Bulan Baru – Semangat Baru – Hidup Baru (Semoga)

Kalau diperhatikan sudah sebulan lebih gue mengabaikan blog ini. Tak ada satu tulisan pun yang gue terbitkan selama Bulan Oktober. Belakangan ini gue sepertinya sedang berada di titik terendah dalam hidup gue, semua serba tidak jelas. Lebih lanjut tentang hidup gue di tulisan berikutnya. Sekarang udah Bulan Novemebr dan gue memaksa diri gue untuk nulis blog lagi. Seperti biasa di blog ini setiap awal bulan gue awali dengan penjelasan mengenai tempilan baru yang gue pake dan rencana / perkiraan isi blog yang akan gue tulis. Di bulan Oktober gue cuma sempat mengganti tampilan tanpa menulis apapun. Target / rencana menulis di Bulan September pun tak tercapai. Yah, emang belakangan ini gue sedang ga jelas, ga jelas dalam segala hal. (tuh kan.. sekarang aja gue nulisnya udah mulai ngelantur & diulang-ulang..)

Langsung aja, di Bulan November ini gue menggunakan tema tampilan DePo Masthead. Bulan lalu gue menggunakan tema tampilan Day Dream. Gue ga ngejelasin apa-apa deh tentang tema tampilannya soalnya gue ga tau mau nulis apa & blom bener-bener niat nulis.

Lalu, rencana isi blog gue bulan ini ga muluk-muluk dan hampir sama dengan dengan yang gue tulis awal September lalu. Gue pengen sebisa mungkin nulis tentang pengalaman gue selama belajar Bahasa Mandarin di Taiwan. Gue yakin tulisan itu bakal berguna karena informasi resminya di internet masih sangat kurang. Trus gue juga pengen mencoba menulis sebagai cara untuk merenung ke diri gue sendiri untuk mengatasi ketidakjelasan diri gue belakangan ini. Ga tau apa yang bakal gue tulis, pokoknya tulis aja lah. Semoga rencana gue kali ini bisa berhasil! Amin.

Salam,

Saya mengucapkan Selamat Hari Raya Idul Fitri 1430 H kepada anda yang merayakannya!

Minal Aidin Walfaidzin! Mohon maaf lahir & batin!

salam,

The first week of seventh semester has passed and it seems that this semester is gonna be tough (you’ll know why)! I get like the “All Star” lecturers of Binus University, meaning that they are (probably) the best in their field Binus has (at least that’s what I got from the first impression). Not that I always get poor lecturers before but it looks like they, not like most of my previous lecturers, are very serious and kinda “frightening” since the beginning. But yeah, who don’t do that! Every lecturer always try to afraid us in the beginning! Well..we’ll see!

So, here are little summary of my first week!

Monday – Computer Networks
This is the first day and it’s hard to face the fact that I have to deal with Jakarta’s TERRIBLE HORRIBLE traffic again EVERYDAY! It’s worst because I take the public bus. (I will NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER get used to this traffic!!!) My class is at 9.20 am to 1 pm. And because this is the first day I DIDN’T come late! Yeaaayy! But in order to do that I have to wake up really early. (=_= Zz) Thanks to the bad traffic I already mentioned!

The lecturer is Mr. Jonathan Lukas who was my lecturer in the first semester for Introduction to Information Technology. I’m fine with him but from what I experienced I have to be careful on the exam! He said that Computer Networks is what he masters best so he asked us to be serious and pay attention in class and we’ll learn a lot from him. He reminded us of his class’s rules & behaviours and he also asked us to do all the assignments on binusmaya… Uhh!

