She said Yes

I'm still speechless, all I know is that this is a very happy day for me. I love you all!

The perfect day...

Watched "Love Actually" with Rika at Djakarta Theater today. A really good movie, all that I could ever expect from a British style sarcasm romantic comedy. Best of all, this was a perfect movie to bring Rika to. I wish you all could see me smile... :D

The theater has a brand new look, more class and more studios. A new favorite place to see movies at? Definitely!

After movies and Dinner, I took Rika on a little detour. I had to visit my cousin Ivan at Remedika hospital. He is sick of Dengue fever after returning from an assignment in Lampung. My cousin Ivan is the closest cousin to me. A rising star at Bakrie's holding company, the day he got sick, the whole office panicked, even Mr. Bakrie himself. Get well soon bro!

Rika and I had an early dinner (just before we visited Ivan). We stopped at Al-Azhar's Agung Mosque and prayed Maghrib, 5 minutes before it was Isya. Haven't been here in a while. I used to go to school here when I was in Junior high.

..I sat on the steps of the mosque and put my shoes on. Rika sat beside me and she gave me that smile. Never in million year would I ever think of telling a girl how much I cared for her on the steps of a mosque... I did.

Progress Report

Checked on the grunts today, just to make sure they don't kill each other (hehehehe...). Seems a night's work have paid off, they completed the front-end of the software a day early. It's either the motivation of forced working in a group and locked in an apartment or maybe the thought of going out on valentine's day with their loved ones.

I don't care which ones, at least they are working ahead of schedule, so I'm givng them the night off tonight. :D

Along came the sunshine

Left the grunts and picked up Rika after work today. We had dinner at Pizza Hut. After days of overloaded work and stress, this is the highpoint of my week... It was raining outside, but it was sunshining here.... yup, definitely my highpoint this week. Tomorrow will be good day, hopefully a better day :-D

btw, to those who celebrate it, happy Valentine's day.

Driving her home

I was with the grunts today at Arief's apartment in Gading. I called Rika up and asked her if I could take her home today, and she said Yes. :)

We talked much on the way home, unfortunately it was only a 30 minutes commute. I wished it was longer. I just dropped her off, I don't know her enough to be invited for coffee or tea I guess. Well, there's always tomorrow.

Cooking for the Grunts

With a project underway, I had the company's programmers to spend a few nights together to finish the software coding. With 3 grunts (programmers) under one roof and none with any culinary knowledge, I had to suffice them with food to eat, so I cooked (note: it's cheaper than ordering out) for the grunts.

First Date?

I'm not going to sit around and think about "what could be" nor be sorry for myself. Yeah, I had that "moment" in my car during Jakarta's traffic jam yesterday. Thinking too much will kill you they said.

I grabbed my trusty (oh, so need a new phone right now) Nokia 5110 and called Rika. Yup, that girl I met last week at the movies. I charmed her into having coffee with me after work, and maybe catch a movie afterwards. She said yes (I still got it), which was enough to pace my heart like Indy 500.

After I hung up, I kinda thought to myself: "I hope this is not my sub concious looking for a rebound. Coz, I really like this girl. Well, we'll just let time see.

I picked her up at her office after 5 and took her to the Gading Mall. We had coffee at the Dome and chatted a bit. I was a bit tired after a long meeting that afternoon, so I kinda stick to the humor and asking stuff about her. Not too much hard talk stuff. We had some laughs and I do find her interesting. We didn't catch a movie that night, but I did drove her home.

All I can say is that I had a great time.

Stab to the heart...

I was visiting Riska's place to plan her wedding with Arief last night. But then we had to get some medicines for her mother, so we went to the Patra hospital nearby to get the prescriptions filled by the hospital's pharmacy. It was there that we accidently bumped to Ulya's mom and dad. We chit-chatted a bit, but just before she left, she said the words that would rip my heart apart: "Chandra, don't forget to come to Ulya's wedding this May ok."

Oh my god. All this time she was engaged and she didn't tell me...


We've been in touch with each other, for what now... this hurts, even though nothing happened I was actually falling in love with this girl. I should've asked her straight on if she had a boyfriend or not and got a clear answer, she never did answer me. I gues her mother did that for her.

Part of me wanted to tell her mom and dad about us, but that would be stupid. That would cause much pain I guess, so I just took it like a man. I just stood there while Riska tried to comfort me. She knews about me liking her, but that didn't help.

I'm going home now.

Ratna Call Home!!

Ratna trying to to call her sister at home. It seems that she left her keys at home, and since we left the theater at 23.30, she needs to wake her sister up. Kids, don't leave your keys at home.

Rika Andriyani

This is Rika, a bit photo shy. Rika is Riska's friend from her traditional dance class. The thing is, although Riska introduced me to Rika, I've actually known her when she was just still in Junior high (9th grade) at PS 216, I was the drill instructor for the district's Paskibra.

If I'm not mistaken, she used to be Daus's (an old friend) girlfriend back then. I was like in 12 grade that time. It's a small world.

Oh yeah, she grew up nice. I think she's cute.

:)

Rina's wedding

Last night I went to Rina's (a.k.a Smack Down Girl) wedding yesterday. Met a lot of friends from school, pengajian, work and Abnon. I was planning to go alone, but Maya called and asked if she could be my date to the wedding. Good thing Indra and his 5 months pregnant wife Nina came along, he even offred to drive :D, coz I was still in "not yet slept mode" this week.


The wedding party was over crowded. There were sooo many people. The buffet was full of people, and these two plates was what we could get for the four of us. Met Iyus here also, but she dissapeared somewhere in the crowd. I also met Hiras, a co worker back in Indo.com days.

At least we had lots of laughs... We need to go to a nice restaurant after this.

Rina and Robby, best wishes to you guys!

In memory of my Opa

Last night, Jasper J van der Klooster died of a heart attack. Jasper is a distant family, and I considered him to be my Opa. When I was living in Utrecht, he and his wife Nanja took me in and helped a lot during my stay. Jasper van der Klooster is the former director of MBA at Hogeschool van Utrecht and representative of KLM to Indonesia. I tried to get a visa to leave for Holland, but I fear it'll be too late to attend the funeral. Jasper's wife Nanja died 3 month before him. They will be missed.

...what a day

That has got to be the..... it wasn't excellent, but it wasn't bad. I don't know what it was? The clients had some hoos and haaas over the product. We did good, forget to change some hard coded material, but it went well. Actually me and Arief are too sleepy and tired to care. We're just happy we won the contract.

Office with a pool

We moved in to our temporary office at Arief's un-used apartment in Kelapa Gading. Our building will be ready in May this year. The best thing about this, is the pool area. Yup, we can go swimming as much as we like, its just the best way to get rid of stress. This is a good thing as the three of us are great swimmers (the other 2 grunts however can't swim, so they hate the pool).

As you can see, Aher and I are always ready in our business attire. Ready to plunge at any moment's notice. Just had to make a few phonecalls first.

Last one in the pool is a rotten egg!!

Mobile Receptionist

Since 2 days ago, I began carrying 2 cellphones. I've reached the point of my life where I need two phones. I get about more or less 10 - 30 calls a day, and people complain when they can't reach me, especially clients. Oh my god, have I become a technology drone??? Am I now a corporate machine??? Nooooo.......!!!