Catatan Riki Akbar

Kegiatan-kegiatan trivial yang mengenyampingkan esensi tugas pokok mulai menyeruak pelan-pelan. Ketika di-ingatkan, diberikan hentakan yang menyebutkan bahwa urusan tugas pokok bukan urusan. Cukup sakit hati mendengarnya setelah banting tulang berupaya memenuhi keinginan dan kebutuhan yang datang berhaluan. Ya memang harus mulai berdamai bahwa kita bekerja bagaikan sapi perah. Yang dimau hanya  uang yang bertebaran, peluh yang bercucuran bukan lagi hal yang harus dipikirkan. Ketika disampaikan, lemparan tuduhan menyakitkan tentang betapa rasa malu menjadi alasan utama peringatan disampaikan, mulai berhamburan. Sakit hati, lelah, tidak mampu memroses kata-kata lagi. Letih tak habis pikir dengan apa yang baru saja terjadi. Terserahlah setelah ini. Tak 'kan ada larang-larang lagi.  Lakukan semaumu, tak ada yang menghalangi. Lakukan sesukamu, kami siap mendukung meski nanah tak teratapi.

Belakangan, saya ketagihan membaca novel-novel Indonesia lawas. Dua di antaranya adalah Orang-Orang Proyek-nya Ahmad Tohari dan Harimau! Harimau!-nya Mochtar Lubis. Dari substansi dan nuansa alur cerita jelas berbeda. Tetapi saya mencermati hal yang langsung menarik perhatian saya dari kedua novel tersebut. Ada kesamaan yang cukup linier jika dicermati. Pada Orang-Orang Proyek, Kabul, seorang insinyur puritan ( so-called ), mati-matian memertahankan idealismenya tentang proyek jembatan yang tepat guna dan berdampak nyata bagi penggunanya. Adalah Dalkijo yang memainkan peran antagonis sebagai atasan Kabul yang menekan Kabul untuk menggadaikan integritasnya dengan mengompromikan mutu proyek yang akan dikerjakan. [ Spoiler Alert! ] Kabul berakhir dengan mundur dari pekerjaannya dan harus menyaksikan hegemoni peresmian jembatan dengan mutu rendah yang penuh dengan kegiatan-kegiatan seremonial. Tak berapa lama setelahnya, jembatan yang dibangun tersebut memang tidak lagi dapat digunakan, se...

For some time now, I'm feeling drained. I lost any sort of appetite for recognition — something I eagerly sought throughout the years. Partly due to the feeling of being left behind and the inability to keep up with all the trends and advancements. Or it's just because I am slowly aging and gradually losing more energy to polish my LinkedIn profile. I will turn 37 this August (insha Allah). I've been quite lazy recently to utilise my brain up to its optimal level. I just completed my reading of Kahneman's Noise ( which took me almost 2 years to complete ) and now am reluctantly reading more serious books — something that's not very typical of me. I've been developing a fascination towards more story-like books: novels, short stories, and other artistic literature . In particular, I have started reading Indonesian novels with marginal themes such as Orang-Orang Proyek . I found myself enjoying Animal Farm too. I don't know. Perhaps I need to try to...

 Yangg, It feels like just yesterday, When our eyes met for the first time. Nope. Kidding. This 8 years have been a roller-coaster. This 8 years might not be what we pictured at the beginning, but they gave us so much more than we ever imagined. From that first sundae cup I gave it to you, to the tongue-dancing fried rice you made last night. Every breath we take, every fight we've fought Every eye-roll you gave me,  Every sigh I let out when looking your clothes cluttered about. It all just pulls us even closer. I can't imagine a single day without you. The Carpenters said: "I won't last a day without you". That might actually be true. Through all the headaches, debates and politics I endure at the office, you grace me with your smile. That lovely smile Through all our fights, however hard they get, a slick kiss always lands on my cheek, melting all the angers away. Now, with two sons joining us on this journey. I love you even more effortlessly, day by day. I co...

  This is unprecedented. Let's keep it this way until the last day of 2025. 

They say life runs in a mysterious way. I guess it's true. Unfortunately, for me, at the moment, it's all going south. And it remains a mystery why every time I get a fresh money, world apparently wants to squeeze the hell out of it. So, at the end of the day, I remain broke.  But, that's the way it works I guess. It cannot go forever like this, can it? Sorry for troubling you guys with this post. I just have no clue right now about what I'm going to do and to whom I need to talk to. Trying to stay alive, I guess. Because too many people rely on me, I cannot die now. I want to live for the next 100 years. I want to live. Cheer up, big boy! Later on, you will come back with a wider smile.