Tuesday
Character Building 4
I supposed to have lab at 7.20 am (isn’t that crazy!) but lab always starts on the second week so I didn’t have to wake up at 5 am this week. The next class, Character Building 4, is at 9.20 am and I came late! (boo!) When I entered the class I saw the lecturer was a tall almost bald man. It turned out that he is Mr. Antonius Athosoki Gea, one of the authors of this course text book. So, we will learn about relation with the world (whatever that means) and he talked about ethics. Well, not as deep as you probably imagine. It was mostly about definitions & terms about ethics. He asked us to discuss about environmental damage & conservation in the binusmaya discussion forum as the first assignment! Great, I got an assignment on the second day! (-.-; )

Language & Automata Theory
Right after Character Building 4 is Language & Automata Theory and I didn’t know what this is about at all. The lecturer is Mr. Leo something… I forget his name… :p He is young and from what he talked I’m sure he graduated from somewhere abroad (lulusan luar negeri). He started the lecture with a lot of class rules and requirements for submitting assignments & homeworks homeworks “>blah blah blah and he said that there’s gonna be a lot of assignments and homeworks in his class. Somehow I think he is like a robot. His appearance and the way he speaks… I don’t know… Maybe it’s just me! When he started the lesson he just read the power point and I totally had no idea what he was talking about! Oh, and he gave us homework too!

Wednesday – Quality Control Statistics
I supposed to have lab too (at 7.20 am again!). After lab is Quality Control Statistics and… I came late again! But it’s OK, I was still considered Attend (hadir)! hahaha… The lecturer is Mr. Makmur Bukit which I think is a weird name because makmur means “prosperous” and bukit means “hill” so his name would means “prosperous hill”. He is old and he seems nice. That day we learnt about quality, the definitions, dimensions, and so on. He gave us homework to explain about one of the dimensions of quality. Three days of new semester with three homeworks… Nice…

Thursday
Multimedia Systems
Somewhat.. I keep repeating my old bad habit of coming late. Even though I was coming with Indra that day (Merry left her helmet to me so I could use it). The lecturer looked fine when I & Indra entered the class but when more & more students showed up late it’s obvious that she didn’t like late students, not like those who don’t care about students coming late. Her name is Ms. Adriani Halim. She began the class talking about rules and stuff (again… too many rules!!). And it also clear that she wants us to pay full attention during the lecturer. What a strict person! After the class Dea told me that she is the IDC leader (which means she is really good at multimedia) and she is actually a nice person and she gives score objectively. Hmm.. that’s a good thing! Just wait & see…

Expert Systems
The next class is Expert Systems. I had no idea who the lecturer would be and it turned out to be Mr. Tri Djoko Wahjono, my previous lecturer for Algorithm Design & Analysis and Artificial Intelligent and one of the senior lecturer of Binus University. So this is my third class with him. So far I like him. Btw, he got his master degree in US which add another argument to this “All Star” lecturer. He gave us what he called “pop quiz” about something like defining family tree or something… I forget.. hahaha…

Friday – Computer Architecture & Organization
Did I come late this time? NOO! The lecturer is Mr. Handi Muljorejo and apparently Merry recognized him as her friend’s dad. What a small world! Like others, he talked about stuff in his class blah blah.. He said he has taught this course for years (so he is another senior lecturer). It looks like this course is gonna be hard. >.<

Saturday – Applied Geometry 2
Yes, I know what you are thinking! I DO HAVE class on saturday on the worst time ever, 1 pm to 5 pm!! That’s lame I know but blame Binus since I didn’t arrange my own schedule! The lecturer is Mr. Sangadji, the same lecturer I have on Applied Geometry 1. I have no doubt on his skill because he has all bachelor, master, and Ph.D degree in mathematics! Plus he got his master & Ph.D in US! What can be better than that?! But the thing is he has some difficulty or I can say “different way” in communicating with us (like any genius in the world has). I know he is a nice person but the whole class barely understand what he’s trying to teach. Like how he turns the simple thing to looks like a difficult complex concept what so ever. And he said that the exam will be open book (not like the previous Applied Geometry 1) which indicate this course is gonna be hard!

So that’s my first week of this semester and with lecturers of that qualificaton and demand such a high expectation this semester gonna be a lot of work & effort! Other things I noticed are the attending system now uses our binusian flazz card and apparently Binus now has “megastore” on the 1st floor which I barely seen… What the heck happened to my university?!?!?

