Inti : Kita tidak boleh merasa punya wewenang atas sesuatu yang tidak bisa kita putuskan 100 %

Example 1:

Kamu merasa bahwa salah 1 anggota keluarga mu anggaplah si X ini lagi free waktu weekend.
Lalu kamu bikin janji dengan teman2 dan berharap bahwa si X ini lah yang akan mengantar mu
ke tempat meeting point dengan teman2. Tapi pada hari H ternyata si X ini sudah ada janji dan tidak
bisa mengantar kamu. Akhirnya janjinya cancel hanya karena kamu merasa kamu punya control atas
kegiatan si X.

Example 2:

Kamu adalah seorang Ibu, lalu kamu tahu bahwa salah 1 anak kamu akan keluar negeri beberapa waktu
dan rumahnya kosong. Lalu dengan keputusan sendiri tanpa make sure dengan si anak tersebut kamu
langsung bilang ke anak yang lain lagi bahwa rumah itu akan kosong jadi bisa ditinggali.
Tetapi ternyata setelah ditanya lebih lanjut, karena berbagai alasan tertentu jadi tidak bisa
ditinggali. Ini juga merupakan kutukan dari pengetahuan, karena si Ibu merasa mengetahui segala sesuatunya
dan memutuskan sendiri tanpa memastikan dengan empunya rumah. Padahal rumah itu adalah
milik anaknya, bukan miliknya

Example 3:

Kamu mau bikin party. Lalu kamu undang beberapa orang. Ada yang punya mobil dan ada yang tidak.
Kamu lalu berharap yang tidak punya mobil semuanya bisa ikut dengan yang ada mobil dan semuanya bisa OK.
Lalu kamu dengan yakinnya mengajak orang lain lagi dan bilang oh si A, si B, si C dll semuanya sudah confirm ikut loh.
Eh tapi ternyata setelah di cek lebih lanjut si C sebenernya belum confirm , lalu si B juga ternyata hanya confirm
kalau si C confirm dan lain sebagainya. Disini kesalahannya adalah karena kamu merasa semua orang pasti ingin
datang ke party mu. Padahal kamu tidak tahu diluar itu mungkin dia punya jadwal lain yang harus dia sacrifice dll.

Example2 diatas diambil dari orang2 yang dekat dengan saya.

Saya tegaskan lagi inti yang ingin saya katakan adalah : kita tidak berhak dan tidak punya wewenang untuk mengambil keputusan
atas orang lain hanya berdasarkan karena pengetahuan kita. Jadi tetap harus di confirm ulang ke orang tersebut.

I don’t need to argue that my knowledge is still notthing compared to them but I realized there are tendency that when you know something very well and started to talked about it to other people, subsconciously you may think that person that you talked too have the same level of knowledge with you. Which is not always a good think.

Especially when the topic reach some religious thought, well of course it’s okay for someone to know their religion very well and could tell anything inside out of their religion, but hoping someone other to make the same level of faith just because you’re knowledgeable about some religion is not something that I fond of.

Okay reigious topic did have tendency to became like that. But even in another topic sometimes thinks like this happened too.

For example:

Someone gave you media file because they think it’s really good and helped them, so you put one quick glance and decided to read more when you have time and enough interest. In the next day, that someone asked you how is the book etc and you couldn’t tell because you only have a glimpse impression which is very normal and he got mad. This is in my thought what is to be called the curse of knowledge and faith.

Summary:

What I want to tell basically is that just because you have some knowledge and faith, you couldn’t just expect every other person you talked to could have that same knowledge and faith too. Even you tried to give books, cd, etc but it’s not in your rights to make someone other to read or watch everything as you hoped for.

Anyway regarding to job hunting, here are some my chronological breakdown

• January 2010, Decided to start look for another job
• January – July 2010, go to several interview, but very limited since I dont have N1 certification
• July 2010, Taking N1 Japanese certificate exam to increase my probability to get hired (I did pass)
• July  2010 – January 2011, After getting N1, lots of job offer came and when to a lot of interviews
• January 2011, Managed to get to the final interview of the company that I really wanted to join
  However with the reason that suddenly they changed the job requirement to at least Master degree holder
  I didn’t get the job
• February 2011, Quit my job in Japan, Head section and Chief of HR tried hard to make me stay there by
  promising promotion, better income etc. But it’s too late I already made up my mind
• March 2011, Came back to Indonesia (not because of the earthquake, I already resign at February)
• March 2011 – April 2011, just within 1 month time span I had 4 interviews in Jakarta and 11 interviews in Singapore
  (Yes I did went to Singapore too) and passed most of the interviews

After summarizing all the company that wanted to hire me, I made top 3 list (all of them are Japanese company)

1. General Trader (Import Export) in Jakarta
2. Bank in Singapore
3. Telecom Company in Jakarta

After having hard time and some dilemma to choose, I decided to join 1 of them and start working since end of April 2011.
Currently when I’m writing this, I haven’t become their permanent worker yet. But so far so good, I’ve met a lot of
great people since I joined.

