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Brokeback Mountain Sucks! Memoirs Rocks!

OK, we admit we also buy illegal stuff. Last weekend, we happened to stop by at Ambassador and before we knew it, we paid supercheap for Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, and King Kong dvds. (Well, there were more, but let's not list them all here -- we don't want to sound so cheap).

Memoirs is excellent. Well, I expected the rising Ziyi to shine the most. In fact it is Gong Li who should have been praised more. Yeoh is so-so. The entire scenes are beautiful. If there's one that we regret, it is the Hollywood sausage: how Rob Marshall pictures the love dynamics between Sayuri and the "Chairman". It's kind of corny.

As for Brokeback Mountain. Our recommendation? Avoid this. It's nothing but a parade of Marlboro ads with two dudes kissing each other! And, eeww, with those cowboy hats and country music...

King Kong, later.

Dressed for success

Does your appearance matter to your spouse? I don't think it should. Anna thinks it does.

So off we went to gym. As usual, I was in what I call my sport apparel: wrinkled T-shirt, jogging pants, and (tennis) sneakers. It turned out, the morning was colder than the days before. We were in the car, halfway from home -- not a good idea to come back for my sweatwear. Without thinking, I just grabbed my business jacket. But...

"What are you doing?" Anna was hysterical, to my surprise. "You can't go to a gym with that thing," she was pointing on my beloved dark jacket (it's cheap, by the way). So, rather than arguing (she was using the tone I instantly recognized as meaning: Don't try to argue), I slowly put the jacket back on the seat...

Now the best part. We were walking to the locker rooms after exercising. Anna realized she left her (business) shoes in the car. "Shoot, I forgot to put my shoes in my exercise bag. I only took the suit". And I gave her yet another wrong response: "Calm down. Why do you need your shoes? You have your sneakers now, no?". She stared at me, "What? A formal (she put a stress on this word) business (on this, too) attire, with ... sneakers (she went: "sneeee-kers" with even more emphasis on it)? Are you out of your mind?".

Was I out of my mind?

All I remember was, one day three years back, I invited a prominent economist to give a talk in my campus. He flew all the way from Washington D.C. to Champaign, Illinois. I picked him up at the airport. He was in a dark business suit with a pair of ... jogging sneakers. And they were white!

Economists should take another course :-)

Easy Silly way to make money

A man is suing iPod's Apple, claiming that the product "can cause hearing loss from prolonged use". Instead of reminding this guy that on his iPod package he should find an explicit warning that reads "this product can cause hearing loss", I have some ideas to help him make even more money:

• Sue Gillette, its razor can cause bleeding on your chin
• Sue BMW, its Z5 can cause accident when you drive too fast
• Sue Nokia, its handsfree can make you look dumb
• Sue Phillip Morris, its Marlboro can cause cancer -- as it admits
• Sue Coca Cola, its strawberry soda can make you puke
• Sue Starbucks, its coffee can make you addicted
• Sue Café Salemba, its postings are nonsense
  

Any more ideas? Let the man know.

Banned in Indonesia

What's inside?

with apology to whoever created this (got it from chain email)

toll road economics

it's been a while without me posting here. i have been extremely busy with works and lately with traffic jam in the toll road due to newly opened bus-way corridor that passes tomang intersection. this so-called integrated transportation system has caused my travel time increase from 50 minutes to 2 hours, especially in the morning! of course now i have so limited time for my personal life. and aco is the one who gets the biggest impact. i don't have time and energy to prepare breakfast and dinner, so most of the time we eat out. but, as an economist he understands very well that the opportunity cost of preparing meals are bigger than buying them outside. that's a very basic of economics. so, he never complains. however, me after reading an article about how convenient it is to live in the city, start thinking of, you know, moving to an apartment! i've started to imagine, how much time and energy that i can save if i stay in an apartment in the city center. and i believe that the saving is worth the price of the apartment itself. some people might not agree, but let's see...

Rubber for soldier

Anna was laughing while reading the latest issue of Tempo magazine. I was curious why. She showed me a small, little news (you might not be able to find it via net -- but trust me, the news exists in print version). It's about condom machine. Reported, the government has installed several ATM-like machines that supply condoms for the public. What was funny is that those machines were installed in ... Army Headquarter (Markas TNI)!

