29 August 2008

Searching, Waiting and Praying..

Now I really really feel how difficult looking for the job is. It is very difficult to decide what my interests are to determine what positions that will suit me the most. I have sent more than 5 applications to 5 companies, but only 1 company that gladly replied me.

I was very tremendously happy when I was invited to job interview by Accenture at Jakarta. My bf gladly accompanied me, driving almost 3 hours from Bandung to Sudirman, Jakarta and another 2 hours from Jakarta to Bandung. My bf's sister lent me her shirt, pant, suit and shoes. I really really thanked to them. I was interviewed by the Senior System Integration that has been worked there for 9 years. That was a wonderful experience since that was my very first job interview and I knew I really screwed it up. But, I think the interviewer likes me since she gave me a call in the morning. Unluckily, my stomach did not feel good at that time, so I asked her to call me in another hour. Unluckily and sadly, she never calls until now.. I've tried to call her back, but she always away for her works. So, finally, I just take those as my first experience in job interview.

When I went back for holiday at my hometown, I also sent 2 applications. But only 1 that invited me for the writing test, interview and medical check-up. The job really really did not associate with my degree. I feel so sad right now that I can not practice what I have been taught during my degree. But, my parents always remind me that the position is not important. Our degree taught us how to think logically which then can also be used in any sectors in working.

Now, I just sent 1 more application for company on Singapore. Did my resume really do not impress them? I know I don't have any work experiences before.. Is that the reason? All I am doing right now is still Searching, Waiting and Praying...

Politics atmosphere in South Sumatra

For the very first time, every province can choose their own governor like what is happening right now. On 4th Sept 2008, every people in South Sumatra will use their rights to vote their own favorite leader.
All the brochures, flags and still many more properties are everywhere on every side of South Sumatra. There are only two candidates, ALDY and SOHE.

ALDY consists of Alex Noerdin and Eddy Yusuf. Alex Noerdin is the leader of Musi Banyuasin (MUBA) area, a small area in South Sumatra. He is the first man that contributed a lot to the education of MUBA people. It can be seen from his website. One of his contribution is that he gives FREE MEDICATION and FREE SCHOOL to everyone on MUBA. He also plans the similar thing if he can be the future governor. He even has prepared many 'small special places' that will function to give free medication as soon as he wins the election.

SOHE consists of Syahrial Oesman and Helmy Yahya. Syahrial Oesman is the current governor while Helmy Yahya is one of the artists that also a creative director on some companies. Oesman has contributed a lot to the infrastructure in South Sumatra, especially Palembang. Palembang is included as the big 5 province in Indonesia. Last time, we did not have a mall, but now we have 3 malls. We even have a highway that is on construction. The best thing is that when Palembang become the champion on the football tournament.

However, the bad situation keeps on arising since we can see some videos (not sure if they are real or fiction..) from youtube.com, started from unsatisfaction from MUBA's residents to Noerdin about Free medication and Free School until his scandal and his suspicious SMU's certificate. This website also shows the Oesman's action on Genting.

I just confused. Nobody's perfect in this world. Every candidate has their own strengths and weaknesses. So, it will be better to follow your heart and select the one that can make our South Sumatra better and better..

29 June 2008

The Science of Happiness: The Happiest Man in the world

Here is an interesting article taken from Business Intelegant and The Independent.

In 2004, researchers at University of Wisconsin conducted a study on the brain patterns of hundreds of volunteers from different walks of life. The bell curve of the MRI measurements fell between +0.3 (a Sylvia Plath acolyte, no doubt) to -0.3 (Richard Simmons, perhaps?). But Matthieu Ricard alone achieved an astonishing score of -0.45 – a level of joy so far above the others that his score was nearly off the chart.

Matthieu Ricard, 60, was regarded as one of the most promising biologists of his generation. He completed a starred PhD at the Institut Pasteur under the supervision of Nobel prize-winner François Jacob, but abandoned his scientific career in 1972, when he moved to Darjeeling. There, he devoted himself to studying under Kangyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan master in the Nyingma tradition: the most ancient school of Buddhism. He has been a monk, and celibate, since he was 30. Ricard still lives at the Schechen Monastery in Nepal.

“The mind is malleable. Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”

To fill your life with joy, he said, you must recognize what already makes you happy, and work to change your mental balance. “You have to identify what it is in that situation that makes you happy. It’s as though you’re making a journey, and you look in your rucksack to find it half filled with provisions, half with stones. You need to take out the stones and put in more provisions.”

27 June 2008

"How much do you love him/her?"

That's a quote from movie 'Win a date with Tod Hamilton'.
It's about an LA actor, Tod Hamilton that falls in love to a West-Virginia girl.
However, the relationship is over since the girl realized that she falls in love with her best friend.

Just wanna share some quotes from the movie.
"How much do you love her?"
"There are 3 types of love: LOVE, BIG LOVE & GREAT LOVE"
"You can get rid of LOVE for 2 months, BIG LOVE for 2 years... but.. GREAT LOVE changes your life!"

