RIP – Kenrick's Notes

2013 in Review

31 December 2013 • Hopes, Notes

31 December 2013

Many things happened in 2013, just like in 2012. The following lists what have happened to me in 2013:

January: The New Year holiday was spent with family and friends. After that I focused on the university entrance examinations. In end of January, NUS UEE was held.
February: After NTU UEE in early February, here comes the Chinese New Year (packed with The Wonder of Science).
March: I GOT ACCEPTED TO NTU! Besides, the school held the final school exam. I also held a mini programming contest at the programming club.
April: I went to Jakarta to attend NTU Scholarship Interview, but I failed to get the scholarship. This month is the last month of studying in high school (my story of last day of school). After we got a national examinations, the school held a prom nite and our class held a farewell trip.
May: the starting point of the transition from a high school student to a university student. I’ve done my CS188.1x: Artificial Intelligence, taught programming at the programming club, joined TWoS, restarted my LM project, started Introduction to Pyschology, and resurrecting the desktop computer. Like last year, I posted my thoughts for Vesak Day. By the way, I got the news that I’ve passed the National Examination.
June started with me getting my report card and National Examination results; going for the first photo session with Mr. Johnson; continuing Introduction to Psychology; starting First Year Composition 2.0; stopping LM2 and starting LM2C. Next weeks, I continued the MOOCs; SSEC meeting (which resulted in drafting a “constitution”); and met seniors of NTU in an informal meeting.
On July, I started many things while some old ones are finished or discontinued. On the 3rd week, my form-teacher, Mr. Manaek Nababan, passed away. On the last week of July, I tidied my stuffs; and started to supervise PJJ OSN.
On August, I arrived at NTU, joined PINTU’s FOC, started many first things. Many events we held on the first weeks, e.g. NTUSU Welcome Week, NTUBS Welcome Tea, NTUBS subcomm recruitment, NTU OSS Welcome Tea, Hall XI Welcome Tea, NTUBS AGM, PINTU’s T-SPRAY.
On September, OSN 2013 was held, this time I was watching the scoreboard movements hoping that my juniors can score well. Then, I bought new laptop! Also ordered a Microsoft Surface RT. I was getting more and more busier this month, hopefully the end of September is e-learning week and then recess week.
My birthday is on October, and got celebrated. I finished many assignments, collected my Surface RT, then attended NTUBS Committee Day. End of October is the pre-climax of my semester.
November started with the climax of my semester: quizzes, speech assignment, and presentation which I survived all of them. After that, the weeks are quite relaxing. The last classes were held, and there comes the revision week which ended with a first examination. November ended with more examinations.
December started with the passing of my grandfather and the end of examinations, also the very first Indonesian SCE freshies outing. Before going back to my hometown, I joined a 4-day bootcamp held by NTU Ventures with speaker from Mozilla. In my hometown, the weeks are spent variously on playing games, developing game, and joining MOOC.

Here comes the end of 2013, happy new year 2014. This blog is never been this crowded before. Thank you for being an audience of my stories. May the blog be filled with more posts in terms of quantity and quality.

P.S. see my year in review from Facebook.

Mr. Manaek Nababan

18 July 2013 • 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.