Two goals in the space of five first-half minutes put the U’s in charge, Matt Green firing them in front from 18 yards with a neat half-volley.

James Constable doubled their lead with a fierce left-foot drive.

U’s keeper Ryan Clarke fumbled in Ben Purkiss’s cross to give York a lifeline only for Alfie Potter to wrap it up.
Given that Oxford finished third in the Blue Square Premier, eight points clear of York, after topping the league for so much of the season, it was perhaps fitting that they went up.

It was certainly a much better experience of the play-offs for U’s boss Chris Wilder, whose Halifax side lost to Hereford in the 2006 final.

Read the complete story

I followed the game Live Report on BBC and wanted to post earlier. But too bad no good clips found on YouTube. And now that I found it, I will put it here for me to view over and over The DVD of the match is coming soon.

The atmosphere was great, the food was delicious, but one thing that struck my mind that day was the prayer that was given by the Habib (I didn’t get his full name) to Ainun and his Wife. He prayed that Ainun and Yanti will have a barokah life. Barokah as in:

1. Even when your money is not much, you still found it enough
2. Even when what you have is not many, you still found it sufficient
3. Even when you have a little time, you can do many things
4. Even when you are given a short life, you can achieve so many things

“Houston, we have a problem!”

Here’s the lyrics:

嚇 命有几回 合擂台等着
he ming you ji hui he lei tai deng zhe
Humph, How many rounds are there in life, the arena is waiting

生死状赢了 什么冷笑着
shen shi zhuang yin le she me leng xiao zhe
After winning a death duel, who’s smiling coldly?

天下谁的 第一又如何
tian xia shui de di yi you ru he
Who controls the fraternity? So what if (you) are the first

止干戈 我辈尚武德
zhi gan she wo bei shang wu de
Stop interfering in my martial rules

我的 拳脚了得 却奈何 徒增虚名一个
wo de quan jiao liao de que nai he du zheng xu ming yi ge
My punches and kicks are great but I only gained a meaningless title

江湖难测 谁是强者 谁争一 统武林的资格
jiang hu nan che shui shi qiang zhe shui zheng yi tong wu lin de zhi ge
The martial fraternity is too hard to predict. Who will be the strongest? Who will have the qualifications to rule the whole fraternity?

小城里岁月流过去 清澈的勇气 洗涤过的回忆
xiao cheng li sui yue liu guo qu qing che de yong qi xi yi guo de hui yi
Time passes fast in the city, the limpid courage washed away my memories

我记得你 骄傲的活下去
wo ji de ni jiao ao de huo xia qu
I’ll remember you, living on proudly

霍霍霍霍 霍霍霍霍 霍家拳的套路招式灵活
huo *9 jia quan de tao lu zhao shi ling huo
Huo (*9) family punch’s moves are flexible

我我我我 我我我我 活着生命就该完整渡过
wo (*8) huo zhe shen ming jiu gai wan zheng du guo
I (*8) I have lived life and should live to the finish

我我我我 我我我我 过错软弱从来不属于我
wo (*9) guo chuo ruan luo cong lai bu su yu wo
I (*8) Mistakes and weakness will never come from me

霍霍霍霍 霍霍霍霍 我们精武出手无人能躲
Huo (*8) wo men jing wu chu shou wu ren neng duo
I (*8) None can evade when our fine moves are executed

Source: http://www.jay-chou.net

The original version of Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless):

The live version:

Thank God, I finally visited Bali as I planned before. My plane departed for Bali on 2nd July 2009 around 10 AM. Kinda woke up late, so I took taxi to Changi Airport, despite my initial plan to take MRT.

Despite the pandemic of H1N1, the AirAsia servicing Singapore – Bali route was surprisingly packed. The check-in queue was very long. I saw a number of Indian guys wearing the same T-Shirt, bringing huge many luggage. Among their luggage, I saw what I assume the containers of traditional Indian musical instrument. Apparently these guys are members of a music band. I assume either there’s Indian wedding that going to be held in Bali, or they are actually participating in Bali Art Festival.

My family had arrived in Denpasar early in the morning, so they will pick me up at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport. I waited for them not more than 5 minutes. Then I saw my father and my youngest brother sitting in the front seat. I waved at them, then they stopped the car. After group-hugging session, we went for lunch. We did not try the local cuisine, we settled with East Javanese food instead. Either-way, I was really hungry, so any food will be fine with me. Moral of the story, contemplating with choice of food means you’re not hungry enough.

