Whatever crosses my mind

Airport di Tokyo dan transportnya

2006-09-03T06:54:00.000+07:00

Di Tokyo, ada 2 airport: Narita dan Haneda. Haneda cuma melayani domestic saja (dan international ke Seoul katanya), jadi most likely, kita2 yang ke Tokyo akan lebih sering pakai Narita.

Narita ini jauh banget dari tengah kota, lebih dari 50 km. Ada banyak cara untuk ke turun ke kota, dari paling mahal sampai paling murah. Click sini untuk baca detil.

Yang paling mahal naik taxi, bisa habis 20.000 yen tuh, highly not recommended! Bahkan untuk group ber-5 sekalipun.
Yang lebih affordable pakai Limousine Bus atau Narita Express (train). Biaya kurang lebih sama sekitar 3.000 yen.
Yang lebih murah lagi pakai Keisei Skyliner, biaya sekitar 1.900 yen.
Yang lebih super murah lagi pakai Keisei Limited Express, biaya sekitar 1.000 yen. Yang ini, seat-nya tidak bisa di-reserve. Jadi ada kemungkinan bakal berdiri sepanjang perjalanan. Kalau waktu jam-jam commute, bisa super-padat! Jadi kalau bawa barang-barang banyak, lebih baik pakai yang Skyliner. Oh ya platformnya sama loh dengan Keisei Skyliner, jadi hati-hati keliru naik kereta. Di board-nya ada petunjuknya ini kereta apa. Bentuk keretanya juga lain kok. Kalau ragu-ragu intip saja dulu, kalau kursinya seperti di pesawat menghadap depan semua, itu Skyliner. Kalau kursinya di samping dan banyak gantungan untuk pegangan waktu berdiri, itu Limited Express. Di Skyliner ada kondekturnya yang ngecek, kalau salah beli tiket, kita bisa bayar kekurangannya langsung.

Kalau bawa barang banyak, yang paling ok mungkin naik Limousine Bus, karena terminalnya dia di Tokyo ada banyak sekali, jadi bisa cari yang terdekat dengan tujuan akhir kita lalu naik taxi dari sana. Cara beli gampang saja kok, waktu kita keluar di arrival hall, sudah ada counter-nya jelas banget, lalu tinggal kasi tau mau ke mana, nanti dia bisa bantu cari terminal terdekatnya. Kalau mau naik Keisei Skyliner atau Narita Express, juga bisa beli di sini. Untuk Keisei Limited Express, mungkin bisa juga beli di sini, tapi yg pasti bisa juga beli di mesin yang ada di dekat pintu masuk platformnya. Ikuti saja petunjuk untuk turun ke "Keisei Line".

Oh ya ada alternatif lain kalau malas angkat-angkat koper, di airport ada banyak counter untuk pengiriman bagasi (baggage delivery service), biaya sekitar 2.000 yen per koper kalau saya tidak salah.

Terakhir, denger2 ada bis gratis-an loh! Click sini untuk baca lebih lanjut.

Yokoso (welcome) to Japan.

PS. Imigrasi di Jepang tidak seperti di Australia atau Amerika. Cukup bebas, boleh bawa krupuk, makanan, bumbu-bumbu, dll. Bahkan kayaknya jarang sekali mereka minta kita buka-buka koper.

PPS. Di Jepang, HP-nya pake 3G. Jadi kalo Telkomsel atau XL yang 3G kayaknya bisa juga roaming di sini lewat Softbank (dulunya Vodaphone). Atau alternatif lainnya, bisa juga sewa HP di airport.

The 37th International Physics Olympiad

2006-07-18T23:50:00.000+07:00

In the midst of an awful earthquake+tsunami that hit the southern part of Java, the 37th International Physics Olympiad had just finished yesterday. And unlike this irritating news about our Mathematisc Olympiad Team last week, the physics team made one really fantastic achievement! See yourself for the result. No, no, not honourable mention, not either a bronze medal; but 4 (yes *FOUR*) gold medals and 1 (ONE) silver medal. WOW, what a triumph! Very well done: Jonathan Pradana Mailoa (SMAK 1 BPK Penabur, Jakarta), Pangus Ho (SMAK 3 Penabur, Jakarta), Irwan Ade Putra (SMAN 1 Pekanbaru), Andy Octavian Latief (SMAN 1 Pamekasan), and Muhammad Firmansyah (SMP Athirah Makasar). Unspeakable congrats to you all.

Dusts settled, we should never forget the dedication of Prof. Yohanes Surya (and his team), who is really the man behind the gun. Indonesia really needs more and more people like him, who is so determined, hard-working, and pro-active in finding, guiding, and training these padawans. He is the man who really has a profound belief in Indonesia's geniuses. I believe he deserves all kinds of support from everyone, especially the government, in realizing his dream: to have an Indonesian nobel prize winner someday. Yes, it will happen, and thanks to people like him should this mission be accomplished.

On a side-note, I was reading about this article in Jawa Pos. The last paragraph of the article (the online version didn't mention this) said this:

"Kalau pendidikan tidak merata, akan banyak scientist muda yang gugur tanpa sempat menunjukkan potensinya. Terutama di daerah tertinggal, seperti Madura," kata Andi, disambut gelak tawa presiden dan menteri-menterinya. Andi memang bersekolah di Pamekasan, Madura.

Translated freely into Englih:

"If education is not accessible equally, lots of young scientists would die before they even had a chance to show their potentials. Especially in under-developed area, such as Madura," said Andi, responded with laughter by the president and his ministers. Andi indeed went to school in Pamekasan, Madura.

I really don't get it. What was so hilarious about Andi's statement? Maybe it was just his Madura accent (which couldn't have been picked up in writing) or some other reason. But I just think we should take what he said very seriously. Andi might still have been just an ordinary student in Madura, unrevealed, if there hadn't been Prof. Yohanes. And yes, I believe there are more Andi among the 200 million Indonesians spread-out in nowhere, waiting to be discovered by a Jedi Master.

Psalm 19:1

2006-07-03T14:02:00.000+07:00

Psalm 19:1 - The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Hold your breath! This pictures (The Size of Our World) makes us re-think of that particular verse and being grateful for what He's done for us. Each of us doesn't even make it into a single pixel in the first picture. Simply fantastic!

Apparently, Job mentioned Arcturus twice in 9:9 and 38:32.

Some fascinating stats taken from Wikipedia:
My body diameter is far less than 1 meter (0.001 km) :).
Earth's mean diameter is 12,745 km.
Sun's mean diameter is 1,4 million km (109x earth's).
Betelgeuse's diameter is assumed to be somewhere between 800 million - 1 trillion km (571 - 714x sun's).
Antares's diameter is assumed to be 924 million km (660x sun's).

Thank You Lord Jesus

2006-05-05T23:44:00.000+07:00

Dear all and friends,

Wanna share a very happy news.

Also check out "See more photos" for more shameless pictures of me: 37, 132-136, 146-149. You can find my wife in #132 and #136.
Thank you for visiting. :-)
And thank you all so much for your pray and support. GBU all.

PS1. Guess what? May 5th was exactly my birthday, hence my utmost gratitude to Lord Jesus for this greatest birthday present in my life. His blessing for us has been unspeakable and I'm out of words to describe this.

