Here is the situation. You are going to do an important presentation in an international conference. You have made your presentation slides, it’s like the greatest presentation in the universe. You made the presentation using the latest version of Microsoft PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org Impress. You double checked your presentation and laptop right before you’re doing your presentation. Suddenly, out of nowhere, your laptop crash, error, bsod, or anything. You have no choice, you transfered your slides file to another computer that can do presentation. Unfortunately, the computer didn’t have the program that can open your slides. The computer has the older version of PowerPoint that couldn’t open your slides. Or maybe the computer using another operating system that your presentation program didn’t support. You’re panic and can’t think clearly. Everything went dark and suddenly you passed out. Continue reading
Some days ago, there’s a vacancy offer in my undergraduate department mailing list. A company is looking for a programmer. I didn’t pay much attention to this email. Okay, here’s the email:
Mr. XXX, my office needs a programmer with this qualification:
- Have knowledge in VB, Java, and PHP
- Have any experiences as a programmer/developer for at least 1 year in IT division or in IT company or software house
- Have an ability to give product presentation to potential clients
- Have knowledge in CorelDRAW and Photoshop
- Have knowledge in Linux
- Have knowledge in building computer networks
- Have knowledge in hardware
About a year ago, I started an English conversation club with my friend in the college. Well, it’s not a real conversation club actually. Instead of doing direct conversation, we’re using instant messenger or irc. Later, I realized that I was doing it because of my own selfishness. I did it because I was lonely at my home, while my friends are on the other city. As expected, the club didn’t last in the long run. My friends became busier with their job and I couldn’t control them. Maybe they were eager to learn English, but they have their own business.
Now in my graduate college, I found that my classmates also trying to run an English conversation club. The great things about it, they are eager to learn how to speak and we can do it directly. We do it in Sunday morning under the tree in the campus’s park. I come twice and I started to love this club. And last day, we’re talking about my favorites: blog. Continue reading
In my college’s department mailing list, there is an interesting discussion about the quality of IT bachelor degree in the workplace. There are some reasons behind that:
- The bachelor graduate worker lacking practical skills. They can not answer a fundamental question that every IT or computer science graduate should know.
- The bachelor graduate worker also lacking soft skills, like how to speak with the higher-ups and communicate with another workers.
As a result, the companies prefer to hire a vocational IT graduate. Why?
- A vocational graduate sometimes have the practical skills that a bachelor graduate didn’t have. Computer science or IT is a wide spread knowledge. It means you didn’t have to go to the college just the learn how to program. It’s all over the clouds. So the learning materials are reachable to everyone.
- Vocational graduates are easier to manage. Some of them have more respect to the higher-ups than the bachelor graduates.
- The standard salary for the vocational graduates is less expensive than the bachelor graduates. Combine this factor with better skills and higher respect means that bachelor graduates’s job are in a grave danger.
“What would you like to drink?”
I just finished my order when the waiter asked me. I guess I have no choice. I, then, ordered a glass of ice tea.
Actually, the foods price here isn’t high. On some small restaurants, you can even pick your own dishes. It’s up to you how much do you want to eat. But, you must pay it before you eat it. The problem here is about the drink.
Based on the drink availability, there are two kinds of restaurant or cafetaria. The first one is my favorite, the restaurants that provide free drinking water visibly . They usually have some jugs or water dispensers with a bunch of clean cups. The customers are free to drink the water at any time as much as they want.
The second one, is the restaurant that invisibly provide free drinking water. They usually ask us first about what we want to drink using the magic question, “what would you like to drink?”. If you’re a shy person, you’ll just order ice tea or warm tea. But actually, if you dare, you can always ask plain water for free.
I’m telling you again, it’s not always about the price. The ice tea here is just cost about one thousand to one thousand and a half rupiah. It’s pretty cheap compared to the price in Bogor or Jakarta. The real problem is about self healthiness. Drinking too many tea or coffee is not good for health in the long term. Not to mention the sugar that accompany the tea or the coffee itself.
So, from this point forward, on my daily meals, if someone asked me, “what would you like to drink?”, here, I’ll answer, “just gimme a plain water”.
Credits: image Drinking Water by de:Benutzer:Alex Anlicker, licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0