ITB : Pluralism Campus

ITB is well known as the best university for technology in Indonesia. But, beside that I am also feel that ITB has given more than the best education technology for its student. Almost 4 years I’ve been there, I feel very happy to learn about tolerance with other ethnicities and religions. I study in Chemical Engineering Faculty which I think has the most diverse people whether the lecturers either the students. There are Padang, Batak, Jawa, Tionghoa, Bugis, Sunda ethnics and also all the religions ( Islam, Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu ) in this faculty. Our harmonic life describes the meaning of pluralism itself.

I am really grateful to have this experience and I believe as Indonesians all of us will do the best for our country despite our differences of ethnics or religions. No wonder many countries has come to Indonesia to learn about the harmonic life of diversity because we have proved that the differences not becomes our weakness but actually it strengthen our country more. You can see the great video of this topic at this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm09CizE_Aw which is made by my friend, Herdimas Anggara. Thanks to him so much.

kopaja insight

hmm. today  I have experienced many things when I use Kopaja to back home. haha. Those things made me amazed, frightening, also curious. First, I am going to talk about performance inside the Kopaja. As you know, there are a lot of singing beggars in Jakarta. So, I guess every bus definitely will have at least one singing beggars when its travels. Today, for the first time I enjoy the singing beggars performance. They are very creative to make a song about Indonesian Foreign Employee case that has been hot topic recently. FYI, one of them had been executed death in Saudi Arabia and made angry Indonesian people.

Anw, beside that they are also talented because they have pretty good voices and I wondering is there any chance of them to be a real musician. Hope the best for them. But, actually there are not only singing beggars in Kopaja. There are also people give a poetry which is mainly about the difficulties life in Jakarta and how a small amount that the passengers give will be help them so much. hemm. pretty interesting right? haha. can’t wait till some people make a drama there. It will be stunning me =D

Now move to the frightening one. Today I feel my adrenaline raised up in the bus, because I almost watch the battle between my bus’s driver and conductor of another bus. They have mentioned to take their ‘golok’ (weapon such as knife) to jab each other and I think I see the driver almost take something under his seat (guess it is his ‘golok’). This kind of situation made the passengers frightening (including me) and we try to get out of the bus as soon as possible. But, amazingly there are brave ladies who separate both of them and I amazed by their braveness. Fortunately, my bus’s conductor stayed calm and help on those ladies. After that moment, I realized that the conductor is Javanese and the driver is Bataknese. I think it’s quite good combination between them when the one is usually emotional (Bataknese) and the other is calm. So, it is good that our country has many ethnic groups because we can fulfill each other deficiency. hehe. If MU’s suporter yell glory glory man united, I’ll yell glory glory ‘bhinneka tunggal ika’ =D

Jakarta city life

Start from last week (6th June), I have been moved from Bandung to Jakarta for three months. During that 3 months, I am doing intern in Chevron as Reservoir Engineering Geothermal Intern. Hmm. The first thing that I felt when I started live in Jakarta was “hot”. Ha5. Fiuh. Every day I sweat a lot when reaching the TransJakarta’s  (Busway) halt. Also, I must adapted soon with the work “thing”, which is get in the office from 8 to 4 o’clock every day. Hmm. It’s quite interesting actually when you start a new part of your life. Although I had been lived in Jakarta during my high school, it is feel very different. For me, it is challenging and also interesting when you start a new experience. I have a dream to experience living in a lot of part in this world as much as I can. =D

Anyway, now I want to write about life in Jakarta which I have been experienced for almost 2 weeks now. Everyday, I use busway as my transportation tools to get to my office like most of Jakarta’s citizen as well. Even from my boardinghouse to the halt, I can see the fast beat life in the town. There are many peoples starting the day earlier, you can see many motorcycle taxi’s driver has waited for customers, many retailers has peddled their goods, and also many peoples has walked to theirs workplaces. Everybody seems has its own part in the whole city routine life. They work hard to get money and live well in the town. This motivation keeps Jakarta growing faster and more crowded each year. Every big city in the world have experienced this and I think this phenomena will spread out to other cities in Indonesia like what happens in China. Nowadays, China has many big cities, not only Beijing & Shanghai, with good city plant such as Guangzhou, Qingdao, and many other places.

So, everyday I am looking for new things that made me interested to tell about. So far, I think the interesting “thing”  for the past week was the food peddlers  in front of Ratu Plaza that provided breakfast for peoples who is in hurry. They sell porridge, “lontong”, “gorengan”, “kue basah”, siomay and so on. It’s quite interesting to see the transaction between the peddlers and the buyers on the sidewalk.^^