Avianto's Journal

Indonesian are very cultural people. I will not argue that, it is a slap fact in the face. My only problem is which culture? Well, admit it, if you are an Indonesian, suddenly being very cultural is not sound so great anymore.

Indonesian are proud for their rich cultures. They boasted hundreds of different cultures living under the same roof in harmony… er, sort of harmony. They said each culture enriched the ‘Indonesian culture’, whatever that is.

The Truth

The truth is not all ‘Indonesian Cultures’ are good. Of course, it also happened to all cultures in the world but there are some particular Indonesian cultures that preserved while it should be out of the window now. The problem was those cultures were embedded so tight into the mindset of Indonesian and to make things worse, most of Indonesian are not aware of them.

Sparked by entries from Mr. Budi Rahardjo and Uncle Tyo (both are in Indonesian language) about ‘services’, I will try to emphasize why I think ‘services’ was not and never be a part of Indonesian culture and hopefully, since I bring this fact into the table, we – as Indonesian – will realize this and start to build a better culture.

Etymology

‘Services’ came from the word ‘Serve’ and to be blunt, ‘serve’ in Indonesian language is quite derogatory (Although referring to the original Latin servitium means slavery and from servus means slave so I guess Indonesian are never pass this level of understanding somehow). The translation for ‘serve’ in Indonesia is ‘layan’ and the person who do the job is called ‘pelayan’ (servant). Now, for Indonesian – what first comes into your mind when I said the word ‘pelayan’? Not a very good job or position, eh? Let’s try the more mild word for ‘serve’ then, what about ‘help’? Then we have ‘helper’ which translate into… ‘pembantu’ (English has an exact word for this profession, ‘maid’). Now, it’s getting worse, right? Even for the mildest version of ‘serve’, we came up with the derogatory word and profession. There is something wrong here.

King and Commoner mentality

There are no culture of services in Indonesian culture. There, I said it loud and clear. We were farmers then traders. The logical evolution would be service providers and yet, the culture stops at traders level (I will write something about how this affected Indonesian way of doing business later). But there was a special level of profession exist in Indonesia and tragically, that level is still exist until today – that level is ‘King or Royalty level‘. That level is a level beyond belief, it’s a parasitic level that depend on luck. Luck, just because you were born within the royal family then you had the right to rule. That concept was more absurd than the concept of the sun revolving the earth. Being a king was always the dream for the commoner and in the old times, it took a lot of things to become one. Remember the history about Ken Arok? He was a thief and robber once, then he became a king. His descendant became the founder of one of the greatest kingdom on the history, Majapahit. If you aware of that, the great Kingdom most Indonesian are feel proud of were pre-built by a thief and robber. That sounds cool, right?

Today it is easier to become sort of King. Just win a local election or even better a national election. It still work the same way before. You need to gather people who believe that you are the only one who could solve the problem (or had enough money to buy votes – this is the most recommended way anyway beside had enough power to scare the hell out of people who didn’t want to vote for you) and then you competed and won – then you became King. The irony is the term for government official is ‘public servant’. When the ‘public servant’ is the King, imagine what happened then.

Bluntly speaking, most Indonesian are not growing up in the ‘service oriented’ environment. The aim of most Indonesian is to become ‘King’ or at least to act like one. Servicing others is a shameful and derogatory act. One famous proverb in Indonesia is “If things could be made very difficult, why make it easier?” and that proverb shows the lack of understanding of ‘good service’.

Solution?

The world nowadays is a service based world. Everything is ‘service oriented’. We have Customer Relation Management concept nowadays, which I found as a great concept but difficult to implement. Even the most successful website is those who offered Web Services. So practically, we need to be a servant, a good one. How will we going to achieve that, considering that we didn’t have it running natively in our culture?

Time to evolve the culture! Time to realize our culture is not perfect. We should still proud of it but never get blind and thought that our culture doesn’t need adjustment. We have to accept that flaw and move on. It will be very hard since it means we have to root out our perception about ‘service’.

Recommendation action would be: start teaching about service culture in the family and at school, informally and formally. Teach kids to respect the maid and teach them that the maid is not slave – they are there to help and not to do every single house chores available including tying the kids shoelaces or cleaning the kids’ room. Teach kids not to follow Saudi Arabian or Malaysian way of beating the hell out maid just because they made mistakes. At school, teach them about ‘service oriented work’.

If the younger generation understand the importance of ‘service’, I believe one day, the ‘service’ culture will become our most valuable Indonesian culture. For us, it is important that we are aware of this problem and do our best to change our mindset about ‘service’ culture and of course practice ‘good service’ behavior. Remember, Yoda once said, Do or do not, there is no try.