PS2. I'd better preserve this before it disappears from TC's front page :-).PS3. I've always loved this kind of picture. Mind you that this was taken by an amateur photographer :-). TC's version will be better. Now have fun identifying each, some prominent people are missing though :-(.

Day 07: Wednesday, 8 March 2006: Macquarie University

2006-03-08T22:09:00.000+07:00

We went to Kam Fook at the Chatswood suburb to have Yum Cha for breakfast. The waiters walked all around the restaurant pushing Dim Sum carts. If you like the food, you just take it. Despite the many foods that we took, I find it relatively cheap, a bargain indeed. Oh, and the food was really great.

We circled around Chatswood, buying some very (too) sweet doughnuts. About 12.30PM we headed to the apartment of Dita's friend, Fany; whom we would go together with to their school, Macquarie University.

We spent almost 2 hours around the campus, visiting the library, the canteen, stores, etc. There were lots of messages posted on the wall about sharing an apartment, selling books, etc. One nice thing about these messages was the contact number was provided in easy to tear pieces. Nice idea.

At around 4PM, we were back at home. Dita arrived home at around 6PM. We then had dinner at nearby bar/tavern, the St. Leonards Tavern (???). The bar was equipped with a billiard table. I had steak (t-bone) for dinner. It was a pretty cheap steak, $7.

Day 06: Tuesday, 7 March 2006: P&O

2006-03-07T22:43:00.000+07:00

Dita went to school again today (up to around 12.30PM) so we were again on our own way. Seriously, we felt like we'd explored all around Sydney and there were not much more to do/see. We started the day by walking around the TownHall, the Queen Victoria Building, and its surrounding neighborhood. Dita were supposed to join us for lunch after school, however something bad happened. She lost her cellphone at the toilet of her school. That explained why we hadn't been able to contact her in the last hour. Anyway we then decided to have our own lunch, a yummy fried noodle.

We then went to 160 Sussex Street, where P&O Ports office was located. This was just in front of Four Points Sheraton, where I had my interview. I should have been here last Friday to see Sean as he wanted me to pick up something for Wara. However I was wearing sandals that day, so I felt it was inappropriate to come there then. The P&O building was some gray colored building. I talked to the receptionist who informed me Sean was in New Zealand, but he'd prepared this envelope that I was supposed to pick up.

It was around 5PM when we got back home. Dita was at home. My wife cooked us bakmoy for dinner. Well, we had too many times going out for dinner already, so we preferred to just have dinner at home then. Dita showed us some minor blister that she got working at McDonald's. She wanted us to take pictures to be shown to her mom in Indonesia. We even took a video of her describing the blisters in detail.

Day 05: Monday, 6 March 2006: The Rocks and Sydney Tower

2006-03-06T23:22:00.000+07:00

Dita had a school today up to 5PM, so we decided to walk on our way. This was the first time I had to go out bringing a map with me. Our first stop was The Rocks. We took a train to Wynyard, then to Circular Quay. The Rocks itself was said to be the oldest village in town. There wasn't really much to see here IMO. We ended up having lunch at the Pancake on the Rocks where we ordered Aussie Sunrise. The pancake was delicious, although IMO the one in IHOP (in US) was yummier. We then continued walking until we came beneath the harbor bridge. There was a tour here to climb and go to the topmost point of the bridge.

Our next stop would be the Sydney Tower. Since we had nothing to do, we decided to take a walk all along the George Street. It was quite a long walk, the day was really hot, so we made several stops during the way. On one interesting point, we came across a man who was selling a ballpoint to passing-by people in order to make a living. He was nicely dressed and didn't look like a beggar at all. We also stumbled upon some homeless people; some looked very young and good-looking, that if they had come to Indonesia, they might have been a famous and adored actor/celebrity.

We had to find our way to find the entrance to Sydney Tower. But looking at other high buildings around it (that seemed to block the view), we were rather skeptical to be able to really see anything when we went up there. Curiously, we found two kinds of entrance; the first one was to a 360 degree (floor revolving?) restaurant, which would be quite an awesome dining experience. The second one was to a viewing platform and OzTrek (a cinema). It was like A$23.5. There was other attraction for the adventurous, the SkyWalk, where you would go out to open-air, with proper safety of course.

While around the Sydney Tower, I found a novel book left on a seat. There was this label on the book: "I'm not lost, see www.bookcrossings.com" and some book ID. It was an interesting concept to share a book, where you released and registered a found book on the website and you could see who and where this book had traveled.

It was about 5PM when we got back to home. We then went out with Dita to had dinner. This time it was a Japanese restaurant, Koh-Ya Yakiniku. Meals were self-barbequed. We ordered a buffet and the food was really great, highly recommended. The ox tongue (my first time eating one) was so tasty that we ordered like 3 or 4 plates. This was my favorite meal during our stay in Sydney.

Day 04: Sunday, 5 March 2006: Chinatown

2006-03-05T23:47:00.000+07:00

Sisca had to fly to the Netherlands today to see our grandmother's sister which was having some heart-attack. Our best wish for her. Dita would be our tour leader from this day onward. Yet Dita was assigned an early morning work-shift at McDonald's (the pay at weekend was 1.5 times higher), so we had basically nothing to do and just waited at the apartment until Dita's shift ended at 3.30PM. Being employed by McDonald's, Dita could buy everything at half-price and in some circumstances could even bring home some free foods. At which that day, Dita brought home some nuggets and French fries (French fries were called "chips" here) for lunch.

The adventure started by visiting Chinatown again. I said "the adventure" because Dita was like more spontaneous in leading our tour, without a very well planned path, map reading, etc. So we sometimes had to wonder here and there about which way to take :-). However it was completely ok because with Sisca, we were practically in safe-arms and need not know anything. With Dita, there comes the chaos :-).

We first tried to find a book store because Dita needed to buy a text-book. Eventually at 4.30PM we finally found the store, but it was closed already at 4PM. Just one example of how spontaneous she was. However next to it was UTS, so we took some pictures there.

We then walked back to Chinatown to have "dinner"; it was still around 5PM, and was like 2PM in Surabaya with sun still high above us. It was in Thainatown, a Thai restaurant. We had kwee-tiauw (thick ride noodle), fried noodle, and a soup noodle. Prices were pretty much a perfect fit for our budget. Whereas Sisca's style was of an executive level dining experience, Dita's style was more of a student-style dining experience :-).

In Chinatown, we visited a mall, the Market City. Exactly underneath it was Paddy's market; but it was closed already. We planned to go back to Paddy's next week because you would find a bargain here for almost anything. Tired wondering around, we ate some ice-cream.

An unexpected thing happened then. Dita went to the toilet, left the t-shirt that she'd just bought on some bin, and forgot to take it back afterward. We realized it after about 15 minutes. We got back to the toilet, the bag was there, but nothing was inside. How awful! This explained why we saw so many "Shoplifting will be prosecuted" signs and security cameras all around Sydney. Never leave your belonging unattended!

Anyway, we then walked along George Street. This street was a main road, like Jalan Tunjungan, that went all the way from North to South.

It was about 8PM when we got back to home. Dita did some cleaning stuff, while I relaxed and enjoyed some TV :-).

Day 03: Saturday, 4 March 2006: Coogee, Bondi, Kings Cross

2006-03-04T23:57:00.000+07:00

The day started, again, around 10AM. Dita had a work-shift at McDonald's, so we went with Dan and Sisca to the Coogee beach. We had our first western-style breakfast there: bacon, egg, and toast (Turkish-style). I think I prefer some normal toast rather than this Turkish one. Btw, I forgot to take any pictures.

