random ramblings

Yayang was here for Memorial weekend.  I came back from dropping him to Cincinnati airport 2 hours ago, and I already miss him so much :’(  Driving to Cincy is about 30 mins longer than to Indy, but it was a direct flight for him, so it’s worth it. And plus this time I got him a reward ticket using my miles, so it only cost $5 for the reward fee. Otherwise these days Indy-Austin tickets cost more than $300.

I just searched for ticket for me for July to go to Austin. The cheapest I could find is $307 from Indy    And the direct flight from Cincy to Austin is $360   Actually now Northwest has a direct flight from Indy to Austin, but the schedule is not good, and it’s also not cheap I just now noticed that both Orbitz.com and also AA.com show the BEFORE TAX price in the search result.  Just now I was going to purchase a ticket right away when I saw the fare was only $267. It hasn’t been that cheap for the past year so I was really excited and ready to pay. But when I chose it, it showed taxes and fees of $40, so it’s really $307. .. normal price ..

So.. . what did we do this long weekend ?

I picked Hendrik up Friday night in Cincy. Poor yayang, he waited an hour for me at the airport hehehe  it’s all because of the time difference. I didn’t realize that they are 1 hour ahead of my time :p hehehhee Actually at 4pm I already didn’t have anything to do at work, I was just chatting with Magda. I even remembered her telling me to leave early but I told her, "No need to hurry, Hendrik wouldn’t arrive till 7pm" So I left town at 5.30pm, hehe I got there at 7pm INDIANA time, but it’s already 8PM in OHIO/KENTUCKY !! :p  I also had my cellphone on vibrate mode. He called me 3 times after he arrived but I didn’t see the missed call until I arrived to the airport.  This is the 2nd time this happened. Two years ago I also left him waiting in Louisville airport for an hour for the same reason hehehhe.

He told me that he almost missed his flight in Austin because of traffic jam. I was worried when I got 3 voicemails from him when I came back to my desk after a meeting on Friday.  The first two voicemails was him panicking that he’s gonna miss the flight, he was stuck in traffic.  But the third one finally said that he made it to the gate just in time.  He said they closed the airplane door right seconds after he stepped in. He parked his car in the short term garage for $18/day because he wouldn’t have made it if he went to the long term parking.  So when he picks up his car tonight he’s gonna need to pay $72 !! Just for parking !! 

Anyway.. on Saturday we went up to Indy for dimsum buffet at Golden Crown and to meet Tin2 and Meggie. It’s a pretty good restaurant, thanks to Magda and Yuldi who found this place hehe. It was only $7/person for an all-you-can-eat dim sum. Afterwards we went to  Indy Zoo and White River Garden. The admission fee is $7 for garden, $11 for zoo, or $12.50 for both.  Tin2 and Meggie had to go back to Lafayette for church, so we only had like 2 hours to spend, and so we decided to get the tickets for the Garden only.  Oh what a ripoff.  Well I read good stuff about the White River Garden and Zoo and I guess my expectation was too high.  Anyway so we went inside the Garden, they had a butterfly exhibit, but that’s about what’s special about it. The garden is so small. I didn’t expect 3 acres to be that small. We finished walking around the whole garden in less than 45 mins.

So afterwards we went back to the ticket counter and asked them if we could "upgrade" our tickets to the combo one. And they let us do that. I guess this happened quite often. We’re probably not the only ones who felt cheated :p Tin2 and Meggie decided to go back to Purdue, so only Hendrik and I went to the zoo. The zoo is not bad at all. We spent around 3 hours at the zoo, there were a lot of attractions / shows (Dolphin, Birds, Elephant, etc)  but because we came in so late we didn’t get to see any of them.

When I told Yuldi about it this morning, he told me that the St Louis zoo has free admission hehe.  Magda and Yuldi are really good about finding good and cheap places to go to hehehe. Maybe next time Hendrik is here, we’ll go there   I’ve never been to St Louis, but it’s only 4.5 hours from here, same distance to Chicago.

Yesterday and today we just stayed in town. We went to the Edinburgh outlet mall, Hendrik got a pair of jeans and a couple of T shirts from BanRep and GAP. We also went to see Starwars Episode III.  This was the first StarWars movie that I watched hehe. Yup I had not watched any of the 5 earlier episodes.  It turned out to be better than I’d expected. At first I really wasn’t interested, but now I’m kinda curious to watch the other episodes. I was trying to persuade yayang to watch Madagascar instead hehe.