Since I started blogging again a couple of days ago, this blog was under spam attack very heavily. I tried many setting of the default spam protection and somehow it wasn’t stopping the incoming flood of spam. Sometime I set things wrong and then some of you were complaining that you were not able to leave any comments. Sorry for that, it was totally my sloppy mistake.

First

Thomas advised me to use Akismet plugin. It worked quite good but it was not eliminating all the spam and for me one spam was too many. And somehow in MT4, there are no indication whatsoever about how this spam filter actually work. It said, Akismet works transparently but actually, I don’t want too much transparency since it make me feels uncontrollable. But somehow this plugin worked beautifully to reduce my daily spam and hopefully this plugin was not eating the real comment since I don’t know where I could find the page that shows all the captured spam comments. Somebody help me with this? Thanks.

Final

I am not really fond of CAPTCHA since it reduce accessibility and usability especially for those who are using text browser or any non-graphic enabled browser. But it seems like the fast and quick solution for my spam problem now. So starting today, I put CAPTCHA feature in the comment form and it work beautifully. Hopefully in the future, once I’ve got a better way to handle spam I will remove it.

Rest

So hopefully, I solve the comment spam problem for now. I am still looking for a more efficient, effective, accessible and usable way to do this. If only I could make some free time – it’s been quite busy lately with Real Life™. In the mean time, sorry for the inconvenience lately and if you are still unable to comment here, please send email to avianto@gmail.com and I will try to solve this problem right away.

Thanks for all of the support lately (33 comments for my first entry after two years were just wow, thanks people).

Time to take a break to celebrate the incoming weekend, shall we?

These are some fun things to do while you are not occupied with life and work. Enjoy!

Soundtrack of Life

This one is the courtesy of Aan. First the rules:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)

2. Put it on shuffle

3. Press play

4. For every question, type the song that’s playing

5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

6. Don’t lie and try to pretend your cool…just type it in man!

So here we go:

Opening Credits:

Wheel Of Fortune – Hans Zimmer

Great opening – for those who didn’t know, this is the opening credits for Pirates of Caribbean – dazzling isn’t it?

Waking Up:

Open Your Eyes – Alter Bridge

OK, waking up and open your eyes. Good enough

First Day At School:

Fall – Something Corporate

Really, what this song had to do with school anyway? Oh, well

Falling In Love:

Nur Ein Wort – Wir sind Helden

Ah, great and fun song. One of the best German band. The meaning of the title is “Just One Word”

The Relationship:

Bend & Break – Keane

That’s it. This song explained everything about my relationship. ‘if only I don’t bend & break, I’ll meet you on the other side, I’ll meet in the light’

Fight Song:

Sousei no Aquarion – AKINO

This is great. Another opening soundtrack for an Anime series, Genesis of Aquarion

Breaking Up:

Jenny – The Click Five

Hahaha, love this song. Especially the part ‘Standing still, you got me on my knees, Jenny, it\’s killing me’

Prom:

Mr. Brightside – The Killers

Nice, it was only a kiss anyway right?

Life:

Life Less Ordinary – Carbon Leaf

My life is less ordinary. It’s extraordinary but I guess so all of your life, right?

Mental Breakdown:

Pure Morning – Placebo

Pure breakdown… enough said

Driving:

I Think God Can Explain – Splender

Well, yeah – I think only God can explain why Jakarta always has traffic jam

Flashback:

Middle of Nowhere – Hot Hot Heat

What can I say? This is exactly what happened in the past few months

Getting Back Together:

Song 6 – Daniel Powter

Well, OK. ‘So let\’s lie in the sun, You didn’t want the world to know, But I\’m not strong and you’ll find out’

Wedding:

Good (I’ve Got a Lot to Learn) – Dakona

We’ve got a lot to learn from a wedding, I guess?

Birth of Child:

You Are Loved – Josh Groban

Ah, of course I will love my own child! What a song, eh?

Final Battle:

Leaves – Ours

A very depressing song. Doesn’t know if it fits the final battle scene.

Death Scene:

Ageless Beauty – Stars

When you are dead, you are ageless. Is that what it means?

Funeral Song:

How About You – Staind

Yeah, how about you? Are you about to get a funeral too?

End credits:

Big Yellow Taxi – Counting Crows

Nice one. Especially the part ‘They\’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. Nice end credit, don’t you think?

Geek Level

I was proven to be 85% Geek. Heh, being a geek is not something to be a shame of. Remember, geeks are worth it.

85% GeekMingle² – Free Online Dating

More fun?

Well, that’s all from me this Friday. While it’s acceptable to have fun online, why don’t all of you move out from the front of monitor and have fun time outside? That is the true fun. So, have fun now and have a great weekend everyone!

