Who Mocks Who?

五十步笑百步

wu shi bu xiao bai bu
Lit: The one who retreats 50 paces / steps mocks the one to retreats 100.

This word struck my attention as I try to find some Chinese proverb for illustration in the Chinese cover workbook for my school. You can find more at my other blog. Since the old times, it’s very hard to decipher what’s the meaning behind each Chinese proverb. One of those is this proverb. It’s easier to decipher the meaning of Indonesian or English proverb. Maybe because I live in Indonesia, or maybe because I was eating western cereal my whole live.

Anyway, after I finished my book cover job, I came back to that website and reading the explanation thoroughly. It tells the story about a king who likes to war with other kingdom. He fought with other kingdom because he just… love it. Well, it feels like a weird, blood lust king. Maybe he has some connection with the vampire ancestry from his mother’s side. But anyway, one day, the king asked a philosopher named Mencius. He asked, why his population number can’t increase, meanwhile the population of other kingdom won’t decrease, even though he treated his people far better than in other kingdom. He moves people from famine-stricken areas to places of plenty, and transport grain from rich areas to the poor. Nobody goes hungry in his kingdom. Where is the problem, he asked.

Bromo Trip of the Summer Vacation

I have mentioned in my other blog’s posts that I’m going to Bromo. Well, I’ve just finished my “tour guide” job for school’s guests from Taiwan trip to Bromo. It’s not a real “tour guide” job actually. Basically, I just have to accompany them as they basically can’t speak or understand Indonesian very well. I help them in communicating with the travel drivers, locals, sellers, and front desk officer. This is some of the pictures I take. This is actually the first time I upload pictures in my blog post (Hurray! Throw the champagne! No? Well, I don’t really like champagne, either), but hey, there always the first time for everything, right? 🙂

The sunrise view in Bromo (actually in the Petinggen Mt.) is blocked by a thick fog

A Slice of Web

Hello for my fellows out there! Maybe some of you have realized that I was very slow in writing new posts these days. The reason are not just only I’ve been busy (I know it’s just an alibi to myself to procrastinate), but also because I still don’t have a good inspiration to write something. I have around 10 posts in the draft, but in the end, I didn’t finished them because I always lost the drive in the middle. It’s like I immediately felt that what I was wrote isn’t good enough. Yeah, that’s just some part of me being a Melancholy person. Always tried to strive for perfection that in the end didn’t do anything because I always felt what I’m gonna do won’t good enough. 🙂

But right now, it seems I always wanted to write many short blogs, sort of “microblogging”, but I don’t like to use Twitter because of its limitation (140 char! My text messages always longer than that!). I also wants to bookmarks and shares so many cool websites I’ve found, but I think I don’t want to “pollute” this blog with many random short posts and bookmarks. I also don’t want to use Pinterest, Tumblr, Delicious, or any other services to share those websites. I have tried some of them, but I still lack the feeling of “sharing”. It’s like I didn’t “own” my sharing. I’m not trying to “own” the intellectual property that I shared. I just want a better authority management of my posts and shares, including its design and layout. Therefore, I’ve decided to give birth to one more blog, the “Slice of Web“. The Slice of Web blog will serve as my container for short and random posts and cool websites bookmark, while this blog will still serve as my main blog of high-quality posts. I will use all of the blog writing tools that I always wanted to use. So, you now will have flavors to choose. Go to the Slice of Web for short, random, frequently updated blog, or go to Life in a Nutshell for thoughtful, less updated blog. Don’t worry, I’ll still update this blog. Everytime I want to write a long post, I will always turned to this blog. In fact, I hope that after this Slice of Web is active, I will have back my passion for post long, thoughtful posts like before. You can also find the link to the Slice of Web blog at the top of this blog. See you around!

Visit: Slice of Web