U.S Quick Update

Ternyata udah ampir sebulan euy ga nulis...
Antara sibuk, males, dan terlalu banyak hal yang terjadi, jadi males updatenya. Hahaha *loh kok jadi ga sok Bahasa Inggris lagi*
Anyway kalo ada yang follow Path pasti sering sih liat apdetan foto dan hal2 ga penting lainnya :D

Long story short, I was feeling very blessed and sad and touched bcos so many friends cared bout me when I was going to leave. Many farewell presents etc. And some I expected, some I didn't! That's why it was so touchy :')

Udah 2 mingguan disini dan kesan-kesan so far:
- Gw berasa anak kampung masuk ke peradaban. Why?? Okeh. Semuanya ada disini. Anything can make your life easy, you name it. Apa satu2nya yang ga ada? Pembantu! Hahaha.. That's the only thing. Kecuali lo tajir mampus, baru deh punya pembantu. Karena intinya di US itu service is veeryy expensive. Makanya tiap kali bayar sesuatu di resto sangat diharapkan ngasi tips!
- I was living in the busiest city ever, Jakarta. Yang mana tiap hari kayaknya seperempat idup gw abis di jalanan. Disini (terutama di kota Golden), totally different. Everything is very relaxing and everyone is very laid back and polite. Satu contoh kasus, tiap kali mo nyebrang jalan atau mau masuk pintu, pasti tunggu2an sapa yang duluan. Hahaha... Dan kadang ampe jadi awkward karna gada yang mau duluan! Anyway, idup gw jadi sehat banget karna tiap hari jalan kaki +/- 9km. Bukan sengaja sih sebenernya, tp karna belom beli mobil aja kekekekeke...
- Oh about the school. I used to study at the BEST uni in Indo. But, well, once I'm here, jadi kayak banyaaaak hal2 yang bikin miris kalo inget2 IT* (sensor). To start with, disini mata kuliah itu kayak "candy shop" kalo istilah beberapa student. Kita sampe bingung mau ambil mata kuliah apa karna semuanya bagus dan menarik. Daannn, cepet full sama anak2 lainnya yang juga daftar (ada kapasitas maksimal). Dan karna skolah ini relative kecil juga, semua professor udah kayak temen kita aja. Discussion is very very encouraged, mau kapanpun mereka available most of the times. Kalo lagi pas ga ada di kantornya, email aja, janjian ketemu. Hari ini baru aja gangguin salah 1 prof buat install software di laptop gw yang akhirannya abis sejaman aja gitu wwkwkwk.. And he was very very nice!
Oh satu lagi juga, kampusnya bagus!! Jadi inget di IT* ga bole injek rumput, ga boleh d kampus ampe malem, dsb dsb. Disini semuaaaa murid pasti leyeh2 di rumput, olahraga, bahkan masang ranjang gantung di antara tiap pohon2. Mau nginep di sekolah juga basically boleh2 aja (gw sih ogah) hahaha...

dan masiii banyak hal lainnya yang mungkin lain waktu deh dishare disini :)
EH tapi itu yang bagus2 doank ya.
OK gw share yang agak downside:
Segalanya dikerjain sendiri. No maid, no one will help you doing daily works.
Segala yang lo bayar, blom include tax dan tips.
I needed to make new friendships. Well, sometimes it is fun, sometimes it is a pain in the ass. Depends.
Kadang ada aja orang-orang yang bikin lo MALEZ pake Z pake tanda seru kalo bisa.
SO many rules yang harus lo perhatiin kalo gamau getting in trouble.
Contoh: ati2 sama race/sexual jokes, etc. Basically karna sangat beda kultur juga sih, jadi harus banyak belajar juga.

I think that's all for now. Til next update/story!

Good People

As we all know, we can't avoid the bad or mean people, or simply people who are jealous of us, talking bad about us, hurt us, etc.
It's just life. Suck it up and deal with it.

But aside of that, I've been telling myself over and over again about how some people are really simply like an angel to me.
Oh well maybe angel is a bit too much. LOL. But they are really just lovely people.

I was planning to make a farewell lunch with all my friends and colleagues at work and even I tried not to invite every single ones I know, it already reached 70++ people. LOL
So I was thinking, man, that's a lot :'( and I would need to save some money to for my life in the US.
But well I thought, it's OK lah.
I made the invitation and sent it out to everyone.