After lunch, we went to Benoa beach. Over there, me and my younger brothers did parasailing. My youngest brother was the one very persistent asking us to go for parasailing. He sort of challenging his elder brothers, saying that he was only 5 years old when he did parasailing for the first time. And he claimed that he did not afraid at all. He is still 9 years old now.

From Benoa beach, we took a boat trip to visit the Turtle Island. They run a turtle conservation there. The conservation camp also have other animals like snake, birds, eagle and rabbits. We are allowed to pose together with the animals and take pictures. In the way out, there is a donation box for the tourist to slip in money to help the conservation camp funding.

On the second day, we left the hotel quite early. We went to Sukowati Market. This market is really the place if you are looking for souvenir on bargain. It is so cheap, I am not allowed to disclose you the prices there . We bought a number of T-Shirts. My brother bought a number of handcrafts. I also saw a foreigner bought a bulk number of paintings. I spoke to him asking what was the price. Then he whispered to me the answer, another proof that we must keep the prices information secret!

After that we went to Padang Galak beach, we are supposed to watch the Bali Kite Competition. Unfortunately, we arrived too early. And it was almost noon of Friday, we must find a mosque to perform Friday prayer. After Friday prayer, we went to Seminyak Beach. I have been dreaming to do Bungy Jumping, but so far I can only make joke about it. So I did make the jump. It was really GREAT!!!! I’ll visit your place again, AJ Hackett.

At night, we visited Taman Werdi Budaya (the Denpasar’s Art Center). They have a “wayang orang” show. It is a play combined with dance that use fragments of epic Ramayana or Mahabharata story. The dialogs were in Bahasa Indonesia, with occasional short sentence in Balinese, Javanese and English . The story was about the period when Rama and his monkey army lead by Anoman are going to attack Alengka. Although the story is about Ramayana, I think the main characters of that night show was the Punokawan. Anyway, discussing about the existence of the Punokawan in Ramayana and Mahabharata epic will need another blog post. In short, the dance was great, the dialogs was interesting and mostly funny. I also noted that the show was also used to convey moral messages to the audiences. Roughly the messages were we should stay away from drugs and alcohol, drive safely on the roads.

The third day was going to be short, because at midday my brother must fly back to Jakarta. His company requires him to work on Sunday. Not every Sunday, but just this Sunday. So we left the hotel earlier than the previous day. We went to Bedugul. Bedugul was totally different experience compared to Denpasar. The air was fresh, the temperature was low, no fog, with plenty of sunlight and awesome clear sky. We had our breakfast there. Nothing beats breakfast in a restaurant, above the lakeside, with a fresh-cool temperature, having fried rice, pancake and a glass of warm tea.

After breakfast, we went fishing. We caught a few fishes. In the end, we did not consume the fish, we release them back in the lake instead. If I think about it again, it is kinda cruel right? I tempted them to bite the hook, which is really painful, but I let them live their misery for the rest of their life. PETA must be really hate me now.

After rushing to send my brother to the airport, we went to Garuda Wisnu Kencana monument. It is an unfinished monument actually, but the view is still spectacular. I heard hearsay about making the monument higher than the Statue of Liberty For now, the monument is still waiting for someone with very deep pocket to fund them to finish the monument.

In conclusion, my short trip to Bali was totally worth it. I wish I have more time to stay there. There are so many places in Bali that I did not have the chance to visit. So definitely there will be a next time.

123►

1. How to Change Your Life
2. How to Change Your Personality
3. How to Achieve Perfection
4. How to Be a Better Person
5. How to Stop Procrastinating
6. How to be a Better Programmer
7. How to get Better at Everything

Apparently it is simpler than we think. It is called small iterations and focus.

On small iterations, Teachers used to say ‘Practice makes perfect’. Indonesians often said “sedikit demi sedikit, lama-lama menjadi bukit”. And Jerry Seinfeld said, “Don’t break the chain”.

On focus, Confucius said “Chase two chickens, you will missed both”. Scientist also shown that our learning process become worse when we are multitasking.

I suggest you to follow the discussion HERE, many people have contributed a very insightful stories and advices.

This uncomfortable feeling is actually quite familiar. I think I experienced it during Ramadhan month, albeit not as bad as now. I suspect it has something to do with immediately sleeping after meal.

So after skimming a number of Wikipedia articles, I found out the ‘possibly’ correct term for my discomfort as Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. The mild vomiting-like feeling is called Regurgitation.

Moral of the story:

• Never Ever Immediately Fall Asleep After Having Meal
• If you really need the sleep, try not to fall-flat in the bed. Sleep in the sofa, or use multiple pillows to make the head in elevated position compared to the stomach
• Coffee, or any acidic drinks/foods will amplify the uncomfortable feeling.

