Let's Start A Less Cash Society !

Quote :

"Every time we start a new project, we always ask ourselves the same question: What can we do better and different?" - Ricardo Guadalupe

Source: forbes.com

What's Less Cash Society ?

Bank of Indonesia via its Governor, Agus D. W. Martowardojo, has officially announced a program which includes a non-cash national movement or "Gerakan Nasional Non-Tunai (GNNT) on August 14th, 2016 in Jakarta. This program is aimed to enhance the awareness of all society, including businessmen/entrepreneurs also government institutes, to utilize non-cash payment tools while having financial transactions due to its ease, safety, and efficiency.  

In his speech, Agus states that GNNT is introduced in order to increase the awareness of all community to use non-cash instruments, thus, within time, there will be a form of community or society which may prefer to utilizing the instruments for all of their economic activities, which is then called a "less cash society" (LCS). As a commitment to create a broader use of the instruments, Bank of Indonesia declares GNNT as an annual movement which will be supported by numerous activities such as socialization events to acknowledge people more on how to use non-cash instruments for all payments or transactions that they have made.

And for information, following the commitment, Bank of Indonesia has held the socialization events through some roadshows to universities in Banjarmasin, Makassar, Medan, and Semarang from November 1st until December 1st with a theme of "Smart Money Wave". 

How do we progress in becoming Less Cash Society ?

Deputy Director for Department of Payment System Surveillance and Policy, Susiati Dewi, states that currently GNNT has successfully penetrated 24 cities where total of 1.2 million people within have been using non-cash instruments for their transactions, e.g. credit card, debit card, etc. And she adds that this progress is expected to continue so that in 2024 around a quarter of population in Indonesia have finally become aware and familiar with GNNT. 
  
In comparison to other ASEAN countries, the utilization of electronic-based payment transactions in Indonesia is considered relatively low. Having consideration to the number of population and the condition of geographic there is a huge potential for the extension of access to the payment system service in Indonesia. Therefore, Bank of Indonesia as the major player in providing service for payment system in Indonesia does need to have a strong commitment to push forward the utilization of non-cash instruments for all transactions to actualize LCS.

 

Source: McKinsey & Company, Asia Pacific Payments Trend, Global Payment Summit 2013 

Here is a picture of LRT/MRT ticket valid for use in Singapore (left) and Octopus Card valid for use in Hong Kong (right). This is an example on how people (resident, tourist, etc.) together with the Government in Singapore and Hong Kong have been massively progressing the utilization of non-cash tools or instruments for any transactions. Moreover, those instruments, in the form of cards, are not only used for transportation purpose, but (magically) also for shopping, dining, etc.

Source: private docs  

What's the benefit of Less Cash ?

As discussed in many other articles that there are a lot of benefits which we can take from using non-cash instruments, such as:

1. hassle-free, since we do not have to bring a lot of money whenever we want to make any purchase or transaction. We may only need a credit card, a debit card, or even a smart phone and this may help prevent from robbery or other criminal activities.
2. cost-efficiency, since this tools may help reduce the cost for production, distribution, and management of paper-based money.
3. automatically-recorded, since every purchase or transaction made is recorded automatically this may help us in calculating our economic activities, including for the purpose of expense planning and controlling. In addition, this benefit may prevent from "underground economy" or illegal economic activity which is commonly held using cash money.
4. increase money velocity, since the use of this tool shall increase the money circulation within the economic system and this is expected to eventually stimulate the economic growth.  

So, based on brief explanation as above, I would like to ask you all to join in and become less cash society. These are mine where is yours ?? :) 

Source: private docs

Let's support Earth Hour 2011 !!!

On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people, organizations, corporations and governments around the world will come together to make a bold statement about their concern for climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. Earth Hour sends a clear message that people care about this issue and want to turn the lights out on dirty air, dangerous dependency on foreign oil and costly climate change impacts, and make the switch to cleaner air, a strong economic future and a more secure nation. Participation is easy. By flipping off your lights on March 26th at 8:30 p.m. local time you will be making the switch to a cleaner, more secure earth.

England's got Bean

Ever seen this guy?

I know that all of you must have recognized him even since many years ago. A great performer... a great comedian... a great actor... a great writer... you name it! But how far did you know all about him?

Mr. Bean a.k.a. Rowan S. Atkinson was born on 1955 in Consett, County Durham, England. Staring at his silly face nobody would've ever thought that he was one of students in Newcastle University majoring in Electrical Engineering and, even more, he continued his study to pursue an M.Sc. at The Queen's College in Oxford.

