Rouge Rosette

First of all, I am not a musician, nor am I a singer. I just enjoy music that I like listening to, and the ones I usually like are the ones that invoke emotions within me, or has relation to what I am currently going through. This is a personal blog post, so any opinions on this blog are more likely to be on the subjective side as I'm not criticizing Spanish songs.

Oh, and although this is irrelevant, I have an Ask.fm account. Ask me stuff so I don't get bored!

my Ask.fm

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Hello everyone!

I come from Indonesia, but I barely listen to Indonesian songs. Don't get me wrong, it does not mean Indonesian songs are bad, it is just that I prefer to listen to Western songs. My mother, too, never felt the "click" with Indonesian songs, so it's probably hereditary... HAHA no it just happens to be so.

Anyways, today I'm going to blog about one of the genres in Latin American songs, as it has become one of my favorites to listen to. The main language of songs that I listen to is English, but I also listen to some Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Italian or French.

Usually, the songs I listen to have romantic themes. It is not necessarily the case when I listen to English songs, but for Spanish songs I tend to prefer the romantic themed tunes, because usually the tempo of the song will be slow, nice to listen to, and often times they sound like they are packed with emotions (well they're supposed to! :p). I remember my mother saying the reason why she preferred Julio Iglesias over Enrique Iglesias; she preferred Papa Iglesias' songs because the way he sang it, it sounded like it was full with emotions. While Enrique, his songs were mostly about women.

My first exposure to Spanish songs were when I was small, maybe about 7 or so. My father liked Carlos Santana's Smooth. I also liked that song, but it did not last long. Then, I listened to Shakira when I was around 12 years old. I first knew of her when she released "Laundry Service". I immediately fell in love with her songs, and until now I still listen to her. Recently, I found about about Prince Royce, a famous musician who sang mostly Bachata genre songs, and began listening to various Spanish songs ever since.

I'm not very specific as to what genre I listen to, as there are MANY genres that classify Latino songs. Salsa, tango, cumbia, bachata, reggaeton, Latin pop, bossa nova, samba, merengue, etc etc. I have genre preferences and preferred type of tunes, and it's quite hard to explain, but I'll try my best below. My current favorite genre is Bachata, and I'll try to explain what I know and what I have listened so far. I have just recently liked this genre, so I apologize if I don't have many to compare with.

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Bachata



Bachata is one of my favorite genres when it comes to Spanish music. It shares the same name with a type of dance which originated from Dominican Republic. On the music genre, Wikipedia says, bachata is a Latino genre of music that originated in Dominican Republic in the early parts of 20th century with the African descendants in the country and spread to other parts of Latin America and Mediterranean Europe. It became widely popular in the countryside and the rural neighborhoods of Dominican Republic. Its subjects are often romantic, especially prevalent are tales of heartbreak and sadness. The original term used to name the genre was "amargue" ("bitterness", "bitter music". "blues music"), until the rather ambiguous (and mood-neutral) term bachata became popular.

Famous musicians that mainly perform music in this genre are Aventura, Prince Royce, Romeo Santos, Don Omar, Pitbull, Leslie Grace, and many more. I don't have a personal favorite yet, but I like to listen to Romeo Santos' and Prince Royce's songs the most.

Romeo Santos

Prince Royce

My favorite song by Romeo Santos is Propuesta Indecente, from the album Formula, Vol.2 and as for my favorite Prince Royce song, it is Mi Habitación from the album Phase II and Darte un Beso from the album Soy el Mismo.



Propuesta Indecente by Romeo Santos.



Darte un Beso by Prince Royce.

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Anthony "Romeo" Santos was the lead singer of popular band Aventura, a New York-based bachata band. He is often referred as Romeo Santos, and there's another popular bachata singer with a very similar name: Antony Santos, so thankfully he chose another name, if not, people will mistake one of them for the other. He was born in Bronx, NY.

Now onto a short info on Prince Royce. His name is Geoffrey Royce Rojas, and took up a stage name, "Prince Royce". Prince Royce, like Romeo Santos, was also born in Bronx, NY. Whee, New York is home to two popular bachata musicians. Royce is newer to the bachata music scene compared to Santos, but he is also very popular.

