Do you know where’s the nearest coffeshop?

It was around half to eleven PM. The dark was just approaching and I was about crossing the street when all of the sudden a car stopped right in front of me. A blonde girl on the driver seat smiled from the car window. While she’s rolling down her car window, she shouted:

“Meneer! Blah blah blah blah blah ?”
“What?? Sorry but I don’t speak Dutch!”
“I said, do you know where’s the nearest coffeshop*?”
“Oh, I’m not very sure, but you can try the centrum. Just drive straight and turn left”
“Thanks!”

For those who need a little bit enlightenment, coffeeshop in Netherlands means a place where we can smoke the cannabis for personal consumption. After she drove her car off, I smiled and wondering how people were still desperately craving for a painkiller even in the middle of the night. Ironically, 6 weeks ago in the hospital in Amsterdam I refused to use a painkiller although the nurse said that I’m entitled to have one. Stupid me. I was too afraid I would get addicted to it. As the result, two hours later I cried and begged them to give me one when they were starting to put the plaster onto my injured leg.

Anyway, back to that girl. Why would she think I know such a place? I think that means it’s time to cut my hair ..

Filed under: Life

Twittering Our Life

Ever since social networking applications had influenced our lives, I started to question people including myself. Have we become more extroverts? Or people are just basically extroverts. The only difference between us and people 100 years ago is that in this Internet era, we have the tools to express our extrovert-ness.

Now I’m going to reminiscing my Internet social life transformations since the year of 2000. So far I remember, I started my extrovert-ness by a creating personal website complete with its guestbook in a simple PHP scripts. Then only in few years, people invented a new word. “Blog”. Of course then I was immediately becoming the part of it. Started that time, the inventions of what they so called social networking applications – or I’d prefer to call it self-promotion services – has never been stopped until now. Say Friendster, Multiply, MySpace, Facebook, etc have become a part of millions people’s life including ours.

Nevertheless, few weeks ago I just created myself an account in a micro-blogging service called Twitter. Actually, I’ve heard about this guy before. But since I had enough with social networking services, I always refrained to sign up. I thought, someday people will get tired of all this things and we will end up by only sticking to one big powerful social networking application. Besides, what’s so cool with writing post in only 140 characters? I’ve been doing it for years in my IM or nowadays Facebook.

I was wrong. Eventually people are so dynamic and we always search what suits them the most. According to Wikipedia, in just two years time Twitter has gain popularity worldwide. I become more interested on Twitter since it’s supported by huge amounts of 3rd party applications. Here’re some few examples:

Tweetr
Twitter desktop client for Mac/PC

twitter@twitter.com
Twitter GTalk account, which enables GTalk users to post their updates via IM.

TwitterMail
Twitting by mail.

Tweetie
Twitter client for iPhone

TwitPic
Share photos on twitter

And so many more in http://www.squidoo.com/twitterapps

I’m pretty sure that soon it’ll be a new word in our dictionary after “google”.  So later we can say, “Hey would you twit about your honeymoon experience ?”

- Yes, you can follow me twitting at http://twitter.com/rnugraha. -

Filed under: Life , social networking, twitter

Radio of Indonesian Student Association

For those who miss home country’s tunes, let’s tune in

http://si-ppi-2009.com/player/.

This internet radio was established by Indonesian Students Association in Germany. Today is their premiere broadcast and Rein, the announcer who’s also a good friend during my college time asked me to participate in sound checking. Here’s some of our conversations:

Filed under: Life

The Welcoming Card

Country Side View by Riza

Few days ago in my regular lazy morning, my eyes spotted something white and square lying next to my bedroom’s door. It was a postcard with a catchy sentence in strong red font on its front side. It said: “Je vindt ‘t pas echt in Utrecht”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but according to my poor Dutch skill, the sentence more or less means “You’ll find it only in Utrecht”.

Filed under: Life

I Think ..

Boss: “I think .. you know what I think! Do you know what I think?”
Me: “Yes ofcourse! You think that I know what you think! You just said it!”
Boss: -_-’

Filed under: Life