Talking about career, he's been well-known as Mr. Bean in a TV serial under the same name / title, Mr. Bean. Following its success a movie entitled "Mr. Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie" was produced on 1997. After approximately 10 years of vacuum another Mr. Bean movie, Mr. Bean's Holiday, was created and published on 2007 to cure the fans' longing for his act. One of his best achievements, he's ever been claimed by "The Observer" magz as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

He's made all people around the world laugh, even myself! Because, frankly saying, lots of my friends told me that I was a quite and serious person. Even worse, some said that I had a bad sense of humor! But thanks to Mr. Bean since he's inspired me a lot to be a more cheerful person with his silliness. But other than that, what's inspired me the most is though his education background was engineering but he'd never shut his eyes for another opportunity even when it came from a very different world.

That's why, if I ever decided to study abroad... it would be in England... and if I chose England... it happened because I wanted to meet him to let him know that he's my inspiration and to encourage him to perform again. Besides, I'd also really like to know and learn about his experiences in dealing with two very different and opposite worlds like science and entertainment plus becoming successful in both of them just like him!

Full credits to leloxord on photobucket.com and Wikipedia.

Bioethanol, One Solution Brings Hundreds of Benefits

As known, global warming has recently been the hottest issue the world’s dealing with. It appears as the consequence of human devastating activities. The impacts of these activities, or known as environmental pollutions, have been proved with the increasing level of ambient air pollution in urban areas as the result of fossil fuels utilization and also the existence of greenhouse gases, such as CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, HFCS, PFCS, and SF₆, in massive amount in the outer of earth atmosphere which will be blocking the re-transfer process of sun partial heat from the earth surface to the outer space. These situations have become the main cause of the rise of the earth temperature globally, or global warming, and climate change in all over the world afterwards.

In other situation, we also have been forcibly engaged to a problem related to cleaner fuels availability which has been a crucial demand among industries, both manufacturer and transportation industries. The global warming phenomenon which we have suffered much from its effects, besides the demand on safety and air quality in urban environment, encourages whoever in this world to improve the technology in order to bring the dangerous emission emitted by fuels to a minimum level.

Based on those problems we need to figure out one real solution such as an alternative source of energy which is more environmentally friendly like bioethanol. Bioethanol can be effectively utilized as an additive compound for gasoline within any composition. The mixture between absolute bioethanol 10% with gasoline 90% is often called as gasohol E-10 where gasohol itself stands for gasoline plus alcohol (bioethanol). The absolute ethanol possesses octane number (ON) of approximately 117 whereas gasoline approaching only 87 - 88. And gasohol E-10 proportionally possesses ON of 92 or equals to Pertamax. Within the composition, bioethanol is often known as the most environmentally friendly octane enhancer which has been able to replace the usage of either TEL (Tetra Ethyl Lead) or Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) in developed countries.

Here is a block diagram of Biofuels (esp. Bioethanol) production

Source: http://lasen.epfl.ch/page40078-en.html

To producing bioethanol, we require raw materials such as:

• Starchy ingredients (e.g. cassava, corn, malt, potato, etc)
• Sweet or sugary ingredients (e.g. molasses or sugar cane)
• Ingredients with cellulose (e.g. logging waste, and agriculture waste such as dried rice stalks, bagasse, corncob, tapioca waste, corn stem, sawdust, etc)

There are a lot of benefits we will earn by using bioethanol esp. for gasohol, such as:

• Creating job opportunity

Job opportunities will be available in plantations which potentially produce bioethanol like cassava and sugar cane plantations.

• Increasing farmers’ income

The needs of bioethanol for gasohol are expected to bring a positive effect to cassava commodity (including sugar palm and sago) which is to have high and stable commercial value in markets. This is simply because cassava farmers’ income has been in the lower level for years and uncertain.

• Minimizing the tendency of global warming and air pollution

Oxygen content in bioethanol, which is 34.7%, makes the fuel combustion finely converted in order to minimize the hazardous emission emitted. Moreover, the Carbon Monoxide (CO) emission of bioethanol is much lower at 19-25% than ordinary fuels’.

Attention Please

Attention Please has just become one of my favorite Japanese drama (dorama) although it's actually an old school because it was first published in April 2006. I disliked this serial drama at first because I thought that Ueto Aya as Misaki Youko, the main character, was acting too excessively. That's why I skipped some early episodes while watching it. But when I finally reached the 8th episode I suddenly found something different and meaningful. What was it? Go check on your own! (he..he)

This comedy drama generally tells us about a boyish-girl named Misaki Youko who's been struggling hard to be a cabin attendant. The story begins with Tsukasa, a guy she has crush on, wondering how she'd look like as if she was a cabin attendant because she never even dresses like any other girl or have girls as friends. That's why she eventually decides to become one promising cabin attendant for Tsukasa.

