One day, he met an old African woman wearing red dress, sitting on a couch, in the park near by his house. Out of curiosity she asked whether or not he hated hair growing on his head.

She: “Excuse me, Mr. Do you ehm….hate hair?”
He: “I so want my hair to grow again, but my doctor said I can never have hair anymore.”
She: “Well, how old are you?”
He: “I’m 35”
She: “I actually have ever cured someone. He also had bald hair, but now his head isn’t bald anymore.”
He: “Really? How did you cure him?”
She: “Wanna know my receipt? Rub your head on a woman’s vagina twice a day”
He: “are you serious?”
She: “Don’t you believe me?”
He: “Ha! Okay, okay. I do. I’ll practise it.”

As desperate as he was, he started to pay a prostitute as he had no girlfriend. And he followed that woman’s receipt.
A week later, he saw a few hair on his head! He’s so happy that he paid this prostitute double for the next week. He practised that woman’s receipt until his hair is fully grown.

On Sunday he went to a church, there’s a bald man sitting in front of him and he was thinking that this bald man got the same problem as he did when he was still bald. “Poor him” he thought. With a good purpose he touched his shoulder, willing to tell him how to get his hair back.

The bald man turned his head, Dave got shocked and screamed loudly,”YOU FUCKING DIRTY MAN!!! GO TO HELL, YOU FUCKTARD!!!” when he saw that this bald man had long beard.

The silence is broken, people around looked weirdly at Dave, and he got arrested by the police.

Just don’t take my tweets seriously. If you do, you are dumb.

I’ve been thinking about these things lately:
- Why are you following those people?
- What do you expect from their tweets?

And also about:
- Why are they following you?
- What do they expect from your tweets?

These are my big questions. I like funny tweets that are not being forced to look so funny. I also need some informations from internet, so I add funny tweeters and geeks on my followings list. For this reason I still exist on twitter and oh, I tweet daily!

But why are you following people? What’s your reason? Oftenly, people follow other people because of these things:
- They are following them
- They are their friends
But they don’t care about the contain of their tweets. Do they? Hell, I don’t know! That’s why I ask you why you’re following people.

For those Indonesian tweeters: you still remember about #rana, who became a trending topic, right? She told you that BB [read: Blackberry] users are alay. But are they really…alay? What did she actually mean? And why are those BB users mad when she spoke her mind out like this? She told:
- Whenever they feel bored, they tweet it
- Whenever they feel down, they tweet it
- When they just woke up, they tweet it
- When they’re going to sleep, they tweet it
- Whenever they want to take shower, they even tweet it
- Whenever they want to eat, they tweet it
- Whenever they want to drink something, they tweet it
These things make me think like,”is it so important to tell tweeters that you feel bored, down, just woke up, are going to sleep, take shower, eat, drink, etc? Is it…important?”

I am not going to say that BB users are alay, nope, they aren’t! But the girl who said this is a high school student who sees it from people around her who are teenagers and I can understand why she told it. But then again, I don’t live in Indonesia and I don’t really have a clue about the situation around teenagers there. I only heard from people around about teenagers having blackberry and only use it to update status on facebook and twitter. I’m sorry for those sensitive BB users who got mad because of this opinion of her. For me, those kind of tweets are boring and too much information! I meant, why do I have to know when you’re taking food, when you’re drinking, feeling bored, etc? IF you get mad because of this, do you think I care?

“But, twitter is a social networking to tell people what you’re currently doing!” I hear you telling me like this.

Alright, you’re right! But since I joined Twitter on 07/07/07, I have seen enough tweets about what the people I’m following are doing, also useful tweets of them about good links, reads, and jokes. Afterall, twitter isn’t about what you are doing anymore, but about what you share to your followers. Am I right? Unless you’re a celebrity and your fans want to know what you are doing every detail, you can tweet about the single thing you’re doing. But I still think you don’t need to, and I still think that other people don’t have to know every single thing you do every day.