We also went to super Target hehehe, and Kohls, JCPenney, Elder Beerman (the only 3 department stores in town).  We didn’t buy anything… just for jalan-jalan hehehe. We almost went to Walmart supercenter too   hahaha There’s really nothing else in town to go to :p  Last night we watched a Japanese horror, One Missed Call (Chakusin Ari). Boy it was very scary. The story is not original, almost same plot with the Ring, but I think this one was scarier. He was up for another horror movie this afternoon, but i refused to watch it since I’m going to be alone again tonight.

Overall it’s a  good relaxing weekend.  Usually if he comes here we always drive up to Purdue or even Chicago, and we’re always dead tired afterwards, but this time we had plenty of time to rest at home.

I lost my keys again !!! Aargh it’s driving me crazy. This is the 2nd time this happens this month. I have 2 set of keys, one contains my car key + apartment key. This is the one I use and carry every day.  The other set contains my mailbox key, the laundry room key, Magda’s apt key, a bunch of grocery/blockbuster/hallmark cards, and  I used to have yuli/tin2 apt key in Purdue. The 2nd set I only used once a week at the most to check my mail. This is the one I’m looking for right now.

2 or 3 weeks ago  I also thought I lost it.  Last time I realized it was missing just a few minutes after I used it.  I opened my mailbox and then I went straight to the dumpster to trash the junkmail. This is my new habit because I found that usually 2/3 of my mails are junk, why should I bring them inside ? I went to my car afterwards to go to the gym and realized that I don’t have that keyset anymore. Then I went searching for it in my car, and went back to my apt but just couldn’t find it. I spent the whole weekend searching for it, but finally just gave up. My theory that time was I might accidentally drop it with the junk mail in the dumpster. But Monday morning when I was getting ready to go to work, I put my laptop in the laptop bag, and VOILA! that keyset was inside the bag!!! How the heck did it get there ????

This time I’ve searched the laptop bag, it’s not there. I’ve searched the pockets of my jeans and jackets, under the couch, under the computer desk, inside my car and even inside my shoes! It’s nowhere to be found!!!  This time I’m sure it’s somewhere inside this apartment because I remember the last time I used it was Friday night after work.  I checked my mailbox and there’s only 1 package (I just bought a webcam from ebay), and I did NOT go near the dumpster!!  I went inside and set up the webcam right away. Saturday I didn’t even step out of my apartment (I slept all day, literally, yday).  This morning I was going to do my laundry when I realized that keyset is missing again!!  AAAAAAAAAH Please please please where are you my keys ?

I’m going to return Magda’s key if I find my keys this time. She’s always worried about her safety everytime I lose her key :p (this is the 2nd time).  We switched our spare key because I used to get locked out of my own apartment all the time :p  But then since I gave her a spare 2 years ago, it’s only happened twice.  She got locked out once too. But I wouldn’t worry too much if I lose my apt key. Let’s say somebody found it in the apartment complex, I think they would return it to the main office. Or let’s say the person who finds it has a bad intention, how would they know which apt it belongs to ?  I personally feel very safe in this community, more than once I found that I forgot to lock my door in the morning hehehe And I never lock it if I’m just going next door (Magda’s)  or downstairs (Yuldi’s)  or the laundry room or the office. I think sometimes I don’t even lock my door if I go to Walmart, which is only 5 minutes from here. Magda is different, I think she always lock her door even she’s just going to Yuldi’s place for an hour :p  I better return her key so that she can sleep better at night  hahehehehehhe

PS. Maybe I need to get one of these. But what if I lost the locater too ? :p

There’s a new Malaysian-Chinese girl at work. I haven’t met her yet, but we’ve corresponded through emails.  She’s married to an American, and her husband first met Magda, and … so we’re planning to meet for lunch next week.  I’m inviting Patty too. She’s here for her 2nd internship. Hehe the indonesian population in this town has gone up since I came here the first time. It started with just me.

