Thursday, September 12, 2013

Remembering 9/11

Yesterday was September 11! Yes you read it right, September 11.
Most of you probably don't care about the date, while others know what the date means to them. It changed their life, it even changed the world.

Yes, yesterday was the date of the 911 tragedy when 2 planes (yes you read right, 2 planes!) crashed the World Trade Center in New York. If you really don't know what happened you can search it on google or see yourself the video on youtube, I'm not putting on my blog because it hurts when I see it all over again.
I'm gonna tell you my experience when the tragedy occured 12 years ago. I'm also going to actually give a bit of my perspectives on what happened after the tragedy.

I was 9 at the time having just arrived in the states for about 3 weeks. My family and I, we lived in the state of Florida. I couldn't speak English (just numbers, colors, and how are you). Woked up like any usual day and went to school. The clocked showed around 9 in the morning and there was an announcement from the principal that we had to got to the Cafeteria. So everyone lined up and went straight to the cafeteria just like how the principal instructed. There was 2 TVs in the front of the cafeteria and both were showing the same thing.

As I watched the TV, I saw an airplane crashed a skyscraper. I first thought it was just like a kids program like Ultraman. But then I noticed that everybody was shocked especially the teachers. They started reaching their cellphones and reacted weird. We were told to go home by the principal. I still didn't know what was going on back then. So I was happy to go home early from school.

When I went back home, my big sister was already there. I turned on the TV and every channel was showing the same thing, but this time it as 2 airplanes that crashed into to bulidings.
Mom arrived about 15 minutes after I arrived home, and then she started explaining everything in Bahasa. I started to know what the heck was going on but to be honest I didn't know what it all meant. the next day was a bit different at school because we had to create some cards for something I really don't know about. I realized what it was for the next year.

So I then saw the news and knew that America was going to war with some countries in the middle east. I still didn't know what they wanted in the war at that time. Then came 2003 when I started to know my surroundings and what happened to America after the tragedy. Some people died during the war and there were people from the town where I lived. There were signs everywhere about the soldiers that died in the war. I started respecting soldiers when I meet them (in wal-mart, publix, and so on) and smiled to them too.

I was totally against the war, but I felt what the Americans felt after the 911. It was anger, hatred and they needed to make a point that they are against terrorism and would do anything to stop it. I hated the idea that going to war was the answer to terrorism, but hey who am I just an 11 year old boy at the time.
Many Indonesians hate America because they went to war after the 911, but they didn't know what it felt like losing your LOVED ONES at a tragedy like that. What happens when that happens to Indonesia? Will we not hate the people who does that to us? Think about it!



I'm writing this to also show my deep condolences to my friends who lost their families during the 911 and during the war. I personally will never forget what happened 12 years ago. I learned a lot, I experienced a lot and it definitely gave me a lot perspectives on things that I would never think of. 
We will never forget the day! 




Sunday, September 8, 2013

Up for New Challenges Ahead!

As I promised in my previous post that I'd like to share something about what I'll be doing for my last year of college. Well, here goes the story:

For the last couple of months, I've been doing my internship in a big company, one of the subsidiary of a multinational company. I enjoyed my time working there and of course I got a lot of new lessons, experience, and most of all I felt just like any working person going to work everyday. It opened my eyes for a lot of things and perspectives. One of the first thing I realized is that I needed more challenges, it's not that the company that I worked for my internship has no challenges, oh yes I can definitely find tons of them, but it just seems different solving them.

So after thinking over and over again to myself, what is really my passion? To be honest, I can't really say right now. All I know is, since I was in elementary school, I like making money. Well I like making money from just anything really. In elementary, I used to sell pencils and pen my mom bought from the train and sell them for almost like 4 times the price. But then I gave back the money I profited from selling the pencils and pen to mom so she can gas for her to cook. In middle school, when I was in Gainesville I didn't have anything to sell, so I only have my time and I liked playing with kids so I started to babysit and also teach kids to write, learn their ABCs, count and many more. Of course the money would go to mom so every weekend we could eat out as a family and I was proud of it. I did continue to teach until now but not as often as in the past. I love making money, especially from things I do best at. It maybe God's gift or I just love making money. 

So, at the beginning of the semester I talked to a couple of my nearest friend to start a business of our own. We haven't quite decide yet what the business would be, or where it would leads to. But we believed IT is the future to almost anything so we're gonna start something in the IT field. We also want to contribute to the country bu actually create jobs opening (in the future after the business is established).
I knew that it would take a lot energy, mind, and also time. But I always believed that if you want to achieve something big, you need to work extra hard on it! I have a year left to really work my butt off and hopefully it'll succeed. 

