Maybe
Sharon Stone thinks she could be another Susan Sarandon. Maybe she
thinks she is intelligent enough to write her own script. Maybe she
just doesn’t realize how powerful China and its market is.

clipped from film.guardian.co.uk

Sharon
Stone is facing a ban on the showing of her films in China after
suggesting the recent earthquake that killed up to 67,000 people may
have been the result of "bad karma" over the country’s occupation of
Tibet.

Stone, 50, who was speaking to reporters
at the Cannes film festival, criticised the Chinese government’s
actions in Tibet and directly linked them to the disaster:

"I’ve
been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics, because they
are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine,"
she said.

"And then all this earthquake and all this stuff
happened, and I thought, is that karma - when you’re not nice that the
bad things happen to you?"

The cheeky newspaper thinks that the ban, however, may
be something of a blessing for Chinese movie-goers. The Year of Getting
to Know Us, the first of Stone’s films to be affected by the ban, has
been described by a user of the internet film site IMDb as "one of the
five worst films I have seen in my lifetime".

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My blog is updated today, 30 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

Social
networking websites certainly are on the top of the game, everybody is
hooked up and cannot live without it. There has been discussion in many
industries about how they could tap into this new trend and get
benefits out of it. It is so powerful that HSBC
had to cancel their plans to scrap interest-free overdrafts for
graduate students, after thousands of them had set up a ‘wall’ in
Facebook, campaigning to boycott the bank. Now mobile phone provider, Orange, try to win their customers by offering free access to Facebook and MySpace - they even air special adverts on TV just to emphasise it.

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My blog is updated today, 28 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

An ex-colleague is coming to pursue his master’s degree here, and was
quite gutted when I told him to prepare some light layers, even though
today is so-called summer. Summer here is not something like in
tropical countries or in Australia, where we can walk around with
shorts, tank tops, and open-toe sandals, and get some sunburn. Well,
Stuart got some sunburn once when he played golf 3 weeks a go, but only
the brave ones will be able to pull off such outfits which heavily
depends on the weather. I usually push my boundaries by wearing a
summer dress with jeweled sandals, but it is always layered with
cardigan and a light coat. I
am still wearing my Australian winter coat during night outs, outside
my skimpy outfits, as it’s not warm enough for winter but perfect for
spring/autumn. It’s hilarious, though, to see stores selling
summer
outfits but then to see people insisting on wearing shorts with tights
underneath (girls, if you think it looks cool, ask the guy).
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My blog is updated today, 25 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

Everyone
in Indonesia is familiar with Japan and its products, especially in
automotive industry. Toyota, Honda, and Mitsubishi are the three brands
which dominate the streets in Indonesia.

His name is Thomas Blake Glover. He was born in 1838 in Fraserburgh, (the same town where Stuart’s father now resides), the largest shellfish port in Europe, 40 miles North of Aberdeen. Glover arrived in Nagasaki when he was 21 and worked for tea merchants (which possibly also did a bit of opium trading too),
and two years later set up his own independent business, Glover Trading
Co. (Guraba-Shokai). His business was a success, and in 1863 he built
Glover House (the oldest Western-style building in Japan) on Minami
Yamate, a beautiful hillside overlooking Nagasaki Harbour.

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My blog is updated today, 22 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

… I don’t really know my country that well, apparently. Stuart’s
friends are coming for two weeks and even though I’ve been to Bali a
thousand times I haven’t explored the island further than Seminyak
area. Then the will be spending some time in Jakarta. But except
visiting our bars (Eastern Promises and Cazbar),
and maybe a soapie, I have absolutely no idea where to take them - I
have to ask my friends who, despite trying really hard, couldn’t give
me satisfactory answers. Where to go in Jakarta except Sunda Kelapa? I
might take them to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah but it’s damn too far (in
terms of time journey, not distance), we might as well spend the night
in Bogor. I only know Bandung for it’s factory outlets. I know,
embarrassing. I am embarrassing.

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My blog is updated today, 21 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

… Another
Scottish dessert. Traditionally served during harvest time in summer
but now can be found everywhere, it is made from a mixture of whipped
cream (lots of it), whiskey, honey and fresh raspberries topped with
toasted oatmeal. The dessert is very light, not too sweet, beautiful to
serve, easy to make, and a mixture of blueberries, strawberries,
raspberries, blackberries may be used, all to good effect, as you don’t
necessarily have to stick to raspberries.

A traditional way to serve cranachan is to bring dishes of each
ingredient to the table, so that each person can assemble their dessert
to taste. Tall glasses are also a typical presentation (from Wikipedia).