Later my boss came to my office and talked to me:
B: We are buying your lunch
Me: What do u mean?
B : You tell me. You sent out the invitation
Me: Oh yes. Yea.. I'm buying my lunch
B: No No..We are buying your lunch. The department will pay for it. Don't you pay anything.

*speechless*

Jadi orang ngapa baik bener ya? :')

And not only him. Some people are realllyyy helpful, some offered their help if I got to the US. Tell me to contact them, their friends, etc.. etc..

You know what, this, this kind of thing, is what helping me putting up with difficult people.
Brush it off, tell em to fck the hell off, and simply just appreciate those who are worth your time.

Updates on June

While I'm writing this, this is the first day of Ramadhan, the first day where there's no food around the office like usual (biasanya tiap menit adaaa aja makanan ini dan itu). The first day we gonna suffer from even worse traffic (biasanya udah parah, well.. double that).

And it is less than 2 months for me to leave for Colorado.

It will feel less than that even, maybe, since after Ramadhan people will mudik for +- 2weeks (including me actually). So by the time I came back from vacation, I will take another weekend gateaway to do my farewell dive, and one week space to do farewell to friends (mainly the office friends), and then.. buhbye :)

By now I almost completed everything. Last night I just made sure that the last important document (which is my health and immunization record) has been received by the school. Quite a funny experience for me. So I emailed the school asking whether they have received my document and they didn't reply. It was suggested on the website that I call their number and they will be available most of the time.

Well remembering the time zone difference, I planned to call at 9pm or later, and I checked on telkomsel, how much does the international cost, etc.
So apparently telkomsel has a good deal. It is Rp 3500/10 minutes. I bought the first 10 min only to think later that I'm afraid 10min won't be enough. So I bought another 10min of call credit.

I rang the health officer:
O: CSM health and blablabla (I forgot), this is Denise speaking

me: Hi Denise, I'm an international student from Indonesia. I just sent my document on 15th of June and I want to make sure that it has been received

O: what is your student number?

me: it is xxxxxxxxxx

O: and your last name?

me: harryandi. H, A, R, R, Y, A, N, D, I

O: OK it's received. Thanks Sheila

me: Oh OK thank you

(tut tut tut....)

one minute only :|

what a waste, buying 20 minutes of international call credit! LOL

I guess I'm just very used to the complicated-ness of Indonesian people.

So anyway, right now I'm just thinking how bad I wanna get out of this city (remembering the traffic nightmare - Oh- I had enough of it!)
And some small group of people (I wrote about this before, yea that party friends of mine) just made me wanna move earlier than ever.

But of course there are more people that I will leave that I really care about as much as they care about me. Sigh. Hopefully I won't cry on my farewell day! Hahaha...

Aannnd, I conclude that I will bring more food than clothes! Afterall that would be my biggest struggle there :(

Some conversation

I talked to this friend of mine, at work. He's been one of the most supportive friends so far. He always asked me bout my updates, am I doing well, etc. Sometimes he's more like a father at work. LOL

Anyways, I asked him last time

"why do you always look happy? It looks as if you don't have any problem in your life"
"of course I do. But I always think of the future. And what I do now will affect my future. That's what I'm focusing on. There's nothing I can change of my past, it's over. And many people are still stuck in their past"
"umm.. yea that's true"
"People do mistakes. But that's how they learn. You cannot do exactly the same things, and expect different outcomes."

Nice words, fella. Nice words.

Double Standard

Last night I was thinking bout this topic. No no, it's not about feminism. But it's more about our personal double standard.
Like, when someone did something not nice, you will despise them. But then one day you found yourself, did EXACTLY the same thing. How do you feel about that?

I feel I kinda make justification bout what I did. Yep. So you know now, when in life you kinda question people , "WHY? WHY? Don't they have heart? " you know what is the answer. Cos basically we are human. We do what we want to do. Of course, some of us have stronger boundaries or principal more than the others. But yea that's the main point.

So what you should do when someone do bad things to you? Just be calm and think "oh well that's human. And this is life" ?
A friend of mine just said something like, "well you can't guarantee someone wouldn't change. I think the answer will be, deal with the pain"

I said, "you are totally right".
We can only put so much effort, and be prepared for anything out of our plan.
It will be sucks, of course. But, well, isn't that life?