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The first song that got me to Prince Royce was "Darte un Beso", a single from his most recent album Soy el Mismo (2013). I instantly fell in love with the song, and began listening to other songs by him. I went to 8tracks to listen to more songs of Prince Royce and any song related to it that sounds good-- I may just like it too. I found a lot of them, and I started to look randomly for Spanish songs, to find songs that I might like.

I tend to like songs that make you just want to move and dance. I don't dance, I do random hip and shoulder swirls and stuff LOL, but I do like songs that just makes your body want to move. The tunes in Propuesta Indecente makes you just want to dance or just move randomly to the music, even more when you watch the video-- with a pair of man and woman dancing to the music.


Prince Royce also has unique characteristics in his songs, that makes you feel "oh I know this is Prince Royce's song" just by listening to it. Music is hard to describe +_+ oh, and he often says "Royce" in the middle of his songs. Like Pitbull with his catchphrases "Huuuuu oohh!" or "Dale"  just much less often.

Here's a video of Prince Royce's Corazón Sin Cara, one of the songs I feel has a very "Prince Royce" feel to it.



Both artists have similar guitar + bongo drums and other instruments in the instrumental part of the music, but I think that's what defines their music as bachata music.

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Here I'll list my favorite songs so far that is still in the Latin American music genre, that I'll recommend for you to listen! Many of them are of bachata genre, but there are others too. You may have similar tastes in music with me! :) I'll also list the songs I have already mentioned above, in case you wanted to copy paste these song titles along with the others.

Propuesta Indecente - Romeo Santos
Promise - Romeo Santos feat. Usher
Eres Mia - Romeo Santos
Odio - Romeo Santos feat. Drake
Cancioncitas de Amor - Romeo Santos
Darte un Beso - Prince Royce
Mi Habitación - Prince Royce
Te Me Vas - Prince Royce
Be My Baby - Leslie Grace
Loca - Shakira feat. El Cata
La Tortura - Shakira feat. Alejandro Sanz
Suerte (Whenever, Wherever) - Shakira
Que Me Quedes Tu - Shakira
La La La (Spanish Version) - Shakira (both English and Spanish versions sound good!)
Berimbau - Jazzamor
Perdóname - Pablo Alborán feat. Carminho
La Camisa Negra - Juanes
Real Love - Gotay

If you really liked them, you might want to buy some songs from them or even the album :D go find them in the iTunes Store! Most of the songs I list here should be available there. If you have suggestions, ask.fm me! Or comment below (if anyone even reads this blog haha!)


Bella

Hello everyone!

So on October 17th 2014, I was invited by my friend Zulaika to attend her concert. She's back from Germany! :-D (and now she's back in Germany). She once held a concert before she went to Germany (forgot what year, but it was a few years ago) and I was a bit reluctant to attend because I was afraid to go alone... what a mistake. But now I don't care-- I went alone nevertheless, and it was one of the best decisions I have made this year. Thank you for holding this event!


The performers are Diatra Zulaika and Daniel Chagnon-Kropp. They both met at Folkwang University in Essen, Germany. Zulaika studies Opera while Daniel studies Master's Degree for Classical Guitar. Their concert was held at Goethehaus Jakarta. Going there marks the first time I went to Goethehaus and the interior of the building was amazing! Very artsy. Also, because this building is quite old, when you go further inside, the walls, the paint, combined together they look very old school! It's nice to see a physical mark of history in this building; there are the modern parts and there's also the old school parts.

They held this performance in commemoration of World Peace Day 2014, as stated in the invitation. Commemoration comes in many forms! Relating to peace, well, I would definitely understand why music can be related to peace.

In the Romantic era, Arthur Schopenhauer created a hierarchy of fine arts, and music was at the top of the hierarchy. This meant that music was considered the highest form of fine arts, and his reason was because music was the "most universal form of art" because music could immediately affect human beings emotionally compared to any other forms of art. Classical opera music have stories in it, and often times, the songs invoke emotions in our hearts when we listen to them.

This is my personal opinion, but opera songs give you a feeling of tranquility, sometimes sadness, sometimes happiness, cheerfulness, or any other emotions, but definitely not any anger or aggressive emotions. That's why I could understand why it would be related to peace. Imagine performing a classical opera piece in front of an audience, what kind of emotions would it bring to people's hearts? I bet they're going to feel peaceful.

