28 February 2016
On one fine day in January 2016, I was e-mailed by Siska Doviana, Wikimedia Indonesia’s Chairperson, an invitation to attend a workshop about Pywikibot and Wikidata on early March, in which the trip will be paid for by them. Initially I declined as the session date clashed with one of a planned NTUBS activity, but then there was an update that the workshop was shifted to 27 February, and it was great since it is the beginning of my recess week but I can’t stay there for long as there was NTUBS activity before (Dharma class) and after (meditation retreat) the workshop, and so I told them: I can only be there on Saturday morning and need to leave on Sunday.
Saturday, 27 February 2016
The night before, I was so excited about the trip (not about the workshop, but about meeting the Wikipedia admins) that I had a hard time sleeping. Yet I woke up at 04:30 am to catch my flight on 07:30. Maybe I woke up too early, but better be early than sorry, as what I experienced during catching flight to ICPC Bangkok 2014 (there was an unexpected traffic jam on the expressway). Hence, my effective sleeping time was just around 3.5 hours. After doing all the final preparations, including a light breakfast as I don’t feel like eating, I left my room and called for a taxi. It was around 05:30 am and I was half-awake on the taxi until it arrived at airport on 06:00 am. Quickly I checked in, and as expected, I need to queue up to check-in counter as the check-in machine failed, the staff said it was due to me having only one name. (I remembered that I only succeeded once in dealing with the check-in machine) Going after immigration, I waited in front of the waiting room, annoyed by some “campers” who had their alarm rang all the time yet he were still asleep.
Skipping forward, I didn’t sleep well in the airplane. During the flight, I listened to Ghost Stories and I realized that I was unaware only between “Ink” and “Another Arms”, that means I was only asleep for ~10 minutes. On a typical long nap, I was asleep during Ink and awake only at the loud ASFOS. This was a method to count how long I was asleep during my naps :P
The flight arrived at Soekarno-Hatta. After stepping into the building, I realized that it was years ago since I last visited Jakarta. I visited Jakarta only 4 times before: for BNPCHS 2011 (Oct 2011), for OSN 2012 (Sept 2011), for BNPCHS 2012 (Nov 2011), and the final one was for NTU Scholarship Interview (Apr 2013). Stepping quickly to the immigration area, it was quite different with Kualanamu, as here there are discrimination between foreign passport and Indonesian passport (at KNO, everyone’s treated equally :P). After stepping out of the building, I was notified by Ramzy, another Wikipedian who has arrived an hour before me to meet up so we can share transportation. He’s at terminal 1, and after few minutes I realized that I was at terminal 2.
So I asked around on how to go to Terminal 1. A security guard told me to go to the departure area and take the free shuttle bus. Yeah, it’s free but there’s traffic jam between the inter-terminal roads. I spent ~30 minutes in the trip and finally met him. We quickly took taxi to the event venue.
Around an hour passed and we arrived in front of the road where WMID held the event, the road was very narrow that the taxi apparently cannot go in. So we stopped and started to walk there.
Stepping inside the two-storey building, it was packed with lots of people. Firstly, it seemed customary to shake everyone’s hand. I recognized Gombang, Ezagren, Rachmat04, and Albertus_Aditya. There too, I met Naval_Scene for the first time. Whew, it’s my first “meet-up” with id.wiki admins. So the talk started by John Vandenberg, talking about Pywikibot and PAWS (which is on beta, or alpha?), then Andy Mabett talking about Wikidata and how it is useful to get high-quality structured data. After lunch (box of Nasi Padang set), the talk continued with John talking about what ArticlePlaceholder using data from Wikidata, how we can use Wikidata, and finally some discussion about Wikidata.
Then the talk formally ended, but the chit-chat continues, since we were also told to wait till the handbook about Pywikibot editing is printed and delivered to us. In the meantime, I were given a tour around the building. The building is a rented and shared by WMID and HOT-OSM, well quite a reasonable since OSM is also doing something great like Wikimedia. At the 2nd floor, Hendra told us that there were the book scanner, bought from some European country, to digitize books, and accessible at “bebaskanpengetahuan.org”. Well, the scanner is much bigger than what I saw in the photos. And since it is expensive to buy and deliver, they decided to “copy” and build it themselves. The copies of the book scanner are structurally done, but there were no electronic circuits mounted on them yet. And the chit-chat continues, where I went around and observed the activities of the people there: Ezagren actively doing mapping at OSM, Muhraz running AWB bot on Minangkabau Wikipedia, Albert patrolling id.wiki.
Around 6 pm, me, Ramzy, Ezagren, and Suyono, walked to our hotel through the narrow roads. The hotel itself was modern-looking yet narrow, especially the lifts, where I think at most 6 people can squeezed inside. Me and Ramzy shared a room at level 5, room 512. The room is quite small, has no windows, and I noticed a ventilation shaft that is quite dangerous since one can just open it and fall down to the ground floor. After some rest, we walked to Grand Indonesia mall to look for food. There, since I had no specific food in mind, Ramzy suggested Burger King and we went to search for it, and we went through a long journey to find the outlet. Hmm, something’s strange, the taste of the french fries from this Burger King is different from that of Singapore’s and Thailand’s. After a while, Albert, Cahyo, Rachmat, and Hendra came to join us. And then Albert took us for a walk around the mall, visiting a gallery inside the mall, and then drove us and dropped us in front of the hotel.
We arrived back to our hotel around 9 pm but I already felt really, really sleepy. After a quick shower, I went straight to sleep.
Sunday, 28 February 2016
I was woken up by Ramzy saying goodbye around 6 am, who were leaving for his flight. After that, I went back to sleep for another hour before fully woke up and prepared myself for the day. I packed all my stuffs and went down for the breakfast. The breakfast was just average, nothing special. One thing that I noticed that it was a car-free day and it was raining since early in the morning. I went to check-out and then rode taxi to the airport, where there were no real traffic jam but we need to reroute since the shortcut was to use the main road that were closed for car-free day. The taxi driver was quite friendly and we chit-chatted during the trip. He, who was from Bandung, said that Jakarta is stressful due to the traffic jam, and the people here are getting more and more selfish.
I arrived in the airport, checked in, then browsed the stores around the airport terminal. I went to the bookstore to look around on books, and wondered why Time magazine next day edition has been published. Then I ate Magnum ice cream, drank Teh Botol Sosro, and ate Beard Papa’s cream puff, before boarding the airplane.
Arriving at Singapore, I took a late lunch at the airport and then went back to NTU, and life goes on.
Disclosure: The trip, including accommodation and transportation to and from the venue, was paid for by Wikimedia Indonesia.