Updates: Light Textures,Scans and New Layout on September 8 2010.

I never liked Monday mornings. I usually wake up late because on Saturday and Sunday I sleep in (even though I’m not good at sleeping in; I wake up on 8 am. That’s the farthest I can do. My record is to wake up on 3 pm, but that was because of the jet lag thingy, so hopefully that doesn’t count), then I will forget things that I should bring to school, getting used to homework and tests again. Monday morning has never been this great now, because I’m having my two-week break. Wheee.

So recently, I’m getting suspicious of some people I know in real life viewing my site, and if it’s true I’m not going to like that fact much because I don’t really want them to see what I’ve been doing here. You know, it’s funny, there are very few people that knows me as a whole person–if not no one. Some people only know a hobby or two among a lot of my interests. There are some people offline that I tell about my site and I don’t mind them viewing, but apparently I’m losing track of people that know about my site now I’m kind of regretting this fact and thinking about moving to another site, but I’m lazy haha.

Yesterday I did some clean up and decided that I’ll only let people offline know about my Twitter (I have another Twitter for people I know in real life, and I only use it to keep track of homework and tests in case I forget) and Facebook. I hid my Flickr and Last.fm from them and I deleted my Tumblr to simplify my online life. There were two people I know in real life requesting to follow me on my Twitter for people I know online but I declined them right away.

(Yes, I changed my blog topic because I didn’t like the previous one).

I don’t think that you have to travel so far away from where you live to feel the experience. There might be a lot of places around your town that you haven’t explored. I’ve always wanted to explore towns around where I live because honestly, I don’t really go out a lot. That could be an adventure, too! That’s just the way you see it. I’ll have two weeks off from school and I’m not going to travel so far away for now. I realize that just around here there are soooo many places I’ve never been to. So I’m planning to go to the Old Town (I’ve been there, but didn’t have enough time. I want more!) and the Old Harbor. I also feel like taking a train ride to somewhere. I have so many plans for my breaks, and I’m more than excited.

I’ve heard and/or read so many stories of people going backpacking throughout a continent or even the world, and they just make me want to do it. I have so many places/countries I want to visit, if I could I’d travel the world. Heh, I won’t mind if I had to stay in a hostel or whatever, accommodation-wise. Some of place/countries I want to visit someday are Nepal, India, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey, South Africa… I could go on forever! But honestly, I want to travel the world. Haha. But before that I hope I’d get a chance to explore my country first, there are a lot of places of interests I haven’t visited. I’ve only been in a road-trip once around Java, and very few provinces outside Java.

What do you think about traveling, and what are countries or places you want to visit one day?

I’m upset and confused.

When I want to share my opinion or if I address a question, it means that I’m expecting a mature response or an answer. Not a judgment or assumption. I don’t care if it is a joke or not, really. I think in a different way from most people, and boom, people assume that you’re A, B, C, D. Funny thing is when all of them are far from the truth.

Maybe it’s just me, voicing my opinion in the wrong place, the wrong person and the wrong time.

But I don’t want to do/believe/follow something just because the majority of people do it. You know, I need reasons. It just feels so wrong when I’m doing something, but don’t know why am I doing it.

Well but remember when I’m pissed off at someone for doing something it doesn’t actually mean that I hate him/her as a whole person.

OK I’m not supposed to post a new blog or anything but I just really want to post this blog. I’ll return comments asap, I have a pile of assignments and tests this week. I come home late lately because I’m in this kind of learning center (or whatever I don’t know how it’s called) now.

School has been okay, and life has been great so far. I have more tests coming next weeks and also assignments. I’ve only worked on half of them. One of the assignments is to write an essay about the end of the world. I’m excited, but then I remember when I handed my Bahasa teacher an essay about gossip and how it affects us. I gave some data because I didn’t want to say that it affects us this way, that way, the A way, the B way without giving any real data that proves so. And she said that I’m getting out of context, and she didn’t seem to be okay with it. So every time I get excited for this end of the world essay, and I remember about how my Bahasa essay ended up, I tend to go “meh”. I’ll work on it eventually.