Jadi, baru-baru ini gua meluncurkan (ceile) channel Youtube baru yang ditujukan untuk membantu temen-temen yang kesulitan dalam mempersiapkan diri mengikuti ujian, khususnya di bagian soal matematika, penalaran, dan sejenisnya. Channel tersebut gua namai TheBoardMath So, far udah ada 4 video pembahasan yang meliputi soal-soal matematika yang muncul di TPA, SIMAK-UI, dan UTBK SBMPTN. Ke depan rencananya akan ditambah lagi dengan tipe-tipe soal ujian yang lainnya. Sekarang beberapa video pembahasannya udah gw cluster dalam bentuk playlist . Harapannya temen-temen yang nonton pembahasannya akan punya semacam bank soal yang dikelompokkan dalam playlist  tematik berdasarkan tipe ujian di mana soal tersebut muncul. Konsepnya simpel. Kita bahas soal-soal matematika yang muncul di beberapa ujian. Pembahasannya dilakukan seintuitif mungkin di atas whiteboard , So you get the feel of tackling the problems yourself, on a plain whiteboard—just like our teachers usually do . Channelnya baru aja...

 Jafar terkesiap. "Kau akan ke mana? Apakah Dia akan membuatmu senang? Sadarlah, X. Takkah Kau terpikir bahwa Dia hanya menginginkan hal lain saja darimu? Tubuhmu, uangmu, atau apalah?", Jafar bertanya dengan nafas memburu.  Ia tahu Ia cemburu. Ia tahu ini adalah kiamat kecil baginya. Sekilas tampak dalam kepalanya bahwa besok Ia mungkin tidak akan bertemu lagi dengan X. Bayangan yang dipenuhi dengan gantungan awan yang lusuh ketika pagi membuka halaman baru baginya di keesokan hari. Tidak akan ada lagi X yang tersenyum dengan senyumannya yang paling manis menurut dirinya. "Aku hanya kehilangan rasa cintaku untuk dirimu, Jafar. Aku tidak menghilang. Aku hanya jatuh cinta. Tetapi bukan kepadamu" Jafar berupaya kuat agar air mata tidak jatuh dari kelopak matanya yang kapalan. "Aku kira perasaanku Kau sambut, X. Kita pergi bersama ke mana-mana. Kita menghabiskan sebagian waktu kita berdua. Aku yang meminjamkan telinga bagi setiap ceritamu" X menghela napas. D...

Jafri memutar tuas gas di tangan kanannya dalam-dalam sembari menghirup lembaran oksigen yang terselip di tengah kumpulan asap karbon yang keluar dari berbagai macam knalpot kendaraan lainnya. Tetapi bukan panasnya asap karbon tersebut yang membuat hatinya hangat. Pendaran sinar matahari yang jatuh dari langit yang benar-benar biru di pagi itulah yang menguapkan segala keharuannya. Matanya menatap lurus ke arah kendaraan yang berlari di depannya. Sesekali ia menoleh ke atas, memutarkan pandangannya pada pohon-pohon yang tumbuh di sisi jalanan Pondok Indah. Dan Ketika sepeda motornya meraung berlari memasuki underpass , bibirnya bergerak lirih menyuarakan bunyi yang damai. "Terima kasih."

We have to endure eternal loss of my father You see, I don't have the luxury of coming home like everyone else does. I don't come home very often; that's the truth. But that doesn't make me less sentimental about my own home. As  Munthe   said, "Home is the place where I belong." Before my father passed away, home was the term I often associated with my mother's smile and her gentle kiss on my cheek. A smaller portion of "home" memory recall goes to my father's straight-but-secretly proud face. Never did I imagine I would be trembling and torn apart once I lost my father. I lost my father; we all lost him. I understand the pain my mother has to suffer after she lost her soulmate. It will never be the same. Even Boro the Cat feels sorrow I lost a figure I used to look up to. I no longer have someone I need to prove myself to. I don't hear "Well done, son" anymore, which used to soothe me and boost my self-esteem after I accomplis...

Di sudut bangku A&W Saya tercenung. Terpikir mengenai arus uang yang selalu keluar. Reels Instagram dipenuhi dengan rekomendasi hotel dan paket liburan. Begitu pun dengan DM istri yang dipenuhi dengan review hotel dan tempat liburan eksotis lainnya.  Sementara di lamunan Saya, ada beberapa kompartemen. Di kompartemen satu ada satuan tugas neuron yang mencari cara untuk bisa mendapatkan uang tambahan untuk membiayai tugas dinas luar kota saya di akhir September. Di kompartemen dua ada aliran darah yang deras dipompa ke otak menyiasati biaya pulang kampung untuk menghadiri wisuda. Di kompartemen tiga, ada memori guratan kecewa pada wajah Istri Saya yang kehilangan kepercayaan atas janji liburan yang saya berikan. Himpitan berbeda pun tersaji di kompartemen lain yang tak berani Saya lihat untuk menghindari keringat yang kian tercampur dengan air mata yang mendetail di pipi. Pedih. Nafas kian sesak dan seluruh suara dalam raga Saya memaki tanpa ragu. Duhai Yang Maha, ke manakah kir...

I don't consider myself part of this hype: sandwich generation. How come I become part of this mass whining, pointing sandwich as the scapegoat and labelling all this pain with it. I don't have any sandwiches to feed. I'm broke as fuck. Yet, people around me like stacking their problems on my shoulder. My brain has to work harder than ever to find any other source of income as the existing one won't pay the bills. Ceremonies. Oh, that's the worse. It costs me a lot of money for crap nonsense. I cannot take this anymore. Living with debt I shouldn't have taken. Pile of debts to finance all the luxuries of Instagram stories. Crap! Somebody take me out of this rat race! Everyone smiles. Smile, you pain-in-the-arses! I'm reaching the bottom of my credit card's leftovers. I'm squeezing my fuckin' brain off for another coin. I'm broke haha! I'm fucking broke haha! Every single person still talks about money. About how expensive a bag is. About ...

