StreAk oF BluE

iPT

today's Wednesday, another boring day for me in Jakarta. I have no special plans for today. I'd like to go swimming but the pool's closed for cleaning. and the sky keeps changing ruthlessly, with occasional burst of heavy rains, followed suddenly by scourge of unbearable sunny sky. the only thing you can count on is 'change'.

so, in this particular jobless day, i have spared some moment to write. well, it's more like i'm trying to kill the time. i don't know what else to do!
i have bought for myself an iPod Touch, which is by many shorted as iPT for convenience. for you who don't know what iPod touch is, it is iPhone without the phone and bluetooth features. if you still don't know what an iPhone is, well, google is a wonderful tool to begin with (this has practically become a ubiquitous quote to mock the lazy people who want to know anything but don't have the diligence to search for it, apparently with google, of course).

i know both iPT and iPhone have been widely reviewed in the net; i just need to kill the time, remember? so bear with me.. hehe.

so what is iPT and what can it do? simply said, iPT is an iPod (the famed Apple-manufactured mini music player that comes in many variants) that incorporates the multi-touch technology (which is claimed somewhere as the invention of the year 2007). this means it comes with a touch screen for the multi-touch tech to work. the only real 'physical' buttons are the one located in the top left corner of the upper side of the gadget, used for sleep/power button; and the one in the lower middle of the gadget, used for home screen access button. every other button will pop upon the screen for user to touch every time appropriate application is launched.

like many others, i instantly fell in love (and in awe) with this gadget the first time i saw it (and afterwards, touched it). with its slim shape body (only less than 8mm thick) and wide 3.5 inch screen, it is truly sleek and stylish. the front frame is colored in black and the back with steely silver with apple logo printed on it. the screen is claimed to be anti-scratch, but i don't take chances, so i have put screen guard both on the front screen and the back side. as if the appearance itself is not enough, there comes the multi-touch technology that makes every touch so electrifying to do and see. on the screen are several icons ready to be explored once you turn the gadget on. music, picture and video are inseparable for iPod, but it also incorporates Safari web browser, clock, calendar, contact, and direct access to iTunes music store.

what i love about it is the touch and slide thing. when you need to drag the screen down, you just simply touch it, and slide the finger along the screen to drag it down. cool, i think. it even pops up keyboard layout on the screen for typing when needed. well, the buttons are a little bit too closely spaced, but over time i get used to it.
i can store more than 2500 songs, memorable photos, and some videos (it is time consuming, though, to convert video to the one compatible with iPod). yet it is truly multimedia on the go. well, i enjoyed taking it and touching it the first days of my encounter with this wonderful little devil. but after a while, it seems like nothing more than portable walkman...

anyway, i don't claim that i have exhausted my love for this thing, it just occurs to me that it can only do limited number of things. i imagine i might want to be able to write notes, use messenger, etc etc. so i browsed Apple website for answer. the best they can offer is the web app which is basically some additional applications accessed ONLY when i am in the wifi coverage. how can you call such application mobile? it is not good enough. so i search for informal forums discussing iPT. man, there is one that offers exactly what i'm looking for. they call it 'jailbreaking' (this explains the status of my YM lately!! hehe). it's just another term of hacking into the iPT. by doing this, i can add more applications i see fit to my needs. well, i had been truly excited about this.

i'd like to tell you how cool my jailbroken iPT was, but unfortunately, i haven't succeeded. hahahaha. but it's supposed to be great and cool, or so i see it in the internet. the main problem is that i need wifi connection (a truly fast one) to download the upgrade. and it must be wifi. i am now stuck at the last step where i have to download the final upgrade through the wifi with my iPT. you know how slow wifi in this country can be! so here i am, waiting for the progress percentage to move, but unfortunately slow it goes! darn. i have finished a plate of chicken wings and two glasses of hot chocolate and it's still spinning... and here i am again, wishing it will spare me the time and let me through with this painstakingly slow process.

so, what is the point of my blog? go see and buy an iPT. it's technology man! hahaha

my life...

Here I am again, after long time no see! This last three months have been like my adaptation months to this whole new life of mine. I moved to this new room, which is much less comfortable than the last room I had back in Bandung. I surely miss the guys and the city, plus all the easy living we had back then, the hangouts and the foods, the university years and all. Oh, time is surely moving forward cruelly.

