coriander in pho

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  • On blogging, building community, and (a rant on) AI — and back using English

    … Aaaand she’s back.

    I tried using the Indonesian language in my previous post, and I found myself feeling “stiff” on using it. I know, the irony, I’m an Indonesian and here I am, feeling uncomfortable using my own language. I know some Indonesians out there who would love to sling mud at me because of this.

    Nevertheless, I feel English would be more helpful, in a sense that not only my friends from Automattic can still read this comfortably (hello!), but it also gives me a good outlet to practice my English writing. While I’m comfortable using English and can use the language just fine on a daily basis, nothing beats the practice of writing the language. As long as I can ignore these… squiggly underlines, courtesy of Grammarly. Thank you, Grammarly, for your service, but sometimes we need to drone on and on about mundane things. You would have a blast with the late Umberto Eco.

    So! I’m back using English, hahah. Also, yesterday’s posts seemed helped me getting through the blogging funk and my memories dealing with users when I was still a Happiness Engineer. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job as a Happiness Engineer, but some cases could be… A bit much. Those cases, unfortunately, somehow stuck with you more than those who didn’t. That said, I faced Site Editor bravely and even switched this blog’s themes to several classic themes such as Misty Lake. I love themes with sidebar, I can’t explain how much I love them. When I was in Automattic, I usually complained commented the lack of sidebar on our newly published themes, so when we finally had one, my teammates at that time (Jordan and Adeline) pinged me like crazy, “RETNO! WE HAVE SIDEBAR! WE HAVE SIDEBARRRR!”

    I also checked Blogger because I mused on the probability of switching sides, and I found myself immensely disappointed. Say what you want about blogging, but for me, blogging is a niche. It used to be a trend, a fad when everyone and their uncles and dogs and cats had a blog, and now we don’t see the same gusto compared to, say, 10-15 years ago. The world itself still lives on, though. People still blog, and they do so with such commitment (5+ years assisting them here), but the lurking problem is the network. Remember blogring/webring? “Adopt a pixel”? “Trade blog links”? I know I do.

    Blogger used to be so good at it. Heck, even WordPress.com used to do that, too. Folks could see newly published posts on the service’s homepage, or “Blog of the Month” posts, or “Blogs of Note”.

    Source

    Look at it. Look how the community thrived and pulsated with new posts. No, the homepage was not minimalist or “professional” or “catered to businesses”. It was filled with texts, information, and news rivaling a PowerPoint presentation by a 100+++++-year-old Japanese company (trust me, I know. I used to do an internship with a Japanese company with a long history.) It was alive.

    Now, I don’t think I can look at those services’ homepage without feeling anguish. That’s the least I could do. I usually screamed.

    I checked Blogger using my GMail account, and I found myself confused: Say, I’m a new blogger and I wanted to start a blog. My first thought would be to find inspiration, but it’s really hard to find one in this social media, 140-character limit, and rage-inducing spaces. I hoped I could find and see some blogs out there, from the same service, so I know what to expect in terms of look and design, and perhaps follow them! New friends!

    Nada. Zilch.

    The things that I see on the screen are:

    Add blogs to follow in your reading list

    You are not currently following any blogs. Click here to enter blogs that you’d like to follow in your reading list. Learn more

    … And blog posts from the Blogger team dated 4 years ago.

    I clicked the linked “here” text, hoping that I could get some recommendations, but no. Again, only a:

    You do not have any subscriptions. Click the ‘Add’ button above to begin.

    At least, at least, WordPress.com is doing better. You can find recommendations and discover new blogs on the Reader. Reader has always been one of, or perhaps THE ONE, my favorite elements on WordPress.com. Call me biased because I used to work there, but I haven’t seen similar service as Reader on other website hosts (I did check Hostinger, the host of this website, and they only have their company blog. The closest thing to “find new blog” is their client’s success stories.)