So far I did not take any medicine, nor I know any treatment to alleviate the discomfort. The discomfort will be gone by itself in 2-3 days. As long as you didn’t repeat to immediately sleep after meal.

So I was standing in front of Wiener Kaffehaus and looking at the pricelist. After slowly skimming through the list of coffee prices, I finally found Kopi Luwak. It listed there that 1 cup for SGD 25, and 100 gr for SGD 62. Jangkrik, I knew Kopi Luwak is expensive, but somehow I feel that $25 for a cup of coffee is too much. My coffee cheapo economical mentality is very likely originated from something that my friend who has recently visited Bali said. He told us that bought one cup of Kopi Luwak in Bali for a mere IDR 30000 (less than SGD 5). That’s damn cheap!

I think I’ll just wait for my upcoming Bali trip.

*)Jangkrik is the Indonesian word for cricket. It was absorbed from the Javanese language. It is also a very mild swore word and mainly used by East Java people. The Australians however, copied it and change it to Crickey…..

It’s something that we need to always remember, that we are as human, is really really nothing in this universe.

Today I received an email from a Cisco Distributor in Jakarta. The email was a quotation of Cisco 24-Port Gigabit Switches. The email also indicated that the switch will be used in Indonesian Ministry of Health. Each model of the switch listed has two prices, list price and reseller price. The reseller price is lower by about $100 compared to the list price. I assume the dollar sign is for US Dollar (USD).

It is interesting to note that it seems computer equipments in Jakarta are traded in USD, not Indonesian Rupiah (IDR). Perhaps the instability of IDR exchange rate to USD (or other currency for that matter) makes it safer for the suppliers to trade their goods in USD.

Anyway, I think this is definitely a case of mistaken identity. So I immediately replied to the sender, telling him that he got the wrong email address. The sender then later on replied apologizing for the mistake.

Problem solved, but I can’t help to be curious to find out which ‘Hardono‘ that actually requested the quotation. Hardhono, was it you?

*) This Hardono has never physically met any other Hardono. The closest he got was having a roommate called Yandhie Dono

Few days ago, I had an interesting after-lunch discussion with my colleagues. We were talking about our receptionist who is planning to go to Bali. She’s planning to go there alone.

My colleagues were disagree with her going to Bali alone. They think Bali is not a very safe place to go, let alone going there by yourself. Since I never been to Bali, I was rather speechless I wanted to defend, but I have no solid argument. What I could do was only to utter naive arguments with some rather high dose of optimism.

One of them visited Bali many years ago. He do fancy the foods and scenery. But bad moments left permanent scars in his memories. The first scar was stopped by a Police officer in the morning. Apparently the Police officer was hungry and urgently need breakfast. Yes, it’s unbelievable but the officer actually did said those words. So he did give the officer money for breakfast, and the officer let them continue their journey.

The second scar was when he was about to return to Singapore with Garuda Indonesia (Indonesia’s National Airline). That time (I think now still is), the flight confirmation need to be done manually. So he did manually confirmed his return to Singapore immediately upon his arrival in Bali. But on the day before his departure day, he somehow feel unsettled. Perhaps all things that happen to him during his stay taught him important lessons on how things are running in Bali. So he called Garuda Indonesia just to ensure the tomorrow’s flight for him and his family. Surprise, surprise, his name nor any name of his family members were not in the confirmed passenger list. Fortunately, he has contacts in Bali. So things are settled once his contacts visited the airline office and ‘negotiated on how things should be done‘.

If my first colleague has personally experienced bad things befallen on him in Bali, the other one is luckier as nothing bad happen to him during his recent visit to Bali. Overall, he enjoyed the trip to Bali very much. But he still thinks that Bali is not a very safe place for a girl to go alone. Most of his argument based on the corruption that Indonesia is infamous for. He witnessed in Bali’s airport a Russian tourist picked out from the queue, then led to a ’small room’. He deduced that the tourist will need buy the immigration officer ‘breakfast’.

Well, after hearing all the bad things about Bali from my friends, I decided to google for it. I found these two websites that contain the most negativity, i don’t know, maybe realistic advisories regarding Bali:

• Bali Broadcasting Service
• Fugly Bali

As we know, Indonesia is now really progressing. The current government is really serious in tackling the corruptions and pursuing justice to the perpetrators. I hope the good start will be continued by the next government, the next next government, so on and so forth. I hope I will still alive when Indonesia no longer infamous for its corruption.

Finally, what do you think? Is Bali really that bad? Did you have any bad experience when you visited Bali?

*)Hardono is planning to visit Bali for the first time soon. Very likely in June