Kali ini gue udah bener-bener males semales-malesnya sampe-sampe “Tampilan Bulan Ini” yang biasanya gue terbitkan tiap awal bulan baru gue terbitkan sekarang. Ini karena sepulang dari Taiwan gue mengalami apa yang gue sebut sebagai “sindrom pasca meninggalkan Taiwan”. Tapi sekarang gue nulis ini, meskipun ini juga agak dipaksa-paksa…

Jadi tampilan bulan ini adalah Cutline. Sebenernya kalo sesuai urutan abjad harusnya tampilannya tuh Connections tapi karena tampilan itu udah pernah gue pake jadi ya gue lewatin aja. (sebenernya Connections udah gue pake sejak awal September, baru hari ini diganti jadi Cutline) Dan karena urutan selanjutnya, Contemp, juga udah pernah gue pake jadi dilewatin juga deh! Trus karena bulan kemaren gue jarang ngeblog karena lagi di Taiwan dan karena gue juga lagi males jadi gue ga nulis komentar apa-apa tentang tampilan bulan lalu & bulan ini. Sejauh ini sih gue suka lah!

Lalu, kalo biasanya tiap awal bulan gue cuma nulis tentang perubahan tampilan blog gue kali ini (meskipun males) gue coba nulis juga tentang apa yang kira-kira pengen gue tulis di blog gue selama sebulan (atau lebih) ini. Gue harap dengan begini gue bisa lebih rutin nulis blog. Ini juga sebabnya judul tulisan ini berubah menjadi “Blog Gue Bulan Ini”.

Jadi, ke depannya gue pengen nulis tentang liburan gue di Taiwan. Kali ini gue harus bener-bener berhasil! Soalnya tahun lalu waktu gue berencana nulis pengalaman gue di Taiwan malah akhirnya terlewatkan begitu saja tanpa nulis apa-apa! T.T Trus gue juga pengen nulis tentang rencana hidup gue. Gue ngerasa udah saatnya gue punya tujuan hidup yang lebih jelas (tertulis) dari pada sekedar ada di pikiran tapi susah untuk dilaksanakan. Dan gue juga pengen menyelesaikan beberapa rancangan (draft) yang ga selesai-selesai. Semoga gue bisa ngejalanin semua dengan baik!

Salam,

In the begining of July, I wrote that I want to write my experiences in Taiwan in this blog. But the fact is I’ve abandoned my blog for a long time, not because I’m not using it anymore but it’s more because I only had limited time to access the internet back at Shida. And just for you know, it takes me a lot of time just to write a single post. Plus after I left Shida I went to Hong Kong & Macau and I’m totally lost contact with the internet.

I’ve been home for a few days now, have a lot of flexibility to online anytime but still I’ve never log on to my blog…until now. Well.. I still want to write down my summer trip in Taiwan as much as I can remember but the problem mostly is I don’t know how and what to write. I had difficulties to express my mind, even when I wrote in Bahasa Indonesia. And now I’m trying to write my blog post in English. So obviously it’s harder than before. Let’s hope I can accomplish my “mission”! LOL

Because typhoon is coming to Taiwan so we didn’t have class today BUT we can’t go outside the building AT ALL. The weather was not as bad as I thought. It was rain since last night (untill tonight) with heavy wind blew. It’s kinda creepy if you heard the sound of the wind from the window. I saw in the news the weather was much worst in Taichung. Luckyly, nothing bad happened here.

So…here are what I did in this “Typhoon Day”. I slept at 3 am last night because I helped Henry wrote a message to Cathy, our xiao lao shi, and I woke up at 11, had tuna burger for breakfast, went online for a while untill the lunch arrived, and then had bian dang for lunch. After that, I went to Alex’s room to played his guitar cause I hadn’t practice since I’m here. I practiced some pieces, talked about guitar with him, watched some guitar videos on youtube, and listened to my new Andrés Segovia CDs that I bought few days ago at Eslite Book Store. Btw, we all got a set of snacks for this typhoon day. I was there untill about 5 pm and then I went to auditorium to watch movies. I watched “Taken” and then had J & K Restaurant’s niu rou fan that I ordered before for dinner. J & K was the only option for dinner. Maybe because only them that provided delivery today. At night, I played DotA at the computer lab, went to my xiao mei mei a.k.a Tiffany’s room to chat, learnt how to play ma jiang in the basement and now I’m going to sleep. Well it’s kinda boring day but it’s not that bad. Night!