"What kind of love do you have?"

02 June 2008

Pledge for Firefox 3

I was browsing through the net and found the link about Firefox 3 that wants to achieve as
the most software downloads in 24 hours on a Guinness Book World Record 2008

It sounds interesting since it means that this latest version of Firefox has better performance rather than the current version. Frankly speaking, I got some bugs in the current version. When I open too many tabs, the navigation box (place where you type on the URL link) on the browser will only show the latest link that I have typed. For example, I opened yahoo, google, friendster, facebook & my monash. So, my current tab is my monash, then when I switched the tab back to yahoo, the navigation box would show up as "my.monash.edu.au" instead of "yahoo.com". Furthermore, the 'Back', 'Forward' & 'Refresh' buttons also can not work. It's so so so irritating when I did some researches for my assignments and it was so so important to keep the references link..

Another bug is the 'Find' option. This option should assist me in finding some keywords quickly, but sometimes it did not work well..

I really hope that the latest version of Firefox can fix this bug.. Really waiting for the download day since it has not been announced yet..

For those of you who wants to join this, click on this link and press 'Pledge Now' button, enter your region and email address, then you will be notified when the download day is decided :)

Thinking..

For the last few days, a question always pops-up on my mind
Is it worth to give up all the good opportunity and fancy freedom only for what-so-called love...

28 May 2008

End of semester Gathering

This is hopefully my final semester in Monash life.. Thus, me and friends were planning to have last gathering before graduating..

So today, after class, we went to Pyramid to have lunch together.
We tried burger, somewhere at Lower Ground Floor of the mall. The environment is nice, but staying there too long will freeze you.. The food actually is OK (I still prefer Subway.. hohoho..). The good thing here is that we can refill our drink with many kinds of drink, Lemon Tea, Ice Tea, Cokes, 100+..

After eating, we took some pictures then walking around to Sony Ericsson + Nokia center to check out what kind of mobile phones that are the latest on the market. Mobile phone centers really has a lot investment to decorate their own store with those LCD touch screen. It's interesting though seeing some kinds of stuffs that really make use of technology. I wish one day I could create the stuff like that (LOL..).

Then, we played archery together. Luckily, there is a promotion right now. The normal price is rm9/person/12 arrows while the promotion price costs us only rm12.30/person/27 arrows. This sport really made my left hand feel pains and tense after shooting all the 27 arrows, but it's just feel good when I can shoot the arrow to the right-place-to-be..

Lesson learnt: Overconfident really does not suit me at all..

Today is so frustrating since I have assignment interview this morning.
I have my codes running well, but unfortunately, some methods can not work during the demo time.. feel so so bad.. nervous.. panicking..
After analyzing it, I found some reasons that have to be noted to my lesson learnts.

1. Make a proper testing before submitting the works.
Actually I was really really sure that I have done the good jobs for this assignment because I have started very early. However, when I tried to draw the class diagram to show the associations between classes, I found out that my class has high dependency since there are many arrows from one class pointing to other classes. This is so irritating, thus I moved some methods to other class. Since I thought the codes have worked, then I didn't really test them out. This is my mistake.. I should be more phobia and did extra checking..

2. Always create and retain some versions of your codes
I always make the versions for every assignment that I have done. Usually I will have something like, AsgnFIT2018, then AsgnFIT2018-edited, then AsgnFIT2018-final. I also did for my Java assignment. I have created each folder for each assignment specification. So I have around 7 folders, named R1,R2,R3,R4,R5,R6,R6xtra. My mistake here is to confidently deleting all the folders except the final folder after I submitted my assignment. I really did not care about the interview since I did all the codes by myself so I will be able to answer every single question (really confident is not a good trait in this case..). I really regret it deleting all of them now, because I could not refer to the again since my previous codes can work well compared to the final codes (only got the association problems..). I really regret it now, I should at least retain them until my mark has been finalized...

3. Always prepare for your interview the night before
The overconfident thing really makes me lazy to prepare all these stuffs.. I had better being more 'phobia' and nervous in facing all these stuffs..

26 May 2008

Viwawa

Recently, I've been addicted with this game.
Viwawa is one of the online web-based games.
It provides many games, but 'Big 2.5' attracted me the most.
Big 2.5 is based on an original card shedding game, Big Two (also known as "Choa Dai Di" in Cantonese, "Da Lao Er" in Mandarin Chinese, "Setsot" in Palembang language.. LOL). I love this game and I used to play this game with my brothers on my hometown.. Suddenly miss them..

This game is really new alternative for me since I have finished all the TV show series, Desperate Housewives season 4, Gossip Girls and CSI NY season 4 :)

Therefire, if you have time, you can go for this game. You surely will love it ;)

24 May 2008

Linux Networking

Finally, can finish networking assignment that took up my 3-weeks-time and made me miss my cousin's wedding party.. So many things have been sacrificed for this assignment. But I did learn a lot things about networking.. especially Linux Networking.