• "Come againe, sweet love doth now invite"
• "Whoever thinks or hopes of love for love"

• "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt"
• "Kennst du das Land"

• "Chanson des Bergères"
• "Zoraide"
• "Romance de Claudine"

• "Heiss mich nicht reden"
• "So lass mich scheinen"

• "El Paño Moruno"
• "Seguidila Murciana"
• "Asturiana"
• "Jota"
• "Nana"
• "Cancion"
• "Polo"

The performance by Diatra Zulaika and  Daniel Chagnon-Kropp

Me and Zulaika

The lady who helped take the picture had shaky hands :') but anyways it was a picture of me with Zulaika! It has been a while since I last saw her and I do miss her a lot! :-)

Attending her concert, I remember how I wanted to attend a performance in an opera house. This year I had gone to Europe, but sadly, the opera performances' schedules couldn't meet mine. Someday, someday, when I go to Europe, I hope I'll manage to see an opera performance. The tickets are expensive, but it's worth to watch once in a while.

One of the things I also noticed is that being an opera singer will probably make you a polyglot whether you like it or not-- you'd sing songs from different languages and of course you have to be able to pronounce the words well enough to be able to sing them. Aside from singing them, you will also have to understand the meaning behind it so you can build an emotional connection with the song, and to be able to sing it wholeheartedly (ok I'm exaggerating lol). In this performance only (with the encore songs), Zulaika sang songs in Indonesian, English, German, French, and Spanish. That's already FIVE languages. While you may not be as fluent in speaking them, you know how the pronunciation works in that language and that's already a plus.

Lastly, this is nothing related to opera, but I noticed something about stage lighting. In this case, the main character of the performance is standing still, so the lighting does not change while she's singing, but the lighting was positioned to make her have a "Rembrandt lighting" effect.

Rembrandt lighting

Those lighting effects are photography lighting that usually makes photographs look nice. Taking pictures with a smartphone from afar won't look very good (look at my photo of Zulaika and Daniel performing above as an example), but the photographers will definitely get good pictures, and us audiences will see it as pleasing to the eyes, despite probably not knowing why :-P

Alright, that's all for my post on Zulaika and Daniel's concert: International Peace - One Song at a Time! It was a wonderful performance and I'm looking forward to another one. Cheers everyone!

I have been longing to post a makeup related entry... and I finally got to it.

I am sure you've seen this look everywhere, but I'll be sharing how I do my eye makeup. It might be similar or even the same as someone else's, but below this will be basically about my eye makeup routine. My eyes have epicanthal folds and hooded double eyelids.


The epicanthal fold makes it hard for me to add highlighting eyeshadow colors at the inner corner of my eyes. I can still do it but it can be easily overdone, because the location of the supposedly highlighted inner corner is very near to my nose contour lines. As a result, I prefer to highlight the lower part of the eyes' inner corner. You can also see that I put some eyeshadow on my lower part of my eyes' inner corner.

Eyes like mine have been called as tapered eyelids, half-double eyelids, or maybe just hooded eyelids. However, when I think of hooded eyelids, I think more of someone with parallel double eyelids that is hooded by... "upper eyelid fats". I can't find a term to describe the part of the eyes that overbears the eyelid, and I don't feel like searching for its scientific name.

Okay, continuing on to the makeup part.

My natural makeup look

Available concealer shades

Milani Baked Powder Blush in Corallina shade

Rose Golden Goddess

NYX Eyebrow Cake Powder

Dior '5 Couleurs Iridescent' Eyeshadow - Earth Reflection

Estee Lauder Liquid Eyeliner

In shade 02 Brown

3 Step Volumecara

Estee Lauder Long Lasting Lipstick in Sugar Honey

Look at 'dem lashes!

Close-up look of the finished makeup look

This picture was shot from a lower angle, so you can see my double eyelids, and also how the eyeshadow looks after application + blending.

I don't mean to discredit any brands, and you might even have good experience by using these type of brushes to apply eyeshadow, but from my experience, brushes like this that is branded as "eyeshadow brush" usually don't do very well in applying eyeshadow to your eyelids. I don't know with the brushes in the picture, they may have soft hairs, but I've tried buying a cheap eyeshadow brush (unbranded) with similarly shaped hairs, and it sucks. Also maybe because it's cheap, the brush hairs are quite hard on your delicate eyelids.