    I’m not sure how Reader is being managed now. When I was still at Automattic, while the team was passionate and REALLY good at it (send your kudos to Dave Martin), I felt that the focus and the effort from the top levels outside the team were not intensive enough (cough cough, those who know me might realized that I tried to be as delicate and harmless as possible when saying it.) I hope this has changed. I really love Reader, I know some folks who have equal love for Reader — even more, and there is tons of potential there. I did see some improvements on the space, though, so that’s great.

    That said, while we have the space, there is a concern about the quality of the content. I really like Stuart’s writing here: AI is going to replace me someday. With the risk of sounding “in the olden day”-vibe, the quality of our blog world is no longer there. We used to be so enthusiastic in building our communities because we knew those words were written by actual human beings. The posts were humane, alive, rich, and filled with emotions — real emotions. To create a community is to connect. The desire might be less now because we are not sure whether the posts published like a clockwork are from a living breathing human or from a freaking prompt. I also hate how people are side-eyeing actual correct grammars and punctuations, thinking those were AI works, like, EXCUSE ME, some of us actually studying, learning, and honing the craft. Who can forget that “a sure-sign of an AI work is when you see em dash on it ( — )”? That’s such an insult to the whole craft and profession. In summary: Finding a blog with well-written words from humans are such a gem. A gem, I tell you.

    If I’m being honest, I have a room-temperature vibe with AI. Slightly closer to the boiling point, but still lower than a whistling kettlepot. I know its potential, I used ChatGPT to translate my comments from English to Chinese for connecting and communicating with folks on the Xiaohongshu app — I am now learning Chinese on Duolingo, BTW — but I also have my… thoughts on its generative nature. I always believe that the human arts will always triumph over everything. I mean, hey, AI won’t be able to generate those pictures, videos, and writings without stealing using the original works by actual human beings in the first place, right? 🤷

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  • Bahas Buku: “The Maid” oleh Nita Prose

    Akhir-akhir ini, selera saya sedang bergeser ke murder mystery. Ya sebenernya memang ini genre favorit sih, tapi rasa-rasanya makin banyak seri murder mystery di luar sana, dan saya sama sekali ga keberatan, hahah. BTW, tulisan Bahas Buku ini saya copy-paste dari feed Threads saya. Saya juga sekarang memutuskan untuk menyebutnya “Bahas Buku” ketimbang “Review” karena… Saya nggak tau gimana cara review buku. “Review” buku ala saya adalah, “ini buku bikin gw nangis sampe jongkok dan asam lambung naik. 100/100 recommended.” Mengingat review saya lebih mirip celetukan ketimbang review beneran, jadi lebih baik nulisnya ya ngebahas aja dari perspektif pribadi saya ya.

    Ini salah satu buku yang terakhir saya selesaikan. Genre murder mystery-cozy mystery, judul “The Maid” oleh Nita Prose.

    Saat baca blurb-nya, saya sempet keinget sama potongan adegan cerita murder mystery juga (Agatha Christie?) yang intinya, “nggak ada yang merhatiin pekerja di hotel. Mereka bebas keluar masuk tanpa menarik perhatian.”

    Saya sendiri suka dengan karakter-karakter yang kurang menonjol. Bukan yang wow banget, tipe “kamulah Yang Terpilih”/The Chosen One. Karakter yang seperti orang-orang yang kita temuin di jalan, angkot, bis. Dan novel ini bercerita tentang seorang staf housekeeping di sebuah hotel butik — yang ga sengaja terlibat kasus.

    Yang berkesan buat saya adalah karakter utama. Ini gambaran kasar ya: Rasanya seperti membaca “Forrest Gump” dengan setting housekeeping hotel. Si karakter, Molly, bisa dilihat sebagai karakter neurodivergent. Ini yang saya kagum dari penulisnya: Nggak perlu ditulis gamblang, tapi dari pembawaan Molly, pembaca tau kalo dia neurodivergent.

    Untuk yang suka novel dengan penuh aksi dan kejar-kejaran waktu (misal, karya-karyanya Dan Brown,) MUNGKIN novel ini bukan novel yang cocok (kecuali kalo lagi nyari tema baru ya 😄) Novel ini fokusnya berat di… Bersih-bersih. Saya suka beberes, jadi happy betul saya baca rutinitas Molly beberes kamar-kamar hotel, hahahahah. Baca ini jadi pengen ikut beberes juga.

