Sun Developer Day 2008, Jakarta

It has been about eight month since my last post here and time seems to be going faster than I felt before. The reason for this long, empty and non productive blog because there is no special events ever occur to me during those passing months.<– I’m lying here …because the truth is I was too lazy and failed or refused to capture every single important events that occur during the past few months.

Anyway.. at 6 November 2008, there was an interesting event that I attended. It was Sun Developer Day 2008 which was held in Shangri La Hotel Ball Room, Jakarta. I’ve got the infos from my friend email. Check out the links he gave me, fill out the registration form, then suddenly I’m registered and bound to go to this event.

Shangri La Hotel is located in Jakarta Selatan and luckily I live there (South Jakarta.. not Shangri La). The problem is.. it was Thursday and the event start at 8.00 am. At this rate the usual thing on this route is a long traffic jam. I decided to take the Busway as my transportation to avoid this traffic jam. I’m using this transportation last year during 2007 when I was working in Jakarta Pusat. I was hoping this experience helps me calculate the required time and prepare for the trouble that I’m going to face.

At 07.00 in the morning I was going from my house to the nearest busway shelter (Ragunan Shelter). As I expected, there was a long queue of people who also take the busway, mostly are going to work. But this time the queue was quite organized compared in 2007. I’ve managed to make an illustration of the queuing system (see below), I hope this would someday help me create a better queuing algorithm.

The shelter has 2 tickets counter, and 4 types of queue. The dark blue queue is to get the ticket, it has about 25 to 40 meter long. …aaaand after about 15 minutes I’ve manage to get the ticket and start to join the “real” queue to take the bus. The green queue on the left side is for those who want to take a seat in the bus. The light blue on the right side is for those passengers who are in a hurry and willing to stand on their feet in the bus.

I choose the light blue queue on the right side, this final queue is about 50 – 70 meter long, maybe more. The queue on the left (green) is relatively shorter than the right (light blue) but it takes longer than the light blue queue, because the bus takes more capacity for the people who are willing to stand on their feet compared to those who wanted to take a seat. Besides at this hour everyone seems to be in such a hurry, they’re also choose the light blue queue.

I was able to prove this by observing other people who takes the green queue in almost the same time when I join the light blue queue. ……………aaaand after about more than 30 minutes of waiting and standing in queue, I finally get myself inside the bus. For those passengers that I’m observing they are still waaaay back on their queue. The fastest of course is the yellow queue, but unfortunately I’m not an old people nor pregnant woman, and I don’t consider my self as a disable person.

The trip from Ragunan to Dukuh Atas 2 shelter takes about 30 minutes. I take the shelter bridge which connect to Dukuh Atas 1 shelter passing through Jendral Sudirman statue, and Start walking towards to Shangri La Hotel. The distance from Dukuh Atas 1 shelter to the hotel is about 500 meter.

The Ball Room is on the 2nd floor, and when I’m at the registration, I was asked for my business card to register. At the time I don’t have it, and then I saw young peoples holding a print out paper of the email registration confirmation. Suddenly I’m searching for the hotel’s business center. By asking from the hotel employee, I know the business center is on the 3rd floor. After I got there, I’m asking the person in charge if I can used the Internet and printer. He told me that the cost to use the internet is Rp. 55.000 for half an hour. I told him that I just want to print something from my email and ask him to charge only for the printer. What a relief that he is agreed to my request, nice person.

He told me that the price to print for a single paper in color is Rp. 35.000, and then ask me whether I want to print it in color or black & white. Remembering one of my Physics class, the lecturer told me that 1 meter and 10 meter are both nearly equal to nothing compared to 1 kilometer. Then without asking him further question, I told him to print my registration paper in color. Done printing my registration confirmation he writes me a receipt and gave it together with my registration paper.

Back at the registration, I find no difficulties with my printed registration paper. I was managed to get the boarding pass, and without further waiting I walk into the Ball Room and was officially join Sun Developer Day 2008. I miss the opening.. and when I was inside the Ball Room, it’s like an illusion inside an airplane. Maybe it was some kind of genjutsu (Naruto term). When I started to focus on the stage, the speaker talks about Java Now and in the Future: Java SE 6 and 7. Next is a Demo Shootout from each speaker, I remember a nice JavaFX animation demo is done by Chuk Munn Lee.

At coffee break, the MC make an announcement that the airplane is about to transit in Narita airport. The audiences now starting to move outside the airplane Ball Room. The situation outside the Ball Room has changed compared to when I was moving into the Ball Room, It’s like another genjutsu making of Narita airport. Modern Japanese song is played to make the illusion stronger. Some of them I can’t recognize, there’s a song I remember, it was Utada Hikaru’s first love. I love the piano version better tough, because it gives me a better and relaxing mood in contrast with the lyrics…strange huh.

When finished with coffee break, or I rather should say tea break, because I’m taking tea instead of coffee. I was inside the ballroom again, and this time I choose to have the front seat to get a better look on the screen. I don’t quite remember the topics after the coffee break. My guess is about Web Application Development with Grails, and then Netbeans Profiling capabilities. Finally it’s lunch time, I’ve managed to adapt with the situation and break from the illusion, or maybe the genjutsu performer are running out of their chakra.

After having lunch, the next speakers was from Oracle Indonesia, and then from the founder of JUG Indonesia Frans Thamura. He was giving a kind of motivational speech to the audiences. A kind of speech that eventually motivate a lazy person such as my self to start writing blog. Another representative came form Indonesia is SEAMOLEC. The speaker is a bit awkward, well if I was in her shoe.. to speak in front of hundreds of people can be quite a breath taking experience.

This is the first time I join Sun Developer Day, and the truth is I don’t know the peoples who revolve around this community before. Everything went smoothly, and at the second coffee break I took a photo of my self in front of an “airport image”, making it looks like I was really in some kind of an airport. This photograph will be printed on a post card, and I planed to take it after the closing ceremony.

Good thing happen to me in the lucky draw session near the closing. Without a single sign from last night dream, suddenly I won a door prize. There are three phase of the lucky draw, each will be won by three person. I was in the second phase, along with another guy and a girl wearing hijab.

When the closing ceremony is over, I rush into the photo booth to grab my photograph. But unfortunately I was unable to find my photograph. There is another guy who was also had the same situation like me. This guy asked the photographer to print his photo again. I was also ask the same thing, and then a couple of minute later I have my photograph printed, fresh from the printer.. nice.

Finally I was going back home.. following the same route taken in the morning. And there are a lot of stuff that I’m gonna try, from what I’ve been shown here at Jakarta, Sun Developer Day 2008.

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