AVICII live at Fairgrounds, Jakarta

Lingered for a while until the crowds and the heat were unbearable. So I faded into darkness and find myself—right now—in bed, a little bit deaf, reading a book with Dave Brubeck and hot tea. Bliss. 

There is an excitement, speeding in the rain.

Tornadoes on my tail. 

(Source: photoperspective)

2012 comes to Jakarta with a series of violent storms.

As you might know I’ve just recently moved to a new office. It’s pretty fun here.

So we’re located on the fourth floor of a building and next to us is a banana-tree plantation. I think they make money from selling banana leaves.

But how’s inside the office? The interior? That doesn’t matter actually. What matter is the fact that we’re on the fourth floor and there’s a banana-tree plantation next to our building.

Because we fly paper planes!

So usually in the afternoon when there’s no wind (or sometimes with wind) we’d fly some paper planes outside (if you think we don’t comply with green policies wait a sec and read on).

Almost every guys in the office participates in this activity. I don’t know who started the trend. It had existed before I got in.

There are many techniques of making planes that we naturally know ever since we were a kid, and we relied on that knowledge to make our planes. It was very interesting to see that actually almost every people had a different way to make planes, and they all could fly. 

Each person would fly the plane one by one and somebody would keep time. Yes, there’s a tinge of competition spirit in this paper plane stuff. Sometimes we looked for the one that flew the longest; sometimes we looked for the one that flew the farthest. My point is we kept score. 

And as the competition developed, some plane designs flew farther, and some were just plain sucks. And usually the ones who won would be the same persons over and over again. And that was when the game changed: people started looking in the internet how to make proper paper planes.

And there were more people joining to make one…

(GOD! SCISSORS?)

And basically you could see paper planes were simply everywhere.

Here,

Here,

And here,

(Oh well, that’s off-image but I just can’t help it so…)

Anyway, the game was on another level by then. The flying duration was greatly improved, and also the distance. But then some people noticed another factor that actually might enhance the aerial performance of a paper plane. And that was precision.

So people started doing their planes with a frightening obsession for bloody precision, treating the subject like mathematics or architecture.

It was like, “Are my left and right wings equally leveled?” “Is there any crease on the back?” “Are the folds crisp and sharp?” “Is this paper dry and light? Or is it humid and heavy?” “Oh, should I make a smaller paper plane?” And so on.

I also started to realise that it wasn’t only the designs and precision that matters, but also how you throw it. Some planes are good when you throw it overhead—as strong as you could. But some planes need to be thrown gentler and some planes can’t be thrown at all but must be pushed slowly into the blowing wind. Okay this is getting so geeky I’m going to stop.

Anyway, not every people care about how to make a plane flies better. Some people care more about how to inject some meaning into it. Like this one (translated—For mum):

So we get to the final question: Does all of this comply with the green policies? Well I’d say, borderline, yes.

Firstly, we only make planes from used papers that contain no sensitive information regarding the companies and its clients. And also if we didn’t make them into planes, the office would throw them away anyway.

Secondly, does this activity leave paper waste all over the place around the building? Yes. Take a look:

BUT

We went down ourselves and collected the waste as soon as after we flew them.

I know you’d ask, what happened with the planes that went over the fence and fell into the plantation? 

The wonderful thing is, the kids in the plantations love the planes. They’d pick them up and play them among themselves. This is one of those rare cases where I like kids. So it isn’t so bad isn’t it? Convert waste papers to toys and give playthings to the kids who need it.

I’m just wondering what’s the next evolution in this paper plane stuff. Aesthetics?

and today we finally, definitely get it… 

It’s bloody burning,

as my friend’s original tweet (unedited):

lembuwiworo lembu wiworo jati  

Colmanhandoko, the hottest creative agency 2011!! We’re on fired now!!!!

The story is,

I just got back from a gloomy morning meeting at the client this morning. Then somebody saw a fire burning on the next building (our office consists of 3 different buildings) and we thought it was easily extinguishable. 

We ran down the stairs to help putting out the fire. And for a while, things seemed to be in control.

However, after just a few minutes, we saw a great ominous smoke rising out from every pore of the roof.

So everybody starts panicking; one particular woman fainted; other hysterical; and peoples, also passersby start gathering in front of our office. It was understandable that the house is an old house and doesn’t seem to have proper safety measures against this kind of disaster. It doesn’t have fire extinguisher, fire alarm, or even a proper water hose.

A female colleague of ours screamed both in terror and tears for somebody to call the fire department. Smoke was everywhere and everybody knew that things had gone out of control. We started running inside to save important files and equipments—before it’s too late—like iMacs, printers, legal papers, even guitars, and other stuffs.

The real challenge was this car that was parked in front of the house (inside the compound). The girl who owns the car was out on a meeting, and the key was with her. To avoid an explosion, we had to get the car out in any way possible. We tried to smash the car window with stones and steel pipe, but in vain, until a guy came out of nowhere with a gigantic log and smashed the window to pieces. He jumped inside and took off the handbrake. But the other thing was, the steering wheel was not in proper, straight position—so the front wheel was tilted to side. That was fucked up. So, we, 9 people needed to push the car, while occasionally lifting it up when it was about to hit something. It was a hard, arduous task—but we got the car out of the harm’s way.

Just in time we got the car out, the fire was blazing like mad. But luckily, the firefighters came on time. What I mean by “on time” is that they really came on time. I might be disappointed with many things about Indonesia, but today, I’m proud to say that they don’t include the firefighters. They came and did their work immediately without delay.

There were like 5 or 6 firetrucks in the spot with some damn long hoses, working hard to kill the fire.

Then I saw one particular guy was kicking and wriggling, being held by everybody because he intended to get back inside the burning house for his bag (cellphones, money, wallet inside) which was left behind—of course nobody let him, there was too much danger in it. Only then I remembered about my stuff in the next building. I ran for it.

The smoke was crazy, but I risked it to save my little friend, Yoda (he’s safe and sound in my room now). 

And while I was running around the smoke-filled room for the Yoda. I saw my boss running down the stairs with a shit-load of books and a Macbook charger around his neck. “Let’s get the fuck out,” he said. So we escaped the smoke-filled building and called out some of our friends in sight to get their things into my car—which I drove it away from the danger zone. 

After securing my car, I returned to the house to see that the fire had much or less extinguished—very much thanks to the firefighters. But nearly the whole house was collapsed, charred, destroyed.

The other two buildings who stood next to each other (in one of them is where my desk is) were fine. The fire didn’t manage to spread.

In the end, we were just grateful that there were nobody wounded or harmed. So far, we estimated that 8 brand new iMacs in boxes turned to ashes, as well as a motorcycle of one of our colleague.

Our bosses handled this professionally, systematically. I did the headcount and everybody was safe.

It was one hell of an experience.

We went home early today.

The second installation of our Joni Blak-Blak TVC for Axis.

Previous one here

As the highway construction progresses in the South Jakarta area, the traffic worsens, roads rerouted, shortcuts closed.

I hope the highway will be worth it—if it gets completed.

(Source: photoperspective)

Assuming from the weather in Jakarta, I think we are about to enter summertime. 

it’s never good to spend your friday night in the office, listening to iTunes while reading a book. but I was waiting for the traffic to calm down. friday night traffic could kill you.