For those whom I’m following, I follow you because of these reasons:
- Your tweets are funny/interesting
- Although you might have tweeted about what you’re doing, you also tweet about interesting things like: links, photos, etc and I really want to know what you do every day
I am not a followwhore, I don’t always follow my followers back because not all of my followers tweet about the interesting stuff. At least, not interesting enough for me.

But now, this question can be directed to me also, why are you following me? I always think that my tweets contain awful things! :D I only like to tweet about what I’m currently thinking of, I can be rude but I don’t really care, but my complicated mind makes me laugh at my own tweets….narcist? LOL

Afterall I wanna say I’m sorry for those who are unfollowed by me, your daily tweets are just not something I want to read. But I have made lists special for you all, I’m still reading your tweets, I just sorted this out. Sorting tweets that really are worth reading for me. From this entry you’ll probably start thinking which tweets are worth reading for you, if mine is not worth reading, feel free to unfollow me, honesty is gold ;-)

And oh, the latest entry on Maxvoltar is true!

If someone isn’t worth following on Twitter, don’t follow him. No matter how much exposure that certain person has, or how good of a friend he is.

But, what did I feel? I felt I’m done with smoking,something in my heart said,”alright, vanes! It’s enough!! Enough with those cigarettes!” and I started to hate my smoking habit, I started to hate cigarette’s smoke.

After this day, I didn’t stop smoking directly but managed to smoke menthol cigarette and I smoked lesser.
Day 1 (monday): 4 cigarettes
Day 2 (tuesday): 3 cigarettes
Day 3 (wednesday): 2 cigarettes
Day 4 (thursday): 2 cigarettes
Day 5 (friday): none
and so on…!

This is a weird situation for me, because I had always been thinking that it’s very, very, very hard to stop smoking, but I have stopped without any difficulty. What I meant to say is that, before, when I tried to stop smoking, I felt sensitive, I felt like I was in a rush to buy something and I kept on counting the time about how many hours I haven’t smoked, and such.

More thing which I find weird is that people around asked me why I didn’t smoke when I was with them, and my friend discussed about smoking room when we were at church as if she already heard that I’m not a smoker anymore and wanted to know whether or not it’s true. Maybe it’s just my paranoid thought, but it made me tell her I’m not smoking anymore. I actually didn’t wanna tell it because I wanted to proove being non-smoker for longer time first before I started telling people that I’m a non-smoker now. When people around me asked why I didn’t smoke I only told them that I wasn’t in my mood to smoke.

When my dad bought his cigarette, I couldn’t stand his cigarette’s smoke and had to leave the living room, but as what smokers had told me earlier about stopping with smoking:

“Girl, I’ve tried to stop smoking, but whenever I was with my friends who are smokers, I felt like smoking again and here I am, smoking again!”

“Girl, I’ve tried to stop smoking, but all I felt was sensitiveness, I kept on grumbling, I felt mad the whole day and I felt that I missed something!”

“Girl, I’ve tried to stop smoking, but whenever I got problems, all I wanted was smoking to calm me down!”

Only one is valid for me: which is the first reason; I indeed felt like smoking after I found out that my dad had a cigarette. I did smoke one, but then I gave it back to him. I felt like smoking, but my body couldn’t stand it no more and cigarette’s smoke omg stinks big time!

Few people asked me how I stopped, honestly I don’t know. I had not planned to stop smoking neither. I didn’t chew nicotine chewing gum, I didn’t consult my doctor, I just didn’t smoke and it is the best logical way to stop smoking: don’t smoke and don’t buy cigarette (right?).

But, if you do have a plan to stop smoking, I have some advices here:
- Do something else, do something which makes you forget to smoke
- Buy lollipops so every time you wanna smoke you start to suck a lollipop instead
- Just imagine you’re with your non-smoker friends and you’re currently smoking; I’ll tell you what they probably think: you stink big time! So? Every time you want to start smoking, think about this stinkyness, you don’t want people to tell you stink, right? ;)
But the most important thing is: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO STOP?!?