I'm not justifying the way I behave. But again, I'm not a people pleaser by nature. Hence, on minor occasions, I have to act the way I used to act in order to preserve my own sanity. Life is hard already and your sanity could fly at any point of time. I intend to keep it that way, my routines. Most of the time, I do respect people and their own choice. I am terrible at putting myself in a confronting position toward other people. Oftentimes, I let my inner thought be oppressed to give space for others' perspectives. But again, people need to understand that I need my own space sometimes, just to recharge and restore my own idealism and thoughts. You cannot compare yourself to anyone as it could be very painful to swallow and I hate that, pretty much. Knowing everything runs differently at the moment, I am willing to accept and adapt. But again, I just need a tiny slice of my time to re-heal and re-assign all my stuff to the place they truly belong to. It takes only a couple...

Mengingat perkembangan akhir-akhir ini ketika kita banyak disuguhkan data dan visualisasi yang terdistorsi, ada semacam kewajiban moral dan intelektual untuk mengingatkan kita semua untuk tidak langsung tersilaukan oleh pernyataan-pernyataan yang megklaim merupakan produk dari analisis dan pengolahan data. Penggunaan terminologi yang tidak pada tempatnya (dan bahkan cenderung abusive ) seperti big data dan machine learning harus dikritisi habis-habisan, tidak peduli siapapun yang menggunakan istilah-istilah tersebut. Seringkali saya pribadi jumpai penggunaan tidak pada tempatnya atas istilah-istilah tersebut dilakukan oleh orang-orang yang bahkan tidak mengerti apa 'big data' atau 'machine learning' itu sendiri.  Belum lagi produk yang diklaim berasal dari so-called data analysis  seringkali digunakan sebagai justifikasi pembentukan opini publik atau bahkan lebih parah lagi:  policy . Kental dengan bias dan conflict   of interest .  Trust me, I've seen enough....

I don't really care about all these 'sandwich generation' things I am suffering financially and mentally, yet I need to put my angel face in front of everyone pretending that there is no issue, pretending that life runs as usual I put everyone's expectations on my shoulder and my head every now and then Now I'm ready to explode I am no longer aware of what I do really want I have been too busy becoming a people pleaser On a night like this, with blacked eyes and a tired look in my face, I am screaming loud inside. Breaking all the silence a Thursday night could offer. I love my beloved ones but that seems not enough And I hate people laughing at something I could not afford for And I hate how people belittling anything, anything that my wallet could scream out loud I hate it But what can I do? Seems I have been trying to live by the standard beyond mine I am just tired I am sick of people laughing and smiling at things they put price tags on I just want to live as l...

import datetime epoch_time =  1541290680 result_datetime = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(epoch_time) print(result_datetime)  # prints 2018-11-04 12:18:00 or alternatively, if you're in rush, head to online epoch converter here code source:  https://www.javatpoint.com/python-epoch-to-datetime

  import textwrap wrapper = textwrap.TextWrapper(width=40, initial_indent=" " * 4, subsequent_indent=" " * 4, break_long_words=False, break_on_hyphens=False) print( wrapper.fill (string)) source

dict.get()  is used to get the value of an item in a given dictionary using its key (see W3Schools for further reference). Why do we use e this method? We can access the item value just by calling its key directly, can't we? (e.g. dict[key]) I think the main advantage of this method is we can actually check whether or not a key exists in the given dictionary without having the hassle of getting an error returned if the key does not exist. How come? dict.get()  accepts two parameters: the key itself and ... the value   (optional).  The value  will return a specified value if the key we look for does not exist in the dictionary. Example: Suppose we have a dictionary, namely d, as follows: d = {'a': 1, 'b':2, 'c':3} Suppose we would like to get the value of an item with key = 'z'.  d['z'] will raise an error due to the fact that there is no item in the dictionary d whose key is 'z'.  Now, if we apply dict.get() as follows:  dict.get(...

Hidup dalam lingkaran kecurigaan bikin energi habis. Tiap hari ada aja yang dijadiin bahan bakar untuk bertikai. Udah jengah banget. Udah all out ngasih apapun, tapi tetep dianggep bajingan.  Sekali bajingan tetep bajingan. Hidup bajingan! (baca: gw bajingan)

 There are two ways to get the replication factor of HDFS files.  Suppose we want to obtain the replication factor of the 2016 Olympic's Tweet dataset stored in  /data/olympictweets2016rio.  The first way would be to run the following command from your terminal: which will be returning the replication factor as follows: As shown above, the replication factor is 10. However, in most cases, the default replication factor is 3. The other way would be simply using hadoop fs -ls command. Just make sure you state the path of the dataset from which you want to obtain the replication factor. The above command will be returning the information of the target directory or files. Have a look at the replication factor represented by the second column right after the permission part. Both ways return the exact replication factor, which in this case is 10. reference: StackOverflow