Taken from the official japan red cross’ website

http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/relief/l4/Vcms4_00002070.html

This is the account number information

Name of Bank: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Name of Branch: Ginza
Account No.: 8047670 (Ordinary Account)
SWIFT Code: SMBC JP JT
Payee Name: The Japanese Red Cross Society
Payee Address: 1-1-3 Shiba-Daimon Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN

I’ve donated this morning and I encourage anyone who live in Japan’s Tokai,Chubu and Kansai area (and all other area that weren’t affected by the disaster) to donate if you have some money to spare.

Today I have an interview session via Skype from Japan with the prospect employer in another country. At morning around 10.00 Am I got phone call that he wanted to change the schedule from 13.00 Pm to 16.00 Pm. Which is good for me because I have more time to prepare myself.

At around 15.00 Pm while I’m preparing for the interview session (wearing suits, necktie etc) the quake came in. It is not my first earthquake experience but it is definitely one of the biggest I’ve ever encounter. I tried to check to Japan’s earthquake site but the site itself was down. So I checked the American website and found that the epicenter of 7.9 earthquake is 700km apart from my place. Later on it got updated to 8.9.

The interview went on at 16.00Pm smoothly without the quake.

After the interview I went to BBC news website and see a shocking image of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. It is really scary, just like watching armageddon sci-fi movie.

My actual plan is to go to tokyo yesterday at March 10th, but because the ticket has been sold out, I changed it to March 11th. And guess what, at March 11t, the earthquake hit and my destination place is also got hit by it. I couldn’t imagine if I DO go to tokyo at March 10th. I guess I’ve been blessed by unknown force.

Recently I just got myself a portable multimedia gadget that need wi-fi for its internet access. So I need someway to share my internet connection from my laptop to that device.

After quick search I found connectify and tried it. At first I ran into some issues, not because the connectify itself but because I never really use my wireless card on my laptop and didn’t know that it had some issues from day one. After re-installing the driver for it from the manufacturer’s support site, the wireless card got detected and it ready to go.

So basically connectify make it really simple for you to share the internet connection.  You just need to provide SSH ID (the name of the wi-fi network you want to create), the password to join, and the internet connection that you want to share from your PC and that’s it, connectify will do the rest for you. (*note: if you are a tech savvy, you could create the batch for this connection without connectify, but if you are just a normal user than go for connectify to make your life easier)

Today when I boot up my laptop I got notification that newer connectify is up. I’m currently on version 2.1 and 2.2 is the newer one. Without hesitation I upgrade the version to 2.2

But ironically it didn’t work. So I reverted back to version 2.1 and everything went OK again. I guess the saying don’t fix it if it ain’t break holds true here. Well for the time being I will use version 2.1 for now.

Here are the few first numbers : 1 0 1 2 9 44 265

The number represent the possibility of different fixed point on sequences’ permutation.
Let’s assume the above numbers as R and N is the fixed point so
for N = 0 -> R = 1
for N = 1 -> R = 0
for N = 2 -> R = 1
for N = 3 -> R = 2
for N = 4-> R = 9

To explain further for different fixed point 0 -> it means all the fixed point are already alligned so there is only 1 possibility.
For N = 1 or different fixed possibility equal to 1, the possibility is 0, why zero you ask ? here is a little example :

ABC -> original position

1 different position means 2 correct position, assume A and B are already in right position, the only left position is C, since A and B already correct, C will ALWAYS be correct, therefore the possibility for only 1 different position is ZERO

for N = 2

AB -> original position
BA -> 1 different fixed position

for N = 3

ABC -> original position
ACB -> A is in correct position therefore it doesn’t satisfied 3 different fixed position
BAC -> C is in correct position therefore it doesn’t satisfied 3 different fixed position
BCA -> Satisfied N =3
CAB -> Satisfied N =3
CBA -> B is in correct position therefore it doesn’t satisfied 3 different fixed position

So after examining the pattern you can see that


Ri = (i-1) * R(i-1) + R(i-2) for R1 = 1 and R2 = 0


Some chinese (I pressume he’s chinese judging from the username) on facebook wall put comment that he found another more difficult formula but work for this Rencontres Number. it went like this

Ri = i! * ( 1/1! - 1/2! + 1/3! .......... 1/i!)

note that the ‘+’ operator has to be done prior to ‘-’ operator.

Okay since we’ve covered the rencontres numbers, let’s go to what it has to do with combination.
You could google the facebook hacker cup wine tasting if you want to see the original problem definition, but let’s make it simple here. For example there are 13 glasses and you need to guess which glass belong to whom and if you at least guess 10 glass correctly, you won. So how many way you could win the game.

Answer :

multiply each combination of the glass with number of different fixed possibility that we covered earlier

=13c13 * (0 different fixed possibility) +13c12  * (1 different fixed possibility)+ 13c11 (2 different fixed possibility)+ 13c10 (3 different fixed possibility)

=13c13 * 1 + 13c12 * 0 + 13c11 * 1 + 13c10 * 2

=1 * 1 + 13 * 0 + 78 * 1 + 286 * 2

=1 + 0 + 78 + 572

=651

note that ncr means n! / r! – (n-r) !   —>  the combination of r number of n object.

