for today, sorry. But tomorrow, I'll get this blog up and running again. This'll probably continue until several blog posts, but we'll make it eventually, until then, Jason out, as usual. Thanks!

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Vacation Itinerary

In a matter of days, I'm about to pack up and leave with my family to a road trip around the island (Java, to those of you who are still unaware of my homeland), and my dad had made me responsible for creating an itinerary for the family's trip. I mean, it's not like I had any other choice but to write the plan for the trip. I mean, when your Wi-Fi's on the line, you don't really have that much of a choice...

But let's not dwell on that. Time to think about more important things, aside from what'll probably happen to me if I don't get this done in time (according to my dad, that's around one hour. I'm working as fast as I can here). So first things first: HOW to get there. The first thing to keep in mind is the transportation that we will require to get from point A to point B. In this case, fortunately, we plan to use a car.

On the first two days, we plan to go to Semarang, a nearby area, where we still stay in the Crown Hotel, which, fortunately for me, has a strategically placed mall beside it. The family will probably be living off the food there for the first two days of our stay (because mall food. Don't ask). Maybe for a few meals, we'll be eating a bit of the local food, such as the lumpia (a unique type of dumpling), various types of tahu (beancurd), and pisang goreng (fried bananas). After spending our two days in Semarang, we'll be setting off again.

After Semarang, we'll set off to another place in the island called Bandungan. Whilst there, we will be staying at the Susan Spa hotel. And as per usual, we might be able to enjoy a bit of the local cuisine while we're there, and maybe some mall food, if any. Yeah, the plan for Bandungan ain't exactly the most detailed one in the universe, but it still merits for something. The plan isn't really fully specified, though.

So that should be it for MY part of the itinerary. We won't end the journey there, however: my brother has another itinerary up and running for the next half of the journey (Jogjakarta and so on), so my duty is done here. So until then guys, be seein' ya. Bye!

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Seven Sins Part 2

OK, so where were we? Oh, right. We were at the part where I had to end the post due to unavoidable circumstances. Lat where we left off, we were talking about the difference between gluttony and greed. So, without further ado, let's just get on with the issue of gluttony in our daily lives...

So, as I have said in the previous post, gluttony can be a problem sometimes, especially for people who have an insatiable desire for their, well, desires (what else?). So much, in fact, that they would even be willing to risk and endanger their own bodies to satisfy their wantings. The details of what gluttony is characterized like can be seen at the previous post.

So how does gluttony affect our daily lives? Well, the reason is rather simple and straightforward. Gluttons such as people with binge-eating problems. Actually, come to think about it, I'm not even really that SURE that “binge-eating” is the correct term to describe people who enjoy eating too many “guilty foods”, but we'll go with that for now until I manage to a) actually get home and finally get some good, actually USABLE Internet connection to search up the correct term for “overeating to the point of risking your own body”, AND b) manage to store up enough energy to actually OPEN a new tab on Google Chrome and search up an appropriate term for “overeating to the point of risking your own body” (yeah, “Sloth” is one of the seven sins I have never really managed to resolve yet. The fact that I also wait out the deadline of an assignment up until the day before the deadline (hell, sometimes I even do it ON the “D-Day”) and commit several hundreds of other lazy, unmotivated deeds also back up this fact).

Anyway, as I was saying, gluttons are pretty much killing themselves slowly by fulfilling their desires (Goddammit, am I just repeating my previous damn post? This is like an 80% similarity match with the first part. Sorry guys, I'm gonna find some original material for you guys in a bit, don't worry). Binge-eaters, who eat way too much and therefore risk their health (and indirectly even their own lives). Binge-watchers/Internet users/Binge whatever the hell gluttons may be potentially addicted to are pretty much destroying themselves willfully. Seeing that I'm pretty much just reusing my words over and over again, lemme just come to this conclusion: you can imagine the impact of us gluttons to our daily lives. I really don't feel like saying everything I just said a third/fourth time, for my sake and you guys's (Goddammit, now I get the feeling I'm making grammar errors AND extreme lack of originality. GODDAMMIT BRAIN WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU).

We still have time to discuss one more sin, and I've decided to pick “Greed” as the final sin of this post, since we're already waist-deep talking about gluttony (and not to mention overusing the same sentences over and over again), we might as well compare it with greed. Greed has the same “base concept” as gluttony: overindulgence of a specific thing. But the difference between “greed” and “gluttony” is that unlike gluttons, greedy people HAVE a lot of what they want (in this case, let's take “money” as the example), but have a tendency of not wanting to share it with people. So let's compare a glutton with a greedy person here.

So Guy A is a glutton. He likes to overspend money, because he's a glutton (that's what gluttons do, after all. We overindulge in our desires, with no regard to ourselves), goddammit. So Guy A, being the gluttonous sonuvab***h that he is, spends EVERY SINGLE penny of his money on things that he likes, with little regard to himself. He just overspends the absolute s**t out of his money,and even when he's low on cash, whenever he gets some moola, he just spends it on stuff that he doesn't even actually really need.

