The Chaos-Knight Journal

 "The journal of one who is walking in the Realm of Men, yet always facing towards the Realm of Heaven and Glory
  Of a Knight who follows the path of what is true, living in the hope of a salvation by grace alone and not by works
  Living not by fear of men, but by fear of God, setting his sights not on the earth, but on the things which are above"
 

New Honda City 2005 - VTEC 7-Speed CVT Automatic Transmission
Rp. 190.000.000,-

My dream car for the moment, which was just released on October 12th in Indonesia. With the VTEC engine, it can produce a maximum power of 110 ps in 5800 rpm, which is very high, or may well be the highest engine output for cars in its class (1.5 litres engine small-sedan). This car looks very good in the Nighthawk Black Pearl color that you can see above. Now supporting self-illuminating meter cluster, which makes the instrument panel looks cool, and I will also get a Double Din CD/MP3 Player with remote in the VTEC option. The under-seat glove boxes in the rear passenger seats will also prove to be very useful for me, as I tend to store many things in my car (CDs, cassettes, books, Bible, folders of church materials, etc). Right now I just stash all of them in my 206’s rear seats, which makes my car look very cluttered and disorganized.

Unfortunately, I do not have the funds to buy one of this. If I sell my 4-years old Peugeot 206, I will only earn about Rp. 100.000.000,- (bought it at Rp 178.000.000,- price tag originally). My dad is now also selling his Mercedes-Benz C-Class because he needed money for some property investments, and it looks like he won’t able to sell the car at the price he needed (might have to settle for 50 millions lower), so I definitely can’t ask for a car from him. Besides, the amount of money I need for this car might rise for about another 5-10 millions because I plan to install a HID lamp, rear spoiler and sporty front grille on this car, IF I ever can get one.

If you have ever driven this car, please leave me a message about your comments on this car.

Introduction
The long battle has finally ended. In the end I won it, but not by my own strength. It is all thanks to GOD that I managed to pass this battle on two fronts. Between the last time I posted here and today, other than doing my thesis, I also had to coordinate and join a specially selected team from Agaphe choir to do a joint recording with some other choirs (Zion). It took a great amount of my time and my strength, I had to not only give it my all, but give more, 100% for the choir recording and 100% for my thesis, making it a 200% effort for this battle.

Last week was the hardest week of the battle…

Monday, October 3rd, 2005
We headed to the studio to do our first recording session. Thanks to GOD, we managed to finish 7 songs in about 3 hours, a lot faster than the original plan. We first plan to record 4 songs in this first session, and the other 5 on the next. But since we finished all 7 songs where we had to join with Zion, for the next only Agaphe had to record the remaining 2 songs. Earlier that day, I also went to campus to consult my lecturer on my thesis book. I’ve had my sleepless nights typing the book, and the book was finally finished on that day. I went to my lecturer and he pointed out that there was about 20 pages with mistakes among the 180-pages book I made. So I sent the other 160 pages to a copy centre and took home the other 20 pages for correction.

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
I woke up early morning to correct those incorrect 20 pages and reprint them. After that, I went to the copy centre to copy those 20 pages and append them to the other 160 pages. I had to carry five copies of the book, so it was a hard work to carry up about 900 pages of A4 paper from the copy centre to the faculty office on the 3rd floor. By 3.30 PM, I managed to gather all the requirements for the book submission, including my latest grade transcript and other forms and papers. So I submitted them to the office and went home, quickly stumbling into my bed to take a long rest. The deadline for the book submission was actually on October 5th, but I didn’t want to submit it on the deadline day, in case that something went wrong, I still have a day to fix it if I submit it the day before.

Thursday, October 6th, 2005
The second recording session. I was exhausted from all the thesis work, so all I did this day was to see my friends to the studio and waited while they were recording. I was too tired to sing, and my voice was absurd. Even if I had my voice, I couldn’t sing that final song because I missed the practice for that one, so it’s better to leave it to the ones who can really sing that. In the end of the day, we finished the entire recording superbly. Then it was long days of resting until the final battle.

