But that’s not all that is unique about it.  What’s so unique about Richmond Park is the strong herd of 650 deer in it!  The special thing about this herd of Deer is that, not only they are free-roaming, but they are also very tame!  So much so that I could feed them off my hand  Which I did last weekend (apparently they like bread).

how close I was to them

They are so ‘Majestic’.

First of all I would like to apologise for not writing for so long.  What can I say, there are other things that needs more attention.

But, I’m back and I’m going to try a different thing this time, I want to try to document my experience using video   I think there is something different with watching a ‘moving picture’, something richer, something unique.

Why did I suddenly decide to do this, well, if you remember from my last post about me being Serial Jobseeker, I wrote that I got a job with my old company.  This company that I am working with, happens to have an office right in the heart of City of London (no .. not London as a city, but the square mile that is the business district of London), which also close to a lot of ‘touristic places’.  It suddenly dawned on me that I have a perfect opportunity to share these great and beautiful places since I am already there.  I could, for example, have my lunch outside and take some short video after that.

So, that’s it, today I did my first video of the series which I am calling ‘This is London‘.  I am looking forward to share many things of this great city that I live in with you.

Today is a special day for me … it’s the day I was born ! Cue the fanfare and confetti !

So, first of all, let me take this opportunity to say that I’m really grateful to be given yet another rich year that was full with all possible things I could ask in life, good things and especially bad things, all working in harmony and contributing in shaping this person, that is yours truly.

Nevertheless, after 36 years, celebration didn’t seem to be one thing that I had in my long list of priorities.  I was prepared to spend the day quietly, no party, no cake, and no present.  I thought that I was too old for those things.

But, what has happened was far from quiet at all.  First, my girlfriend, who got upset because I didn’t want any present from her, went behind my back and threw a surprise pre-birthday party for me!  I’ve never had somebody giving me surprise of ‘anything’, and as I didn’t expect this at all, I was genuinely surprised I had my close friends there in the party, we ate, we drank, we sang.  I had my party, my cake, and my presents.  I had a great time

That was yesterday, and I thought that was all the surprise I got for the day.  So, imagine my surprise when I checked my Twitter this morning.  There in my replies box, there were already a bunch of ‘Happy Birthday’ Tweets from some of my Twitter Friends waiting for me.  That was it, it was the icing on my birthday cake, wonderful.  In the midst of this, I was actually stop and wondering where they all got my birth date from.  But I immediately realised that I’ve put the date on my Facebook account, and that the first person who tweeted was also my Facebook friend.

So, the rest of the my day was one of a classic example of the Word of Mouth, as one tweeted and others followed, and again, and again.  This happened for the most part of the morning, not just in Twitter but also in Facebook.

This is my first Social Media Birthday Party, and I would like to thank everybody for their kind greetings and wishes.  May God repay your kindness a hundred fold.

I took a screenshot of my timelines (click to zoom), enjoy:

Happy Birthday Tweets

Facebook Wall

Update:

Ok, this is a little bit surreal, but Leo Laporte just sent me a Birthday Wish via Facebook !!!

Leo Laporte B'day Wish

Not sure if he was writing it himself, but nevertheless, this is Awesome !

Last week, my home country (Indonesia) was holding its Legislative Election (to elect local MP) and if everything goes according to plan, we are going to have the Presidential Election this summer.
Since we do election every 5 year, this year’s election is the third election I would’ve experienced since I’ve been abroad.
The thing is, I didn’t vote on both previous occassions. On the first one, I’ve just arrived in the UK, still fresh, and didn’t have a clue on what I was supposed to go about registering myself to vote. On the second one, I was just too lazy to register, besides I thought I’ve already been away too long I felt that I lost touch with my country’s politic scene, and that whoever I had voted wouldn’t had had any impact what so ever in my life abroad.
This year, I was telling myself that it’s time for me to be a responsible citizen and start exercising my Democratic Rights. Or so I thought
This time I manage to register myself on the voting list, had received the voting card, and basically administratively ready to vote.  The only thing I needed to do was to get over to the embassy and voted.
That’s the theory anyway.
A few days before the voting day, I vented my frustration to my fellow Indonesian Tweeple, saying that even though I had a few days left before I had to vote, just like 5 years ago, I ‘still’ hadn’t had any clue about whom I should vote.  Apparently there are 44 parties to choose from (somehow I missed the time when we had only 3 parties available), each has its own candidate for my electoral region (the overseas).  Then somebody sent me a link to a website featuring a list of all those candidates for me to look at.
After reading (more like skimming) the list, I realised, really … even with all these information, how was I supposed to pick one just like that ?  I suddenly began to doubt my own decision that I took earlier.
The night before the voting day, I completely lost my interest, and coupled with the fact that I had to get permission from my work (as it was a working day), my conviction was all but remained. I just didn’t have the will anymore, and finally decided to go ‘Golput‘ (an Indonesian slank to indicate abstain).
I still want to vote for the Presidential Election though, where the candidates are a few, so I won’t have to think that much, at least that’s what I hope.
Btwy, if anybody wants to know which parties are winning (or losing), you can check it in this real-time chart, so far the Democrats are winning.