2002 = me + magda (intern)
2003 = me + magda (full time now) + aldi, elian, woolfrey (interns) + kasma (malay -> count as indo :p )
2004 = still just me + magda as the fulltimers + aldi, elian, patty, yuldi (interns) + mbak amalia (an indo who doesn’t work for cummins but lives near columbus) + kasma & shahreel (kas’ husband)
2005 = me + magda + yuldi (he’s joining the fulltime crowd) + patty (intern) + kasma & shahreel + amalia? (i wonder if she’s still around, we haven’t been in touch) + arine

It’s sad, isn’t it ?   But I’m used to it   There are a LOT of Chinese and a LOT of Indians here, just like in colleges everywhere across the US.  But hanging out with them are just not the same. If only there are more people from Singapore or Malaysia or Taiwan or ..   

So anyway this new girl Arine asked us to go for dinner, but I replied to her saying that we’re not much of a dining-out-on-weeknights-people, hehe actually we’re really not going-after-dark-people. To think that I used to go to Walmart or Payless or Marsh to do grocery shopping at midnight in Purdue. And we used to always watch the midnight shows in the cinema too (well it’s cheaper, we’re colllege students hehehe).  Back in Pittsburgh, this is ancient time, like 7 years ago, we used to go cosmic bowling until 3AM and then go to Dennys afterwards.  So what has happened ??  Nowadays once I step my foot inside my apartment I don’t want to go out again until it’s time to go to work tomorrow morning   Even when yayang is here or when I’m in Austin, we don’t like to go out too late anymore. Once in a while we still go out for late night movies, but definitely no more midnight shows for us. Are we getting old or something ?  And life has become so monotonous, work 8am-5pm -> gym 6-7pm (if I’m not lazy) -> my personal time 7-11pm hehe (grocery/TV/internet) -> call yayang 11-12pm -> sleep -> wake up and work again.  A coworker has asked me several times to go shopping (sometimes a drive to Greenwood or Indy) or to go see a move during weeknights, and I’m just not up for it anymore.   

This afternoon there’s a tornado (not thunderstorm) warning in the Columbus area. I was still at work, getting ready to go to the travel agency here, and the alarm just went off. "This is not a drill. Please proceed to shelter" So I and hundreds of other people went to the basement. It was so hot down there. We got the "All Clear" 45 minutes later but was advised to go home immediately because more severe weather was expected. It was raining cats and dogs outside and the thunder was roaring. Oh I saw the glass door to the lobby was broken. It was shattered to tiny pieces. My car was parked so far away in the parking lot. I used my sweater to cover up and ran to my car, and I was so drenched. I made it home safely of course   There were tree branches on the streets on the way back.

But not long after I got home, the rain calmed down. I went out again to go to see the travel agent. Since Tuesday I’ve been busy looking for a ticket for Hendrik to go home next month. He hasn’t gone home since December 1999. How long has that been ? He’s going to stay in Indo for 3 weeks (15-16 June till 8-9 July), he’ll visit Bandung too, and maybe will go for a quick tour of SE Asia. Can you believe that he’s never been anywhere in Asia before ? Not even Singapore or Malaysia hehe. Of course he’s been to Changi Airport or Chiang Kai Shek airport in Taipei, but he’s never set foot outside of the airport hehehe. But we did not expect June-July to turn out to be a high season for air travel. He’s called several travel agencies and all said the same thing.  So he’s very nervous of not getting a ticket now, and he’s just very cranky the past 2 days. 

I’ve told him many times long ago to buy EVA Air Evergreen Deluxe class and then he could buy an upgrade to Business class for the Taipei-Jakarta segment. Last time I did that and it only cost $130 one way if I remember it correctly. It’s a cheap upgrade and so worth it to go from Economy to Business for a 6 hour flight.  And another advantage is of course if we fly together in the future we could together accumulate EVA miles, which I’ve already started.  Another option is to try the new SQ Executive Economy class on the LA->Singapore direct flight.  I’ve signed him up for both SQ KrisFlyer program and EVA Evergreen club last week to prepare.

BUT, I guess because we kinda already at the last minute now it’s just so hard to get what we want. Besides the waitlisting on some of the segments, he needs to arrive in Surabaya, but leave from Jakarta on the return. Actually if he just needs to go home, either one is ok. He would need to get a domestic ticket again to go to Yogya either way. Poor yayang. So many connections to get home.

He’s made a visa appointment at Surabaya’s US Consulate for June 20th morning, and two of his friends are getting married in Surabaya on the 18th.  And the return from Jakarta is just for convenience of the scheduling.  International outbounds from Surabaya are so limited, plus his mom has told him that there’s also very limited flight from Yogya to Surabaya.

