Dear you,

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They say the more I use you, the more I seem intelligent. Sometimes I bring you with considerable curiosity I could never pretend. All people also put you at the final of their question to make an end. That makes me more jealous because of the fact that I'm not the one who can be with you, but everybody can.

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I actually try my hardest to always use you, find you-- be with you. Even if I know there would be a lot more people who will call me an inquisitor like some of them already do. They just don't understand, and they will never do. But neither can I resist that they are not true. Though there is something truer than that, that is my love for you.

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Dear you,
Do you know what I like the most about you?
Because there's always an answer after you.

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Sincerely yours,

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An inquisitor

written long time ago for Charity.fm when Ask.fm was a real hype.

"Kalo kamu hobinya apa?"
"Membaca dan menulis."
"Wah.."

Akhir-akhir ini rutinitasku banyak diisi dengan wawancara untuk memenuhi tugas kaderisasi masuk himpunan. Hobi adalah salah satu pertanyaan template yang diberikan. Kalau dipikir-pikir, aku juga bingung apa hal yang kutekuni dan senang saat menekuninya. Mungkin bagi mereka yang mendengar jawabanku, rasanya aku seperti orang serius sekali. Atau sebaliknya, ada yang membuat candaan kalau hal yang kusebut seperti jawaban anak taman kanak-kanak.

Aku suka membaca apapun. Novel—jika tidak malas, sajak, artikel, blog post, Tumblr post, atau bahkan thread Twitter jika menarik perhatianku, pasti akan kubaca. Sedangkan untuk menulis, aku menemukan diriku setiap harinya selalu ada hal yang ingin ditulis, namun berakhir mengetiknya dan kembali menghapusnya. Bagiku memang lebih sulit mengungkapkan hal yang ingin kuutarakan. Post ini misalnya. Aku berpikir berkali-kali sejak beberapa hari yang lalu untuk memutuskan benar-benar kutulis atau tidak. Padahal yang membaca hanya aku saja.

Aku kerap melihat raut wajah yang mungkin berpikir bahwa aku membosankan setelah mendengar jawabanku. Entah mengapa aku lebih senang dianggap membosankan oleh kebanyakan orang di sekitarku sehingga aku tak perlu repot-repot berurusan dengan mereka. Hm.

Dari sekian banyak hal yang aku tekuni setengah-setengah, mungkin untuk saat ini dua kata tersebut lebih cocok untuk disebutkan jika ada yang menanyakan.

It has been a while I am not posting things on my page anymore. The lazy me would say that I didn't write anything because I had no content to write, when in fact I truthfully am just being lazy. So yeah, here I am now being a college student and I'm ready to tell you guys what I have been thru this past year.

I haven't told you yet which university I go. Right now, I am a student at Bandung Institute of Technology, or so called ITB. Yeah, the best technological university in my beloved country. If you are wondering how the hell I could get in this great institute, here's the answer. It all started with a dream.

I am going to tell you how I worked on this dream during my high school life, but I won't put every detail. Everybody knew that I was the quiet kid with good intelligence (not being arrogant but the old me was just really good at academics and bad at socializing). I decided to join the Student Council to get to know a lot more friends and be a better person. My goal was really just to have a good social skill. It worked. I was known as the student that could balance academics and joining organization. I scored great in class, I joined competitions inside and outside my province, and I helped a lot of events and activities at the Student Council. Long story short, I got into ITB by SNMPTN program with the help of good grades and achievements I got in high school. Yes, a typical smooth way of going to college.

That's the recap of how I got accepted in my campus.

As you see on the title, this post is going to be about my college life. Ever since I started leaving my hometown I knew this would be a new journey for me. I get used to being away from home because I joined a couple competitions outside my town. So, I thought it was going to be easy being away from home. Turned out, it wasn't. At all.

This is me posing at the famous Plaza Widya as the new student. You can see the twin buildings behind me.

Living in Bandung started when my family drove me there with bunch of my things I brought to support my daily life. They stayed for two nights and then I was left in the Sangkuriang Dorm, the place where I lived during my TPB year. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that ITB somehow has kind of different way to learn from any other campuses. They call it Tahap Persiapan Bersama (TPB) for the first year of study. My lecturers said that it is intended to make all the students have the same level of knowledge as their base to support them in learning what they're going to learn in their own major later.

How was TPB for me?

As a-not-keen-at-studying-student in high school, I would say it was hard. Not so hard that I couldn't even have my leisure, but it was hard, hard, you know. I realized I was behind in class when I faced my first Physics quiz. I got zero on that. Yes, I prepared for the quiz, I studied what my lecturer taught me, but come on, this is ITB, the best institute in the country. It wasn't enough. For me, the problems on the quiz were reaaally hard. I mean it. I tried to solve the problems and wrote them down. I remembered how my lecturer taught me, but it was far from the problems on the quiz. Then, I understood that I should try to study harder that I already had. Even though I was not the one who got zero, still that moment hit me hard.

Lesson learned, I gotta prepare harder for every quiz, every exam so that I could, at least, pass them. I studied until it's late, sometimes 3 a.m., 4 a.m., or even no sleep at all. For a person like me, just to get average score was extremely hard. So I was grateful no matter how much I got (as long as it made me pass, lol). Long story short, I finished my TPB year with a very average GPA. Thank God, I didn't need to retry.

Kampus Gajah is not only about the heavy load of academics, but also the student affairs. Let me start it with OSKM ITB. (Anyway, sorry for the back and forth plot, hehe). OSKM is some kind of the new students orientation. This event was set up so amazing for me who just entered college life. I started to think that the events that I held in high school were nothing to be compared to college events, especially ITB's. All the committees seemed to know their own part of the event so well that it could go perfectly. All I could think as the new student was only mesmerized by them. But after a year studying here, listening to the stories from seniors, reading rant posts about it, hearing gossips here and there, I knew, to be active in ITB's student affairs needs sacrifice.

I was told, here in ITB, there are three options that you can only choose two. They are academics, sleep, and student affairs. If you choose the two options, you'll be lack of the other one. I haven't decided what I choose yet. So as the closing, let's hear something from me again after a couple of time studying in this campus and dealing with every part of it. Sorry for a sudden end on this post, I'm always bad at ending something (especially, feelings hm). Wish me luck in my study.

So, a couple of years (two or three years, I think) ago, I read this writing of someone. She is Rosemarie Urquico, a writer from the Philippines. I think everyone should read this somehow. Well, here it goes.
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