If you sweep the brush on the eyeshadow (product), and then try swatching it on your hand, the color looks like it's not pigmented at all and also usually there will be clumps of eyeshadow on where you swatched it. You can trick your way by dipping the brush into the  eyeshadow. The color will usually appear more pigmented that way, but using a brush with different hair anatomy will do the eyeshadows' colors much more justice.

Take the picture as an example, the hairs look stiff and thin. Google Image eyeshadow brush and the top hits will show brushes (mostly branded though..) with nice rounded/elliptical shaped hairs, with the shortest hairs usually at the leftmost and rightmost of the hair, and becomes longer towards the middle, and the hairs are usually of elliptical shape (imagine 3D ellipse), not thin like the ones in the picture. Think only expensive brushes have these hair characteristics? Masami Shouko brushes are generally affordable, and the number 40 brush is just over US$ 4, I bought it for IDR 42900. It does a great job in applying eyeshadow to my eyelids, but as I said, the brushes are sharp so it might be quite a painful application. I can bear with it though, because it'll only take a while to apply eyeshadows.

Continuing on...


If the eyeshadows and eyeliner were drawn into some sort of chart, it would look like this. There's just 4 simple steps to achieving this look. Oh yeah, don't forget your eyelid primer! I'm using Too Faced's eyelid primer.

Number 1 is supposed to be the lightest shade of all the eyeshadows you're going to use. Apply the color all over the lid. After you finish step number 3, you may also reapply the lightest shade in the middle of your eyelid, but don't use too much so the darkened outer V won't get touched by the lightest shade.

Number 2 is second darkest shade. Apply it at the outer V of the eye, and at the hollows of your eyes. Just press your finger/brush gently on your eyelids and you'll find out where your eyeballs 'end'; that's the area of 'the hollows of your eyes'. Applying in this area will make the eyeshadows to have approximately the same shape and size with your eyes. If you apply too much outside the hollows of your eyes, you might look weird and messy.

Number 3 is the darkest shade. Apply only a little amount of product of the "darkest shade" on the outer V and blend towards the center of your eyelid. Make sure to not go overboard towards the center. You can also apply the color in the hollows of your eyes, but just until the middle of the eyes or just a little before the middle of the eyelid.

Number 4 is eyeliner. Here, I applied from the middle of the eyelid, carefully drawing a line on my lash line. No need to tightline, but make it as close as possible to the lash line and extend the line out of the edge of your eye a little bit.




I was using Dior's '5 Couleurs Iridescent' Eyeshadow Palette, so here's a guide to which colors I used. I picked the upper left color as my lightest shade, and the darker shades are the upper right and bottom left colors. I did not pick the lower right pearly white color as my lightest color because the upper left yellowish gold color complimented my skin better. The darker shades aren't exactly very dark, but because of that, it's good for a natural look.

The central pink color is the color I usually use as highlighter. In this case, I only put it on the lower part of my inner corner of the eyes like I said in the beginning of the blog. The pearly white color can also be the highlighter shade for the eye's inner corner.

As for the eyeliner, use whatever type of eyeliner you want-- pencil, gel, or liquid, but it's best to look for a color similar to your eyeshadow so it appears to be "blended together". You can also pull out a natural look even with a black-colored eyeliner, but when you use an eyeliner with a color similar to your eyeshadow's darker/darkest color, it will look very natural, more natural than if you used black eyeliner.

After all has been done, curl your lashes and swipe a good amount of mascara to your lashes!

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So... a mini review on the products I used. Just a piece of my thoughts!

1. My Estee Lauder GelCreme foundation does not make your skin oily for the first few hours. Today it lasted for about 4 hours until it started to feel oily, but I was mostly outdoors and not in a full-AC room. My skin is combination btw, and quite acne-prone. The thing I love about this foundation is, I really liked this shade because it's one of the perfect shades for my skin. I have always been confused whether I'm of warm, cool, or neutral undertone.. if I judge only from the vein test, I'm a neutral, but my skin tone tends to go to the warm side. Yet here I'm using a Cool Creme shade.

2. My HealthyMix concealer is nice, not extraordinarily nice. The packaging is nice though, because it's more hygienic. If I want to cover my dark circles using this concealer, it's best I use an applicator like a brush or sponge. I don't like to use sponge cause I'm lazy, but a foundation brush does a very good job in blending the concealer. Using my fingers will just overblend the concealer and then my dark circles end up still being very evident.