Now I have just to accept whatever life’s going to offer. I now rent a room in an almost remote-from-civilization area in South Jakarta. Fortunately I can access the busway which kindly offers an access to greater Jakarta and to my friends in no time not so far away from the place I live. There’s also, thank God, a swimming pool nearby. It’s destiny I guess that I always end up live in places where there’s a swimming pool nearby. Now, I didn’t plan that one when I moved in. The water gods surely love me much to arrange such destiny for me. Swimming has always been my most comforting choice for pastimes, beside movie, hangout, and god knows what else. What I expect, though, is a place near the heart of entertainment and leisure, a place I can easily find a spot to prey and be preyed upon. Well, you can translate that sentence into any wild imaginings you like. The only closest thing to that imagination is a mall called Citos here. I don’t like it very much though. So despite all the incompatibilities of my living place against the way my mind is hoping what a place to live should be, I still haven’t moved yet. Many reasons, but so little excuses. Well, it’s just a stone throw away from the commercial estate where the company I work at is. It surely wins many whole points against all the inconveniences for lives. But I do consider to move somewhere further and close to civilization. I just can make up my mind yet, just like my usual indecisiveness, and I still can’t find the right place. Plus, I seldom stay long enough in the city to look for something I like.

So, talking about the jobs, I have been asked many times, what and how my job actually is. Most responses I got after I told my profession were rigorous blinking (well, I exaggerate this, but as metaphor you know what I mean), silence (I don’t really know what silence means!), and the most frequent: more questions. Well, my job is indeed not like being in the list of the most well known or looked after jobs, like lawyer, accountant, manager, or even engineer. For people who are not familiar in the oil industry, it may be a new thing to hear. Well, I’ll try to explain as there be given chance.

I’m working in an oil service company. For short, we provide services to oil owner companies. Of so many divisions in this company, I work in the drilling division as MWD engineer. Now, now, I can just sense that you have just added more wrinkles on the brows of yours buddy. MWD is short for Measurement While Drilling. Like the name of it, we provide measurement services while the drilling is performed. As you MIGHT know, most of the oil wells drilled today are not vertical, which means the well path can deviate horizontally and vertically from the drilling starting point. Why elaborate so? Well, sometimes it is more cost efficient than vertical path. Ask oil engineers for more detail but here’s the picture: imagine you suspect an oil reservoir exists beneath some village or city, you can wipe out the entire place to put your rig on top of it and drill vertical or you can put it somewhere beyond the surface projections of the reservoir and drill a deviate path.

So, where do we come to play? Our division work on how to build the desired deviated path and get the drill done. A directional driller is a pro for that. But how can you tell where the drill bit is going once it goes down-hole? How can you point your position and navigate the bit so it turns to the desired path? That’s what MWD provides. We install a down-hole sensor in the pipe to send us information about where our bit is drilling its path down there. We need only two information to know where our bit is. If you are familiar with the spherical coordinate, you might get the idea how. So we have to set up the tools and all the computers, test that and this, install it, and troubleshoot if necessary.

Well, I guess I have explained as much I could. So the next time people ask me about my job, fortunately I can easily say, hey, visit my blog in Friendster will ya.

So, is it fun, this job? Well, I guess I can’t say I’m comfortable with it, but it is not bad either. The annoying part: you have a truly crappy schedule. Many my plans have failed thanks to the irregular schedule. This job is also not something I imagined I would be having back when I was still in the university. I imagined a job behind the desk, tucked shirt, tailored pants, probably suit, file case, laptops, and weekend pleasure. I imagined the girls behind the doors, view to the city, office in the crowded lane of the city, and the malls. I imagined no sweat but the sweat of my brains, no mud, no brawns, no ducking below the pipes and working below the place where the water drips. I imagined of happy weekend, happy holidays, safe position, safe asses, and fucking cool all day long. My job probably concludes all the opposites. LOL. Like I say, it is not that bad though. I can avoid boring daily routine of office life and actually work some muscles (this though, I doubt since many of my colleagues are truly ‘filled’). The pay is above moderate and we just sit most of the time during the job. I can travel here and there, seeing places, meeting people, getting experience, missing my friends and my family. (Oh, I truly miss the foods now). It is a good thing, it means I still care for something and I have a dream when I come back home. So, I sometimes do complain I have to stay in the stupid field where nothing exists but me and the drilling program, or I can open my laptop and write this, thinking about friends and families, like I do now. J And thankfully I have got the psp. Thanks for it pal! Maybe an ipod will be a good companion too? Hahaha. Man, it’s not like the adaptation is over…

So at quiet times like this, I always miss somebody, and thinking, having a person to share a love might be nice… See you then!