    “The Maid” ini berseri. “The Maid”, “The Mystery Guest” (ini juga bagus!), dan “The Mistletoe Mystery”. Tahun ini kabarnya akan rilis “The Maid’s Secret” — ini udah, BTW. Kemarin jalan-jalan di Suria KLCC dan melewati Kinokuniya, ngeliat buku ini satu tampak di etalase.

    Saya sempet liat komentarnya si penulis, Nita Prose, mengenai motivasi dia nulis ini. Dia cerita kalo satu hari, dia masuk ke kamar hotel dia karena kelupaan barang. Pas masuk kamar, dia dan staf housekeeping sama-sama kaget karena dia ga nyangka staf udah di situ dan staf juga kaget dia mendadak nongol 😆 Dari situ dia berpikir, “staf hotel ini pasti tau banyak soal saya, dari barang-barang dan sampah saya. Tapi, apakah saya pernah meluangkan waktu untuk tahu siapa mereka?”

    Karena itu lah dia nulis novel dengan karakter staf housekeeping hotel, menggambarkan mereka lebih dari hanya “seorang staf housekeeping”, tapi juga hidup sehari-hari mereka. Temen-temen yang suka ngobrol sama staf, penjual makanan keliling, tukang parkir, dll, mungkin akan tertarik dengan novel ini 😄

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  • Being 40 and 2025

    My birthday already passed (December), but I just got my motivation and willingness to blog now. As… snappy as this sounds, opening the post editor on my laptop reminded me too much of (previous) work. When I had my sabbatical, I didn’t touch any of my sites for 3 months — hence, perhaps this was the same case as before.

    I ended my 2024, and continuing it in 2025, with a driving lesson. I can’t drive to save my life, and I started to feel that driving is one of the must-have life skills. Here in Malaysia, you will need to sign up for driving lessons for your driving license. There are, at least, three types of driving licenses — which feels like a power-up item, hahah. After you attended the theory class (6 hours of theory class), you need to attend the computer examination (theory exam). Should you pass the exam, you will get an L driving license: Learner. An L-license holder can only drive a car with a certified driving lesson trainer assisting them, no other passengers, and the car should have a big “L” sticker to indicate that the driver is a learner.

    During L-license lessons, you will have the hands-on experience of driving a car — in the training circuit and on the road. The lessons take 16 hours in total.

    After the hands-on training, you will need to face another exam (practical exam). During this exam, you will have a staff from JPJ (Jawatan Pengangkutan Jalanraya — Road Transport Department) as an examiner. Once you passed the exam, you are entitled to P-license (Probationary drivers) and the license applies for 2 years. Only after you finished 2 years with the P-license, you leveled up to be the Final Form: D-license (Completed Driving License).

    I’m still on my L-license form and have yet to evolve. I must say, the lessons can be tricky and now I know why driving is considered an art and experience-based! Wish me luck, everyone! I’m having my (repeat) driving exam next Monday.

    Now, speaking about 2025. I know that talking, or writing, about the new year can be so passe. It feels like after what happened in 2020, people started to be more… calmer, in building and working on their resolutions. We had, like, 2-3 years with “staying alive” as one of the main resolutions after all.

    That said, I don’t have any current goals/ambitions for this year. I mentioned this in a couple of past posts: I have an immense amount of privilege, which allowed me to say things that I am saying here.

    I actually wondered if I should just switch to Indonesian language here. I know that nobody’s stopping me, this is my blog anyway. So perhaps, that’s what I’m going to do: Switching to Indonesian on this blog. Again, a lot of things here remind me too much of my previous work and it’s, uh, unpleasant. The recent news about the place I used to work was not super great either. I even had the thought to switch to freaking Blogger of all places, knowing full well that Google could pull the plug at any time. That said, the website host subscription is already paid up to 2028, hahah. So switch to Indonesian it is.