On the other hand, Guy B (the stingy motherf***er) has absolutely NO problem whatsoever when it comes to keeping his bank account balanced (to you guys who might not get this figure of speech, it basically means that he has a nice amount of money to keep his life going). However, he is incredibly selfish. He has no regard for other people, and although it won't hurt his wallet that much to donate and give others a bit of his money from time to time, he refuses to do it, because, as I have said a few sentences ago, he's a f***ing greedy jerk.

Greedy people can be a pain in the butt to the world. For instance, greedy governors/presidents/rulers of countries and cities may be too stingy to give to money to his/her dominion. If you have a greedy ruler to control a domain, he/she is gonna be all in for the money. And when said person gets a crap ton of money, he is just gonna constantly try to find other ways to get more and more money. And he/she will. Not. Stop. EVER. This applies to many things related to rulers ruling over their dominions (is that even the right word? Oh well, let's just go with that. Don't have a dictionary open right now, or good Internet connection either. Yeah, let's just go with “dominion”. Sounds cool anyway). In addition, people who are greedy are also the selfish buttholes in today's society due to their insistence of keeping whatever the hell they like to themselves and never give any of it to anyone, even though it won't hurt to do so.


So that wraps up the post for today. We'll continue this later sometime. Until then, as usual, see ya guys until tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Seven Sins (Part 1)

Haven't posted in quite a while now. How many days has it been? Nevertheless, I should probably get a post up and running if I'm ever gonna hope to keep this stuff up. So anyway, today we're gonna talk about the seven deadly sins (I'm not sure whether I should capitalize "seven deadly sins" or not. You know, kind of like "Seven Deadly Sins". Ah, doesn't matter. Probably won't be using the words that much in the following paragraphs to come anyway. Oh right, what was I talking about before? Oh yeah) and its application to real life.

The Seven Deadly Sins (yeah, we'll go with capitalizing the front letters. Don't know why, just feels more appropriate) are the seven main, well, SINS (what else?) that have been the root of (presumably) all the evil that has been present in this world. There are seven sins, as I have mentioned three times already (including just a few words ago) in this post, and these sins are as follows:

  1. Pride
  2. Gluttony
  3. Wrath
  4. Greed
  5. Lust
  6. Sloth
  7. Envy
After observing the world's behavior for the past several years (I won't say "for the past 14 years" because I only started observing all the wrong in the world just a few years ago after realizing what an issue the world had when it came to sinning. And BELIEVE me, although I have only begun to analyze the world's evils only a few years ago, boy, have I come to realize a LOT of the horrible sins and errors the world has to offer for us), I have made a rather thorough analysis of the applications of the seven sins hidden within our world.

Let's start with Pride. Honestly, there might not be all THAT many issues related to pride in this world, and even if it is, it might not be such a huge issue for worldly issues (corruption, terrorism, etc). I mean, seriously guys, I don't think that a terrorist is gonna be bombing some random skyscraper just to show that he can (or WILL he? I might be wrong here guys, feel free to prove it anytime, I'm open to feedback (and criticism) anytime, anywhere). OK, I admit, if he does, then he's got a REALLY huge ego. But in our daily lives, ego can be a massive pain in the butt. To start with, you've got people bragging around that they're "the best" at many things (I'm not even gonna START to make a list of things that they can potentially brag about, oh heeeeeell no. That'll take way too damn long). They start bragging, discriminating, and doing some other unspeakable things to their friends and (if we're unlucky) the public. In simple words, they become a world-class jerk.

Gluttony. Now, I have had a lot of confusion between "gluttony" and "greed". Both of them basically mean overindulgence, a knack of wanting to keep everything to yourself. But as I have learnt, it turns out that "gluttony" is different from "greed" in a distinguishable way: A "glutton" is a person who wants WAY too much stuff for himself (I can hear you SCREAMING right now, "But J, greedy people do that too, idiot."), BUT the difference between a greedy and a gluttonous person is that gluttons want too many things for themselves, to the point where they cannot even take care of THEIR OWN BODIES. That's probably the main reason "gluttony" is most related to food; people with health problems related with eating habits because they eat too much rich food can be considered "gluttons", because they like to eat so much of this good (but guilty) food to the point where they can't even take care of their own bodies.

But gluttony doesn't only apply to people who love eating "guilty" foods, oh no. Gluttons can also the people spending every possible minute that they can into watching a TV screen, the Internet, social media (so just in case some people out there feel offended and are trying to find a reason to hate on me, lemme just be fair here: I'm also a glutton. And a lustful person. The fact that I'm trying to squeeze every minute of my spare time into gazing at my laptop watching YouTube videos approves of that fact. Just to be fair), the possibilities are limitless, as long as they involve the glutton not being able to control these desires to the point that they would even risk their health and body to satisfying these desires. In other words, we gluttons are slowly, willfully killing ourselves slowly, as long as we get our satisfaction.

We'll talk more about this in another post, Dad's gonna wake up any second now and flip the absolute f**k out if he finds out I'm typing this (don't ask why), so we'll continue this later again, tomorrow. Until then, see ya guys at the next post.