I will put one quote from the movie I watched recently,
"I'd been let down in my life so many times. Why should I have gotten my hopes up, right?"

Do not give a sh*t

If you ever think bout it more, it's the hardest thing you could ever do, is to not giving a shit bout something.
And the more u think, "I don't care", the more actually u gonna care. LOL. How shitty is that?

Sometimes I wish (or everybody wish) I could control my mind. I could shut some particular things down and turn it on again another time when I feel like thinking bout it.
How nice could it be?

But again, nothing occurs in this world means nothing. Things happen for a reason, that's what people always say. If you always get what you want, then why bother working on something? Why bother put efforts on something?
You wouldn't feel disappointed, but you wouldn't know how it is to be satisfied, either.

The Process (Part 2)

So for you that have been following my blog (jaelaaahh... sok beutt), I want to resume my last post about "the process" for me finally getting the school.

Well first of all, now I'm at the point of counting days. Too lazy to think about the packing, what to bring, what to manage before I leave (gahh!). I just came back from US embassy, got my Visa approved (tho it is still in the process). But I've just also booked my ticket :|
*Mudah2an beneran dapeett yee visanya bo*

FYI bukan e mau mamer tapi tiketnya mehoonngggg gilaaaaa x((((

It was $1500 for one way to Denver from Jakarta, so kalo diitung 13200x1500, hampir 20 jeti aja buat tiket :(

*nunggu THR dateng*

Well I have asked some friends and colleagues, and yes they told me that usually tickets are not covered. Jadi yasudahlahyaa... *ikhlasinn*

Anyway busway, the last time I was babbling about how I finally came to decide to apply for the school because one of my colleague really encouraged me to do.
So the next thing I did was sending out an email to the professor. I figure that the explanation about this will be somehow quite long, so I will do it more systematically:

1. How do I know which professor should I be contacting?
*) I always knew I wanted to go to CSM. I want to do Geophysics. Some of friends and colleagues I knew, graduated from there. And there is one name that I kept hearing, the name of the professor with the research program which I'm really interested in. Let say the Prof's name is Tom (well it IS his name). Tom is the director of one of the research programs in CSM. (note that in one department, there are several research programs, you can gain the information from the school homepage). So Prof Tom is the one who decide which applicants are eligible to get admitted to the program. He is also the one who connect with the sponsors (companies who give funding to the school). So in conclusion, he is THE guy.

2. What would you contact him for? What do you want to communicate to him about?
*) Basically, I introduce myself first. My name, which University I graduated from for my bachelor degree, my GPA, my major, how long I have been working, what is my job description, which company, what project I have been working on, what are my accomplishment. I also gave him information about my IELTS and GRE score (so at least he would know if I have a big chance to get admitted or not, if I apply). After that I informed to him that I have done a research on the website about the program, and find it really suitable to my background and my work experience. So giving several reasons why I'm really interested in that particular fields, I ask the chance to apply to the program. And also the opportunity to get funded for the program.
The response from the Prof would vary, of course. But in my case, the Prof was responding in a really positive way. He then told me that it would approximately be a 2-year program for masters and that the possibility to get funded is high. So THAT became my first motivation to really apply through the school system.

3. What did you do next?
*) I just applied to the school through the website and follow all the instructions. The most important part that we have to provide basically are:
- GRE score
- IELTS score
- CV/Resume
- Motivation letter
- Recommendation letters

For me the most struggling part was the recommendation. Because it has to come from the recommender directly (sent from their email address). So I had to remind them all the time, while also make sure I did it in a very nice way. Plus keep in mind that this part is extremely important. So make sure the person is someone who really knows your job or your educational experience. In my case, I asked 2 people from the company I'm working on (both are managers position) and 2 are from my previous university (the dean of faculty and the professor that advising my undergraduate thesis).

The process took approximately 2 months to get the answer whether I'm admitted or not. It was 2 months since I completed all my application and credentials.
The important part is, after I finished submitting all through the system, I emailed the Professor again to confirm that. Why? So when they have the committee meeting with the department's staffs, he would remember. Well it's better to do more than less. Plus there are maybe a lot of other applicants, so it would be good to have someone knowing which one are you among the others.

It was a quite hard time to wait for the decision tho, lol, because I was very anxious whether I got it or not. Whether I got all credentials submitted or not..

But anyways, as all of us know already, no pain no gain ;)

I'll get back to you on the next post...