When I left Wallstreet Systems (WSS) at the end of 2006, I didn’t think that I would be back working with them again.  But yet, here I am, sitting in their new office, surrounded by my old collegues (most of them are still here).  It’s been a strange feeling, as if I had never left.  Indeed some of my collegues has been saying that they considered me having had a (very) long holiday everytime my name up (for one or other reasons).  This has led me into somekind of realisation, of how important it is for us to keep a good relationship with our former collegues for the reason of exactly moments like these, ‘especially’ for moments like these.

Why? Because ‘internal recommendation’ is the best and the fastest way to find a new job!

Most employers would give priority to internal recommendation above all other type of candidacies.  They will generally trust their own employees to provide an inside information, a personal reference if you like about the candidate.  This usually works best when both of the referee and the candidate were at some point working together, and even better if both were/are friends, which means that the employee can give not only a profesional recommendation, but also a character reference.  Consequently, the employer would get a more accurate picture of the new candidate, and doesn’t have to rely solely on the result of interviews, which let’s be honest could often be a hit and miss.  Moreover, for big companies which often do the hiring via Recruitement Agencies, this means that they don’t have to pay big commission to get new candidates, the internal recommendation process will skip the agent completely, less expenses for the company.  Everybody is happy! (apart from the agent of course).

As a matter of fact, this was what exactly happened to me.  I left WSS on November 2006 for one and other reasons, mainly to broaden my profesional horizon, to try other things that live could give me.  One key thing in this was that my leaving was not one of those bad lay-offs, when employee is faced with statutory dismissal in regard of some employee’s own gross conduct or similar to this.  I left the company peacefully with mutual understanding on the reason of why I was resigning.
More importantly though, after I left, I wasn’t just leave it like that.  Thanks to the closeness that we had among us, I wasn’t prepared to throw away the relationship that we had. So, I kept in touch with them, especially with some select few, with whom I was particulary close.  Of course, I didn’t know at that time, that this relationship that I kept going would give me a way out in the most critical moment of my profesional life, nor did I expect anything from this friendship.  We were just friends, and that what friends do.

During the last month when I got redundant from my previous job, I had an opportunity to visit one of these friends of mine, who accidentally lives not far from me.  He is now holding a quite high position in the company (the kind of position which has big influence in the decision of hiring new employee).  We were talking about our jobs and other usual things.  Basically to catch up with each other.  Obviously I told him about my redundancy, and the fact that I was looking for a new position.  But nothing actually happened on this meeting, possibly because the decision to hire new people was not finalised at that time.  In anyway, I was not actually expecting anything from him, as all big companies were either cutting back their workforce or freezing the hiring process.
Only after a few weeks later that I received an email from him, basically asking me if I was still looking for new position, the fact that the company were looking for (several!) new developers to come aboard, and if I was interested I should call him.  Well, at that point, that email felt like a letter from heaven.  Because to be honest, I was starting to get very worried if I would ever get a job or not.  I called him straight away, we talked and we arranged a face to face meeting where I would come to the company’s HQ and doing interview with HR.  One short interview and one week later, I got an offer for the job I was applying, which I prompty accepted.  And here I am, again, sitting among my old friends (who were all delighted to see me again), staring at programming codes which I wrote myself a few years earlier, and trying to remember why I did it that way

So, next time you are planning to leave your company, consider to keep the friendship that you’ve already had, even after you leave, cause you never know what is going to hit you along your way (bad economic recession for example?). And when ‘the shit’s starting to hit the fan‘, you will really need all leverages you can get to get out from the deep-end.  Having keep a good friendship with your old collegues could just be your ‘trump’ card, your lifeline, or sometimes the only way out.

Btwy, here are some photos from my new workplace

http://plurl.me/4ms

I was a Serial Jobseeker and thanks to God that I have finally found a job.

For others out there who are still not having any luck, don’t give up guys!  I’m sure there is something out there for you.