Unlike the others, she apparently doesn't have the criteria to be one at all but surprisingly she passes the interview session because of her uniqueness plus genuineness that have attracted the judges. So, not for long, she is officially called to join the training in JAL (Japan Airline) in Tokyo. Lots of funny plus foolish things start from here as she is trying hard to be somehow a girl. More than that, Attention Please also gives us lessons about how to get up from failure and start all over again as a survivor, understand the meaning of friendship, and be respectful to others.

Believe me! This J-drama is absolutely worth to watch.

Please leave comments or credits. Thank you.

Numero Uno

 
On July 12-13th last week I and my family spent our little time by visiting Jember, one of county in East Java, to attend my parents' colleague wedding ceremony. Well...I refused to go at first because I thought it was going to be boring and what would I do there? but then I changed my mind, as usual, because I suddenly remembered that I need an elopement or run-away thing after months, feels like years, I've been drowning myself into the process of making my final task. Besides, boring or not wasn't quite certain before I tried myself, right? So, I finally decided to come along. "It'd better be great!".

Day One
Well..nothing I can tell. It was almost 7 hours journey and definitely boring! I did nothing but sleep (he..he) and when I woke up I was forced to hear some old weird songs my mom loved from the radio. Oh my God..I had no choice! What a day!

When we were FINALLY there we directly headed to a hotel my dad had booked the day before.
'Oh..no!', my dad said. The hotel, in fact, wasn't as good as he'd expected before so we changed direction to get away from the hotel and searched for another better. Cheaty, huh? It was all because my dad knew about the hotel from the internet without knowing how it might like so he just reserved rooms like that.

On 1.30 pm, we found one named Mulia Hotel but, unfortunately, there was no room a.k.a ALL BOOKED! We were somewhat disappointed because the hotel is somehow nice and new. So, we desperately continued our hunting until we saw a hotel named Panorama. And there we decided to stay, thank God I found you! 

In the evening, my parents left to the wedding event and I, with my little brother, stayed in the hotel doing our own business (like we did).

Day Two
Woke up early, praying, preparing, having breakfast, and packing. It was like I'd thought..no fun! until my brother called when we were having breakfast and said that Mrs. Khofifah Indar Parawansa was there at the hotel.

She was in Jember to do campaign due to be the next Governor of East Java and surprisingly stayed for a night at the same hotel like ours. Just for your info she affiliates with Mudjiono, ex-TNI (Indonesian Army) member, as her representative. Her sequence number for the election is 1.

I could feel the enthusiasm my mom had and, like I'd thought, she was truly excited to take pictures with Mrs. Khofifah as you can see one above. Left to right : Mom, Mrs. Khofifah, and myself. Well..I was pictured too because I wanted to show you off (he..he).

That was how my journey eventually ended and If you're interested enough to visit Jember these are some recommended hotels just don't imagine them like a five-star hotel in a big city, ok?

Panorama Hotel
Contact : (0331)333666 or www.panoramajember.com
 
Mulia Hotel
Contact : (0331)429999

Please leave comments or credits. Thank you.

Goong Fever

I was kind of thinking that I would be unfair if I didn't share with you my favorite serial drama I've been addicted to since this place is 'where I can share all of my interests to you' (see tag line above). So, this time I'd like to talk about PRINCESS HOURS!!

It is actually a Korean serial drama, also known as Goong, which tells about an ordinary school girl, Shin Chae Gyeong, who lives between a family in arrears. Fortunately (or badly), she's been forcibly engaged with a local charming Prince, Lee Shin, by her late grandfather since she was still a child.

Finally, they get married and all conflicts or troubles appear all the time after that. These simply because she can't resist the way she has to live in a Palace that she's never even imagined before with such manners, disciplines, etc. On the other hand, another Prince, Lee Yul, and Lee Shin's girl friend, Hyo Rin, show up in a wrong time, wrong place, and threaten more to their marriage.

This drama isn't all about love between four (so many huh?) but also about foolish things that Chae Gyeong does as a Cinderella and the most impressive one is you can see a lot of Korean cultures here. Goong successfully represents them through the costumes, drama locations, traditions, and of course, the Royal Policies in which all of the stories begin.

That's why Goong has been a booming K-drama for more than two years and well-known around Asia especially in Japan, China (including Taiwan), Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Korea itself, and many more.

 

Please leave comments or credits. Thank you.