On Friday I went to watch Salt. It was okay, maybe because I didn’t really set up a high expectation of it. And then I went to break the fast together with my 2009-2010 class, had a really great time there. On Saturday I went to the bookstore again, and I hope that will be the last time because I seriously need to stop I’ve bought six books to date this month:

1. Pygmy – Chuck Palahniuk (halfway, but had to gave it up for a while)
2. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut (currently reading)
3. Looking for Alaska – John Green (finished)
4. Paper Towns – John Green (finished)
5. An Abundance of Katherines – John Green
6. The Elegant Universe – Brian Greene

I’ve written book reviews of Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, I’ll put them up later. I was going to buy The Hunger Games, but when I saw The Elegant Universe was available (I’ve been looking for the book since like ages ago and had to order it from Times bookstore in Singapore) I picked it up. Can’t wait to read it, though! I’ll get The Hunger Games next month. Feel free to e-slap me if I happened to say something along “I just bought some books” later this August.

Yeah, talking about books. It’s hard for me to stop buying and reading books. I know I have a pile of books that I haven’t read on my bookshelf, but still. When I go to the mall, I have to go to the bookstore. When I go to a bookstore, I have to go with at least one book. I love books, haha. <3

Anyway, I’ve completed my 101 in 1001 list.

Today I had my math presentation. I worked with my group, and it was okay. We received some critics and apparently some of my classmates had no idea what we were trying to say. I wish they did; I felt bad if they didn’t.

I wasn’t the one who had to explain things. My jobs were to find animation or 3D graphics and made the PowerPoint slideshow. And during my group’s presentation, something tickled me. I thought they had no idea about what I wrote on the presentation. It’s difficult to explain, but long story short, they just didn’t get it. They wanted it to be A, while I already had a scheme in my mind, which was B, not A.

I’ve known that my mind is pretty different from others. I suck at explaining things, and when I already have the ideas concepted in my mind, I just can’t execute it. It’s frustrating especially when I have to make a presentation, or group presentation, and work it with other people. My ideas won’t go well with other people’s. When I think it’s good, they can’t judge because they don’t even get my ideas. And they would be like, “meh…”.

I do understand, though, that I’m not good at this, so it doesn’t really surprise me when my chairmate or friends ask other people instead of me. I’m not blaming them—it’s my weakness. I know so well that one of my friends just don’t get the way I explain things (and if you’re reading this, haha, don’t freak out, it’s my bad). Other people do know, as well. I’m not the one people come to when they ask questions about math, science, or other things. I’m not their right person. Too bad, though; I’d really like to help, but I just couldn’t.

It’s difficult, really, to suffer from this kind of thing. I’m not good at speaking, explaining… they’re not things that I’m good at. Kind of similar to my previous math blog post; I understand things in my mind, but just can’t write it down or speak it up.

And I’m being more sure about this when I discovered this test, through Skeletons MB (you should join if you haven’t!) I usually don’t rely too much on online tests or quizzes, but this one surprised me. It was accurate, and in one of the paragraphs it was described that most of the time, people won’t get me. Either they would mistake me as an arrogant, or just don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. This personality is called INTJ (Introvert, iNtuition, Thinking, Judging).

But well, I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll figure this one out. This is one of my weaknesses, but there must be a way to at least improve it a bit. Because I don’t want to live chained by my weaknesses, and fail at life because I think they will make me stop moving, when I actually have strengths that I haven’t used or haven’t discovered… yet.

I’m lack of social skills, I have an abstract mind, but I promise I won’t let them to bring me down.

(You can tell that this is self-motivation blog, but hey!)

Anyway, I’m also proud to announce that I haven’t missed any day on my 365! I missed a day.

I had a brilliant idea in my free time: re-reading my past blogs on Urban Conspiracy. I went to my archives page. With this one, I have fifty one blogs, not counting the ones that I’ve written on Piczo, Freewebs (though they weren’t really blogs), my subdomain BrilliantMistakes.FinalDesire.org, and my WordPress when I just started Urban Conspiracy. Fifty one blog posts isn’t a huge amount for you guys who have been in the world wide web for a long time, but I’m still glad that I keep my past blogs. And I really, really have a big respect for them now.

A few months ago, my blogs were just “blogs”, “entries”, “updates”, something to fill in my homepage. I was more focused to my visitor contents, so I didn’t really care about what I wrote there. I lost my blogs often, and I never cared. But if it ever happened to me now, I swear I’ll cry.