3. Milani Baked Powder Blush is my HG blush so far. I really liked the color payoff and the color itself, because I wanted a coral blush that's not too orange.

4. Rose Golden Goddess Bronzer is not a very good bronzer in my opinion... it's hard to use a brush to get even a small amount of product, so sometimes I use my fingers to swipe over the product and apply it on my cheeks and then blend with brush. If you use your fingers you'll get a decent amount of product with pigmented color, but I want the product to stick to my brush not my fingers. I'm wondering if I had to use a different technique to get the most of the product out to my brush or is it the bronzer's fault. I'll say buy a different bronzer instead-- Physician's Formula makes amazing bronzers.

5. I really like NYX Eyebrow Cake Powder! If I had extra money to spend I'd have bought Dipbrow Pomade by Anastasia Beverly Hills, but for now this'll manage. For a natural look you won't need the "cake" to make the eyebrow powder become gel-like. Even with powder you can get a pigmented brown color to your brows, which is good! And no pain at all. Before the eyebrow cake powder, I used Shiseido's pencil eyebrow liner and it hurt if I don't use foundation to smoothen its application. I don't always use foundation when going out so that's quite a big con. The surrounding skin will be red after I apply the pencil brow liner because it has hard texture. The sad thing is, the pencil brow liner was expensive (Shiseido...), so I'd rather buy other brand's pencil brow liners like from DollyWink-- I used my friend's and it's very soft.

6. My Dior Iridescent Eyeshadow is the first eyeshadow palette that works on my eyes. I used to buy these cheap unbranded eyeshadows and their colors are very poorly pigmented. And then suddenly my mom buys me this palette so I was totally amazed by the difference in quality. The colors stay ALL DAY with primer, forgot how long it lasted without primer.

During a similar period of time, my mom also once gave me an Estee Lauder travel palette (earlier than the Dior) but the eyeshadow colors were too nude and barely shows any color on my skin. After buying Dior palette, I concluded that my eyes need more expensive palettes/eyeshadows because it will withstand the constant movement of my "eyelid fats" on my eyelids (which will cause oil secretion.. yeah. Constant skin contact will cause it). I have tried many other eyeshadows but still, if you want to splurge on a nice eyeshadow, I recommend Dior's 5 Color Eyeshadow palette. They recently launched the Fall collection and I'm in love with the red, but if only I could easily afford it...

7. Estee Lauder's liquid eyeliner is really good. Very good. And I love the brown shade... it's a natural brown shade and it's such a shame they don't sell it in Indonesia--they only have the black one. I like the brown so much I'd rather not even buy the black shade liquid eyeliner.

The brown shows on pictures, with shiny finish, and then the felt tip applicator of the eyeliner is soft so it doesn't hurt your eyelids. A review on this, by Beautiful with Brains here, same link with my picture source, says exactly what I think about this eyeliner.

I have experience with bad liquid eyeliners, so I dare say that Estee Lauder's is really good. I once tried Maybelline's liquid eyeliner (old one) and it HURT. I threw the eyeliner away after 2-3 uses because I can't stand the pain. I also had experience with irritations from using Sephora's liquid eyeliner.

8. 3 Step Volumecara is one of my HG mascara! We don't have GreatLash mascara here in Indonesia so this is one good alternative! Have fun experimenting with the mascara as you can spin the middle part of the bottle to switch steps-- look at the mascara's reviews done by beauty bloggers and see how amazing it is. My lashes are super duper sparse and thin, and this mascara does great results, which I say is comparable with Benefit's They're Real mascara. One thing to look out though, you might want to buy these mascaras from online shops that import products from Korea or the resellers, because you'll save so much money. In the retail Etude House shops the price is about 200% to 300% more expensive-- I remember my friend saying it's around US$30++ (IDR 400k ish) while you can get them for just around US$13 (IDR 160k ish).

9. Estee Lauder lipsticks. I love them. It depends on what kind of colors you're looking for though-- I just happen to like many of Estee Lauder's very much. Sugar Honey is a "my lips but better" color, and is my lifesaver when I have heavy eye makeup. I think the color is discontinued but I haven't checked with the counters in Indonesian Estee Lauders yet. I hope it's not discontinued!