I hear you laughing...

Convenient AND cheap? No way

We saw this ad by Lion Air on tv. It says: more convenient, more comfortable, and ... cheap. We were skeptical. There's no such thing. Lion Air should ad like this: "We know we're not offering the best convenience. But we guarantee the lowest price, and we are improving on the safety". That's honest and that would make a good niche. It might even confront AirAsia.

"No smoking, please" vs "Feel free to smoke"

It started with Anna complaining about a meeting she had with some officials from a state-owned power company. All the officials were smoking -- in a centrally air-conditioned room. She was irritated.

Then we discussed about smoking in general. It seems that everybody knows that smoking may endanger his/her health. But people keep smoking. Anna was bothered to see some sick people in wheelchairs were sunbathing in hospital frontyard, smoking. She also didn't understand why many street beggars (even those with legs amputed) smoke. "They barely have money. But they smoke, why?", "Why don't they use the only money they have for food -- healthier than smoke?".

I told Anna, we had to be careful in this issue. Smoking is a form of consumption. Some people like to do it; just like I enjoy chewing bubble gum. Or like anybody sipping coke, eating candy, et cetera. But why don't we complain when we see somebody chews bubble gum or drinks coke? While we get irritated by people who smoke? As long as they use their own money, it's their right to spend it on whatever they want. Including to buy cigarrette. As for the beggar, we are free to give him money or refuse to do that. But once we give the money, we can't take it back just because he uses it to buy cigarette.

Anna was still unconvinced. And I knew it. She must be thinking about what economists call "externality problem". When somebody smokes, some other people have to deal with the smoke, too. Without proper compensation, we say, the affected parties bear a cost due to somebody else's smoking. This is a situation where the non-smokers have the right to hate and even complain the smokers. ("You should have told those officials you had meeting with; you objected them smoking"). But note: we "hate" smokers because the smoke disturbs us (and is harmful to our health), not because smoking is harmful to the smoker himself. We can complain because the smoke gets in our eyes (and lungs), but we can't complain if people spend their money to smoke. (The way we can complain when somebody spils coke on us, or somebody throws bubble gum on the street). You see the difference?

But, how to ask a "proper compensation"? Is it that we can't ask the smoker next to us to pay us some compensation? That's true. Here's a room for a policy called "sumptuary tax" -- charge imposed on to discourage consumption because it might create negative externality to other people. How? Make smoking less attractive, by imposing higher tax/excise. That would result in higher price of cigarette. How is the money collected be used for "compensating" the non-smokers? By providing (closed) smoking booths in public place etc. Of course this is no easy, as many smokers don't care with such facility; they smoke wherever they want, including in public places -- looking for designated place is troublesome. Well, those guys deserve a slap. Things are more complicated because many non-smokers don't know that they have the right to complain... More so, the smokers don't understand why they are complained.

luv the tech

we don't have a fixed phone line at home. we tried to apply but the guys there at the state-owned telephone company implicitly asked for some "extra payment to speed up process" and we refused. we have to rely on our cellphones. how about internet connection? i bought this internet pcmcia card pluggable to my notebook. to control my usage, i chose a prepaid system. so far so good.

and then yesterday, when i was browsing, a window popped up. my internet phone card required recharging. before, i always made the recharge over atm. so, on our go, we stopped by at one. it turned out, the atm was broken. what should i do. fortunately i have a gprs system in my o2 cell. i logged in to my bank website, used a password key generator, and recharged my phone card. then i activated it via phone.

within five minutes, i am able to write this post.

i love technology.