Yes, SQUAT, as in Squat Down

Funny enough, this seemingly trivial little fact was only made aware to me recently.  I guess when you take something for granted, you don’t really care about it, until somebody point it out to you.  

I am talking about Squatting Down.  Yes, the trivial exercise that most of us seems doing without even think.  But I recently learned that apparently there are two types of Squatting.  

The first one is called Western Squat, this is the Squat where your heals don’t touch the ground.

The second one is called Asian Squat, this is the Squat where your heals do touch the ground (like what this guy in the next picture does).

Now, I think the two regional terms above don’t indicate discrimination, they merely are just describe where it originally came from.

Moreover, I learned that not everybody could the Asian Squat, something that I’ve done all my life, hence took it for granted.  It was actually quite funny when I watched some friends trying to do it but kept falling over because they were losing their balance

Anyway, I was thinking today, why’s that?  Why we, most Asians can do it, but not others?  A quick Googling (you really can find anything via Google this days) lead me to a conclusion of what might’ve caused this.

In my opinion, it is a matter of Cultural differences.  You see, back home we have wet Bathroom and Squat WC/Bog/Toilet (whatever you call it).  So, since we were children, we’ve already trained (forced) to squat on the Bog to do ‘our business‘.  Consequently, we all are able to do it.

As for myself, my family house has sitting bog for a long time already, but it took me a long while to actually brave myself to sit on it.  For a very long time, I just did as I was used to do, i.e. squatted on top of the sitting toilet  It really was a change of mind-set for me (there is another change of mind-set that still has relation with toilet, which I will tell you on the next post).

When I did my research today, I came across this funny Youtube clip that sums up all of this

[Original clip by mhl12]

Related Posts:

Culture Shocks: The Intro to the series

Culture Shocks #1: The Queue Starts Here

Culture Shocks #2: Do You Take Milk With Your Tea ?

Some of you might’ve known that recently I was made redundant (that is 3 weeks from today). Not many of us could’ve predicted what is happening today, and the ones who could, most of them just turned a blind eye away from it (damn those bankers!). Unfortunately, the recession is real, is here and is definitely not getting better very soon. And, again, unfortunately I am pretty much in the ‘thick’ of it.
The funny thing is, this is the 4th time that I’m back in the Job Market in the past 3 years, which means that I’m out of job almost ‘every year’. You can say that I’m a ‘Serial Job Seeker’.

As hundreds, thousands of people are losing their jobs almost on weekly basis, the market is becoming more and more saturated. Consequently, the chances that we get a job, any job (let alone the job that we want) are very slim. To make matters worse, as job seekers are coming flooding in to the market, employers can now hire very good, very skillful people at a very competitive salary rate, sometimes almost half of what it was 6 months ago.

I can feel this straight away. Six months ago, as soon as I put my CV online, I got almost contant stream of calls from Head Hunters. In one week I had already secured a few interviews, and I got an offer by week three. In addition, I could still negotiate a decent, above average salary rate a little bit more freely. All these without me actively looking for job openings.

This time, the situation is completely different. I can’t anymore rely on agencies stumble upon my CV online and call me, and when they do, there haven’t been many of these calls. I have to be more pro-active in looking for new vancancies, and sending CV directly to these openings. The worst part is, the salary rate has been much going down, that I have to take a substantial pay cut to make myself more marketable.
This time, employers are really have the upper-hand in term of commanding salary rate, not that there are many of them hiring, most employers are freezing their hiring process, as they are sacking half of their work-force.

But, not everything is doom and gloom. There are in fact employers out there that are still hiring, and eventhough I don’t get as many phone calls as I used to, the fact remains that there are still some of them that needs people (thanks God).

After three weeks looking pro-actively, finally I got my first interview early this week, and more interviews line up next week. So fingers crossed !

For my fellow job-seekers, don’t lose hope, there are still place for you there, you just need to wait a little longer. My advise is,

• Let yourself known, put your CV on all Online Job Boards you know (I list some of my favorites in the bottoms).
• Join LinkedIn, put your resume there, and start connecting with people.
• Use your Social Networking’s Network (Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, etc) as much as possible, don’t be too shy to ask around for vancancies, you never know what your friends might have.
• If you want you can Tweet your Resume to me (my Twitter acount is mahadewa), and I will Re-Tweet it to my network, everybody could do the same I’m sure.
• If you are used to get paid a high salary, this is not the time to hold on that, you need to go down on your rate. But it doesn’t mean that you have to get too low that you would be forced to skip meal every other day so you can pay the rent.