Like I said before, I’m respecting my blogs now, knowing what they have done to me now. They’re so precious and they mean so much to me. Every time I read it, I feel like seeing a reflection of the immature, foolish me. I never liked the way I write in the past, and what I wrote. I hate the fact that I used to complain so much, it’s like I never, ever paid some respect and appreciate what I have and be grateful, instead of complaining about silly little things, like this blog: mystery behind the disappearance of mom’s mango and bun (it’s still unsolved! Whoo!). And when I did read them, I didn’t like them. If I were a different person from the “silly me”, I’d probably just forget it. By that, I think I’m getting better. I’m still far from perfect, but at least I now know that I was just that lame. Haha. And I’m sure that in ten years, I still have these blogs, and I think my twenty three year old me won’t like to read these blogs. P

It’s weird that I remember some of my Piczo and Freewebs blogs, but not the ones from my subdomain and the earlier ones from Urban Conspiracy. On Piczo I remember I wrote about my vacation in Bali, and it was my last Piczo blog ever. On my Freewebs, I think I blogged about how people on Zwinky were rude to me and about my crush. Oh God, weird days. (And yes, my memory’s great. Joking.) I’ve deleted them though, so you won’t be able to find me blogging about my crush. That’s a good thing, I would hate it if someone EVER found that blog and chances are they’d find out who I was talking about. That would be a hell of a disaster. -_-

My hope is that I’ll be able to keep Urban Conspiracy until like, years from now. It would be nice reading this post and laugh at how bad the way I write. My site is like a diary that I never had. I had a diary, a few of them, but I never really wrote on them. I always felt like someone was watching me and I had a fear of someone reading my diary, even though I got it locked. But I don’t know; I feel comfortable writing on my site. Probably because a lot of people do the same, and they’re not ashamed of it at all… hell, why would we be ashamed, anyway?

I’m looking forward to ten years later, when I’ll go and read this blog about my fear of math and exclaim, “OH YEAH, I’M A MATH GENIUS NOW. IN YO FACE!!!”

What do you think about your blogs?

I’m worried about something right now.

I know that my blogs lately are mainly about school, but school is like taking over my life now. The whole national exams thing is a really big deal–it’s “only” seven months away but time does fly so fast. And I hate to say this but I don’t want to go trapped in another stupid school. I have no idea what national exams are in your country (tried to look it up on the internet but no results, haha) but if you want to get a good high school, it all depends on the national exams. And if you want to get a good college, it all depends on which high school you’re in. Or miracles.

National exams consist of four subjects (and we can’t choose): Math, Science (Physics and Biology), Bahasa and English. I’m pretty optimistic about all of them… except math.

And math scares me. Back when I was in elementary school, I always got Cs, but I got 9,75 out of 10 (A) in my national exams. I had a very nice and brilliant teacher back then. My math keeps falling downhill in junior high, mainly when the teacher changed and he was bad. And he couldn’t teach. And it scares the hell out of me now. I’m worried that I can’t make it. My teachers keep talking about how important national exams are, and math is included. Duh.

I’m not good at all subjects, but I can catch up on all subjects if I work hard, except for math. I can grasp the idea easily, but when I have to work on so many different problems, I get lost. Same thing doesn’t occur on physics, though; for me, physics is way easier than math. My mom even said that I might have a phobia of math (IDK if she’s joking or not). I understand the way things go in my mind, I know how it works, but when I have to write it down, I can’t. I just can’t, when I already have everything placed perfectly in my mind.

And then to enter a good high school, in order to enter a good university, I have to go through another test. Another MATH test. One of these schools that I’m aiming, I think I haven’t meet the requirements yet, but I CAN, and I’m positive about that. But not the math test (commonly, tests to enter high school are harder than national exams).

Lately I keep thinking about it. I’m not stupid. But when it comes to math… it seems like everybody stands it, and it’s only me that can’t. Sometimes I feel like I’m left behind. I know people have talents and things that they’re not good at like my new math teacher said (not the one who can’t teach!)

My new math teacher once said that there are some people who are good at most subjects but math. The situation is the same with me. Some people get impressive grades at most subjects except math. But the question is, do all people know that? Some people think that if you’re good at math + science, even though you suck at history and stuff, you’re a genius. But if you’re good at history and stuff, but suck at math + science = end of the world.

I’m trying to figure out how to solve this thing. Hopefully I’ll have the way out. I’m glad though that I’m doing well at most subjects so far. I swear the only thing that worries me right now is math, and only math.

Have you ever felt this way to a subject, e.g. science, math, etc.?

Now reading: The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking | Recently watched: Inception | Now listening to: Lentil by Sia

15/365

Edit: My honeymoon with the internet is over classes start tomorrow and according to the deal with mom I only have Fridays and Saturdays to get online. This means, I’ll return comments and post a new blog on Friday.

Alternatively, you can reach me on Twitter or send me a message through the contact form.

Take care everyone!

