Last Friday, I went to Carrefour with Mom. She was buying some groceries, so I tagged along to buy some supplies for the office, since one of our lights was half dead. I noticed this sort-of-in-a-trend campaign from Carrefour that encourages people to reduce the use of plastic bags. And no, not with a highly-recyclable fabric tote-bag that you can carry every single time you go to Carrefour to shop, but with another plastic bag. Yes, plastic, but a bit tougher than your average plastic grocery bags. I wonder how that could make our Earth greener? Maybe we can all make up a “Fight Plastic with Green-Colored Plastic” campaign, that would make the Earth greener, alright. Literally. When I saw the ad for the campaign on their LCD panels, it claims that this plastic green bag is an alternative model to the fabric tote-bag which, I never saw any around. If green is the next way to go, why would they even bother creating an “alternative” yet destructive model to choose in the first place anyway?

Two days ago I was invited as a speaker at the Boot Strappers. It was an entrepreneurship talkshow held by the Management Student Society of UI. On this event, I finally met Hendy Setiono in person. He’s also one of the four nominees of Business Week’s Asia’s Best Entrepreneurs Under 25. Surprisingly, although we both run different businesses, we share similar point of views on entrepreneurship.

Visit MSS FEUI for more information on their society and this event.

Last Thursday, UPH faxed me an invitational letter to join in the upcoming UPH Design Week 2007. Basically they’re asking if they can exhibit my final project during the Student’s Exhibition. I’d say, why not and give it a go. I am prepping an authorization letter from the office, though, in case something goes awol.

The family, minus Dad, plus Ingrid went to the Disney’s Lantern Fun-Tasy yesterday. We didn’t thought that the venue was gonna be that crowded of people carrying kids, crying, pounding the ground and performing wild breakdances on the floor. Just kidding. Anyway, this would probably be one of Disney’s biggest theme-park event in Indonesia, and I must say I’m quite surprise with the quality and the quantity of the lanterns involved. However, the musical parade as we all know, still cannot beat the foreign ones. Here, it’s a bit bland. What I hate the most about Indonesia is that you MUST, and I’ll say it again, you MUST involve the Indonesian heritage in whatever you do. So just imagine having a drumband parade, inside a Disney event, playing Gundul Gundul Pacul. WTF?

Anyway, the gallery is up.

Finally, today is the day, and yes it’s a very exhausting day. The event started a bit late at 1.15 PM, and the crowd was overwhelming. At the end of the ticket sales there was exactly 124 tickets sold, and although not all of them could make it, the place is still crowded. Frankly, we never thought that people are THAT interested with our event, since the last gathering was at 2004, and it was kinda internal.

Our event could probably be considered as the event with the most doorprizes ever. There was 87 plus doorprizes, so practically at least every participant could get one. Of course, everybody wanted that iDog Imel brought from Singapore… If only we could smuggle it, hehehehe.

The event started with a session from Avianto on the relations between design and business, then Bayu with his experiences as a freelancer. After a short break, Muid came up next with his presentation about the tv series project his office has been doing, Saladin. Then there was a session from ADGI, explaining their role in the design industry. Sijuan from Big Bros Workshop also contributed a short session followed by Yul and Ade after that, closing the event shortly before the last doorprize session.

We concluded the whole event around 6 PM, spend another 1.5 hours cleaning up the place and chatting. It was a nice experience, and two thumbs up for everyone for every each of their efforts dedicated to this event!

Meanwhile, my version of the gallery is available here.

Updates:
Iyay’s gallery
Epel’s gallery
Muid’s gallery

Nyonyo, Decca, Yudi, Bhagas, and I went to the 14th Indonesian International Motor Show at JHCC yesterday. Frankly, I wasn’t too impressed with the overall event, in fact I think the one before was better. And except for the new Toyota Camry which is based on the Australian Toyota Aurion, which is strikingly fantastic, IMHO, nothing could keep up to its par… Well, concept cars aside, of course.

The new Hyundai Santa Fe was surprisingly much better than its squiddy predecessor, this is quite a milestone for a company that always has tremendous design flaws with its cars. The new Accord is a total disapppointment, now it looks like an overgrown Baleno Next-G, and it also looks cheap like those made in Korea. Despite the huge breakthrough with the new Camry, Toyota’s Superman Edition Yaris is nothing more than a cheap modification with a cheap taste.