For people that still has a job and surviving, don’t think that your invincible (I thought I was untouchable, but I was actually just too proud).

• Get the dust off that old CV of yours, and start writing a new one, so when (if) the time comes you are ready.
• Go and do some scouting to see how’s the your job market for your sector out there, it will give you some idea of what are available.

Finally, this is probably the perfect time for us to re-think about what our goal in life and if what we are doing right now is the right path if not the only path to reach that goal. Think about other alternatives, maybe you want to start that restaurant business that you always wanted to do (people still need to eat), or you want to free yourself from the shackle of corporate life and becoming freelancer. Or how about getting together with some of other friends and form your own business (we’ve seen some successful stories like this after the year 2000 ‘Internet Doom’). I believe this recession is the best time for enterpreneurs to start to make a move. Quit procrastinating and get moving, because now you have the perfect excuse to do it.

The recession is real, is here, and is not going away very soon. You need to be more pro-active, this is not the time to sit around and hope that you can get through the storm unscathed, for we are in this for a very long time.

Good luck for your job hunting !

Here are some job resources that I’ve been using, mostly for the UK cause that’s where I live. If you have your own favorites, please do share:

Online Job Boards:

Monster.com

Jobsite

Jobsearch

SimplyHired

LondonCareers

Startupers

Global Career Company

CWJobs

Jobster

Crunchboard

http://twitter.com/topjobsinlondon

Programmer Meets Designer

LinkedIn has it’s own Job board, but you need to join in first.

Freelancing:

RentACoder

Today is Monday the 2nd of February 2009, and London is snowing! I can hear other people from colder countries say ‘meh’ in unison  But if you know London, you would know that snow is really rare let alone one with 20 cm thick. So, I took a liberty to record it this morning  In a way it’s quite beautiful, although as the UK has never been prepared for this kind of snow, troubles are everywhere.  Most schools are closed (sensible), many roads are closed as driving is simply dangerous, and don’t ask about buses and tubes.

Err … what ? Hell No !

Tea … you wouldn’t understand the ‘extend’ of the Brits’ obsession for drinking Tea until you actually live for a while in this country.

I didn’t realize how much drinking tea were so integrated to the British life that, like football, cricket and rugby, it had become part of the culture, probably more than those 3 sports combined.  Nor little did I know that tea can have so many types, colours and tastes.

Tea Boxes

Before I came to England, the only references I got about English’s tea drinking habit were from English Period Movies, or English Novels/Children Books, mainly Agatha Christie‘s, Enid Blyton‘s.

And who can forget … Captain Jean Luc Picard

.. only when I got here that I could finally get how Earl Grey tastes like, and to tell you the truth I kinda like it.

Earl Grey

Sure, from these ‘literature’ or from ‘what people generally says’ we could get some sort of assumption or at least some imaginations of how it was, but that was all. I (and probably many others) had always had this sort of assumption/imagination, that everybody in Britain would stop doing whatever they were doing at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, where they would sit down and sip their nicely brewed tea while eating some biscuits.  This was probably true … long time ago   In reality, the one that I’m living now, many people simply don’t have time even for lunch, let alone for a cup of tea.  It doesn’t mean that they stop drinking it though, they still do, just the time and the place that has changed. Instead of 5 o’clock, they do it whenever they want it, and instead of the ‘Drawing Room’ they do it where ever they want.

In Indonesia, tea is of course nothing new for the people who live there, after all Indonesia is one of only few places in the world where tea is grown (en-masse) and that 7% of the world tea exports comes from highlands of Indonesia.

Tea Picker

As a matter of fact, according to history, Indonesia had played a quite important role in the process of introduction of tea to the European.
As you’ve probably have known, Tea (Camellia Sinensis in Latin) was originated from China and it’s been enjoyed by the Chinese for thousands of years.

Tea Species

During the beginning of the Colonial Age in the late 16th century, it was believed that the Portuguese was the first people that brought back and introduced tea from China and the Far East to Europe.  But it was not them who were the first ship tea commercially, it was the Dutch (who occupied Indonesia for about 350 years). By the turn of the century the Dutch had already established trading posts on the island of Java, and it was via Java that in 1606 the first consignment of tea was shipped from China to Holland.  From Holland, tea began to spread around European continent and eventually made its way to England.  You can read more about the history of tea in the UK Tea Council website.