We then strolled along coast-line. Some people were playing games on the beach; there were also lots of people on the nearby park. We hiked the rocky area to some remote, not-too-many people, spot. The view here was awesome, the Pacific Ocean view if I'm not mistaken. We spent about one hour around the area. The only thing I didn't like was it was really hot and I think we managed to get our skin burnt. Siska told us that if we followed the walkway, we would reach the famous Bondi beach in about an hour. Thank God, we decided not to walk, and instead took Dan's car to Bondi.

On our way to Bondi, we passed by a cemetery; a really nice one actually, it had a nice beach view. It was about 1PM when we reached Bondi beach. This was the most famous beach in Sydney and I think it was much larger and more crowded than Coogee. Dan dropped us here as he wanted to play tennis. Compared to Kuta, um, in some ways Kuta might be more beautiful, but the sand here felt much softer and smoother. We sat in some hidden-from-sun spot; I was busy digging a deep hole :) while Sisca and my wife chatted and shared stories.

It was almost 3PM when we decided to go back home. We headed to the nearby Bondi Junction, where we saw a mall, Westfield, which was like the largest mall in Sydney, because they were two separated buildings connected via some bridge. Yet, it was relatively small compared to Tunjungan Plaza (I couldn't believe that I couldn't find any website for this largest plaza in Surabaya). Things were pretty much different here (and in the US) compared to what we had in Indonesia. There were not many big malls or plazas here, but there were lots of shops, cafes, restaurants, along the roads everywhere. Of course this was due to the fact that pedwalks were pretty much more enjoyable, more pleasurable weather (no need for air conditioning), and less polluted air. If you know Kuta Square in Bali, that's how it looked like everywhere here.

Around 6PM, we (with Dita) went to Kings Cross suburb for dinner. It was, for the fourth time, another Malay restaurant, except that this one had some kind of romantic atmosphere. We had fish, and I forgot what else we had (and forgot to take pictures), but it was really plenty. My wife thought that this was the best dinner we ever had in Sydney. After dinner, we walked around the area. There were many backpackers' hotel around this area, lots of adult-show places, and tons of shops/restaurants.

Afterward, around 9PM, we rode on Dan's car and proceeded to Star City, the biggest gambling site in Sydney. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures here as I thought it was disallowed. It was Saturday night and this place was packed with lots of people. We initially had some problems finding a place to park. To enter the place we had to show our IDs (Indonesia's KTP was ok) to prove that you were of enough age (18+?). This place was huge and you would find many different sorts of gambling here, from poker, blackjack, roulette, the old-fashioned slot machine (well, it wasn't really old-fashioned, because they were all digital machines, with screens and digital buttons), and many other games that I had no idea. The roulette was also interesting because it was also provided in digital format, where you could play singly against a machine (no real tables, no real roulette wheel); this was like playing some kind of computer game actually, except real money was in stake. There was also this semi-digital format where a real roulette wheel was played with real people, but instead of placing your bet on the table, well, the table was "digitalized" and you placed your bet digitally via the screen; this format could accommodate much more people than the old-fashioned style. I didn't really notice the odd of winning any gambling game here, but I noticed there was this one person who won quite lots of tokens playing roulette. It must be his lucky night. We also spent some time watching people playing blackjack (because this was the only game I was most familiar with). No, we didn't play any game. We simply thought $10/$25/$50 was too much money to be placed on bet :). But seriously, there was also this slot machine with only 1c of bets if you just wanted to test your luck. The problem was I didn't know how this slot machine worked; there were simply too many unfamiliar buttons. It was like 10PM when we decided to leave the place. And once again, we had problem finding where Dan parked his car, because Sisca forgot what floor the car was parked on. The night ended when we found the car and returned home.

Day 02: Friday, 3 March 2006 - Opera House, Chinatown, Luna Park

2006-03-03T23:13:00.000+07:00

Due to some jet-lag and exhausting experience yesterday, it was like 11AM already when I woke up. I took a quick shower and was ready to explore Sydney. Our first destination was the famous Opera House. But before we went there, Sisca wanted to treat us for a lunch. We took a CityRail again from St. Leonards to TownHall (or was it Wynyard?), where we then proceeded to yet another Malaysian restaurant. We ordered Hokkien fried noodle and laksa. Well, I had to admit that meal portion was huge, just like in America. One plate of typical meal was comparable to two in Indonesia. After lunch, Siska went back to work, and we (I, my wife, and Dita) walked to the nearby Opera House.

Opera House was located near the harbor (Circular Quay). There you would also have a great view of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, which connected the southern part of Sydney (main city/CBD/downtown) and its northern part. The walkway here was very nice and clean.

We encountered lots of street performers, one of which was pretty funny and attracted quite a lot of people. He was doing some sort of sword juggling. It was quite entertaining as he involved the spectators and threw some funny jokes to passing-by people while performing his act, such as "Watch out mom, you have two strangers following you", "Hey lady, do you find me attractive?", "That man, carrying a large bag, is a professional shoplifter".

We kept walking 'till we ended up at the Opera House itself. The unique architecture of the building was what made it interesting. There were lots of tourists here. We walked around the building and took lots of pictures here. There were no activity inside the building and it was closed, so we could not go inside the building. I think we spent about one hour here.

We then took a Sydney bus to the Chinatown. Bus fare was calculated based on section length, and you could pay the bus on board to the driver or you could buy a pre-paid card (which was cheaper, of course). It was Friday evening and there was this night market, so it was pretty crowded there. IMO, the Chinatown here was a little bit bigger than the one in LA, but smaller than the one in SF. Dita bumped into her friend, Etha, here. All of us then went to have a nice chocolate at Max Brenner. Make sure you ordered the Suckao.

It was about 6PM already, so we headed back home because Sisca planned to take us for a dinner. We then went to yet another Malaysian restaurant, Kuali, for dinner, where Sisca had waited there as she went directly from work. Weird, huh? I just realized that 3 out of the 4 meals we'd had during our first 2 days in Sydney were Malay food. But this time, it was a really huge dinner. We had crabs as our main course, and many various entrees and desert as well. Dan, Sisca's boyfriend, joined us shortly afterward as his apartment was just around the area.

Dan brought a car and night was still pretty young, so Dan & Sisca took us to the lower part of Milsons point. There we had a great night view of downtown Sydney and the harbor bridge. Just around the corner was the Luna Park. This amusement park was closed already though. At around 11PM, we decided to return home.

Interview with Microsoft

2006-03-02T23:58:00.000+07:00

I arrived at the hotel at 1:45PM, asked the receptionist where the Microsoft interview was, and told to wait at the lobby as she was busy with something else. I waited for about 5 minutes before asking again and was directed to the 10th floor. On my way up, I met two other persons who were also here for the interview. I went to the room, and there I met another 3 persons, so there were a total of six persons for that interview session.

There were no MS people anywhere in-sight. Maybe they had just finished their previous interview session and were having lunch. All six of us waited in that room, where the bed had been taken out and there was this big table with these Geomag toys, wooden blocks puzzle, Seattle magazine, Microsoft SDE/SDET brochure, plenty of coffee and tea to keep all of us from getting bored I guess. Only shortly afterwards, a MS guy, the HR maybe, came in. He welcomed and briefed us about what the interview might look like. Basically we would meet at least 3 people, 45 minutes each, and if deemed necessary, we might meet one more people. There were six interviewers; each would go one-on-one with each interviewee. After each 45 minutes, we were supposed to return to this room, and waited to be called for the next one.