"apa artinya cinta"

anna and i are reading this movie review in tempo magazine. it's on "apa artinya cinta", reviewed by leila chudori. it's too harsh you feel sorry for the movie crew and artists. but, as i said elsewhere, it's a review -- and review is a subjective act. leila has all the freedom to kill a movie. nonetheless, i usually buy her taste.

but anna has a good point: leila might just be a representation of her generation, or at best, her peer. meanwhile, that movie, just like other chick-flicks, has it's own niche. the fact that youngsters are willing to pay and stand in queue several hours is an indication that there is demand for this type of crap -- whether you like it or not.

that said, i suggest my peer: avoid this movie!

hospital that doesn't seem to be

my father in law is hospitalized. this hospital is supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the country. yet, anna and i are surprised by the their slow service. my in-law got in yesterday at 1pm. he was taken into the icu. they took his blood sample. and we had to wait 3 hours before they told us that anna's father had to stay!

is that cool ER series really just a fiction?

the expensive minute

receipt

anna is always outraged when we exceed the 60 min 59 sec of a parking-hour, on the way to paying it! and i can't blame her: the last minute is the most expensive minute.

yay, it's holiday

it feels good to have saturday on wednesday from this week to next week!

pity the housewives

It’s been 2 days I am home. I’ve got a terrible flu (no, it is not avian flu) that forces me to stay home for rests. Being home during the weekday for two days really bores me to death. Not only that I am too weak to do housework but also I can not connect to the internet (read: outside world) until Aco is back -- he's got a pcmcia. It is ridiculous knowing the fact that Kabelvision’s (tv cable and internet broadband provider) head office is just less than 1 km away from our house! When we first moved in, Aco and I visited the office to apply for the connection, but they said no plan to extend the cable to our neighborhood. We then applied for the second time last month, together with our 20ish neighbors, expecting that 20 connections would be more interesting for them to invest. However til now, no news whatsoever.

So, I ended up watching local television. Most of the programs are gossips, criminal news, quizzes and what-so-called “sinetron” (mini series drama). This is just a brief statistic from 11 local channels from 7am – 5pm on Wednesday:

• Gossip show: 23 programs, average duration: 30 minutes, prime time: 7-9am, 11am-1pm, 2-4pm.
• Criminal news: 14 programs, duration: 30 minutes, prime time: midday
• Sinetron : too many to count, duration: 30-60 minutes, mostly morning and afternoon. (more in the evening, though)

I believe most Indonesian housewives are fully-engaged with this black-box during the day. If I were a housewife, I would probably spend most of my time at home watching TV while I was cleaning, washing, cooking, and ironing. It is very easy to get engaged, you just need a remote control and a TV (of course). In my opinion, TV is the most perfect media to educate people, especially housewives. With good programs-such as in Discovery, Animal Planet or National Geographic, TV can make the greatest change ever in human life. The power of knowledge and experience shared will give a multiplier effects to the children. They can gain knowledge from their well-educated mom. In the long run (borrowing from Aco's term), good quality human resources are simply there at the market. Instead of launching BOS ("bantuan operasional sekolah" -- school assistance aid) that needs to be advertised hugely in 2-full-page newspaper to justify the achievement! Get awake, minister!

intrusive, intrusive!

i once wrote a short paper titled "do consumers buy advertising?" (sorry no weblink). i concluded, yes. and that means, advertising is a good thing. but i might need to restate my position. why? lately i feel bothered by many ads got into my cell inbox. when you travel across countries, it might be a good thing that once you reactivate your cellphone in the foreign airport, you get this message telling you some good deal on calling rate. but not too much, please.

now, even the government can have access to your cellphone. i hate it when there's an incoming sms from somebody not in my address book, yet, her/his/its name appears as such. see? meaning i HAVE to recognize it. i am forced to recognize it. believe me, this is not the same with ads in newspaper or magazine or tv. on today's cellphone, you have less freedom to ignore such sms. you have to read it.

and not just cellphone. the comment field in blogs are in danger, too. freedom has dark side, no?

(i'm tempted to talk about intrusion in google, too. yes, now, whenever i want to surf with google.com, i HAVE to go to google.co.id first. hey you out there, why are you forcing me to use co.id?)

productivity vs toilet

What is the correlation? You might not be able to link it directly, but this is how I relate these two things together. Economists (including Aco) calculate productivity by dividing output with input. Input in this case is defined as the sum of resources (capital, human resource, etc), where output is the final product of a process. So, the larger the result from that division, the higher the productivity is. Then, what does toilet have to do with productivity? Well, probably not many people might even think of it. But I think toilet affects the productivity.