Yesterday was my first day of school, and we didn’t do anything. We were gathered in the field and we were simply told to watch the colorful balloons and the birds fly away to the sky. It’s a tradition in every year. I’ve seen that ceremonial “let’s fly the balloons” thing for eleven times in eleven years. And the amount of the balloons keep getting smaller. I remember once I was a kid my friends cried watching the balloons flying and the teachers said, “Go, go, keep your tears with the balloons, let them fly with the balloons!”

It was boring, but it would be my last “let’s fly the balloons” thing because I’m moving to another school next year. Time does fly so fast. I’ll be a high school student next year! Well not yet, I don’t even know if I’m gonna pass my exams or not, heh.

My last year of staying here started with a good start. Some of you maybe know how much I hated my school, the management, the facilities, the systems and it was like one of the biggest regrets in my life for choosing that school. I was pissed at how the textbooks that had so many blinding colors (of course, each of them costed $1 – $2!), the health care unit that didn’t have decent beds and medical supplies, the culinary kitchen that was dumped to the school’s connection bridge between the main building and the library (oh funny), and God knows what else.

And when I went to school this morning, gosh, I felt awkward. And I couldn’t believe it when I knew that:

1. There’s a new, improved, rebuilt, health care unit.
2. There’s a new, proper culinary kitchen.
3. Textbooks now are designed well, good color scheme and good contents.
4. Each of new students was asked about his/her talent so my school can start mapping and developing their talents.

Where did all of these come from? All of the sudden?

My physics Olympiad teacher was being our (means me and three of my physics Olympiad friends) victim of rage and complains back in 8th grade. Every time we had the chance, we told him what we felt about our school. And he felt the same too, and he started explaining to us what he thought the school should be–great minds think alike.

My citizenship teacher was the same. He was my class’ victim, especially when there was a class debate. Everyone was out of control and the full story can be read here. So he asked us to write our opinion, and I wrote it five pages full, but didn’t have the chance to give it to him and for some reason I decided not to give it.

They both said that they actually had nothing to do on these things, and they said that it’s good for us to be critical, but sadly they weren’t the ones who were supposed to handle these. They had tried to voice their own opinions in the meetings but failed. And we were like kind of losing hopes there.

And yesterday I walked into my school, greeted by these things, and also finding out that the nicest and wittiest teacher in my school ever is now in charge of being one of the vice-principals, made me happy. It was like a birthday present that wasn’t given right in my birthday date. Yaaay.

This is a huge impact, and now our voices are heard. Even though I only contributed a little, but still. Even though since now I’m a 9th grader I can’t really “taste” the new and improved facilities–I don’t have a culinary class this year, and there will be no competitions for people in my grade, but whatever at least my juniors don’t have to go through the pain that we had last year.

/end of happy ramble – thanks Georgina for correcting!

Two weeks and three days holiday (including my trip thingy, I’ve got a month, because I like stealing holiday!) wasn’t that boring. But the aftermath of my holiday to-do list was worst than anything, ever. I barely finished things. Next time I’m not going to create another to-do list because I can’t really stick with it.

I did some readings, though. I’ve done reading “Dexter” by Jeff Lindsay, “The Truth about Forever” by Sarah Dessen and “Pretty Little Liars” by Sara Shepard. I finally re-read “Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar” and am now reading “The Universe in a Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking.

Something that is not on my to-do list, but I managed to finish it, is photography. I learned a lot in the past week, from articles and such. I also started a 365, and haven’t skipped any day. So yeah. My to-do list is a total failure, and maybe I shouldn’t arrange a to-do list next time. I’ll just do things spontaneously.

My sleeping patterns were totally messed up, so I slept like around 11pm, or worse, 3am. I’m not used to sleeping late, because I usually sleep early and I’m a very morning person. The first time I found out that I woke up on 3pm (what the hell? I slept for 13 hours!) I was seriously pissed because I felt like I’ve just wasted my hours for something that I shouldn’t do. I could have woken up five hours earlier (because human needs to sleep for 7-8 hours, right?). When I woke up I didn’t feel good at all; I felt so lazy to wake up, not feeling fresh. Until today, this hasn’t been fixed. It seems like someone keeps pressing the button “Randomize” in my sleeping patterns. >.>

I’ve practiced to fix my sleeping pattern since a few days ago, but I always failed. Around 10pm I went to my bed and closed my eyes, but it didn’t work at all. So I tried to listen to my songs on my iPod, and ever since I always listened to a song before I went to sleep–it’s Boy Lilikoi by Jonsi. It always gives me goosebumps and I always feel happy every time I listen to it. And it works! I can go to sleep peacefully, even though I ended up waking up late (and sadly alarm doesn’t work).

Do you have a song that you always listen to before you go to sleep?