My first interview was with a PM in the Exchange group. He was a really nice guy, smiley guy, I liked him. First he introduced himself, his work, his team, that he had been involved in Exchange since it was nothing 'till now where Exchange had a huge installation base. It was amazing. Then he asked about why I wanted to work in MS, what my interests were, some work I had done, etc. Then it proceeded to the exciting stuff where he asked me to write codes on paper (no whiteboard). I was asked to write a function findNth(int n, Node* root), which would return the n-th node of the given tree if the tree were traversed in-order. But instead of traversing the whole tree, I was supposed to traverse directly to the requested node, without doing any backtracking, etc. For example, given this tree:


     E
    / \
   /   \
  C     H
 / \   / \
A   D G   I

whose in-order traversal returns: ACDEGHI. If n equals 3, then I'm supposed to return node D (directly traversing E->C->D). I won't post any answer here, but I think I did well for this task. Btw, during the interview we were allowed to ask any clarifications, which I think we should. And I also tried to verbalize my thought as much as possible.

My second interview was with an SDE in the mailbox team. He first asked me to introduce myself, tell him a little bit about myself, etc. Then it went to the technical stuff again. He wanted me to write a function hexStr2Int that takes a string (pointer to array of chars) representing a hexadecimal string and returns it as an integer value. I think I did well too here, including identifying any possible pitfalls, etc. He then gave me a second problem, where assumed I was given a line-drawing algorithm on a cartesian coordinate of (-N, -N) up to (N, N) and I was supposed to write test cases for this algorithm. What kind of input test cases would I write? All in all, I feel like I did well for this task too.

Third interview was with another SDE. After some initial introduction, he asked me to find a contiguous subset given an array containing positive and negative values where the subset sum would be maximized. For example, given this array: [2, -1, 3, -5, 7], the maximum subset would be [7]. No, brute force was not allowed, in fact he wanted an O(n) algorithm. Somehow I totally screwed myself up this time. I was unable to come-up with an O(n) algorithm. My mind was somehow fixed to an O(n^2) solution (maybe, I didn't pursue further). Until the end of the interview, I could not come up with a good solution. I did really bad and felt down. Later that night, I found out that I should have known about this because I learnt about this some time long ago.

When we all gathered back at the waiting room, we were wondering if there would be a fourth interview. Apparently there was, my fourth one was with the HR guy. The interview wasn't too technical in nature. It was more about my interests, my background, what I would do for Microsoft (my vision) if I were Bill Gates. This last question was particularly interesting: imagine you were Bill Gates, what would you do? Although there were no right/wrong answers, I didn't feel like I had answered well though. After the discussion, he presented me with some problem solving, the famous Microsoft riddles. My first riddle was like this. Two old friends came to meet each other while they were sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. The first man asked, "How old are your daughters?" The second man answered, "Well, I have 3 daughters, the product of their ages is 36; the sum of their ages is equal to the address of that house across the street". The first man replied, "I still don't have enough clues". The second man added, "My oldest daughter has a red hair". And the first man said, "Oh, I see. I know their ages now". So do you know their ages? After several discussions, I managed to find the answers. It was really an interesting riddle. Then he presented me another riddle: there were three jars in front of you. Each was labeled: apples, oranges, apples + oranges, respectively. But all those labels were wrong and misplaced. You could not see what inside each jar was. You were only allowed to reach-in into one of the jar, picked exactly one of the fruit, and decided which label should go to which jar. I managed to find the answer for this riddle as well.

Four interviews and I thought those were all. Apparently I was wrong and I again had my fifth interview. This time it was with Matt, who had interviewed me before via the phone, before I came to Sydney. I was really glad to finally be able to meet him. He was the one who decided that I be invited for this on-site interview after all. Matt seemed like a nice, cool, and relax guy. He just wore a short. After several short introductions, what my interests, what I didn't like to do, my backgrounds, some work I had done, he asked me to write this function which would "fix" a URI like: http://www.microsoft.com/office/../sp2/../sp2a/ into http://www.microsoft.com/sp2a/. No STL string, no CString, just pure #include <string.h>. It was the longest code I wrote among all interviews, I spent like 3 pieces of paper, but I managed to finish it all. I think there could be some syntax error here and there though.

After that, I returned to the waiting room. Shortly afterwards, two of the candidates (one was named Sun Jae, the other Rony) joined me in the room. We waited until about 7PM when a MS guy, the first guy that we met earlier, came in and told us that the interview had ended. We would receive the decision the following week. He then collected our transcript, passport, and bachelor certificate, which we had been instructed to bring copies before. Oh btw, I didn't see the other three candidates that were initially with us. I was told later that those three guys had only four interviews instead of five. This could mean a good sign or a bad sign. A bad sign for me because these three guys were good enough that they didn't need the fifth one whereas I might not have impressed them yet; or a good sign for me because these three guys were simply not good whereas I still might not have impressed them. Both were probably signaling the same thing, they could not achieve a unanimous vote on whether I was good enough to work for MS. I kept my fingers crossed for the result. In fact, the next few days would make me really nervous waiting for the result as I didn't feel like I had done well enough. Whatever the result would be, this had been a worthwhile experience.

Day 01: Thursday, 2 March 2006 - Arriving in Sydney

2006-03-02T23:14:00.000+07:00

We arrived at Kingsford Smith airport at about 9AM local time. Sydney is 4 hours ahead of Surabaya (DST in effect), so it was about 5AM in Surabaya. My first impression of the airport was, well, just like most airports. On our way to the customs, there were lots of signs about the obligation to declare stuff, such as food, meat, etc, that you brought into the country; otherwise you might be considered breaking the law and could be fined. After all the immigration stuff, we queued at the "Things to declare" line because I brought in some food for my cousin in-law who was studying here in Sydney. Well, it was a really long queue. Everybody seemed to have something to declare. Not a surprise since if you noticed the declaration form, it asked you to declare almost anything like food, meat, animal, soil (or sporting equipment with soils contamination); it even suggested that if you are really not sure, you'd better be safe by declaring it.

When my luggage was checked, the officer seized my "abon" (side-dish: meat fibers) and banana crackers. They were not allowed because they were considered some kind of meat or processed food. If they had been in some kind of canned form with a clear and professional wrapping, they would have been ok. Unfortunately they were home-made and wrapped simply with a plastic bag with no label or anything like that (no expiry date, no nutrion facts), so I had to let them go. Other stuff, such as cracker, snacks, etc, was allowed.

It took us about one hour before we could finally get out to the arrival hall where our cousin, Dita, had waited for almost two hours. She took us to her apartment by taxi. The taxi cost was about A$50. It would have cost us approximately the same if all three of us took a train instead, not to mention that train would take more time. The roads were big, clean, and nice, like most advanced countries have. Despite being summer, temperature was about 25 degree Celsius, so it was pretty comfortable although our taxi had no air conditioning.