Edited this post a little bit. Whew, that was a long post. I hope you don't get bored reading my rants. And I hope this post could help you in some way, especially those of you who just started doing makeup or have eyes that are similar to mine. Remember, you don't have to use exactly same colors as I do; I use the same technique for other colors as well, and even with darker colors it still looked natural because when my eyes are open most of the colors won't be seen anyway! :')  Anyways, enjoy! :-) Cheers!

Hello there!

Today's post is about what I'm currently listening.

My favorite song of the moment:

2-1 by Imogen Heap



Video courtesy of krushastar in YouTube.

I found out about this song from CSI Miami Season 8, the episode Kill Clause. Imogen Heap makes a lot songs that sound like this, like a contemporary dance song. Hide and Seek, The Moment I Said It are some of what I consider "Imogen Heap Contemporary Dance Songs".

The lyrics say something about earth and galaxies, and well, what made me really like this song is because of the chorus.

Things are not always, things are not always how they seem.

Will you be ready?

and

They don't turn out always, don't quite turn out always how we think.

Will we be ready?

Very deep sentence, if you take it in other or certain ways. Also, the violin instrumental after the sentence is sang in the song, makes you somewhat delve deep into the song. This song sounded sad, and I like melancholic sounding songs. Not the ones that make you cry, but what makes your emotions get.. "shaken". Not in a bad way.. just like the song can make you.. pose with one hand right above the chest area (in front of heart) and one reaching out to the stars. Okay I am exaggerating things but basically like you can feel the emotion from the song.

I can put this on repeat and not get bored at all. But I'm afraid I'll get quickly bored, so I try to not put it on repeat all the time.

--

My second favorite song:

Not Fair by Lily Allen



Video courtesy of parlophone from YouTube.

I bought the whole Lily Allen album "It's Not Me, It's You" for just around US$ 2.45 (IDR 29,000) because it was the explicit version. The clean version was priced normally, IDR 85,000 if I was not wrong. I don't care about explicit songs, so yeah I bought the album. Turns out I like most of the songs so good for me.

I originally really liked this song for its tune. Then I saw the lyrics and I was like whoa. One of the sentences that made me "whoa" was:  I spent ages giving head. At first I was like, giving head? Then, oh. That head.

Again, the chorus is what had drawn me to this song. Aside from the catchy tune :)

It's not fair, and I think you're really mean, I think you're really mean.

This song had me wondering what the meaning of some of the sentences were. They sounded like it was really based on personal experience. A vulgar version of Taylor Swift? :')

Lily is indeed known for speaking out her thoughts very frankly. The last Lily Allen song I listened to was "F*ck You", which is also from "It's Not Me, It's You" album. I did not look for the lyrics though, so now that I finally looked for the lyrics of an explicit Lily Allen song, I was a bit surprised. But it gives me something to learn... because in Indonesia there definitely won't be any songs with these kinds of connotations. Or maybe there is... but I don't listen to Indonesian songs most of the time, so... please pardon my ignorance.

Other than Not Fair, I overall liked almost every song in the album.

--

Third favorite song:

Loca (Spanish Version) by Shakira ft. El Cata



Video courtesy of shakiraVEVO from YouTube.

I love this song. And what made me love this song more is the video. Very personal, because this year I went to Barcelona for a study trip with a few of my friends and one lecturer as supervisor, and the shooting place for Loca is the beach we went to LOL

In most Shakira videos, I pay attention to her belly dancing more than the song. I want to be able to do that too! As for Shakira in action, I prefer She Wolf but as a song to listen to, definitely Loca for me. Also, the Spanish version is so much better than the English version in my opinion. The song is being sang more fluidly, if you get what I mean...

Ok that's all for now. I actually have to sleep but my sleep cycle is very broken at the moment, and... I have to get up early tomorrow (no, in a few hours). Ok goodbye for now, see you at the next post!

Bella

I haven't posted anything in a while, sorry.

What's happened lately?

I got scammed.

A student pursuing master's degree in Universitas Gadjah Mada in Jogjakarta insulted Jogjakarta through a Path status and is now cyber-bullied and faces risk of going to prison.

I find it hard to find a suitable company that I want to try to apply for internship.

I have been traveling a lot.

--

Scammed!

Beware, there might be some swear words in this post. And it is not censored like my previous posts.

