Notes

Mr. Manaek Nababan

• Journal, Notes

18 July 2013

Today, one of the most beloved teacher in my high school passed away. He is Mr. Manaek Nababan, a physics teacher, who was our form teacher at grade 12. He taught me somewhat little, because in the first days of grade 12, I’m attending my brother’s commencement, and I did not get in school for a week because of OSN, and a month because of Pelatnas.

He gave us so many general and specific formulas and put it on a box that make the formula seems important. I did not like to memorize those formula though, I just like to memorize a very general and short form of concept that will derive out the formula. But his general formula is very general that it can be applied at very much cases but the formula is too long to memorize.

Before boarding the plane that took I and Peter to Pelatnas 1 at Bandung, we met a guy who claimed to be an alumnus of Sutomo and former student of Mr. Manaek. He said that Mr. Manaek was used to be a teacher at a public tuition class (like Ganesha Operation), which focuses on speed rather than concept, and that is why he like to give us formulas: to speed up our work in examinations.

There were many quotes from him that were quite funny, like

Gantungkanlah mimpimu sejengkal di atas kepalamu, agar gampang diraih

translation:

Put your dreams a span above your head, so you can reach them easily.

In my opinion, this was to motivate us to reach dreams that were reachable, not to put them at place which were out-of-reach.

On our class’s inauguration party, he intended to come, but because of family matters, he couldn’t make it. Before the party, he told our maths teacher, Mr. HL, that he said that this class was one of the best class he ever taught and he intended to go to the party. But in front of us, he apologize to us that he couldn’t come because of him being the host at his family party that night. The Monday after the the party, we kept the cake that were cut during the inauguration and then shared the cake to him.

The last time I saw him was 24 May 2013, he gave us the letter that states our graduation. His voice that time was already weak, and he wore jackets, like he was sick but pushed himself to show everyone that he was okay. Often they said that when he looked sick, if someone asked him, he will said that he was okay.

This essay may seem very disorganized, but I will keep it that way.

Good bye Mr. Manaek Nababan, thank you and rest in peace.

IMG_4772

ANT website

• Notes

13 July 2013

This was the story of me building the website of my class, ANT.

It was end-2012, I have things to do but I need some refreshments, I’m tired of working at LM. I started an idea to create a website for my class. One day after another, it came to testing phase, I showed this project to the class monitor. If he granted me permission, I will finish this project. I was granted the permission and by the end of 2012, I somewhat finished that project. It was quite simple news website: add post, edit post, delete post, manage post, with some enhancements like tagging post as sticky post or announcement.

Usually when near exam period, we shared our resources via a Dropbox account, which was initially created by Wilson Tianusa. Curious of everything, I tried to search if I can access the Dropbox account of my class via the website. After some searching, some experiments, and some modifications, it was done! Out of my expectations, to just access it, users do not need to know the username and password of the Dropbox account. Usually we share the files via shortlinks, because some are shared via SMS and Twitter. Curious again, I searched and found Bitly API which I can utilize to generate shortlinks of every folder and files. Because they are all resource heavy, I decided to restrict them to registered users with sufficient roles.

But it did not lasts, the login/logout system was not quite well when we face our last school exam (UAS). After some complaints, I removed the code that required registered users to access Dropbox.

Just like expectations, this project was short-lived, it was busy when it was on exam period. Between them, maybe it was busy when we uploaded something new and we notified peoples that we did that. Overall, I was happy with this project: we can share our resources freely.

Link:

peerScholar Assignment

• Notes

2 July 2013

In the Introduction to Psychology course, we were asked to follow an activity called “peerScholar” which was like peer grading but more customized one. There were 2 assignments, if which we were asked to do just one of them. The first one was to relate the class (psychology) to the world events, the latter one was about argument related to animal use by humans. I chose the second one because I have ever written one related to that but I revised and add references (to other people who supported my view of course :P ) I chose an attracting title, but one of the peers criticized me because of the title is somewhat irrelevant to the content. Other also said that I put too much references and the references are not strong enough because most of them are just a blog post. Enough talking, the followings are my essay submitted to peerScholar.