EVA does have a flight from Taipei to Surabaya, but only twice a week, and the schedule just doesn’t work. If he wants to arrive in Surabaya, he’d have to wait like 12 hours in the airport, and same thing for the return trip.  And I know that CKS airport sucks! I can’t barely stand a 4-hour transit over there. And also he wouldn’t make it to his friends’ wedding if he take that flight, unless he flies to Jakarta, and then buy another domestic ticket to Surabaya. But of course that’s such a hassle, having to clear custom and then change terminal, check in again, etc. 

We also searched for flights out of San Francisco and then Cathay and SQ.  But Cathay also has very limited flights to Surabaya. SQ is better. For the return, almost all international flights arrive in the evening in LA, and there’s just no domestic flights to Austin past 8 PM. So he will most likely need to spend a night in LA.  There were some red eye options if he were to go to the midwest like me or to the east, but not to Texas ! Well there’s an option to fly to the midwest first, and then to Austin, but that’s just stupid.  Oh, I was given a price of $2200 for the SQ Executive Economy.  So expensive that we count that one out. But even if we don’t have a problem with the fare, we would still face the same problem of the waitlisting, and the Surabaya vs Jkt, and the LA->Austin segment.

Anyway, no matter what airline and which city we departs (LA/SF) and arrives (JKT/SBY), and where we transit (TPE, SIN, TPE-SIN), it’s just hard to find an available seat across all segments.  Well we finally got a confirmed itinerary, but I wouldn’t buy it if I were him, unless I don’t have any other choice.  It’s Austin->LA->Taipei->Singapore->Surabaya. And Jakarta->Singapore->Taipei->LA->Austin  on the regular Economy class, and the fare is around $1400-$1500.  It’s just a regular SQ economy and it makes an extra stop in Taipei.  And the return date is July 11, it’s 2 days later than the plan. I’m just being selfish, but I don’t want him to take more vacation than 3 weeks because I want him to take save some of his vacation days for me. But Hendrik just doesn’t want to wait. 

One difference between me and him is, I like to do A LOT of research or wait for a good deal before I spend a large sum of money on something. He doesn’t.  I like to see my money well spent. But not because he has a lot of money. He actually always complain that he’s boke boke boke. But he just doesn’t like to think too long or delay on getting something that he wants. He is one impatient guy. He said he just can’t do any work until he gets what he wants. The last 2 times I went home on Eva EDeluxe I paid less than that.  If he would just wait a few more days, the seats might open up and he might be able to get the Eva EDeluxe, this time it’s gonna be around $150 more expensive but it’s gonna be worth it.  I would wait if I were him. After a lot of persuasion and after I reassured him that he’s already got a confirmed booking and he’s not going to lose it, I was finally able to get him to wait to a couple more days before paying for that itinerary.

….to be continued…

ps. I can’t believe I wrote this long about something like this… I hope I didn’t bore whoever reads this blog.

I got this and this from a bored coworker during training. 

I’ve gOt tons of things to do right now, at work and some outside of work. But I don’t know where to start. Ah I should write a TO-DO list and really break out of this procrastination habit .. Anyway, just a recap of the past week. I was in training all week long. It was my 4th week of six sigma training, and my last one. We had a graduation lunch and I got a very nicely framed diploma too The last module was taught on Thursday morning. And at noon they broke the class up into 5 groups, and we were assigned to complete a six sigma project using all the tools they taught in 3.5 weeks within half a day!! The teachers just told us that we need to present our results and do the demonstration Friday morning at 9AM. So it’s up to us whether we want to work late, or come really early on Friday.

We had to develop an airborne delivery process that can consistently deliver food aid to people in need. Our mission was to optimize the predictability of delivering to a target that is periodically relocated. Each team was given a airplane and a launch pad to release the airplane from, and we were given a budget of 120 flights to predict the flight process.

This is the airplane that we used.  Of course we also had to assemble it.  And we were free to "redesign" the plane.

Friday morning after the presentations, the teachers will place a target in 5 random places and we’ll get to fly our airplane 5 times, each time it hits the target we’ll get 1000 points. We’ll also get points for the beauty of the flights. And we’ll get points from the presentation for what six sigma tools we used, the capability of our process, creativity, etc. So long story short, my team won first place ! Yay! We hit the target, which turned out to be Mr Potato Head, 3 out of 5 times.