The new Avanza/Xenia was also a disappointment, well, at least for me, since I’m an owner of an older one. The interior looks cheap enough, probably because of it’s beige and not dark grey like the one I have. Beige interiors work well with large and more sophisticated cars like the Innova, Fortuner, or Camry. But budgetary beige interiors definitely don’t work with cars like the Avanza. Very very cheap looking.

During our visit, we also took the chance to snap some pictures to send in to our friends at Add More Horsepower! I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to see what the visitors’ cars look like, heheh.

Anyway, I’ve compiled a set of pictures in the gallery.

My family and I took the chance to have a 1-day-long vacation to Bandung yesterday. Actually I was going to see how my work is doing in Mande’s Der Ach exhibition, since yesterday was the event’s closing day. The figure on the picture is my design on Mande’s template. Too bad he didn’t had the time to construct the other five figures as a tribute to the Ranger Bastards. But the event was great, everybody displayed fantastic works, both the figures and the sneakers. Anyway, more photos are in the gallery section.

Soundshine 2006 would be the other concert I watched after the Java Jazz Festival, the difference is, I really paid for the concert. The downside is, while the ticket said that the concert starts at 5PM, it’s nowhere from starting for almost another 2 hours, and standing for hours is really exhausting.

Anyway, the concert starts with White Shoes and the Couples Company as an opening band, they played for almost an hour straight, I think.

The second band performing was Mocca. I really love their arrangements, particularly for “Swing It, Bob!” And Arina (the vocalist) really has a nice English. Compared with that moronic Ahmad Dhani who can’t even speak English correctly, she’s way cool!

The band we’ve been waiting for was obviously Kings of Convenience. Oh my God, they played their music just like in the CD, perfect and crisp acoustic sounds, clean techniques, and they’re really good at what they’re doing. And I really like the acoustic version of “I’d Rather Dance with You”. So I guess waiting for hours for them to play was really worth it in the end.

BTW, pardon the bad photos, I have to take them with my Zire, as they confiscated Nyonyo’s camera.

Since Kings of Convenience is coming, I decided that I’m not going to go to the Java Jazz Festival this year. But I’m lucky enough that Dad somehow got himself free tickets for the event. So I went there yesterday, along with Yero, Karina, Ulina, Joy, Aldy, Yolanda, Irlanto, Mery and Nyonyo. We also met several other friends there every other time or so, including Yuka, Hanny, Dina, and Pipin.

As the event starts for the day, we went to see Kahitna on the Cendrawasih room, where they played their wild side of music, not so many love songs, but a lot of jazz-fusiony things going on.

Next stop was Discus, that’s Iwan Hasan’s progressive band, which is highly above all normalities! Ha ha ha.

Noryn Aziz was a jazz singer from Malaysia, she has a nice voice. A high range of vocals with an alto sound. Thick and sounded good for a jazz singer.

Before queuing for the Take 6 show, we went to see Dwiki Dharmawan and his band for a while. Krakatau alumni are definitely good, no questions whatsoever.

Now here’s what the event’s really about! Take 6 is in Jakarta and they kick ass! The band has always been a favorite acapella group for us at the church. I even got to make a short stop at the Aquarius counter to pick up their CD. It was worth it, since I got the whole band’s autograph on it. Well, minus Cedric, because he was replaced with Christian. It doesn’t matter though, they still rock.

Here they are singing Grandma’s Hands, with Alvin on the piano (not shown).

Claude V. McKnight III, the man with probably the widest range of vocals in the band. He does look very similar to his brother, huh?

More pictures coming up when I got those copied from the other’s cameras. We also get to meet Andy, he’s the band’s manager. They are really great guys, friendly and nice to talk to. Now I got a sore throat for screaming constantly on their show…

Finally! A worth-to-watch concert is coming to Jakarta. Kings of Convenience is going to play at Hotel Nikko on the 18th next month. And I might have to skip Java Jazz over this, because I’m not going to spend that much money in a month to watch two concerts. Besides, Java Jazz will be held annually, but this would most likely be a chance of a lifetime.

Updates! Click here for the venue information.

Click here for the band’s official site.