Tea Plantation

Below is a photo of ‘Cutty Shark‘, the ONLY remaining Tea Clipper Ship in the world. Clipper is a specialised ship with narrow hull and tall masts packing as many as 35 sails, they were very fast (25 knots).  They could sail from China to England in about 100 days or less (this is before they built Suez Canal, so they needed to go around the Cape of Hope).  Before Clipper time, the quickest journey using normal ship used to take 9 months!  Cutty Shark was ‘parked’ in a dry dock in London Greenwich.  Sadly it was ravaged by fire last year.  Fortunately I managed to take the picture below long before that happened.

So, in a way Indonesians have been known to tea for quite some times now, and we all grew up drinking tea since we were baby (some parents give their baby tea instead of milk).  We drink it hot, we drink it cold, we drink it in any occassion, in no specific time, and unlike the Japanese, we don’t have a special ritual to drink it (at least not that I know of).  One of our favorite tea is one particular branded bottled tea called ‘Teh Botol Sosro‘, it’s so ubiquitous that other products of bottled tea are called the same name (‘Teh Botol‘ – Bottled Tea) regardless of the brand (just like coke for Coca Cola). We would drink this bottled tea almost every time we have a chance to.  This is probably as close as we could get in regards to national obsession in tea drinking, though still not even close to the English’s.

Teh Botol Sosro

One thing that was a culture shock to me was the fact the they drink tea with ‘milk’ !!!  What the **** ?! That’s exactly what I thought when I was asked whether I took milk with my tea.  Were they mad ? Not only that it looked disgusting … it tasted awful !  I couldn’t believe that there was anybody in their right mind would drink that thing !  Alas, it turned out to be that almost ALL of them drink tea like that   It took me quite a while to accept this, and as a matter of fact I had a chance (accidental .. mind) to taste it myself.  I am sorry, no offense to my British friends, but that was my first AND my last time I would drink ‘white’ tea.  Btwy, recently some studies discovered that putting milk in the tea would block the health gains

Another interesting thing I learnt in conjunction with this habit is the word ‘tea’ itself.  Here it doesn’t always mean the ‘drink’, it also means ‘dinner’, depending on the situation when you say it.  It took me a while too, to realize what my housemate meant by ‘having my tea’ while in fact he was having his dinner in front of him and not a cup of tea.  It turned out that, in the past people would have dinner very late, about 8 o’clock.  So they invented the tea drinking habit to ‘fill in’ the gap between lunch and dinner, which was around 5 o’clock and originally was the domain of upper class ladies in the drawing room.  Later on, the middle and lower class worker had also their ‘tea’ but with more substantial meal, around 6-7 o’clock in place of the late dinner.  The former is called ‘low tea‘, because it’s served in a low table, and the latter is called ‘high tea’, because it’s served in a dining-table (higher).

These days, at least in London where I live, since everybody only come from work after 7 o’clock, not many people are having ‘tea’ anymore, instead we usually have dinner, or even supper (for even later).

There are many other things that we could talk about, such as the types of the tea, where they grow, or how to make a perfect brew, and so on and so on, but I am going to leave these for you as a matter of excercise

Ok, I’m going to shut-up now I was meaning to talk about drinking Tea with milk, and ended up giving a History Lesson Admittedly though, it’s been an eye opener when I was researching this post, I’ve learnt quite a lot of things these past few days, things that I took for granted.  Hopefully it’s been as entertaining for you as it has been for me.

‘Cup of Tea anyone?’

Related Post:

Culture Shocks (Intro to the Series)

Culture Shocks #1: The Queue Starts Here

Culture Shocks #3: I don’t Know Squat

You might also be interested in:

It All Began Like This …

I would like to take a bit of your time to tell you about this group that I joined recently.

‘Blogger Peduli’ (Bloggers who care in English) is a Network of Bloggers and Blogger Communities, whose main concerns are issues regarding places in Indonesia where Natural Disaster strikes, the people who are victims of these disasters and how to aid them.  This non-profit community will, fore and foremost, provide news and information on and about these events via their member’s network of blogs. They are also open for any form of aids, assistance or partnership from other parties who would like to help.

At the moment we are consolidating for the Earthquake that hit Indonesia on Sunday, 4th of January. The 7.6 magnitude tremor struck north of the city Manokwari in Irian Jaya (West Papua).  We are monitoring the situation out there and trying to share any news and information we could get. You can read more about it on BBC News site.

You can read more about them in their blog (Indonesian only for now) at http://bloggerpeduli.com.
You can also join the mailing-list , or the Facebook Group.
Alternatively you can follow them via Twitter or Plurk.

This is a great and noble initiative by Indonesian Bloggers, one that I am proud to be a part of.  Let’s hope that the group can continue to grow to its potential and to serve its goal to help Indonesian people.