Okay, I’m going to tell you another truth here:

Notice why I gave you a date on my very first paragraph? December 27th, 2009. What did exactly happen that I could remember this? Since I’ve met pastor Ayemoo from Nigeria, the feeling of disliking cigarette’s smoke appears, Pastor didn’t say anything to me, he only looked sharply at me, but it already set me free from the thing that has shackled me for years which was nicotine. I feel that my Lord has sent him to me for this! I may be a bad girl, but I really feel His presence in my daily life as I’ve asked Him to guide me, accompany me, to keep me strong with my decision which is to stop smoking (I asked this after I found out that I dislike cigarette’s smoke).

If you do believe in miracle, miracle does happen! The Christmas theme this time was about miracle; Pastor Ayemo has cured a deaf man, paralyzed man, and sicknesses. All of this could happen with the help of our Lord, Jesus Christ!

My miracles:
- I have been smoking since I was 16 years old and I haven’t stopped till last December 2009. Now I am 28; It is not possible for me to not feeling sensitive, rush, etc if I don’t smoke, but I had not felt any of these things since I stopped! Normally, I would spend 1 pack of cigarettes (25 cigarettes) in 1 1/2 day
- I didn’t need nicotine chewing gum, or doctor’s advice to help me stop smoking, Lord is above all of this!

My big test is to survive without smoking,
My bigger test is to not smoking when I’m with my smoker friends
But my biggest test is to not smokig when I have problems. This last one has not happened yet because I don’t get any problem yet that will make me feel down, but I hope I won’t start smoking if problems come!

vanez.tumblr.com

Or follow me on twitter

twitter.com/vanes

My neighbour’s snowman.

Outside my bedroom’s window

My mom after doing a grocery shopping.

Me (:

Everywhere I go, is white!! See the blue plastic bag there? That’s our plastic bag. From Albert Heijn’s supermarket.

My shoes are buried in the snow

a small path on the way to my house! I’m living in wonderland ;-)

My neighbour’s snowman!

Me, trying to make snowman, but failed hehe..!

- Hootsuite crashes if someone added a geotag on his/her tweet.
- I can’t view thread conversation.
- I can’t browse my followings and followers lists.
- I can’t see the RT if someone uses a new RT style to RT.
- I can’t browse tweeple list if I want to mention someone on my tweet.
- Hootsuite has no inline image viewing.
- On profile, you don’t know whether or not I’ve followed/unfollowed someone
- No “mark twitter as spam” option
- No instapaper integration
- I have to go to someone’s profile if I want to DM him/her (I could do d @twitterusername message, but it’s not handy if someone doesn’t know how to do it, his/her tweet can easily go to the twitter timeline, while in Tweetie if I want to DM someone, I can go to DM tab, click on the compose button and it will let me choose whether I want to send a DM or a tweet).
- It doesn’t recognise the hashtags I have used like what Tweetie and Twittelator Pro do.

Afterall, I like the organised tabs which I can edit the way I want to, I’m also able to add lists, view my stats although it only gives me a statistic about the links I’ve created with the built in ow.ly shortener.

Maybe you have found another disadvantages of using Hootsuite app for the iPhone, just let me know. But my advice for this app is that you better wait til the developers released a better update, unless you’re a big fan of Hootsuite. For now, Hootsuite isn’t my favourite twitter app for the iPhone, even though I like the looks. I still prefer Tweetie, Twitterrific and Twittelator Pro because these apps have better features and Twitterrific has a really nice design! I’ve noticed that IconFactory team has made their apps with a big love! ;-)

Normally, what I’ve decided is really what I want. But this time I realised that getting information is not yet enough to know that this study is really what I want without experiencing it. By experiencing I meant I have to be in the class and see what kind of things I’ll get in the class.

Last year I’ve studied print design. At first I’d doubted between it and web-design. I can make website layout but I’ve never studied it, I’ve learnt it from the internet. I’d decided to take the print design course and I’m graduated in the same year. I’d told my mom once that I’ve planned to take web-design course after it, but during the time I’ve seen that lots of companies didn’t only ask for someone whose knowledge is only in print design, but also in graphic design, so after searching for all the informations I needed to know about it I thought it’s really what I needed and that’s why I took graphic design course which I’m still doing at this moment.