I'm gonna close the post with a really nice saying that hit me, it was one of the team member who shared it to us: Life is short! Build stuff THAT MATTERS!



 I'll be posting again soon!

Enjoy your day :D

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Enjoying the IT Case Solution Competition Victory!

Well, it's been a while huh since I last time wrote on this blog.

This time I'm gonna be writing about a competition I won recently (about  3 months ago..hehe). I didn't have the time to write after winning it, so now I'll be telling you all the experience and the feeling I felt throughout the competition.

So the background to the story is, Binus University they held a yearly event (is yearly even a word?) from their Himpunan Mahasiswa of Information Systems (Himsisfo) called Himsisfo Competition and one of the category for the competition is: ITCASO (IT Case Solution) where we have to give solutions/recommendations based on the case given on a company. Last year my team and I we made it through the Final (Top 6) but we didn't manage to be in the top 3. It was okay since we were the youngest team who made it through. All of the finals were either in their junior and mostly are in their senior year. It was such an honor to be even in the Final last year (2012)



Well, this year my team and I, we joined the competition once again with the target of actually winning it. We were going for the gold! We were a bit confident because we were a year more mature, more knowledge, more skills, and most definitely we were more committed than before.
Even though our preparation for the competition was a much shorter than last year, we had one year of gaining experience and knowledge we would be used a lot during the competition. So the team was still the same, it was me of course, Adrian Nuradiansyah, and Aldyra Dhien Swavira. We named the team: Nusantara Consulting. well there's a bit of the philosophy of the name. In a short explanation, the team comes from different tribe(suku) all around Indonesia (Nusantara), and we wanted to the team BIG just like Nusantara in the past (as a Kingdom), in the present now (Indonesia now), and in the future (something great)

So after registering the competition we were given a pre-case for us to solve. We were given about 6 days to give our solution to the case of a Company named ExerciseApp, a mobile app startup who wanted to develop a mobile application on sports. Well the case clearly stated want the problem and what we needed to solve, so we managed to solve the case.
The announcement for the final were made about 3 days after the precase submission, and thankfully Nusantara Consulting made it to the final, which means 2 finals in a row.
The final took place in Binus Square where we were quarantined for 1 full day where we needed to solve another case given. This time the case was a bit hard, it was about a company called Telerik, a software house in Eastern Europe who are commited with Agile Development Process. At first we didn't find any flaw on the company nor any opportunity for the company to grab on. But in the end, we found on the case that the company is facing difficulty in its new employees adapting to agile development especially when it is on expansion. We solved the case until 11::00 pm and started rehearsing until midnight then we decided to call it a day and went straight to sleep.
The next morning, we practiced a couple of times to give our presentation in ftont of the judges. We were picked randomly to go second, and were only asked to deliver the presentation in 15minutes. we gave our presentation in full english and also answer the questions given in English also. We were a bit nervous at first, but we managed to stay calm and once the presentation was going to handled it pretty nice actually. We confident, we gave the answers to what we have prepared, and mostly we managed to impress some of the judges with our solution and recommendation to the case.

The announcement for the competition took place in Binus also but it was 2 weeks after the final was held. Well, since Adrian and Aldyra could not come to the announcement, I had to represent the team. It was a nervous moment for me because we had big expectation for the result.
Well this is the result:


We came in first place and we got several prices. We were very proud of it and couldn't believe we finally achieved what we hoped for.

We want to thank everyone who made this happen, Pak Jonathan Sofian (our coach and mentor), Pa Rifki Shihab (also our mentor), and also Christian Regensius (our mentor and coach), the Lab E-gov of Fasilkom for letting us borrow the room for us to discuss. We hoped you are all also proud of what we have accomplished.

I also want to give a lot of credit to this incredible team we formed a couple of years ago. Some people might doubted us what we can do, well we proved them wrong I guess. I want to introduce the members of the team:
1. Adrian Nuradiansyah, Information System 2010. This guy has it all! He's brilliant, he's willing to work hard. He's got millions of ideas that you can take from him. If there's anyone you'd like in the team, well he's the one you want! He's the brain of the team.
2. Aldyra Dhien Swavira, Information System 2010. She may be calm, man she can work hard and tirelessly. She's a very detailed person, the one always looking for the details needed. She's the heart of the team! She is also the person you would want it your team!

Well that's about it. I'll be writing really soon about something I'm starting on my final year in College.

See you soon!