My cousin had a pretty cozy apartment. It was a one main room apartment, plus one study room (which was used for a bedroom as well). I think the size was approximately 7 meters wide, 10 meters length. One other cool thing was about its security. One could not just go to any floor easily, instead, if you had an apartment at floor 36, for example, your swipe card could only activate button 36 of the elevator. If a guest (without a swipe card) wished to pay a visit, she should first call the corresponding apartment number using the panel at the front of the building, and only after the owner granted the permission (by pushing some switch in the room) that she could go up to the appropriate floor. The apartment also provided a swimming pool (not the one in the picture!) and a gym, free for the residence, nice.

We rested and freshened ourselves for about 1 hour. At 2 PM I would have to be in Four Points Sheraton, Sussex Street, where my interview with Microsoft was going to be held. My cousin took us there via the CityRail train. A round-trip ticket from her apartment to downtown cost about $3.40 per pax. We got off at the TownHall station (Queen Victoria Building), took a really quick lunch at a Malaysian Laksa restaurant, and walked for about 10 minutes to get to the hotel.

I'll write about my interview later. To summarize, it was 5 hours long. Despite the demanding time, it was really exciting, fun, and challenging actually. Meanwhile, my wife and her cousin, Dita, explored the surrounding area, the Darling Harbor. When I had finished my interview, it was about 7PM already, but somehow it felt like 4PM because you could still see the sun. We returned home, bought a grilled chicken at Oporto underneath the apartment, and had dinner at home.

Day 04-06: Santa Clara & San Jose

2005-11-24T14:03:00.000+07:00

Yahoo@Santa Clara

San Jose

Yummy

Great America Park

Day 03: Prepping for the big day, moving to Santa Clara

2005-11-24T00:11:00.000+07:00

Tuesday, Oct 11th 2005 Ah, we had been here for 2 nights. Time flies so fast when you are enjoying it, doesn't it? Today we woke up earlier so we could get the hotel's breakfast. Well, since it was just bread, we decided we wanted more :-). Hence we walked (btw, we didn't really take the suggested Google Map route because we weren't using car) again to the mall, and we again had Panda Express' delicious Oracle Flavored Chicken (ko lo kee). Tips: did you know that you could get a Satellite view if you click the above link, click "Satellite", and zoom it up to maximum?

Since arrived here, I had never been able to get any internet access. Yesterday I said that the hotel's receptionist didn't even have any computer. So whose website was this? Well, for sure, I asked the manager, and they claimed they didn't know. Funny, considering I booked from that website. Maybe I just had no idea how this travel agent thing worked. Anyway, on our way out of the mall, there was a big sign that there was a free hot spot inside the mall. Yay.

My big day would start the next day. It would be held in Marriott, Santa Clara. If I had a car, here's the route that I should take (Google maps is cool, isn't it?). Unfortunately I didn't, so I had to take Caltrain instead. The nearest Caltrain station in San Francisco was at 700 4th St San Francisco, CA 94107. You could see here that it was actually pretty close to our hotel, but I had no idea how to reach there with SF's public bus (MUNI).

Actually you could find and download MUNI's system map here. At some bus stations, you would also find this system map printed. We decided that we'd rather try to find our way first without carrying our luggage. So we checked-out and left our luggage at the receptionist. Riding MUNI was a very pleasant experience. It was pretty much like Singapore's bus system, but these buses were powered by some electric cables above it. Seniors and disabled people were given priority seats in the first few rows of the bus. Interestingly, the bus entry platform could be lowered (hydraulically?) to make it easy for seniors and disabled people to get into the bus. How nice. I was very surprised to learn this at first as I thought we had a flat tyre.

Drivers were also very polite that they would gladly answer any questions you had. I told the driver that I wanted to go to Caltrain station, and since I had no idea where to stop, he would gladly advise me when we had reached the station. Hm, actually this might be overstated. I actually later met one driver who was impolite and seemed angry, which I later found out that his shift had ended and he was mad that the next driver wasn't there to replace him.

Walking around downtown SF was very enjoyable too. Pedestrian definitely had a priority here. City weather was perfect for walking, we didn't feel sweaty walking all-around. Blocks were not too big, so you would enjoy walking. Many shops and tall buildings were all along the road, so pedestrian walks were pretty much covered from direct sun-light. When there was a construction, a temporary roof covering the ped walks would be built so that you didn't need to worry that something might fall off on your head. Oh, and we often heard trucks of the fire dept (mobil pemadam kebakaran) in the city, though we never saw any fire.

After we found our way to the station, we got back to the hotel, picked-up our luggage, and went back to the station. It was aroud 4PM already. Caltrain ran for every half an hour or so. The train was very clean and nice, it also had an upper floor. Oh, if you had a bike, you could bring your bike in. Actually this also applied for bus. Many buses (outside downtown SF) had a special rack in front of it to put a bike in (or you could bring it inside if space permitted).

About an hour later, we arrived at the nice, peaceful, and quiet Santa Clara station. Surprisingly, this was the heart of Silicon Valley, yet we didn't see any tall buildings or crowded traffic, like we imagined existed in big cities. From the station, we caught a bus to the hotel. Actually TC provided a hotel for me in Santa Clara, but I would be sharing the room with Ardian. So we booked the Vagabond hotel for our 5 nights stay in Santa Clara. Btw, you would get a cheaper price if you booked the room via this website. This hotel was definitely way much better than our hotel at SF, and cheaper as well. The room was very spacious and clean, the amenities were also better.

Unlike downtown SF, there were not much to see here. Our hotel was located right next to a big main road. Every few blocks there would be a space dedicated for stores and restaurants. We had pho for our dinner in the nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Somehow there were lots of Vietnamese in this area, even some signs in the bus were written in both English and Vietnamese.

I spent the rest of the night refreshing my memory with the component design that I was going to compete on the next day. I slept sometime around 2AM despite having to wake up early morning tomorrow for my big day. Oh, the hotel also had a free wireless internet so it was really great, the first time we could really go online with Yahoo Messenger and meet our Indonesian friend.

Day 02: Tour around San Francisco

2005-11-18T18:10:00.000+07:00

Oct 10th 2005. We probably woke-up around 9AM. Oh I forgot to comment on our hotel's room. It was a clean hotel, despite its old 'classic' furnitures. There was no internet at the hotel (actually, the receptionist didn't even use a computer). The breakfast provided was also just bread, coffee. But hey, all we need was just a place to sleep :-). Another surprising thing was we didn't really feel jet-lagged. Probably because we had lots of sleep while crossing the Pacific Ocean yesterday and also maybe because we were too excited with our new experiences.

After taking our shower, we walked to Union Square to find some breakfast. There were many restaurants serving breakfast packages. Seriously, we had to put in our mind that 1 US$ = Rp. 2.000 before all prices felt normal :-). There were Pizza, Mexican food (Burito, Taco), Thai food, Asian (Chinese) food, and various other breakfast that we had no idea what it was. We kept walking until we reached San Francisco Shopping Center, 1 block south of Union Square. The shopping center had an interesting curved-shaped elevator. We ended up taking our breakfast at Panda Express in the food court. It's a fast food of Chinese meal. Oh, we also got our first fortune cookie. Inside the cookie, you'd find a word-of-wisdom. I didn't remember what it was about, but it was something nice (well, customers wouldn't be back if they put something rude).