Helpful links:

http://momento.mataku.com/blog/2011/12/15/inextron-penipuan-berkedok-trik-marketing-2/

http://myzone.okezone.com/content/read/2013/05/13/10470/

and many more... just Google: Colvern Indonesia or Penipuan Colvern Indonesia and you will see most of the top articles are about scams. Unfortunately, they're in Indonesian, so if you're a non-Indonesian and you'd like to find out, I hope my post can help you become more aware, or I hope Google Translate will do a good job.

So I went to Poins Square Lebak Bulus on a fateful 9th of August 2014. Who knew that that was a day I'd learn a lesson the hard way?

OTOPlus is the name of the store/showroom that scammed me. And many others. It goes by many names, and the first link from momento.mataku.com has kindly listed some of their scammer company names. First of all, OTOPlus is located next to California Fried Chicken, but I forgot which floor was it. They are a small showroom, does not look nice, and their workers consist of 4 people: 1 who supposedly act as manager, 1 woman named Ifah, Ipah, or whatever, 1 man named Lucky and another man named Ijal if I remember correctly.

Lucky approached me while I was on my way to my car (at the basement). He offered me a detox patch as a complimentary gift but to get it I'd have to fill in a form and sign some stuff he said. I always felt pity for these salesmen/women because it's hard to find passersby who'd actually listen to you, so I listened.

This Lucky guy says he studies at BSI (Bina Sarana Informatika) and is currently at 2nd semester but he works while taking college classes. He constantly praises me, like how come someone as pretty as you don't have a boyfriend? Your skin is so smooth, you must be the epitome of male adoration, etc etc. Maybe the flirting would've worked more if he was good looking. Then another male joined in the praising, and that is Ijal. This Ijal has almost-bald-short-hair, very skinny, and super sweet mouth (again, it would've worked more if he had better looks). This impudent guy dared to touch my calves while praising my smooth legs. Who the hell are you?

They were promoting their foot massager from a Japanese brand called NIIRO. I saw the brochure and I was a bit surprised that all of them were priced nothing less than IDR 10 million. Yes, 10 million. In an ugly showroom. But I was stupid enough to not feel suspicious. They said their foot massager had JADE inside. When they asked me if the massager felt good, well it was so-so, good, but not extremely bad.

Maybe because I'm a female, the bitch Ifah did a lot of the talking. She said she was a dangdut singer and showed her CDs and photos. She is a voluptuous lady. And not in a good way. Bla bla bla and then they said because their company Colvern is celebrating their 17th birthday, they are giving me a chance to win a "doorprize". They had prepared two examples: one coupon said "Thank you for your visit" and the other was "You win a massage machine worth IDR 1,890,000". They said the majority of the coupons were like these examples.

I pulled one, and guess what, I won a portable stove priced at IDR 15,990,000.

4. They are the reason why big companies that hold lottery/sweepstakes always say "We do not ask any money from lottery winners". So if you win a lottery and you have to pay a lot of money to get the prize, then it is a scam. No doubt about it.

5. They will force you to do the transaction right away. If like me, you have credit card from your parents, and you want to call your parents to ask if it is okay to do the transaction, they will not like you calling them (your parents). But they will try to hide their annoyance because they still want your money.

6. If you say you're not interested and keep on repeating maybe until you get annoyed, they will change their attitude completely. They were so nice to you, now not anymore.

7. They are likely to call their sponsors using an old-looking phone. In my case, they used an old wireless phone.

8. If you're a female, they will praise you like you're the most beautiful woman in the world.

Edit: 9. The more someone tries to convince you that they're official, they're trustworthy, by saying proofs that prove their point, repeatedly, the more they are likely to be scammers, or just untrustworthy.


And one word of advice if you have at least one credit card: Find out how to void transactions. On BCA machines it's more confusing than other EDC machines, and that's what made me not know how to void my transaction-- the menus were not helping at all. And if you're still a child financially depending on your parents, it's best to have a credit card with a low limit-- and find a bank who can give supplemental credit cards with low credit card limits. My friend says BCA lets you, but you have to be over 21 and have an official statement of how much you earn every month (pocket money for me), but you'll need a salary receipt for that official statement.

That's all for this post. I hope this helped in a way. I know some of the things I did seemed stupid and it is, but this was a hard punch to the face-- it was a hard lesson but I learned much.

Today marks the day I first saw a cat (or kitten) that got run over by a vehicle with my own eyes. Sometimes, I would see dead cats on the road but did not see it happening.

