Good Bye 2014, Welcome 2015 :)

2014 will end tonight. Time really flies! Especially this year, I really didn't feel it was that long ago we were counting down to new year 2014, but here we are, about to do another count down to 2015.

Many and many things have happened this year, especially the bad ones... I do have to squeeze my brain hard thinking what were the good things that happened this year. I really hope 2015 would be better than 2014 for everyone.

2014 was full of accidents and terrorism. Ferry accident in South Korea killing pretty much a whole year of students. 2 accidents of Malaysia Airlines just in the gap of 3 months. 1 was accidentally shot down by either Russia or Ukraine, none of them admitted yet. 298 people onboard. The other one with 239 people onboard was missing while flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing (I think) and still not found until now. The search team was searching for weeks but still nothing was found. Another plane accident happened in Taiwan mid 2014 due to weather. And just to end the year, Air Asia flying between Surabaya and Singapore lost contact an hour into the flight on 28 Dec. There were 162 people on board. Yesterday, Indonesian SAR team found some debris and dead bodies of the passengers floating on the sea 10 km from where the plane made their last contact. It was Air Asia's first accident.

2014 was full of terrorism too. ISIS was busy this year beheading people and broadcasting it to all over the world. A lot of fanatics both men and women flew to Syria to support Islam. Men to fight, women to be sex slaves. It's not just rumor, some people did depart to Syria from Australia to help. Early 2014, Sydney had text messages circulating about ISIS planning to grab and behead random people in Martin Place. And Sep/Oct 2014 police caught people who planned an attack. And just 2 weeks ago, Martin Place siege happened. A gunman taking hostages of 17 people for 17 hours. The siege ended when the hostages tried to escape when the gunman starting to doze off. The gunman and 2 hostages died.

There are other things too I.e. Thailand military taking control of the government, and Hongkong protests. There was Taliban school shooting in Pakistan too the day after Martin Place siege took place. 145 people died, mostly school kids.

Many crimes happened. I'm not going to list all of them, but the ones that made big news were the killing of Ade Sara by her ex and the new girlfriend and a mother killed her 7 children and another child.

And a lot of celebrities passed away this year, including Robin Williams and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Although on the bright side, Little Prince George is growing up cutely.

The only good thing I can think of was Jokowi was inaugurated as Indonesian president. But even that didn't happen  smoothly, a lot of drama happened just to make him the President of Indonesia. But at least he was finally inaugurated and we now have a president who actually wants to work :) the second good thing I could think of was close to Jokowi too. With him taking the post as President, Ahok, the Vice Governor of Jakarta by default becomes the Governor of Jakarta. Again that didn't happen as smooth and I was again glued to Kompas and Detik to read all the news about protests and demonstrations to not let him become the number 1 guy in the capital. But finally he was inaugurated as Governor of Jakarta by his former partner in crime, the current President :) and he got a partner that he chose himself to help him lead Jakarta. That partner seems to be a good guy and seems like he wants to do work too.

2014 was also the year of ALS Ice bucket challenge. Though seriously, a LOT of people just did it for the sake of taking the challenge and not to spread awareness or donate for the cause.

Although 2014 was not all happy memories, at least people surrounding me and I are all living well. So it is still a good enough year to us :) Let's just hope for a better year for all of us in 2015 and let's begin the countdown to tonight's midnight fireworks!!!! ^^

Cheers!!! :))

Memorable First Times

I might have mentioned that I grew up in a big city. I was also very fortunate to be born to be into an okay family. My parents were not rich, but I didn't have to wait until I grow up to let say, go to shopping malls, or flying on an airplane. However, of course not everyone is as lucky, and I had some friends who did those for the first time when they were adults. The results were kinda funny :p

Let's name this first friend as Hiro. He grew up in a small village in India, not sure what the village name though. Anyway, he said that all his life he lived in that village, never been to the city. He then said, the first time he ever took an escalator was when he was 18. One day he visited his uncle in the city for the first time (seriously, I don't know how big this city is, Bogor is a city, Solo is a city and Sydney is also a city, but I dunno the size. Well, he said it to me as a city). Then, he went to a shopping mall, and he stopped in front of the automatic door, stunned seeing it open and close by itself hahahaha.. :p I know it's normal since it was his first time, but imagining him as an 18 years old stunned in front of the doors is really funny.

Then, he went into the mall, and he found this other weird object. Can you guess? Escalator! He stopped, looked at it up and down, down and up, confused. He said to me, he stopped and thought for a while, when is the right time for me to step into it???? LOL again, keep in mind this was an 18 years old boy :P

Another memorable first timer is the water tap, one of my colleagues. His flight to Sydney was his first time on an airplane. And he flew ALONE. Then, there was this guy named John Smith coming up to him after he got into the plane. Mr Smith asked him if he mind swapping seat with him as he wanted to sit next to his companion. Water tap being a nice guy said ok. Then he swapped seat and swapped his boarding pass too. He thought just like in a cinema, if you swap seat, then you need to swap the ticket too. Then the plane flew to Denpasar, Bali.

In Denpasar, Water Tap needed to get off the plane and transfer into flight going to Sydney. That's when the problem occurred.. he needed to produce his PREVIOUS boarding pass in order to get his connecting flight boarding pass!! Mr John Smith got off in Denpasar, so Water Tap couldn't swap the boarding pass. To make it worse, Water tap was a country boy who didn't speak much English! It was very hard for him to explain the whole situation. the officers kept asking him why did he need to swap the boarding pass just to swap seats? he told them he thought it was like in the cinema! I bet those officers were like what the.... Water Tap was very stressed. He was alone with little English. And he didn't have the phone number of his friend who will pick him up at Sydney Airport. There's no way for him to contact his friend. 

Luckily he had all his university documents with him. He gave all those documents to the officers and told them to check with his university to prove him legal. Now that I think about it, the airline should be able to get his information from the database, showing his passport should be enough. But this happened 12 years ago, so maybe it was like that back then.

The officers then called the university to check Water Tap identity. Luckily the phone call was picked up and Water Tap identity could be confirmed and he could get on to that flight. Until now he's still pissed off with Bali and what he refers to "YOUR people" LOL

Another small funny story is one of my cousin's, Ija. It wasn't her first time flying, but it was her first time flying with non-budget airlines. You know we all get earphones to use for watching movies on the plane right? She never had that with budget airlines. So when she flew the first time with Qantas, she was confused of where she should plug them in. Then she SKSD-ly asked the middle age guy sitting next to her.

Ija:  "First time flying with Qantas, Sir?"

Mister: "oh, no... I've been few times."

Ika: "oh! *excitedly* where do I plug these into???".

Lol