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
Thesis Judgement day. Not too much to say about this one. My presentation went well, and I went through the first hour of the Q&A session quite well. The judges managed to find my weakness and bombard me to the point where I couldn’t reply at all during the final 30 minutes. I was heck scared when they said that the Q&A was over and they will discuss about my result: pass or not. I was afraid to fail, and I closed my eyes in fear when the lead judge said, “Nathan, after discussing and judging your thesis, we conclude today that you have…”

“…passed the thesis judgement, and now you are a Bachelor of Information Engineering (IT), congratulations”. I sighed a breath of relief when I heard that, and the judges could well see that I was nervous. So they came to me and shake my hand to congratulate me. According to one of my lecturers, I got a B+ for my thesis (where I actually asked GOD for just a B mark). That means my final GPA will be about 3.40, not bad at all. Now I can take a little rest from all this, and maybe try to find a job vacancy for next year. Until Christmas, I will just focus on church activities and Christmas event preparations.

Thanks to GOD and all of my friends who have abled me to go this far. You have my credits.

Conclusion
This is not just a graduation from my studies, but also a graduation of my services to GOD during September. That month I sang in two sessions of Stephen Tong’s Surabaya Crusade and I also sang in four Sunday Services, three of them with the choir, and the other one as a backing vocals. People say that hard work for Christ is never in vain, and yes, now I can see that GOD has granted His best blessings for me this month. Even though some people said that I must be crazy to minister that much in the final month of my thesis, GOD have proved that I was not crazy, but I was depending entirely on Him and His strength. Usually people backed off a little from their ministries during their final thesis month - where they will be extremely busy - but it was during that month GOD gave me so much ministries to do. I did them all well, while not neglecting my studies, and now, you can see the end result. Praise be to GOD and eternal glory be unto Him.

So now I am Nathan P. Suwanto, S.Kom (Sarjana Komputer neh… not Sarjana Kompor Gas… :p)

S700i

K750i

A bad occurence has happened to me during the last week. On Thursday, two men disguised as Air Conditioner technicians entered my room - pretending to be fixing the AC - and took my Sony Ericsson S700i, my Titanium G-Shock watch and my brother’s gold watch. The loss was about 6.5 to 7.5 million rupiah in terms of money, but the loss of my phone book contacts brought greater impact for my daily activities.

And to think again about it, it happened in the day where I should be ministering with my choir (and along with other choirs to form a united choir of 600+ people) in Stephen Tong’s Surabaya 2005 Crusade, located at Supermall Convention Centre. God be praised, I did not lose my spirit or strength, but furthermore I was strengthened and energized, and I became more eager to sing that afternoon (to think that actually the day before I was quite lazy). In the end, I managed to serve during Thursday and Friday quite well, and I was quite satisfied. God wiped away all the sadness and anger from me, and I can live on my life like it was before, only now without my cellphone and my watch. I still have my old number because Indosat replaced my SIM card, but for now I have to use my brother’s old Nokia 6100.

I don’t think I will be getting a replacement soon, so I have to be content with what I have, but frankly I am hoping that one day I can buy that black Sony Ericsson K750i (I’m always in love with black cellphones). It is definitely not going to happen soon, maybe have to wait until next year, so until the time comes, I’ll just keep wishing.

Concerning Death Note 77
TOWNL released their Death Note Page 77 Scanlation right after I released mine, so I will not post mine in respect of their release. In the future, if they do not release their Scanlation quickly, I will do my scanlation and think of it as a “Quick Release” version for the fans’ reading sake, because I know the quality of my scanlation can never match theirs, with my scanlation team only being a team of two. I don’t know if I will scanlate Page 78 now that the RAW and translation is out, but hopefully TOWNL will be releasing theirs soon.

Important Note
For those of you my friends who know my cellphone number, please SMS your name and number to me because I have lost my entire phone book, so I will have to reinsert your name and number again… sorry for this.