Notes: This entry is a summary of my ‘Visual Gaming’ and ‘Game Design and Development’ introduction session. As a part of education process, this one is a Fair use as it may contain a few citation from other books or writings. Feel free to recite, add or even criticize it and use it for your own purpose.

Game is a simulation of a simulation. It is a subset of reality. It is created to control the uncontrollable. It is to take a small part of reality and simulated it within the rules created by a common man. In other words: Game is not real.

People love to play game because it is not real. Reality is rarely associated with the term ‘play’ and of course saying ‘playing reality’ would sound too corny. Playing game is the way to escape from reality and involve oneself into a simulation where the environment is controlled and there is some certainties in dealing with it.

But no, I will not discuss the ‘Philosophy of Game’ with this one – I will discuss it later, as it will need many research, readings and of course, thinking. This entry will discuss about creating game. What are the important parts to be considered to create a successful and enjoyable game. As most of us already know how to play game, wouldn’t it be great to know how to create one?

So this is Part I of many entries I will write about creating game and in this part, I start with the very basic thing, what is the elements of game?

Elements of Game

Game depend on three basic elements; the goal, the rules and the mechanic. Each of the elements is hierarchical and the first two have to be the easiest to understand and mastered while the mechanic is the element that defined the game.

The goal sometime interchangeable with the ‘winning condition’, although some games doesn’t really have a ‘winning’. The goal could be as simple as score as many points as possible to the elimination of the opposition or in those non-winning game it could be to get better more and more in each stages. In short, the goal is the condition where a player is considered the best in the game. This element has to be very easy to understand and actually, there is no point of playing game if a person doesn’t understand the goal, isn’t it?

The rules is the controlling element. This is the part where the way to achieve the goal described. For example, soccer game has a very simple rule: to achieve the ‘winning condition’, one team must sent one ball into their opponent’s goal without using their hands. That’s it, pure and simple and with this simple rule, everybody could play a soccer game by just using an empty street and a couple of stone to create the goal. There are additional rules, of course, such as the ball must not go outside the field line, the goalkeeper can hold the ball inside the penalty area, each team must consist of 11 players and so on. But the basic rule is practically simple and everybody could understand and follow it without too much hassle. Another sample of the rules is a chessboard. Without a chessboard, there is no chess game. Again, very simple.

The mechanics, also known as ‘game play’ – but I prefer the word ‘mechanics’ as I find it is quite confusing using the term ‘playing the game play’, is the way rules manipulated to achieve the goal. For example, chess game is defined by the goal of elimination (of the king piece specifically) and the chessboard. Thus the mechanic is the one which responsible for determined how many chess pieces used and how each of different chess pieces moved. In soccer game, the mechanic is the way the ball played within the field. Each game has their own specific mechanics and it should takes time to master them.

The mechanic is the differentiator between a beginner and a master. Those who able to understand, mastered and control the mechanic are those who are known as masters. In chess game, the master is the one who understand expertly with the mechanic of the chess piece’s movement. In soccer, master players are those who has total control of the ball mechanism. They are excellent with dribbling, kicking, tossing and other manipulation with the ball. In addition, a master goalkeeper is the one who knows how to anticipate the incoming ball.

Those three elements are the key to a successful and enjoyable game. The first two are obvious since there will be no game without them. The mechanics part is the tricky part, it should be easy enough to understand but not too easy so everybody could mastered it in short time. Most of the game design discussions usually talk about the mechanics design and creating a creative and innovative mechanic is the most important thing in the game design industry.

Next I will write about translating these elements into a very specific game industry, digital game (video game, computer game, mobile game and all those game created digitally) industry. Until then, keep on playing!

No, it’s not the question for Kenneth and it doesn’t have any connection whatsoever with the meaning of that amazing song. It is a catch phrase I love to say when I am talking about ‘Social Network’. What is ‘Social Network’? According to Wikipedia:

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

I like the radio and frequency analogy because since now we have so many ‘social network services’, it is common to say “Do you have ‘name the social network service of your choice’?” when we meet someone new or even our old acquaintance and want to keep in touch with them. For me, it is like we are ‘tuning’ into their frequency and keep on informed about their activities.

Join everything, update nothing

A stolen catch phrase from Satya, which said almost everything about the tendency of many people when joining a particular social network service, myself included. How many of you already registered with this and that social network services and updated them regularly? Probably, you only regularly update 3-5 services and leave the other service unmaintainable or sporadically maintainable. Those services you are regularly maintain are usually the services that your friends and peers updated or used the most too. That is ‘the frequency’.

What are my frequencies?

I love social network services. Not all of them, of course. There are some services polluted with hideous user interface and annoying ‘blink’, which I personally refused to use. I joined almost every services mentioned in the news but at the end of the day, I only updated some which I really love or the one which my peers used (even to my annoyance). So here they are in no particular order:

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