---

Today, I saw a small kitten on the road trying to cross the street. I braked my car, and usually adult cats would have ran across the street immediately, but this kitten was confused and stayed in place. I stopped my car for a few seconds, because the kitten would not move-- got honked from cars/motorcycles behind me but who cares-- the kitten was probably shocked and scared.


A couple of seconds later, as it was running across the street in panic, BAM! A motorcycle ran over it. The motorcycle driver was with his female friend, and his female friend looked like she was saying something like "omg why did you run over the kitten?!?" Or "omg the kitten omg omg", and her hands was on the sides of her face, jittery and looking panicked. She did not look back at the kitten but even from the back her gestures were obvious that she was not okay with what her friend did. The motorcycle rider and his friend continued their journey to wherever it may be, and when I looked at my rear view mirror, the kitten was writhing in pain. It was still alive then...

---

Because there are still many cars/motorcycles waiting in line behind me, and I also got homework to do, I did not stop my car, I also continued my journey to my home.

This event got me contemplating when I was waiting for the red light. And then I thought of many things, such as how the kitten might be living miserably because it was separated from its parents, and then life was taken away from it in just a flash, and what would have happened if I had stopped for a while to save the kitten.


I imagined myself in the kitten's position. To be honest, I really can't imagine the pain of living without a mother; even thinking about it makes me cry, because it makes me think of the future when I get older, and so will my parents... *sob*

The kitten was confused and got lost in the middle of the road. It was actually in a really dangerous part of the road. I don't know how the kitten got there, but it was in the middle of a wide road and it was far from the pedestrian walkway. And unfortunately, in that road where the kitten was in, there's always a lot of cars and motorcycles passing by.

---Buat orang Jakarta, lokasi tempat gue melihat kejadian ini adalah sebelum flyover Antasari, saat jalannya dibagi 2 menjadi 1 ke kiri ke arah Prapanca, 2 lurus masuk flyover Antasari. Gue dari arah jalan Sisingamangaraja, yang dari sekretariat Asean belok kiri, terus belok kanan masuk jalur yang di tengah, lalu di lampu merah yang lurus ke Jalan Truno Joyo, gue belok kanan. Si kucing muncul di jalan yang dari underpass mau ke arah Prapanca.

My mind continued to wander... how the kitten must have felt; alone and lost, without its mother, and then having your body crushed by a vehicle. That must have been extreme pain.

---

However... I had prioritized my homework, which is also my final project, due today before midnight, over the writhing kitten in the middle of the road. If I had stopped for a while to save the kitten, I would have gone to a veterinarian, paid the costs for the kitten, the kitten would be safe for now.

But then, going to the vet may take time, and then I might not have enough time to finish my essay, and most likely it will cause me to fail the subject, which will make my GPA drop ungracefully, and lose 3 million rupiahs (the cost for the credits of the subject) over a kitten. How will I explain to my lecturer about giving me time extension over saving a kitten...? While it is also possible that going to the vet may not take very much time, there's still the risk.

Thinking over this in a rational manner, what I did was certainly directly beneficial to me. I did not want to risk failing the subject just because of a kitten. It was directly beneficial because I will not spend extra money on veterinarian, I will not spend extra time saving the kitten, it's definite and obvious.

If I had saved the kitten, I would be proud of myself, and call it one of my personal accomplishments for having saved a stray kitten when it got run over by a motorcycle. It will not benefit me materialistically, but it will benefit me spiritually. I can safely say, that the feeling of being able to help someone (or something) and make a difference, is one of the best feelings in the world.

Almost everything harder in life does not benefit you straight away and materialistically, but gives you that personal spiritual enlightenment, which is good. Which was easier, saving the cat or just drive away pretending it never happened?

._.)

Honestly saying, I actually did have the want, the intention to save the kitten, but I decided it was not my first priority. I am a bit disappointed in myself for not saving the kitten when I had the chance to, and I do kind of regret I did not save the cat, but my will for playing it safe was greater.

---

Dear kitten, I apologize for not saving you, but I sincerely hope someone out there will save you, and if unfortunately, you eventually died of your wounds, I hope you rest in peace.

And I hope, the next time I see something like this on the road, I am not in a rush.

(No pictures, I'm sorry. I was driving and I wouldn't stop my car just to take a picture of it lol)