Around 12PM, I contacted Robert. Apparently he was already around the area. Due to my lack of knowledge, Robert had to actually go around the area several times before we finally met him :-). Our first destination then of course was the famous Golden Gate Bridge. There were lots of tourists. We also took lots of pictures here. We were really lucky because the weather was so good that we could get a clear view of the whole bridge. It was really cold and windy there, however the air felt so refreshing. The ocean was just so blue and crystal clear. It was simply a breathtaking view. Notice the hill behind the bridge in this picture, you should go there if you want the best view of the bridge. The bridge construction itself was also amazing. Did you believe that the cables are actually made from lots of smaller cables so that they could survive earthquake?

Satisfied, we proceeded crossing the bridge on Robert's car. At the end of the bridge, there was another stop point where you could get another view of the bridge. Here we also had a great view of downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz from here. You could also go further down to "Vista Point" get a view of the bridge from the bottom.

We then went a little bit more to the North, to Sausalito. Sausalito was famous for being home of the rich. It had a great bay view. Couples would also find it a romantic place. Robert told us that Li Ming (a HK actor) had a movie made here.

Our journey continued to some higher land to get just another view of the Golden Gate Bridge. And I have to tell you that you would get the best view from here. Not only that, you would also get an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean from here. City tour wouldn't normally take you to this spot, so there weren't as many tourists here as down there. Thanks to Robert, our "personal tour guide", we got this amazing opportunity.

OK, we were ready to get back to downtown SF. While we didn't need to pay to cross the bridge to the north, you had to pay for the southward direction into the city. But since there were 3 persons in the car, we got a free pass. Robert then took us to the Palace of Fine Arts. This place was very beatiful. It was like a heavenly palace with really huge structures. Well, imagine it like the place of god/goddess in Greek mythology. If you've seen The Rock, you'll remember the dome as the set where Sean Connery met his daughter and got caught by Nicholas Cage.

It was around 5 PM already, we then went to the most "weird" (crookedest) street in San Francisco, or maybe in the world, Lombard Street. The neighbourhood was just so creative that you actually had to do a zig-zag passing down the road. Unfortunately it was fall season so the flowers were not all blooming. Now just imagine the challenge faced by the owner of any of the house in this neighbourhood to park their car in their garage.

Our "tour" proceeded to the nearby Coit Tower. From this spot, you could again get a view of the San Francisco bay and downtown San Francisco. We didn't enter the tower tough. The view from here was spectacular already.

It was almost dark already and thus, it was the best time to then visit the Twin Peaks. It was located pretty far, about 30 mins, south of San Francisco. During our way there, Lego contacted us and informed us that he'd finished with work. Since he lived somewhere near there, we decided to meet there. Twin Peaks at evening was really cold. This was the first time we felt freezingly cold, you know, your teeth and hands shivering. The downtown view at night was amazing. Notice the brighter straight line of lights in the picture, that was the famous Market Street. I think it was the main road in SF, like Surabaya's Tunjungan. There were lots of professional photographers taking pictures here (with tripod, of course). This was also the second time I met Lego in face. The first time I met him was briefly at his wedding in Yogyakarta a few months before. Hence I couldn't immediately recognize him again here :-), besides it was pretty dark up there.

All 4 of us were hungry, so we decided to have dinner together. Since I had no idea of any place, Robert and Lego discussed it, and Thanks God It's Friday's (TGIF) was our choice. I ordered some steak, rib IIRC, and it was nyam nyam yummy. You should try their Jack Daniel's menu. This was our first western meal since we arrived at SF. We had lots of talks during dinner, about work, life in US, visas, competition, etc. Thanks to Lego, he was the one who treated us all. :-)

After dinner, Lego kindly took us back to our hotel. Robert went home on his own since his home was closer to the restaurant. And.. that concluded our day tour. Thanks to Robert who kindly took us all around SF. I'd strongly recommend "Robert SF Personal Tour" as the best way to experience SF. I guarantee it will be the most personalized and customized tour for you, expecially for budget tourist like us :-). The only drawback is it's only available on weekend and if he's free from work. Oh btw, Robert said that he would take us to Monterey at the end of the week. Wow!

Day 01: San Francisco, CA

2005-11-17T22:34:00.000+07:00

Captain log, earth (San Francisco) date Oct 9th 2005
At about 8.30AM, earlier than scheduled, we landed at SFO. First impression, well, it's an airport, what did you expect? :-) Anyway, I still think Changi is better. As usual, we first had to line-up for the immigration process. When my turn came, I approached the officer with my wife. Being Indonesian, I was told to wait to do some special registration before I could get an entry-clearance, while my wife had her passport stamped right-away. I waited for only about 5 mins for the interview. The interview went well. The officer asked my personal details, the reason I came, where I'd stay, when I'd leave, etc. He was very nice, he kept telling me, "this won't take long, just a few more questions". I also had my fingerprint and photo taken again here (just like when I applied for the visa at Surabaya's consulate). Anyway, I got only one month of entry, while my wife got 6 months of entry :-). But that was already enough, because we'd only stay for 3 weeks max. At the end, the officer reminded me carefully that since I was given some FIN# number, when I leave US, I should not let the airline officer took my immigration card, and instead I should find and confirm my leave myself. This turned out to be a little (tiny) problematic later, because the airline officer insisted on taking my card and didn't know about this procedure. I'll talk about it more in day 16.

We then immediately proceeded to the arrival hall. It wasn't really as big as I had expected. First thing we'd like to know was what the weather was like outside. There we went, our first breath of SF air :-). It was a really nice weather, cool, but not too cold. Felt like on the mountain. Perhaps you could compare it with Batu, but colder. I think I could survive with just a t-shirt and an ordinary jacket. Later I found out that it was about 20 degree Celcius. Nice, isn't it?

Since we'd be leaving via LAX, we decided to explore SFO first. We first took all available brochures/flyers, lots of them. There was a vending machine which sells electronic gadget, such as iPod. There were also museums, stores. We went to the spacious departure hall and I thought the roof there was nice :-). There was also AirTrain which could take you to all other terminals. Surprisingly, no free internet access :-(.

Before coming here, we'd done lots of research on hotels and available ground transport. In fact, we thought that finding hotels in US is much much easier and faster than finding hotels, say in Bali or Jakarta. We used online services such as Expedia, Orbitz, TripAdvisor, and many others. We could get some good bargain too by making our reservation online. Since the competition would be at 12th, we planned to stay for 2 nights first in downtown SF. And we picked Astoria hotel because of its great location (next to Chinatown) and relatively low price (USD59/night before tax).

We then proceeded to the BART station, bought two tickets to downtown SF, Montgomery Station. BART was nice too, although IMO Singapore's MRT was cleaner. The trip took about 30 mins and it approached the city via subway. So you could imagine, we "popped-up" from underground, right immediately in the middle of San Francisco, on a relatively quiet Sunday morning. From there, we walked about 4 blocks to our hotel. It was not that far actually, except when you brought your luggages (and the road was climbing up, yes, SF is hilly), they became a hassle.

We found our hotel. It is perfectly next to the Chinatown gate. We checked-in, took a brief rest, and went to explore Chinatown. SF Chinatown was about 6 blocks tall and 3 blocks wide. The road was small. Shops were all along the road. We then had lunch there. Our first SF lunch was simply fried rice and fried noodle. We were too hungry and just wanted to satisfy our stomatch. They tasted perfect. The surprise was that the portion was huge. We ended up wrapping-up half of the rice and half of the noddle and brought it back for dinner. The term for this was "food to go" (bungkus, maksude).

