Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding has long been proven to provide additional immunity to the babies. I'd say more breastfeeding produce less mortality in babies and therefore, more children who will buy powdered milk. But then, those milk powder producer prefer to market infant formula, claiming milk powder is better than breast milk (Philippines). I wonder whether more living infants buying advanced formula for age 6 will give more income to the manufacturer or selling infants < 6 months milk formula. I tend to think that more surviving baby will give more income though since babies from 6 months onwards still need milk powder hehe... on the other hand, babies, who take infant formula, having higher mortality rate might only live for 6 months or less and not gonna need any more milk powder in the future :P

Doh... marijuana ok as food seasoning, Indonesia VP said

At first, I really thought it's a hoax... How could a vice president said that marijuana is okay for use as food seasoning.. but then.... http://news.indahnesia.com/item/200706271/kalla_marijuana_can_be_used_as_seasoning.php confirmed it....

So, Jusuf Kalla simply said.... marijuana user and courier + dealer will be sentenced but local people (especially the Acehnese) is welcomed to use it as food seasoning. Acehnese chefs are said to support the use of marijuana since it "enhances" the local taste of food.... It's sort of de ja vu for me since not long ago some Japanese spices are said to contain traces of cannabis. Countries which those spices are exported to have withdrawn the items from shops. Yet Indonesia VP said it's okay to use such "enhancer". No wonder the plants are popular ....

Made-in-China's cars and tires

Tell me... after you see the following pictures, would you still buy the cars from the brand involved?
The test is held for Brilliance BS6 which is to be sold in Europe. The test is under NCAP standard.

Amazingly, the China car company actually produces BMW for BMW in China. :-P

The pict courtesy of www.mobilku.com

There was also a report from the same website that tires made-in-China failed in some cases and customer in Mexico and US is feeling the bad end of the defect. A GM's van apparently went into accident when the tires' rubber portion allegedly went off from the steel frame. Ouch...

Long way to go ... indeed....


The cars for developed countries' consumption should have been made to follow much stricter standard. Failing important test and not being responsible with defect-induced accidents are not the way to go in garnering higher customer satisfaction.

But perhaps, China manufacturers really need to learn the bad end of their irresponsibility before they can produce better products.. perhaps..

Different selves

This is what I learn.

We have 2 selves:
1. Actual self
2. Ideal self

Actual self is divided into 3 sections:
1. Manifest self : how we behave, consciously
2. Social self : what other think we are
3. Latent self : what's our subconscious mind think of ourselves

It's in the ideal case that latent self shall be known so as to allow one to understand on how to control the behaviours arising from that self. If one was not aware of that latent self, some behaviours related to that self will be manifested subconsciously and maybe quite destructive. The awareness of that 3 sections of actual self will allow one to reconcile them and rationally understand one's behaviour and control them better.

Ideal self is divided into 2 sections:
1. Personal ideal self : what we want ourselves to be like, ideally
2. Institutional self : what our institution demand us to be like

At times, what we are are not the same as what we want us to be in ideal case. Maybe we'd like to be very nice guy who can accommodate to every kind of people. However, in reality, we'd have our share of being an angry person. On the other hand, our job might demand us to behave in a certain manner. For example, a call center officers would be required to be very nice and are expected to answer all questions nicely, including knowing all answers to all sort of related questions.


One would have to understand oneself entirely from that 2 types of selves if one would want to control how they behave. :P Hard, but should be doable.

Racing in life

So, we are all in a sort of racing competition in life. The racing is most of the time, self-induced, aka voluntary. So, one fine day morning, one woke up and decided to pursue one's dream. Before that day, one has dinner with one's spouse or friend or boyfriend/girlfriend at least six of the seven days. After that morning, having decided to spend time to pursue that dream, one only manage to have dinner with one's loved one, once a week or twice a week. Why is it so? Well, normally the dream "worth pursuing" has the loved one in the picture, but the loved one is at the end point. In the journey, the loved ones are not involved. The closest analogy I think suitable is painting a picture and then cutting + pasting the loved ones' picture from another painting to that newly finish painting.