…

peerScholar AssignmentRead More »

Personal Philosophy Essay

• Notes

The following is my “Personal Philosophy Essay” assignment submitted to “First-Year Composition 2.0” course offered by Georgia Institute of Technology at coursera.org. The assignment was as follows:

Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you.

Neutralism

Which party did you sided in the last US election: Republican or Democrats? I choose neither. I choose to be neutral because it is non-sided. Being neutral is well-accepted, then why not? …

Personal Philosophy EssayRead More »

Gabrielle Aplin – The Power of Love

• Official Chart, Videos

Actually it was released last year. This song ever topped the UK Singles Chart and I love this song. This song is simple but so powerful.

Recently her songs “Panic Cord” and “Please Don’t Say You Love Me” got into UK Singles Chart Top-40 and her album “English Rain” entered the chart on #2. Because of that I started to search her songs and listen. She can be compared to Emeli Sande which songs I like too.

The power of love
A force from above
Cleaning my soul
Flame on burn desire
Love with tongues of fire
Purge the soul
Make love your goal

Vegetarian

• Notes

24 May 2013

Vegetarian means you don’t eat any meat while vegan means you don’t eat any meat and its products such as milk and egg. In my opinion, being a vegetarian once in a while like the one I practiced is good. I am a vegetarian twice in a lunar month: at the first and at the 15th. It is a tradition from my mom. The kind I and the family practising are not eating meat, garlic, onion, and fertilised egg. We don’t eat garlic and onion because it increases our desire to eat. I don’t care much about garlic and onion though. About fertilised egg, we believe that it will soon be alive, so to eat that is similar to eating meat.

Why once in a while? Not every day? Well, the first, for me, I can’t stand being a vegetarian every day. Vegetarian food is more expensive. Also it gives fewer calories than the normal food I ate so I become hungry faster. Another reason is vegetarian food are rarer. We are surrounded by non-vegetarian products everywhere. We need to find a specific restaurant to eat vegetarian food. Here, it is rare that a restaurant serve food that is vegetarian as main dish.

Being vegetarian doesn’t mean you go green. You are just the same. Think about what if everyone is a vegetarian. First, vegetarian products give fewer calories than meat. So to fulfil one’s hunger they eat more. Because they eat more, it means the world needs to supply more food. More food means 2 things: deforestation and/or intensification. Intensifying means creating products that may harm our health. Deforestation means global warming.

Global warming is a current issue which we think being a vegetarian will reduce the warming effect. I suggest that to reduce the effect we can start from things around us. Like using less clean water or even use used-water to flush the toilets. It is good idea to reduce the usage of plastic bag from any transactions. Switching off the lamps while we went out even if it is for a while is also a good idea. Keep in mind to recycle used papers and plastic bottles. Another is to plant some plant in a pot. I’ll let you know that planting there means you also make home for other fungi, algae, bacteria, insects, and even worms. Be clean though, if not, health problem will come. Being healthy is a gift, because if one’s not healthy, they can’t do anything.

To sum up, I think that being vegetarian once in a while is good but it will be a problem if everyone is a vegetarian every day. Being a vegetarian don’t reduce the global warming effect; start to reduce, reuse, and recycle but keep in mind that health is very important. Happy Vesak Day and may all the beings be happy.

Everything will be OK. If it’s not OK, it’s OK.

• Others

“Everything will be OK. If it’s not OK, it’s OK.” — Risan Petrus

That is a quote from Risan Petrus, that was shared to students who followed Pelatnas 2 TOKI 2013 which was held at Bogor. As I’m not qualified to Pelatnas 2, I got that quote from their assistants sharing at their Facebook accounts.

It was a quote with deep meaning. It implies that people is not perfect and thus should be thankful of what the situation those people are facing. Everything will work according to plan, if not, never mind.