Our exploration continued to Union Square. It was about 2 blocks away south of our hotel. It was a, well, huge square with a tall tower in the middle of it. There were lots of branded stores all around the square.

Next to the square was cable-car. It was a "must-ride" for every tourist :-). We bought passports which would allow us unlimited ride for all buses/streetcars/cable-cars for 3 days. I learned later that this was unnecessary as we could have bought bus ticket which could be used for up to 4 hours. Anyway, it was a very nice experience riding the cable-car up and down on the hilly SF. When the road went down, the driver would just do a free-fall :-) and most passengers would yell. It was also interesting to see how they rotated the car once it reaced its end. Btw, at the end of the road (somewhere on the northern part), we found "Barnes and Nobles" bookstore. It was getting cold and colder, and it was warm and nice inside the bookstore.

When we got back to Union Square, it was about 9.00PM already. We went back to our hotel. I contacted my friend, Lego, and my friend's brother, Robert, who both worked there. Robert was going to be free the next day (a Columbus day) so he promised to take us for a tour around SF. Great! Stay tuned for more exciting day.

Day 01 Singapore-Japan-San Francisco

2005-11-16T13:29:00.000+07:00

Captain log, earth (Singapore) date 9 Oct 2005.
We woke up very early, 2.00AM, because late for the plane was the last thing we would ever want to happen. We then went to Changi, and at around 3.30AM, we already arrived there to do the usual check-in ritual.

Before doing check-in, each passenger would have a little interview. It was just some requirement for US security, I guess. He asked about what you brought, whether you brought meat, whether you brought laptop, etc (I don't remember all the details). After we got our boarding pass, we still had lots of time, so we accessed the internet, checked email. Just when we were about to board, there would be another security check. It was a very thorough check, you even had to take your shoes off and let the officer check them. Fortunately my shoes were new :).

The flight to Narita, Tokyo took about 7 hours and we arrived there at 14.15 PM Tokyo Time (2 hours ahead of Surabaya). The NorthWest plane was very comfortable and clean. I was glad that there was no smell (but just plain fresh air) on the plane, as I think I'm very smell-sensitive and a little smell could easily make me sick. Each seat was equipped with a TV, I watched "Fantastic Four" on the flight, while the rest of the time I just slept (to cover-up my morning sleep).

Narita is a very comfortable airport too, although I must say that Changi is more spacious and hence feels better. We transitted there for about 2 hours, so we had some time to browse around and try some Japanese lunch (hot tofu + noodle). While browsing, I found some interesting gadget: a JVC camcorder with a hard-disk as its storage. It was something like 40/80 GB and could store about 40 hrs of movie in MPEG-2 format. Cool, but the price was hefty (> USD 1000).

At 16.00 PM, our flight departed from Japan, headed to San Francisco, the farthest we'd ever step our feet on. We were so excited. The trip would take about 9 hours. We'd be crossing the international date so when we arrived at San Francisco, it would still be Oct 9th 09.00 AM daylight time (Oct 9th 23.00PM Surabaya or 14 hours before Surabaya time). During the flight, we were given two meals (dinner and breakfast or was it lunch and dinner, whatever) and lots of snacks every so hours. I watched "War of the worlds" here, very cool movie, not a satisfactory ending though. The rest of the time, we spent it with sleeping, hoping that when we arrived at SF, we wouldn't feel jet-lag.

Btw, the plane was not crowded. It was a 2-4-2 seat in each row. I noticed some people were sitting alone on the 4 seats and could use all 4 of them as a bed. How nice. So next time you took a flight alone, you might want to consider this strategy.

Somehow, I also managed to crash the TV set on my seat, it rebooted and I could see it rebooted Linux and tried to connect to some multicast server. Interesting. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this.

That's all for now, see ya at San Francisco :).

Day 00 : Surabaya - Singapore

2005-11-16T00:39:00.000+07:00

I'll be documenting my 16-days trip in US in the next few days. But first, let's preserve some interesting link again: TopCoder 2005 Finalists Press Release.

Since I'm a coder, I'll start with 0-based index :). Besides we weren't in US yet on day 0. Here was my complete itinerary:
GA 842L - 08 Oct 2005 - SUB-SIN - 0700 1010
NW 6M - 09 Oct 2005 - SIN-NRT - 0600 1415
NW 28M - 09 Oct 2005 - NRT-SFO - 1610 0930

NW 1M - 25 Oct - LAX-NRT - 1310 1700
NW 5M - 26 Oct - NRT-SIN - 1845 0105
GA 843L - 27 Oct - SIN-SUB - 1810 1925

The round-trip plane ticket cost was USD 915 (it was a low-season). Anyway if you're flying with NorthWest (or any planes), you shouldn't forget to register for the frequent flyer program. I got about 17,231 pts from this trip alone. Another 2,769 pts would earn me a free ticket to any destination in Asia. Wow. Just hope NorthWest will be doing fine, considering they just filed something like a bankruptcy protection program in US. But I'm sure they will be, their planes are very clean, well-equipped, and pretty much comfortable. I'm a happy customer.

We left Surabaya at 08 Oct 2005 07.00 using Garuda Indonesia. The trip to Singapore was about 2 hours and we arrived there at 10.00 local time. Going abroad was my wife's first experience, so I can tell you how excited she was all the time.

Oh, before leaving Juanda (Surabaya), we met our friend, Ruslan, who was also going to Singapore. So we were on the same flight, and thanks to him, we got a free taxi ride from Changi to our hotel.

I had a funny incident at Changi. Somehow, before the immigration clearance, while filling the immigration form, I left my cellphone on top of the table. And I forgot to take it back. I realized it when I was about to enter the taxi, so I quickly rushed back into the terminal. Thank God, it was still there.

We had to stay 1 night in Singapore because the flight to Japan would leave early the next day. We chose the earliest Garuda flight so that we could enjoy Singapore for a whole day. NorthWest is very generous to give us Furama RiverFront hotel. It was a pretty nice hotel. Unfortunately since we came too early, there were no room available yet. Wow, it's definitely not a low season in Singapore. So we had to wait about 1 hour for a room to be cleaned. We were given a welcome-drink voucher to be spent at the hotel's lounge. While waiting, I checked with my laptop and apparently they had wireless internet, but it's not free :(.

The hotel was about 15 minutes of walk from Chinatown, but we decided to go to the famous Orchard first. Besides, the hotel provided a free shuttle bus to Orchard. It was Saturday so it was pretty crowded at Orchard. My wife told me she preferred to do sight-seeing instead of shopping. So we took a quick sweep of malls and plazas around Orchard, and decided to have our lunch at Yoshinoya inside Takashimaya. The food was great. I recommend it to everyone. Unfortunately we forgot to pay a visit to Borders.

I still had my EZ-Link card from my previous visit, so I bought another one for SGD15 for my wife. Armed with this, we were ready to travel all around the city. I planned to take my wife to Sentosa to watch the beautiful musical fountain (the only must-see attraction at Sentosa IMHO); but I thought it was still to early. So we decided to visit Suntec first, which is just next to Orchard.


