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Sunday, Nov 28: Timeline and Cold Mountain

Some days before, Carla lent me two VCDs, Timeline and Cold Mountain. When I played the movie, I quickly found out why she had it. Because Paul Walker was one of the actor. She has been a loyal fan of him lately. Timeline was a sci-fi movie about some archaeologists who travelled back to the past to find their leader. The setting was when English invaded Franch. Nothing special though, the story is easily followed and so predictable.

While Timeline is an under average movie, Cold Mountain is really a good movie featuring some decent actors and actresses: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zelweger, and Natalie Portman. Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) and her father, a priest, came to a remote place called Cold Mountain. There she met Inman (Jude Law) and felt in love at the first sight. Soon, there was a civil war in America. Inman and the other young men were sent to battle. Having spent quite some times in the battlefield, Inman couldn’t resist his feeling anymore and decided to go home to meet Ada. Unfortunately, every man running away from the battlefield was considered a traitor and must be killed at sight. Hence, the journey was not a walk in the park.

Cold Mountain packs many romantic scenes, especially between Ada and Inman. A must see for every fan of love stories. Renee played so well as the servant of Ada that she got the recent Academy Award as the best supporting actress.

Monday, Nov 29: Milla Jovovich Gets an Upgrade

Around 5 PM, Jon suddenly asked me to go watch the movie with him. Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse. At last, I’d asked him several times before but he always replied that he didn’t have enough money. Luckily, we arrived at Galaxy Mall just before the movie began. I got two tickets for us at a very strategic position at the top row.

The movie started slowly but things changed when Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) got in a really cool action. It got even better when Alice (Milla Jovovich) finally kicked in and killed some zombies and creatures. Gosh, Alice was much better there than the previous movie. The story told that Alice and her friend had been injected with the T-Virus that mutated them and gave them a magnificent power. While Alice still got her consciousness, her friend didn’t and turned into a dreadful monster, Nemesis. IMO, this is the best action movie since Van Helsing. Don’t miss it.

Tuesday, Nov 30: The War of Emperium

Warning: If you ain’t familiar with Ragnarok Online, skip this.

Every Tuesday, the War of Emperium took place. I decided to leave my guild temporarily and join a stronger guild this time. I made a good choice since my new guild and I could take a castle, Valkrie 3. After hunting in the guild dungeon for a while, my new guild master asked me to stay in the guild longer. It was a good offer actually, but I had promised that I would only leave my old guild temporarily and would come back later, so I refused the offer.

Wednesday - Thursday, Dec 1 - 2: Boring

Nothing really happened in this periode. Boring as usual.

Friday, Dec 3: Is StarOne Good?

These days, I really couldn’t leave without the Internet. I read news, contact others, work, study, and play on the Net. Therefore, I need my own connection to the Net. Dial Up connection is evil. It is slow and hella expensive. Can you imagine? Almost 10,000 rupiahs per hour for a connection at 56 kbps maximum . Cable Internet is also ridiculous. The cable provider need me to register with the cable television first before getting the Internet connection. What the heck will I need the cable television for since I hardly have time to watch the television. DSL, the rising star in the Internet connection, is so damn expensive. 300,000 and 1.5 million rupiahs per month for 500 MB and unlimited bandwith respectively. Not mentioning that most, if not all, Indonesian Internet Service Provider suck.

Recently, in an online gaming forum, some people suggested frequent Internet users to use StarOne. StarOne is actually a CDMA operator. It offers an unlimited internet connection for only ~300,000 rupiahs per month. It’s cheap. Unfortunately some of the users complained about its unreliability. Gosh….

Saturday, Dec 4: Social Day

Around 10 AM in the morning, some colleagues and I visited Sinta. There were Anton, Bambang, Lisa Gunawan, Jon, Yustina, and Yunus. She just had a baby. A boy. She was so protective that she asked us to wash our hands and feet before we saw her baby. Soon, Shirley Wibisono and Yendy joined.

After spending some times there, we tried to find some food while Yunus went home. I suggested Vivi’s place which was nearby. They seemed satisfied with the food and I was satisfied because I could see her after quite some times. She was pretty as usual. Lucky me, she was making some cookies and she let me have some.

After eating, Jon decided to go home while the rest of us wanted to visit Stephanie at Adi Jasa. Her grannie recently passed away. Since she would be there at around 3 PM and at the moment it was 1 PM, Shirley asked us to visit her home and wait there. While others were playing PS2, I fixed Shirley’s computer. She said it couldn’t connect to the Internet. Finally I could fix the computer and asked Shirley to fight me in Tekken 4. I lost the first fight but won the rest two fights.

Around 2.30 PM, we headed for Adi Jasa. After waiting for the church service for about half an hour, we finally met Stephanie. Honestly, she doesn’t look so sad. She maybe not so closed to her grannie. We went home at about 4 or 5 PM. Well, enough for today, I went straight home after taking Lisa to her house. See ya!

I went to EF at Delta Plaza Surabaya this morning to get my TOEFL test report. Shirley also asked me to get hers. Actually, she had been there on Monday but the report had not been prepared yet. The staff asked her to come back in one or two days.

I arrived there at about 9.30 AM. There were two receptionists at the guest room. A young woman and an older man. The woman was an IBC. She got a clear and white skin. Not that beautiful but pretty interesting. The man has a darker skin, a typical Indonesian. But I believe he ain’t a Javanese. His accent was rather different I can tell. The man was occupied so the woman got to serve me. Lucky me :p. Heck, not that lucky. I explained to her that I needed my test report. But she didn’t know anything about it. Gosh, I had to wait for the man who was likely in charge there.

Tick, tick, tick… Time was ticking away. The man had not ended his conversation with his guests yet. I started to feel impatient. I looked at the wall clock. Wow, there were three clocks. Each pointed a different time. Uh huh. I see, there were writings below each clock. The top clock showed the Surabaya’s time. The middle London’s and the last Boston’s. Do they really need to show the London’s and Boston’s time? Maybe they only want to look cool.

Oh finally the man finished his business. He moved to the table in front of me. Blech, I really hate to repeat my statements. But I did tell him that I needed to get my test report. He didn’t have it. He made a phone call to ask somebody about my test report. He told me then that the report had not been ready yet. He asked me to come back tomorrow. What the… I almost lost my temper. I said to him–in a raised tone–that it wasn’t the first time they asked me to come back again. Okay it wasn’t me. Shirley was the one who tried to get the report on Monday but what’s the difference? I insisted to get the report at that moment or else had them sent my report to the office today.

He seemed a bit confused. He made another phone call. He asked his mate about how was the report. Then he tried to create one. That’s better. I could wait. Gees, he was slow. Waiting impatiently makes everything seems slow.

Finally he finished the report. I asked him to make 4 copies of each. Mine and Shirley’s. Ha ha. I got him. The other staff told me the other day, that he could only make a copy of the report. I need to make a photocopy of it if I want more copies. But in that situation, I don’t think he had the guts to refuse my request. And he did make every single copy I need. I even asked a glassed envelope for each copy of the report. It made eight envelopes. I realize I’ve gone too far, but that time, I really wanted every second I wasted to be compensated. By the way, I am really disappointed about EF service. I mean it is a big company. They should know how to serve their customers well, shouldn’t they?