Peeking some accepted source code from korean (again judging from his username) on facebook, He solved this problem by using memoization for combination generated by pascal triangle and also memoization of rencontres number itself (using above formula for dynamic programming approach).

Background

At early of this year, I saw one of my friend’s profile on facebook sharing the page to facebook hacker cup. Well seriously at that time I thought it is a security breach competition or something similar so I don’t really bother to take a look.

Few days just before the qualification round started, I took a peek at the facebook hacker cup page just for curiosity. To my surprise here, this is not a hacking (in term of security lingo) competition, but this is a programming competition. Now me myself haven’t join this kind of competition since I graduated from college. I did participate in a lot of programming contest during 2002-2005 timeframe where I went to college though. But anyway I see this as a good chance to reboot my programming skill again and decided to enter the competition. Luckily for me it wasn’t too late for me.

Reading the rules and terms of the contest, someone posted that the rules are almost a copy-paste from google code jam. Since I never joined GCJ (but I do know their presence), I googled the gcj to read their terms and yes…. it is like 90% of the rules are copy-paste from GCJ. But here I learned something new for me. All this time I misunderstood between the ACM-ICPC and GCJ, I thought they targeted the same segment. While ACM-ICPC can only be joined if you are currently enrolled in University, but GCJ is free for all. I always thought GCJ is also for University’s student only, which is why I never bother in the first place to participate in GCJ after I graduated.

Learned up to this point : GCJ is free for all

Qualification Round

On qualification round, I chose the 3rd (string manipulation) problem and after I solved it I went to hit the submit. And ow boy here is me, a windows boy… when I downloaded and opened the input file, on notepad I am surprised that the format is not….. formated. So basically I am kinda panicked a little bit and try to format it again myself. but Alas when I tried to run it I got an error, so there is a bug on my code, after tracking and solving the bug, I ran out of time (the timer is only 6 minutes). But actually later on, they lifted the timer restriction on qualification round and my solution for this 3rd problem got accepted.

At that time I thought I was already failed at 3rd problem, which leave 1st and 2nd problem. The first one is math and the second one is map traversing problem. I decided to do the math one and hoping this time I could pass the time limit. and.. Yes I passed it.

Learned up this point : Unix and Windows have different new line character set and notepad on windows couldn’t detect it and shows it as whitespace . But the program will know that it is a new line so you don’t need to reformat. Wordpad on Windows could detect this new line.

Round 1 A

Goes to Round 1A. well actually there is only 1 problem that I have a chance to solve and still I couldn’t derive a solution in time. But since there were a lot of bugs from facebook itself this round got cancelled.

instead they gave Round 1 A Reprise. Well, still it was a tough one to compete, I ended up solving nothing but learned a great experience.

Learned up to this point : Probability theory, Pascal Triangle for Combination, Rencontres Number theory.

Round 1 B

Round 1 B was held on weekday, and in Japan it’s early morning at 6 PM. I got a job, although I could just take a paid day off but I didn’t. After reading the problem after, if only I joined this round I could just might pass because one of the problem is a widely known Josephus problem.

Round 1 C

Decided to do the prime related problems and really make sure my code could pass the time limit, and luckily it did pass. The timer is 6 minutes and my code run for about 4 minutes.

And then move on to the map traversing related problem, I actually solved it but it was too late. if only I had 3  more minutes, I could get this one accepted too. After the contest over, someone posted the right input and output for the problem and I tried in on my program and it passed. So I did solve it but couldn’t solve it fast enough because some stupid bugs.

But I already got 1 problem solved so I move to the next round.

Learned up to this point : Always watch for your global and local var (this is the bug that I didn’t find fast enough), memoization (array storage) could be used for approximately the limit size of int. Dynamic programming for map traversing using recursion is easier than I thought

Round 2

A tough one for me. I couldn’t solve even 1 problem. actually only 150 people that managed to atleast solved 1 problem with 5 people solved all of them perfectly.

Considering more than 120.000 people “like” the facebook hacker cup page so let’s assume they all registered, only around 5000 people passed the qualfication round, after that only around 1600 people passed the 1st round and only 150 people passed the 2nd round.

Congratulations for the first top 25 that will compete for grandprize.

Misc

although this time I used C#, but seeing the available solution that are dominated by C++ I also learned a few things I didn’t know until now.

Learned things regardings to C++: how to use preprocessor directive like to develop custom looping function and other cool stuff (for example #if 0)

Currently I only have 3 Play Arts Kai figure, which is solid snake, dante and ezio.

And in my opinion this one, ezio, is by far the best figure by Play Arts Kai.

*note :
although Dante looks nice in this figure, but the hand is pain in the ass and in my opinion, defected by design. I ended up breaking some part in the hand by purpose and used glue for it to handle the gun.