Crowded Orchard	Fountain wealth @ Suntec

Around 5 PM, we decided to go to Sentosa. The only thing we would like to see was the musical fountain which started at 7.40 PM. Based on my experience, if you would like to get the best view (straight in front of the fountain), you'd need to arrive at least 1 hour before. My guess was right, it was pretty crowded already at around 6.30 PM there; but we managed to find a perfect spot. The show was really spectacular. The last time I saw this was about 7 years ago, and they had "upgraded" the story. 7 years ago, the laser could only draw the outline; but now they could "fill" and draw the complete character. There was also fire burst out occasionally and you could actually feel it's hot.


Took a cable car	Flower clock (about 6.02 PM)


The fountain garden	Musical fountain at 7.00 PM


Amazing laser	Drawing a woman


With fire	Me with Merlion @ Sentosa

After that, we took the cable car back, had dinner (some Vietnamese meal), went back to the hotel to get a rest as we had to wake up early morning for the flight to the US the next day.

All Glory Be To Him

2005-09-09T09:38:00.000+07:00

Hello my fans (as if I do have fans :)),

Haven't been updating my blog for a really long time. This could probably mean two things, either nothing interesting is going around my life that I have nothing to write about, -or- there's way too much going around my life that I don't really have enough time on my hand to write about it. Apparently, the last time I wrote was last March, and it's been 5 months. Well, I'm glad to tell you for sure the last 2 months have been the later case. Now, I definitely have soooo many things to document (documenting my life, experience, etc). Tons of things are in my head, that I really should put them all here in order not to forget it and share it with the rest of you. But not yet right now, I'll be writing pieces of them in the coming days/weeks/months, whenever I have the time (I couldn't promise you when) and when I'm in the mood to write it :). This second case is actually the most difficult. A friend of mine once told me, it's not necessarily the task itself that took a long time, but it's the time to start the task which might took a really long time. What a great procrastinator (now, this is definitely a word that I just learned about). But I couldn't agree more, it took me a long time to come to this writing-mood mode :). But once you do, you'll want to write like, hmm, like you want to write forever. Now I got to stop, because I have to start that other works, don't I? :).

Anyway, enough the prelude, the reason I'm writing is I'd like to dedicate this special time and blog space to my Dear Lord Jesus Christ. For what? Well, for everything. We wouldn't really need a reason to thank Him, wouldn't we? He has given us, who believes Him, the greatest gift of all, His Son to be our Saviour, and what could we possibly ask for more? Nothing, zip, nada, zero. Nevertheless, He's still giving me so much much more than I had ever expected or imagined! Way things beyond my own capability, strength, and dreams. And if I could make it so far, no, it's really not me, but thank Him. There have been lots of tiny-to-huge bad/good things that happened, and they're just too unfortunate to be called coincidences or lucks. These are things that God intefered, things that I might not even realize as His inteference, but believe me they are. Hope I didn't forget it and could write more details in the coming days. So, let all glory be to Him.

Now you all might be wondering. Ok, just to give you a sneak preview, check this out:
TopCoder Open 2005 comp-dev press release.. Now, you know I really mean what I wrote above. Thank you again dear Lord. I'd also like to thank TopCoder, with all its staff, for giving me this golden opportunity.

One very special thanks to my wife too who's been very supportive and encouraging these days. She's also my main motivator. Without her, this might not possibly happen as well. So thank you my wife. Love ya.

Oh, last but not least, congratulations to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo again for doing so extraordinarily well. He made it to TCO05 final at the algorithm side. WOW! Wish you the best for the on-site final.

Google India Code Jam 2005

2005-03-29T14:33:00.000+07:00

Just came back from a very exciting event: Google Code Jam India 2005 in Bangalore, held by Google India and TopCoder. I guess I'm lucky to be among the top 50 finalists to be invited to compete on-site for the final round.

Here's the complete list of the final result:
http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?&module=Static&d1=gicj05&d2=advFinal

Congrats to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo & Pascal Alfadian who make it into #1 & #2. You really are making the news:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/03/will-code-for-rupees.html
Go Indonesia! I hope Google will consider opening an R&D centre here in Indonesia :) *huh* *dreaming* Well, who knows? Maybe in the year 2100. :)

I was placed at #31, not too good. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the on-site competition. This had really been one of the most exciting experience in my life. I'm very happy to meet my fellow coders and especially to make new friends with several Indonesian coders sharing the same passion & energy.

lars2520, TopCoder's head problem writer, with the 7 Indonesian finalists
(Left->Right, Up->Down: Rheynald, me, Ardian - our champ, lars, Pascal - our 2nd champ, Felix, Prima, Bram)

[Updated 4 Apr] Add links to Felix & Pascal's websites. Here they are:

Petals Around the Rose

2005-02-25T10:32:00.000+07:00

Someone gave me this link: http://crux.baker.edu/cdavis09/roses.html.

It took me almost an hour to solve it. I feel such a fool, the a-ha feeling is comforting though :-).

What You'll Wish You'd Known

2005-01-25T15:52:00.000+07:00

If you could go through high school again, what would you do?
Sir Winston Churchill once said, "Those whose work and play are one are fortune's favourite children".

Click here to read Mr. Paul Graham's opinion.

Test your typing skill

2004-07-09T16:13:00.000+07:00

Feels like want to test your typing speed.
Relax your fingers and hit this http://typera.tk/.
Oh, you'll need a java enabled browser.
Here's my score.

About blogging

2004-06-24T09:47:00.000+07:00

Blogging is actually pretty cool. Try it and you might like it. I hope I could make this my personal website too. Uhmm, check back later, I'll update it whenever I have spare time.

Meanwhile, if you have lots of spare time :).. check this game, beware it could be pretty addictive :)
Tontie - I got to level 7.
Vanilla - I got 28 feet.
Beat me and let me know, ok :)

GMail account

2004-06-24T08:44:00.000+07:00

Just got my gmail account: sindux@gmail.com.

My first impression is... WWWWOOOOWWWW... 1 GB of email. Maybe this could be my email of a life-time. I couldn't think how to spend those 1 GB space. Thanks to Google for their great service. Anyway, 1 GB is plenty today, but who knows 5 years from now. 1 GB maybe like 1 MB today. :)

My second impression after using GMail just half-day and started receiving replies from my friends: Cooooolll guys!! You really need to sign-up. My outgoing message has no ad (at least now, not sure later). And the interface is colorful. The thread view is the best of all. Heavy use of shortcut which is good since I'm a fan of keyboard :). Excellent auto-completing address. Excellent heavy use of JavaScript, it really helps improve the interactivity experience. It's fast!

What I think still missing from GMail, but I believe they'll improve it:
- Address book is too simple & primitive.
- Email notification (something like we got from Yahoo messenger)
- Virus scanner

I've been using Yahoo all this time, no complain about them. They're great too, and in fact they just upgraded my mail box to 100MB last week. Thanks to Yahoo! too. I guess I'll still be using both.

FAQ :)
Q: How do you get one?
A: Uhm, I was invited by a friend. Here's his page: http://rgrig.blogspot.com/. He told me that after about a week, I'd be able to invite my friends too.

Q: Invite me! Invite me! Invite me!
A: Ok, don't worry. As soon as I can invite you, I'll do it. Post below and leave your comments OK. It's a FIFO queue. so hurry up, post. I was told that you can only invite 5/6 people. Depends on my activity, so post your comment to increase my activity, OK. Thanks guys :)

Q: Is it really 1 GB of space?
A: Dunno, maybe, because that's what the counter below said. Send me mail-bomb, etc and we'll find out :)