Bali

It's been a week since I moved to Bali. It wasn't a vacation trip but a working trip because finally I decided to accept a job offering that requires me to move here, in Bali. There are many things that I want to share here, in this blog, but I'm going to tell You several things that a bit shocking me, not as a bad compliment ofcourse, but I just want to share my personal story.

Bali has so much distinctions compared with Surabaya. The first thing is that Bali is very very hot at day and very very cold at morning especially for You riding motorcycle. To make it even worse, I didn't bring any jacket here, so...yup... I got flu and a bit sunburned skin hehehe. The second is the time zone differentiation. When I was in Surabaya, it was very very late to do Sholat Subuh at five o clock, but now, it's even still dark at five.

The third is kos-kosan. Almost all of kos-kosan in Bali doesn't provide basic stuf such as bed and cupboard but an empty room for you. Tada... Now I now the reason why the company gives us relocation allowance hohoho... The fourth is the dog. It seems that there are one or two dogs for each house including kos. So... I've got to learn to make myself feel comfort with it. And the last one is that You'll find angkot as a very very unpopular transportation to go somewhere.

But there is another thing that surprising me, Balinesse are very kind, one of the most gentle people I've found . It is proved when I got lost, twice, in Bypass Ngurah Rai and in Kuta area. Every people I asked about direction were showing very good conviction for helping me to find my way out. Something that You'll never found in many places. So...I think the real asset of Bali is its people.

Now, I'm trying to adapt with this new place, a place that someday I hope I can consider it as my second home.

Not Another Nice Story

Time moves so fast that it's been ten days since last post here. I've been very busy recently with my English test and my Ubuntu. It's been full of English learning material within past two months. I've got pieces of English exam recently. The first exam was last Saturday. It was TOEFL exam at ITS Language Centre. I don't think I did well by the way. The second one was last Thursday at TBI. It was speaking and listening exam. Not good enough I think, but not bad as a beginner hehehe. It's going to be writing and reading exam next Tuesday. I didn't put much hard-working attitude in all of these English exam because I think learning English is something that I've got to do regularly, You can't learn English very hard for weeks and then stop, can You? Listening to BBC and watching movies with subtitle help me improve my English. Creating our own English speaking environment, that's all We can do when We can't always find native speaker to speak to. Well... enough about English.

The second thing that needs my attention is my Ubuntu. I removed my Hardy finally and installed Jaunty. I needed to switch to safe mode graphic at the first installer menu because, as I said in my previous post, it shows blank when I try to use the live CD. Is there something wrong with graphic card or graphic driver? Whatever. Jaunty installed successfully, finally. Then It's high time we install everything, but something odd happened.

First, when I tried to install google earth from synaptic I couldn't find the package eventhough I did check many time if I missed something. I found no difficulties when I installed it on Hardy. And then guess what? Surprise... google package appeared later when I searched it again in synaptic. Don't know why.

Second, I tried to install Oracle XE. I did exactly the same steps as I did on Hardy. Again, no package found in synaptic. So I tried to install it from terminal. Wow... it worked. Package installed successfully. Did I miss something?

Third, when I tried to start Oracle instance, tada... nothing happened. I read again my previous notes about starting Oracle on Hardy. That was exactly 100% same steps. Frustrated, I started Oracle from 'Applications' menu. The error console said that there was no privilege to start instance. Ok, I added my username to dba group and tried to start instance again. It worked. So? From now on, I need to do extra step to start Oracle instance. First, start listener using lsnrctl start, and then use 'Start Database' choice from 'Applications' menu. What the hell... Ok stop there, don't want to know why.

And fourth, I can't start my iReport. What the hell has just happened here. I doubled click iReport.sh and it's just hang up. Shows nothing but blank terminal and grey spash screen.

I really miss my Hardy.