This is the story of a toilet. I had quite a number of intriguing toilet experiences that no one ever think about. In one of my project assignment at a government oil and gas company, the toilet in the building where we worked for about 2 years was very “fascinating”. There were 4 toilet rooms with toilet bowl in it, but no toilet seat at all. Imagine how you are going to pee in that kind of situation! The first time I used the toilet, it took me about 5 to 10 minutes to get the best position to pee in this toilet! I was curious how the others can survive with it. So, on one conversation over lunch with my colleagues I asked some of them on how they use the toilet. And, I got amazing stories! A woman colleague told me that she used to do half-squat every time she peed because it was impossible to sit on the toilet! The other one said that she sometime sat on it –with the help of a roll toilet tissue to cover the bowl--because she could not stand the squad position if she had “big event’ that usually took minutes. The most hillarious one is that some of them even squatted over the toilet bowl to avoid contact with the non-hygienic bowl! For some of my metrosexual male colleagues, the toilet thing was really a big problem. They solved the problem by going to a five-star hotel located about 1 km from the office just for “pup”.

Another experience I have now is quite the same, even though not as hilarious as the previous one. I am assigned at the state utility company where there are 2 toilets which tissues as the problem. Sometime I have to spend 3-5 minutes looking for tissue. Some of us try to find another toilet in different floor. You do the math for the time spent on these non-value-added activities!

You may think that this toilet story is just a tiny problem that you would not be bothered to think about it. But, have you ever calculate the economic side of this extraordinary situation? How much opportunity and time we can save if we have clean and proper toilet? Let say, 15-20 minutes of no added value a day, can be accumulated to 100 minutes a week, 2000 minutes a month and 24000 minutes a year (equal to 400 hrs. try converting this to consultant rate: 8hrs = USD 600-800). Not to mention that actually bowl-type of toilet is really not suitable for some of Indonesian people. Instead of seating on the bowl, they squat ON it! If you are the next person using the toilet, you have to really clean up the seat!

Back to productivity, when the output is less due to employees’ beyond-control factors, it is the responsibility of the employer/client to solve it. Working environment is not simply office, computer, networks, colleagues, documents, but also toilet and temperature (I’ll write the last one later in different post -- I can assure you, this is as much interesting!).

alias

Alias

have been watching "alias" lately. mostly out of curiosity after reading the graphic novel some years back. it's not dissappointing. anna seems to disagree, though -- she always falls asleep with those glasses on her nose. (surely she loves "friends" way more. even "everybody loves raymond" can not beat her sleeping call).

back to "alias". garner is a bad actrees. don't be critical on acting skill, if i may suggest -- just take it easy. it's sidney bristow. forget about garner. (but that guy who does sloane and another one playing jack bristow are good).

great place to work

this morning i told aco i want to be a parliamentary member. less work (or should i say no work to do?), less thinking, but good salary with lots of allowances. they themselves just approved another 10 million rupiah allowance per month, excluded the following compensation that they had already have (in million rupiah):

• basic salary:4.2
• position allowance:9.7
• intensive communication:4.14
• honors allowance:3.7 (what the hell is this?)
• package allowance:2
• electricity:2
• telephone :2
• family allowance:0.588

compare that to a worlwide management consulting company where i am working in now; with its famous slogan: "great place to work", ours are really nothing.

however, money is not everything. i still value our personal development, critical thinking, respect to others, integrity, honest and hard works more than those allowances. and lastly, i don't want to be a person that is cursed by millions of indonesian people.

the power of "thinking without thinking"

Yesterday I turned down one candidate that I interviewed for a vacancy in my office. It is not that she doesn't meet the qualification, but something was telling me that she is not the right person that we're looking for. People might think that I am subjective. Well, thanks to my husband who bought me "Blink" (to cheer me up 'cause I couldn't go with him to Phuket, sniff) which makes me more convinced that you actually can make a very good decision in the first 2 seconds. That’s the power of our brain. As Malcom Gladwell said "with mastering the art of 'thin slicing' we can think without thinking."