This assignment taught me how to program the router. Frankly speaking, the first time I saw first router was in this networking class.. so pathetic, right?? IT student but saw router the first time on the final semester.. I just knew it that we had to program the router using PC. I thought router is just a router that already had built-in program once they are manufactured. This subject really opens my eyes, networking had a lot interesting things to learn..

I also learned how to configure some services on Linux OS,using Ubuntu 7.10. To get better understanding, I even had Ubuntu installed on my laptop. It's my first time dealing with Linux codes but these stuffs were so interesting.. although I found this Ubuntu made my laptop slower than ever, made me reformat my laptop and made me reboot several time because of it hang almost all the time.. hehe..

By the way, the most stressful thing is when I tried to install OpenVPN on my laptop. It was very hard to make it run.. so many problems I have faced.. But accompanying by some Indonesian-language-blog and some books that I have borrowed from library.. Finally, could get it running ;)


10 May 2008

Gearing to Success Stories Talk at Monash

I just come back from the talk conducted by Monash Alumni.
It's really a good talk, presenting Sen Ze, the author of 'Air Asia Success Story' and some books about making money through Internet.
The guy looks young and knowledgeable. He told us that 'Sen Ze' is not his real name, it's just a name to make his target markets easily remember him. The interesting part is that he knows a lot of things about Internet, although he graduated from Law.
It's really a worthwhile talk to listen, since I am an IT students that might go into the E-commerce field.

There are some issues that I catch from the talk:
1. Our future employers might use search engines ('Google'), networking site ('Facebook') and video site ('Youtube') to find information about us. That's why we need to be careful in writing and doing something. Can you imagine if you get drunk, then your friends record you using camera and put it in the Youtube.. what a shame if your future employees see that.

2. Creating our own website by buying domain name that is associated with our name. He really imposed that our name is our brand and very very important. He told us that 'Sen Ze' is not his real name. He just used it to make his target markets easily remember him. What a good idea he had.. I should also find other names to make people easily remember me.. Oh yeah, he shared another way to make people remember you. When you meet other people, asked him what's his name and 'pretended' that you also have the same name. That is surely leave the impression to other people, since noone forgot their own names.

3. Create a blog that focuses on one field that you expertized. So, when employers see them, they can see your thought and ideas.

4. Use Facebook as the way to sell yourself. Fill your profile page with the contact information and personal details. Then add as many as friends as possible to spread out your network.

Actually, I know the use of blog site and networking site, but I have not thought that those sites will be essential and useful resources for future employers to dig in.

20 March 2008

An Empress and the warriors

Today I and YanDan walked to Pyramid and watched "An Empress and the Warriors" movie, starring Kelly Chen, Leon Lai and Donnie Yen. Usually the 'war' movie is very boring, but this movie is so so different.. maybe that's because the love story that touching me. Although it's Chinese Movie, but it looks like the Western Movie where the technology used looks real.. the view.. the air balloon.. also the white cloth that the empress wears was so so beautiful.. This film is much much more different from jay Chow's film, The curse at the golden flower. That film is so so boring..

However, the end of the story is not really good, cause the empress lost her lover.. He protect an empress with his life.. so so sad ending.. That the end that I really don't like..

13 March 2008

Career plan

Inspiring by my friends' blogs and some of our previous discussion about the career...

Since this is the final semester of our bachelor degree, this topic becomes the hottest topic now and will be in the next few months.

Most of my friends have found out what they want. Most of them are looking for opportunities at Singapore to get experience about the business life there, then planning to have Master degree to get some knowledge, experience and connection that assist them in their working life. That means to get higher position in the company or get better and larger company. After that, with those experiences and salaries, they will start their own business. Finally, when everything is settled, marriage life will be the next level.

How about me? That question always come out of my mind.. I am just a university student that focus more on studying to avoid the 'F' in order to use parent's money wisely. I did not involve in any clubs. I have never take the part-time jobs. So, basically, Sadly, I do not have any working experiences that I can put on my resume to get the extra points from my current employers.
Then, the saddest thing.. Until now, I have not found out yet what kind of job that I really want..
What can an IT-fresh graduate do?
A programmer? I dont think I am good at that field.
A system analyst? I heard that we can not straight away be an analyst, we need to be programmer first before becoming an analyst.
A sales person? Am I good at persuading other people? Can I communicate with them?
Running a business? I really do not know how the business life is..
So confusing..

Blogging again..

It's the third month in 2008 which means I have abandoned this blog for one and half years.
I was enjoying blogging at Friendster at that time. But now, I just want to find something new by makes the use of my old and first blog.

Blogger has much more improvement since the last time I login. It has more layouts for our blogs. The most improvement is how to login. I think, Blogger now integrated with gmail, so we need to have gmail account to login and to leave the comment to the blog.