Few days ago, my mom asked me,”is graphic design really something for you? Are there lots of companies that look for a graphic designers?” I answered,”yes, of course! Why?” “It’s okay, I was just curious.” After this conversation I made a flashback about what I’ve been getting at my college, whether I really like it, and I also remembered what I had told her earlier about my plan. Yesterday evening I talked to the director of my college about the course I want to take and I told a few of my classmates that I’m going to take another course and stop with graphic design. During photography class I realised more that it’s really not my thing, no matter how hard I’ve tried, it didn’t seem enough to convince myself that I really can do it. By the way I was (still I am) a fool who hadn’t expected that I’d have to print a lot! I’ve been working digitally for years! Even if I’ve taken a pictures, I have them on my computer, and flickr photo stream. On my way back to my house I felt a total failure, I discussed with my parents about it and hopefully I don’t have to pay for a complete course, now that I’ve been studying graphic design for 3 months (I still have a few months to go).

Making a decision can be this hard! I’d almost always been decisive before, also when I had to choose which thing I wanted to buy; After a few minutes of thinking and comparing, I could choose without doubting after I’ve bought it.

Now let’s just imagine if you’ve made a wrong decision, what would you feel? Maybe you don’t really feel bad, but maybe you do. It all depends on what kind of decision you’ve made. Maybe you’ve spent more than a year studying something which is not really your thing at all. I would feel a total failure, especially if I have spent a long time because time goes so quick and I would feel that I’ve wasted my time and energy. But on the other side, I would never know what good is for me if I haven’t experienced it. At my college, my only favourite subject is drawing, and the rest?!? Hmmm….ewww! But now that I knew I’ve spent 3 months for a course that’s not my thing, I’m not going to regret and complain about it but to realise that I now can make a decision. Because if I didn’t experience with studying what I’ve been studying, maybe I would still doubt between graphic and web-design. Sometime, you not only need to imagine, but also to feel, eh? If you know what I meant.

Hallah!

Dan juga kesulitan karena ada kata-kata yang hanya saya ngerti dalam bahasa Belanda, atau hanya dalam bahasa Indonesia, atau hanya dalam bahasa Inggris, jadi kalo saya butuh waktu yang lama buat ngeblog, itu udah biasa. Dan lagi banyak drafts yang masih harus di publish!

Buat orang yang tinggal di luar negeri, apalagi yang bahasa sehari-harinya bukanlah bahasa Inggris, saya yakin punya masalah yang serupa. Alhasil bahasa yang digunakan dalam weblog saya lebih dari 1 bahasa. Masalah ini bukan hanya di bidang weblog aja, di kehidupan sehari-haripun ada. Saya yang masih belajar desain grafis ini dapat kelas fotografi. Denger dan menulis yang penting-penting apa yang dibilang sama dosen. Oke, tentang sluitertijd, diafragma, ISO. Kalo ISO oke deh, itu internasional. Tapi sluitertijd? Saya hanya bisa ngangguk-ngangguk, ya saya kira saya mengerti; Tapi setelah pulang ke rumah dan cari info tentang sluitertijd dan diafragma, ternyata yang dimaksud sluitertijd atau belichtingstijd itu tuh Exposure! Dan diafragma itu ya maksudnya Shutter! Hallah! Bahasa Inggris kok diterjemah ke bahasa Belanda? Menyebalkan :) Bahasa Indonesianya Shutter dan Exposure?!? Hell, I don’t know! ;) Jadilah saya orang yang paling bego di kelas! :)