Tampilan bulan ini adalah ChaoticSoul. Tampilan ini masih bernuansa hitam cuma bedanya sama tampilan bulan lalu kolom widget-nya ada di kanan. Terus di atasnya ada header yang bisa dipasang gambar. Uniknya header-nya ini dibagi dua, kanan & kiri, jadi gambar yang kita upload bakal kebagi dua. Sisanya kayaknya standar-standar aja.

Terus mengenai tampilan bulan lalu, so far so good. Gitu aja deh.. Gue lagi males nulis. hahaha

Salam,

So, from now on until mid August I will write about my experience in Taipei joining OCAC Language Study Program. For those who want to know what is that, I maybe will write about this program later. And because I never write my blog in English before I want to write it in English this time so that my english speaking friends can read it too. If you find any mistakes (typo, wrong grammar, incorrect words or terms, etc) just let me know! :)

Day 1 - July 7th, 2009

This program actually started on July 6th but because I still had my final exam on that day (thx to my damn university! :-( )  I couldn’t come on time. So, I missed everything on the first day: the Opening Ceremony & the Introduction.

The Flight
I used China Airlines, my flight was free because my mom works there. My flight to Taipei was on 6.30 am. I woke up at 5 am, got prepared and then went to the airport. Followed all the procedures etc etc. The total journey took about 7 hours: 4 hours flight to Hong Kong, 1 hour transit, 1 hour flight to Taipei, and add another 1 hour for the procedures and so on. I usually like the meals they served but today the meals were  so bad. They served niu rou fan (rice with beef) on the flight to Hong Kong and a kind of noodle (I forget what they called it) on the flight to Taipei and I didn’t like those at all. When I was in Hong Kong for transit I kinda had a rush to the plane because somewhat I couldn’t find a store to buy a drink. I wandered around just to find that the convienient store is located near my flight gate. But in that short transit time I managed to online (using the airport computer near my gate) to cheked my email & posted some tweets. Hahaha..

I arrived in Taipei at about 3 pm local time (there’s 1 hour time difference between Jakarta & Taipei) and when I passed through the temperature scanner, the officer from the CDC (Centre for Desease Control) called me and dragged me out of the line. I don’t know what happened but I think it because my body appeared red  on the monitor. You know, this swine flu things make every country cautious and Taiwan is very strict about deseases. The officer took me to a small room nearby, asked me some questions (where do you come from, where have you been in last 10 days, do you have chicken or duck in your house, etc), filled some forms, took my blood sample, etc etc. After that I was given a mask & mosquito repellent. This ”interogation” took about an hour. I was a little scary and I worried whether I still can join this language program. Fortunately, everything is OK!

Journey to NTNU
After those “medical check up”, all I was thinking about is to get to NTNU as fast as possible cause I don’t wanna be the one stucked in the airport and being suspected as a swine flu infected person. NTNU had sent me the letter of admission in which they wrote the instruction of how to get to the NTNU. I followed the instruction, I took south exit, bought a Guo Guang Bus ticket for NTD 125 to go to Taipei Main Station. After arrived in Taipei Main Station I had to take MRT to NTNU. Luckily in the bus I met 2 girls that wanted to go to place near NTNU and they kindly helped me to get to NTNU. I followed them until the Guting Station (which is the same station as in the letter) and they told me to take exit 5 and they went to another exit. Actually how to get to NTNU was clearly written in the letter so I think I can get there myself even if I didn’t met those 2 girls. After went out of the Guting Station I walked down the street about 15 minutes and I finally arrived in NTNU.

Hmm.. gue cuma pengen nulis pendek aja. Sebenernya tanggal 6 kemaren gue mao nulis kalo gue bakal ke Taiwan selama musim panas ini tapi ternyata internetnya mati jadi yah gitu deh..
So, sekarang gue lagi lagi ada di Taiwan buat belajar mandarin dan seperti dugaan kalian pastinya gue ga ikut pemilu hari ini. Gue rencananya bakal nulis pengalaman gue selama di Taiwan ini secepatnya biar gue ga lupa. Soalnya terakhir kali gue berencana nulis SETELAH pulang ke Indo gagal total karena gue terlalu “sibuk” dengan hal lain.
Well, segini dulu ajah.. Sekarang udah mao jam 7 di sini dan gue udah laper. Saatnya cari makan di sekitar NTNU. Bye!