8 December 2013
On this week, many things happened.
On Monday morning, I was informed that my grandfather has passed away. I last saw him through Skype on 8 November 2013, where he was in hospital and looks okay. The last time I saw him physically was when I departed to Singapore on 29 July 2013.
Life is uncertain, death is certain.
Nevertheless, I had an exam on Monday evening. I just focus on the materials that will be examined that day, HE9091 Principle of Economics. After 2.5 hours of struggling with it inside Nanyang Auditorium Lobby (Exam Hall A), I somehow finished it and we, Indonesians students from SCE, went to Canadian Pizza to have dinner together, celebrating “the end of exams”, or at least, “the break of exams” because the next exam will be held 3 days from that day.
Overall, for the next 2 days, I just go and study CZ1002 Introduction to Computing Systems by memorizing everything and may I remember the details until the exam finished.
On Tuesday morning, suddenly I missed my grandpa. I cried out for a while after listening to Florence + the Machine – Shake It Out. Dunno why, but the song is very emotional that I missed my grandpa. I somehow let my feelings out.
On Tuesday afternoon, I worked part-time as ad hoc CELT (Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching) Student Assistant at OSSAC. This kind of job is kind of busy as many of the students are returning their clickers, and many of them wrongly take the queue tickets for the “Submission” as opposed to “IT/edveNTUre”. Many of them also just come directly to my counter without taking tickets; and I accept them because I my account did not have the privilege to access the Queue Management System to call the queuing peoples.
On Wednesday afternoon, this time I worked part-time as CITS-SA as usual. Today, the SA for CELT, which was a fourth year Computer Science student, and the CITS officer was kind of talkative and hence the day was lively while I study for my last exam.
On Thursday, before having my last exam, we, Indonesians SCE students, went for lunch at the Quad first. We had the exam at exam hall L, which is the lobby of School of Biological Sciences (SBS). Overall, I was relieved that the exam for this semester was finally over. Some of us then went to SAC to play some games. Around 5 pm, I and Stefan (and Alwyn, which showed up from OSSAC after doing his job) queued up for Starbucks open house which gives away free drinks and ask you to donate any amount for the Salvation Army: I donated some amount and the get my drink for free. In the evening, I watched The Hunger Games to prepare for the outing on Saturday which includes watching The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
On Friday, which was unofficially my first holiday, I worked part-time as CITS-SA in the morning slot, covering other person’s slot which swapped with my Wednesday afternoon slot of the previous week. It was so long ago since I rode the first bus of the day which come to operation at 8 am. On this day, because of the boredom of finishing exam, I played some game on my Surface there and somehow got “reminded not to play games during work” by the OSSAC officer; the CITS officer was not there but I was quite embarrassed. It was very boring day as there was just 3 people visiting my counter. By the way, this week I worked for 12 hours: 3 from ad hoc CELT-SA, 4 for my normal slot, another 4 because swapping slots.
It’s 1 pm, finally it was over, I quickly went to have lunch because I usually went to lunch around 12pm but no later than 12:30pm. After that I went to find Herdiyenti to pay my Dharma Camp 2014 registration fee before going back to my hall to do start my journey on “Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship ” course on Coursera. Hope that I can earn the statement of completion for the course. In the evening, I watched Monsters University. At first, it seems like in NTU: registration, orientation, CCA fair. But it went differently after that.
On Saturday, we, Indonesian freshies from SCE, held our first outing. Yay! This idea has been coined since the recess week, but just can be done today. First, we had lunch at Aston, a western restaurant, at CentrePoint, near Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. In front of the plaza, we spotted a Catching Fire ads and took photos with it. Overall, the food was nice. Although the price was higher than normal western food in NTU, but the portion and the taste of the food worth the money spent.
Next, we rushed to Cathay Cineleisure Orchard by bus. There we watched The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The theater was nice but the subtitle for the movie was in Mandarin. If I would to choose, I would choose not to put any subtitles rather than languages that I don’t understand well. At first, I thought that the movie will be just another hunger games and they won and they live happily ever after because of the fear from the president. But it turned out that the games resulted in a revolution because of the “provocative” acts among Katniss and other Victors. The nicest moment is when the movie climaxed at the end and then Coldplay – Atlas song started to play. Looking forward for the next movie!
After that, we went to Ion Orchard by foot. I’ve never been in a street that was so crowded like this before. On the way there, we got “trapped” by the one-dollar ice cream. Inside Ion, after killing some times, we had dinner on the food court there and then Zillion left us because he intended to spend his night at Changi. We then went to Starbucks nearby and do some #HTHT session. Lastly we went to Marina Bay Sands to watch the laser show. It was a windy night and the screen created by the water is not nice enough and thus we somehow did not know what is the story about. Next we spend our trip back to NTU by doing #HTHT session. They then wanted to continue the #HTHT session while taking supper. I was very tired already, I chose to be separated from then and went back to my room. It was an amazing outing, especially for the Catching Fire and #HTHT session. Thank you everyone.
On Sunday morning, I went to Buddhist Fellowship with others. This time, we were late! FYI, we were never late since the first time we went here. We missed the opening puja and the meditation session. Then, a venerable give a talk about faith: If someone have faith in themselves, and also by holding to the five precepts, then they will do things such that everyone will be happy. In the afternoon, I finally have time to visit Fairprice to do some shopping. Going back to my room, I do some cleaning before having dinner. In the evening, my repository on Github got its very first star! Woohoo!
Next week, I will be attending HTML5 & Firefox Mobile OS Bootcamp, a very interesting workshop (and seminar) by NTU Ventures. Because of it I will be missing many other events that will be held next week. Hope that I make a right choice.