Why the event unfolds as such? One great "guru" taught people that the five closest people surrounding one describe one's future. So, people normally follow that "rule" very closely and guess what, one's loved one rarely allow one to reach a particular dream, especially if it's "prosperity" and "success". Therefore, the said event in the paragraph above happens. One's life becomes a race to reach that dream in the hope that the loved one can finally enjoy that dream with the racer.

One flaw, biggest flaw I observe in running a race and chasing such dream is the failure to consider that one can't control how long one lives! No matter how healthy you live (eat all organic food, no fried stuff, salad and seafood or whatsoever), there is virtually no way to control whether the oncogene in one's body will turn into cancer. There is no way to control that one won't encounter any accident at one fine day. If bad things happen, will one be able to turn back time and enjoy the life more with one's loved one? Friends, live your life to the fullest and chase your dream but don't forget to spare bulk of your time with your loved ones. Self employment does not bring real happiness to your loved ones. Ten million dollars does not bring real happiness to them either. It's either you live your life now and make them your priority (at least spend >50% of your non working time with them, and now... don't start calculating the number of hours...) or risk losing the one in a life time chance.

It's not that I am such a wonderful person living a very enriching life. It's just that I don't wish to see friends withering away in their chase of dreams. Those self-induced works lasting 16 hours a day has something wrong in it. Working life is 10 hours, at most 12 hours. More than that, find a better place friends. Life happens once and only once. Seize the day and have a nice dinner with your loved one, spend your limited time on earth with them.

Standards and implementation

There are many standards being used nowadays to help improve the performance of an organization. Starting from ISO, Six Sigma or even TPM. Many companies claim to practice one of those standards and improvement method, one way or another. However, not many gets certified and even less that actually embodies the culture well. Easiest of all, arguably, is an ISO certification. ISO needs tonnes of documentation with the hope that the documentations allow standardization of work. New employee can simply breeze through the training by following the process and quality manual. Process will be alright by following the standards and documentation provided.

Yet, although so many files and stacks of documentations are produced, efficiency and productivity of a company may not be improved. It's simply due to the lack of employee's involvement. Many times, certification is a mere certificate. No souls is injected into it. Employees turn out to be ignorant. After all, human generally dislike adding work into their already existing burdensome job. Very few people loves adding documentation to their daily job. It's useless, right? Well, that's the challenge. Unless those standards and certification can be inculcated and grafted well into the company's culture, nothing will result from the certification except the additional work, useless type of job. Unless the top management understand and practice the documentation step, nothing can be done to improve the religiosity of the bottom level worker in adhering to the standard.

The top management needs to clearly understand why standards are made and processes are to be followed. Only after having a strong desire to implement the system and an almost zealotry understanding of the system that top management should preach the goodness of it to the lower level guys. Those guys down there, the ones arguably working their asses off, need to see the usefulness of the system. They need a lay man term and PROOF that those documentation can help them to achieve higher productivity, improve their skills, shorten their waiting time, improve their values, and so on. Only by then that standards are useful.

Vehicles in Indonesia

Guess how many cars and motorcycles in Indonesia.... There are 30 cars per 1,000 people and 10,2 people per motorcycles. Indonesia's motorcycle density is number four in Asia. The bike density in Jakarta even reach 2.8 people per unit. Both numbers are based on the industry association respectively.

No wonder the air in Jakarta is so polluted. Hahahaha... there are just so many cars and motorcycles. No wonder that the environmental ministry wants to stop new vehicle sales. Anyway, he must be thinking wildly when he suggested to stop vehicle sales. Hehe.. it's going to stop a bulk of the country's industry if it happened. What the government really need to do is to tidy up the corruption before even doing other things. There are just too many underage drivers with "valid" license and cars giving out black fume. The entire transportation needs an overhaul before other things.

Even highway construction (read: infrastructure) easily spur higher vehicle sales in Indonesia (read: central java highway is coming up). Noone knows how terrible the construction quality will be though :P The country still has a long way to go in everything.