Saya lahir didalam keluarga (pihak ibu) yang bisa berbahasa Belanda. Bahkan bahasa Belanda adalah bahasa pertama ibu saya. Ibu saya memang lahir di Indonesia, di Bogor tepatnya. Tapi, bahasa sehari-hari yang digunakan orang tuanya (terlebih nenek saya) adalah bahasa Belanda. Maklum lah kalau di hari pertama ibuku sekolah, beliau dipulangkan kembali ke rumah, karena nggak ngerti sama penjelasan bu guru. Akhirnya, ibuku harus belajar bahasa Indonesia selama setahun, lalu balik lagi masuk sekolah. Dan karena ibuku tinggal di Indonesia dan setelah itu lebih menggunakan bahasa Indonesia, ibukupun tidak fasih berbahasa Belanda lagi. Tapi, ibuku masih membawa beberapa kata-kata dalam bahasa Belanda sampai aku lahir, beliau menamai tirai = gordijn, penghapus = stift (setip), lemari es = koelkast, tempat cuci tangan = wastafel (sampai sekarangpun saya nggak tau arti wastafel dalam bahasa Indonesia, apa betul artinya tempat cuci tangan? Itu terjemahan saya sendiri). Dan masih banyak lagi.

Seringkali saya berpikir,”kenapa yah gua gak tinggal di Amerika aja? Atau di England? Udah cape gua dengerin orang ngomong bahasa Belanda! Bahasa yang nyebelin!” Bahasa Indonesia itu mudah, karena gak ada kata-kata lampau dan yang akan datang!

Yesterday, I’m going to …. [isi apa aja]
Today, I’m going to … [isi apa aja]

Tapi bahasa Indonesia punya arti banyak dalam satu kata! Yang dimaksud itu adalah panggilan. Seringkali saya berpikir,”gua mau pakai gua-elo, atau saya-kamu, atau aku-kamu yah sama orang ini?!? Yang mana yang cocok?” Atau,”sebaiknya gua panggil dia apa yah? Ibu? Tante? Bapak? Atau panggil namanya aja?” Perlu kalian tahu, kalo di Belanda sini banyak orang yang memanggil orang tua mereka dengan sebutan nama, jadi mereka panggil Paul, Marijke (or whatever their names are), mereka tidak memanggil dengan sebutan ibu, bapa, atau mamma, pappa. Jika saya berbicara dengan seorang yang tidak dikenal, saya menggunakan kata “U” yang artinya adalah anda (apalagi kalau lawan bicara saya lebih tua dari saya). Tapi, stelah mengenal orang itu, saya gunakan kata “jij” yang artinya adalah kamu. Juga saya panggil dosen saya dengan sebutan nama, bukan bapak, bukan ibu, juga tidak menggunakan kata “U” tapi “jij”. Begitupun kalau saya manggil boss saya, tidak pakai bapak, atau ibu. Panggil namanya aja :)

Yang paling membingungkan itu kalo orang-orang Indonesia ngumpul disini. Alhasil, saya harus menggunakan bahasa Indonesia dan Belanda, yang dalam waktu beberapa menit ganti-ganti, tergantung lawan bicaranya siapa. Karena banyak juga yang diantara mereka tidak bisa bahasa Indonesia karena lahir disini. Nah, disini bingung deh sama kata panggilan. Alhasil, sayapun jadi sering seperti orang gagap :)

Ada yang senasib dengan saya? Or am I just the only one?

Waiter: Good morning, miss! How are you doing today? Wanna have some cocktail?
The girl: Good morning! I’m fine, thank you! Cocktail? That’s okay!

They walked together to the bar.

Waiter: I want you to try out our special cocktail
Girl: What’s the mix?
Waiter: Bailey
Girl: Oh no, I don’t like Bailey
Waiter: Why? It’s extremely delicious!
Girl: No, I prefer sex on the beach!
Waiter: But we are in a ship, you know!
Girl (laugh): I know! I meant the cocktail!
Waiter: OMG! Yea! But we can go by boat to the beach, too!
Girl: Haha! Nice try! I’m sorry, hard to get!!

Sex on the beach’s cocktail arrived. The barman added 2 straws for them in one glass. They started to drink it, but the guy looked at her with his eyes widely open. You know, the typical Middle East one who has big eyes.

Girl: Don’t look at me like that!!
Waiter: Why?!?
Girl: You made me think of a gold fish!

I’m sure he felt pissed! LOL