None of the other 4 teams hit the target even once hehehehe My team did stay late working on it Thursday night, I didn’t get home till 9 PM and we also came in as early as 7AM on Friday morning, but still it was surprising for us because when we went home at night we still didn’t have a good function to predict the flight outcome.  All of us said that there’s no way we’re gonna win this contest.  And you know what, don’t tell anyone, hehe but we went overbudget. We definitely used more than 120 flights. hehehehe. There was a team who left around 6PM, we were sure that team was gonna win they were so confident that they nailed it. Well either that, or they just didn’t care about this competition. So, what did we get for the winning it? Actually everybody won something, but my team got the first choices. I got myself a puzzle (rubic cube kind of mind trapper) because none of other choices were interesting. There were umbrellas, coffee mugs, pens, yoyos, etc. So that’s Monday-Friday. I must say the competition was the most fun thing of the whole 4 weeks of training.

I went to Indy on Saturday. It was Yuldi’s treat for his graduation. We ate at Sichuan restaurant in Carmel. Good food, it was very spicy. Oh, and I tasted rabbit meat for the first time. They ordered Kungpao Rabbit. I only had one small piece. It tasted like chicken hehe, but I just felt weird eating a rabbit, so I stopped after that one bite. Sunday I also had lunch at Yuldi’s because his mom made some nasi kuning. And in the evening, I went to Kasma’s place for her husband’s birthday. They cooked a lot of food (salad, asparagus, mutton, beef, jumbo shrimp, agar-agar, rice pudding, icecream cake). It was very good. Summary of weekend : I ate too much ! The pics are in my multiply gallery.

One good news from this weekend is that Tin2 called me telling that she got a job. And she received 2, not 1 job offers. One was actually for an internship in Fort Wayne, and the other one for a full time position in Chicago. Of course, I advised her to take the Chicago one, besides the fact that it’s full time, it’s in CHICAGO! But I also told her to ask more about H-1B visa sponsorship stuff first to make sure. She was asked to start working ASAP. So she might start moving to Chicago this week or weekend. Hendrik is coming at the end of the month for Memorial Day weekend. At first we were planning to spend a day outside in an amusement park ( Six Flags or King’s Island or Holiday World waterpark ). Then last week he changed his mind saying that he wanted to rest and just stay at home. Maybe a daytrip to Indy Zoo and White River garden is good. But now we might go to Chicago to visit Tin2. Hmmm let see… Ok.. i really need to start writing my To-do List now..

This morning I woke up early because I had volunteered to help out at the Special Olympics.  Several people from work were already there and our group was assigned to run the Softball Throw game.  We had a list of participants, divided by age groups.  They range from young kids to middle aged people, and of course they’re all intellectually disabled.  I was in charge of getting them queued up for their turn.  The other tasks were to measure the distance, to mark where the ball lands, to record the distance, to judge whether a throw was valid or foul.  My task was supposedly the most challenging because from the beginning we were told that some of them like to walk away from the queue   And it’s true, one young man kept walking away, and we had to search for him every time it’s his turn again.  One young woman was so happy and high spirited.   And there’s this old lady who kept asking me when her turn is. It was interesting to watch them in this game.  And I could see that some were more normal than others.  Some of them were also more quiet and shy and some were just very enthusiastic and loud.  There’s one guy who always asked for a high five after he threw a ball.  We were done around 11 am, this is the time usually I wake up at on Saturdays    I was prepared for a day out in the sun with sunscreen, hat, etc hehe  although it was short, I had fun and I think it was a good and rewardning experience. On the way to my car,  a guy that participated in the softball throw and he won the Silver medal was behind me.  I asked him where he was going. He said he’s going to for lunch. I asked him where he was going, actually I wanted to know how he’s gonna go.  He told me that he drives a car.  Wow I was surprised, then it just strucked me that they’re all just like us too.  He probably has a full time job too.  We’re just more fortunate than them.  We should be thankful for what we have. 

Woaah… 3rd posting for today.. hehe

Just saw this on the local news on TV. Soon the speed limit in Indiana will be increased by 5mph. So the max will be 70 mph Yoohooo!

and just recently it’s also been decided that starting next year, Indiana is going to follow Central Standard Time, so we’ll adapt the Daylight Savings Time. Finally! :p