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  • Post-lunch Cardio

    KL has been getting cooler recently, and I have enjoyed nice breeze as I opened my balcony door and let the air flows through.

    I just finished my lunch yesterday when I heard a skittering sound on the ceilings. At first, I thought it was a bug or a dragonfly entered my unit from the balcony (a common occurrence), but I realized the sound was too loud for a bug. I put my attention away from episode 2 “Seoul Busters” and looked for the sound source — and there it was, a small bird perched on my ceiling lamp.

    The bird was panicking, which, understandable. Imagine yourself as Jack, and you stumbled into a giant troll’s house after climbing a humongous beanstalk that happened to grow in your backyard overnight.

    I tried to call the bird with an attempt that can be said as “whistling”, although it was more like a “blowing air and making squeaking noises.” The bird, might be offended because I might insulted them in bird language, fluttered to the guest room. Then, the chase started.

    I closed the door so it was only me and the bird in a standoff. The bird scurried between the air conditioner unit and the curtains. I did open the windows, but the window panes are too low for the bird to realize that they could fly out from there (fun fact: Happens a lot, too, with bugs and anything that breathing and flying.)

    At that point, my strategy was to tire the bird out so they will fly lower. I went back and forth, chased the bird, from one side to another. Cue Lil Jon & East Side Boyz’s “Get Low”.

    To the windooooowwwww to the wall.

    We need to put “bird chasing” as part of cardio because whew.

    After an eternity (20 minutes), the bird started to getting tired. I noticed they flew lower, so I grabbed my foldable laundry basket and trapped them. I pulled my son’s shirt from the school event of “Fun Run” (“fun” and “run” should not be in the same sentence) and grabbed the poor terrified little friend.

    The bird chirped loudly, emitted a protest. I muttered a mix of apologies (“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry”) and my mother instinct of scolding (“ha! See?! I told you! I told you it’s dangerous! You still do it! See?? Ah, do it more then! Do it more!”) while I ran back to the balcony and set the bird free. They flew immediately after, to my relief.

    Also, I found some mushrooms on my wooden table in the balcony.

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  • Digital Graveyard

    I never thought too much about digital graveyard until I revisited my bookmarks on my Chrome browser.

    When I was a Happiness Engineer, my Chrome browser was connected to my Automattic profile. For five years, I never used my personal Chrome account. Naturally, the bookmarks went unnoticed.

    After I resigned, I reset my Chrome browser and realized that I still have the bookmarks —- and a lot of them are either outdated (last update 7-9 years ago, even) or inactive. Some have the bloggers already passed away.

    It was sad and bittersweet. It makes me wonder how vast our digital graveyard is. I remember there was an uptick in the Support queue from users a couple of years ago, mainly Indonesians, requesting for their WordPress.com blogs to be set to Private. It was so prevalent, our team had an internal discussion talking about it. The Indonesians staffs, including me, in the discussion put two and two together, and we told the team that the users who asked for their site to be set to Private are most likely those who provide “Jasa Tutup Akun” (Account Closure) services. We noticed that a lot of these blogs were last updated 9-10 years prior, and with rough calculations, the blogger’s age by the request came would be in their early twenties —- the age where one is looking for a job. Their blogs might be created when they were in their teens, and as teens usually do, a lot of the posts could be considered as “cringe” or unfit for their social media profile. As they might have lost their account and blog access, they resorted to these Jasa Tutup Akun services, and these services contact the Support team and request for their (client’s) account to be closed or to set the blog to Private (yes, it’s possible in WordPress.com). The requests were no longer as many as before, though, and I would gander that it’s because the rise of popularity of social media and blog becomes a really niche element in the vast world of the Internet and the team’s effort in reducing such requests.

    Anyway.

    It’s funny, isn’t it, that we are all here just a mere speck of a dust in the Internet, that bits and bytes beeping, the zeros and ones that comprised our username and our meticulously crafted Instagram persona, and it’s easy for us to think that nobody would miss us if we go away and disappear. Then, there is — at least — one stranger out there that might have you in their mind and cherish and cheer for you.

    — This post is dedicated to all bloggers out there

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