No, this is not another Sadako animated gifs, nor are they fake edited pictures created in Photoshop to scare you. These images are real, and there is a story behind all this. If you care to listen, please sit down, while I spread the star powder on the campfire, before we tune in to another session of Are You Afraid Of The Dark… *maniac hysterical laugh - screams can be heard from far away*

The story began when I went to the Data Sari Cipta (DSC) office, the modem distributor. Of the two solutions I proposed earlier in this journal, there came the third new option. The owner of DSC, a graduate of the Computer Engineering major in STTS (Technical High School of Surabaya), decided to let me borrow one of his modems until I finished my final project. Maybe because we are both students of Computer Engineering (although I steer towards the Information Systems division), he can understand what I’m going through, so he let me borrow his modem. I was to meet him in his office and take the modem earlier today at 11 am, and this is where the actual ghastly apparitions story began…

When I arrived, the office building was not like what I imagined an office building would look like. The building used to be a hotel named Jane’s Hotel, and the office was actually only in one room of the hotel, room 106. Since the owner was away, I decided to waste my time by looking around the hotel. It turned out that this hotel was a classic hotel that existed from the Dutch colonization era (early 1900’s). There is even a map of Surabaya that is still written in Dutch, and the notes from the map suggest that the map was made in 1929. The artifacts that exist in this hotel are ethnic Javanese, with some influences from the Dutch culture here and there, especially on the layout of the hotel itself.

Since the owner was not back in 30 minutes, I took out my Sony Ericcson S700i and snapped some pictures.
•  Hallway towards backyard
•  Exit towards backyard
•  Backyard tree and “pendapa”
•  Lobby - Angle #1
•  Lobby - Angle #2
•  Room 106 - The Office
•  Gamelan lounge
•  Vases and paintings
•  Hallway towards front door (apparition?)
•  Receptionist desk

For the guy that told me to go out and contribute to Indonesia’s 60th Independence Day… well here is my contribution. This post shows you a building from the pre-independence days, so it should have some historical meaning in it. Besides, if I’m not mistaken I saw a painting of Teuku Umar in here, but I don’t feel like taking an up-close photo of the painting because taking pictures of a painting can be spooky. Also remember that I took these pictures on 11 am, so there’s still daylight, but I bet you wouldn’t want to sleep in this hotel in the night.

Also, for the information of those who might be interested, this hotel is for rent. So maybe if you’re not scared and you want an office or workplace with an ethnic feel and a mystical atmosphere, this will be a good place to look at. Maybe the guys from the Outcasts Community can rent this place as their Surabaya Headquarters? The address is a “good number” too, it is located on Dinoyo 100 Surabaya, so it should be easy for your customers to remember where your office is located if you decide to rent this place after all.

About the Modem
Knowing that the problem now lies in the GSM modem, there are two solutions that are applicable for this problem. The first will be to repair the modem, which would take two weeks since they have to send the modem back to Itegno Singapore. The second will be to try getting a replacement. I will try the second solution first, then the first if the second fails. The problem is there are no traces at all about my modem purchase on Fast n Cheap. I don’t have the billing notes, membership card nor the warranty card. I don’t know where I lost them, looks like someone accidentally throw them away from my drawer during room cleaning. The only proof I have left is the box, which still has the barcode strips intact, and the modem serial number. I will try to go to Fast n Cheap tomorrow, to see if they can trace my purchase and if they are willing to hand me a replacement. If not, I have to repair the modem and see if they can finish it before end of August. If they can’t, then I will take the last ditch solution, that is, to buy another modem, which will cost me around Rp 2.25 million (about US$ 225).

About the Final Project
The program completion rate has reached 90%, from 85% last week. Yesterday I collected some valuable data from my friends which should contribute a lot for the testing and survey phase later. The table view scripts are also done, so what I need to do is just to finish the Study Plan algorithm, core SMS engine and minor web details. I think I will be able to complete it before end of August, so if I have the modem, I can go into testing phase immediately. For September, I will work on the book and prepare for the presentation.