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My blog is updated today, 17 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

Cooking
is something - I can say this with confident - that many Indonesians
don’t master. Generally we are spoiled rotten by our family who can
afford maids (or sometimes maid and
cook), and by the widely available good and cheap food on every corner
in Indonesia. Because of this, some people never visit their own
kitchen, or have more than one (one for display, one for pantry, and
one for the maids who do all the cooking and where the
real work
presents. Seriously, this is true), or live merely by eating out or
deliveries. It makes sense, anyway, that if you only need to pay USD
20.00 for a delicious main course in 5-star hotels, or much less in
nice restaurants, why bother to cook?

Since
Indonesians are spoiled all the way, it’s no wonder that few of us
understand which knife to use for cutting meat and which one is for
veggies. Horrible stories like burned toast or even burned boiled
water, lack of kettle usage ability, and so on, becomes a constant joke
in the country and abroad. I hardly meet someone who thinks cooking is
a hobby, let alone an art. Those who do cook, usually discover their
hidden talents by force of nature, being kicked out of home to study
somewhere else, and as typical (poor) students, we get bored of Indomie
instant noodles or suffer from acute homesick (especially when we live
thousands miles away from our home country). In some rare cases, some
of us are forced to cook when we get married and must impress the
in-laws, or jump into a couplehood and are asked to pamper their
partners, or sometimes cannot runaway from social responsibility for
presenting signature dishes on holidays like Id or Christmas (the
closest example would be my own mother who every year became so busy
cooking for Id and she made from nastar cookies to her signature beef
soup. It was a stressful time usually because we would have an open
house for probably 7 days and wouldn’t know whether 13 or 30 people
would turn up everyday).

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My blog is updated today, 14 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

Last
month on our journey back from London, a 7-years-old girl was sitting next
to me restlessly, and in between her non-stop chatting to her mum who
looked desperately could use some extra hours of sleeping and her tiny
fingers which wre busy pressing her pink Playstation Portable to kill
whatever enemy she fought against, she was singing. Not the Barney
purple dinosaur song or any song a normal pre-teens would sing, but Girls Aloud’s new single Can’t Speak French.

Her
mum, finally given up sleeping and joined the conversation, said that
her beloved daughter wants to be an actress. Not a doctor, a lawyer, or
an architect, but an actress. Being a pragmatic lady, mum said it’s not
going to be easy. A dreamer and a kid, the 7-years-old said it’s easy
(according to her friend who had scored some gigs in local theater) and
believed she’s going to make it.

This
kid is not alone, millions of other (pre)-teenagers have unrealistic
expectations of instant stardom. The constant media exposure of teenage
celebrities, such as Emma Watson and Miley Cyrus,
as well as the reality TV talent shows like X factors and American Idol
that present the glamorous life of being celebrities on our doorsteps,
are said to be contributing factors. These youngsters think that their
Hollywood break is just around the corner, and the glittery life every
teenage celebrities live each day is an escape from exams and other
boring school stuffs.

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My blog is updated today, 12 May 2008. Click Finally Woken
  to read the complete story.

The Writer just wrote about spoiled expatriates, "those who come from developed country and get a job in developing country and live like a king/queen".
With salary which is unbelievably higher than a local standard - mostly
due to ridiculous exchange rates and tax regulations - and lots of
allowances, they soon embrace a lavish lifestyle with maids, gardeners,
security guards, and so on.

I
couldn’t deny that many expats are living like that. Being expats means
they have to sacrifice many things: their life back home, their friends
and family, their comfortable surrounding, to go to a foreign place
thousands miles away from home with different customs, food, culture,
temperature, and work attitudes. Many of them are reluctant to be
posted overseas, especially if they have children to think about, or
will be posted in a not-so-popular country like Colombia (and I don’t
think they will jump in joy when they know they will be sent to
Indonesia!), and have to be lured to say yes (hence the allowances and
first-class treatments).

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My blog is updated today, 7 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.

Indonesian Expatriates Forum (IEF), created in January 2008, has been doing very good. Bugilsnews
puts IEF’s widget which shows the list of articles we have published on
their website (they also put a link to my personal blog there - big
thanks to Bart and the team - perhaps because I constantly promote
Bugil’s, Cazbar and EP!), and with their perpetually growing number of
readers and loyal fans, having IEF’s link on their site will certainly
boost IEF’s popularity! Several bloggers also have IEF link on their
blogs, like Jakartass (the most popular English blog according to Indonesia Matters), and my blogbuddies like Rima and Therry.

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My blog is updated today, 3 May 2008. Click Finally Woken to read the complete story.