Have you made anyone smile lately?

I was offered yet another ride today from someone I didn't know.

The kindness of people around me have just never ceased to amaze me =')
I guess this is what living in a small city supposed to be like.

Her name is Glenda; she's from Philippines. She's been here for 11 years, working in Casa di Riposo in Villazzano now. She has a gorgeous sleeping 2 years old daughter at the back seat. She was graduated from informatics too on 2002 in Philippines.
She was just finished accompanying her friend and was on her way downtown when she offered me a ride.
She did it since she said it's nice to talk to a foreigner once in awhile.

Tell me about it.

With my super broken Italian my daily circle is practically my work friends, my lecturers, and my Indonesian friends.

It's so very sweet of her to give me the ride and had our little chat along the way. She even made sure I arrived right in front of my campus =')

May you be rewarded for your kindness and blessed with happiness today on dear Glenda =)
*hugsss*

Sand

I remember reading about this, in a manga I think...or somewhere.

Relationships- of all kinds- are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold on to some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost.

source

The best way to get rid of papers

Turn them into confetti
Dress pretty/weird/funny for the carnival
Throw the confetti happily to everyone you meet on your way =D

Smile

My dearest friend gave me this song way back then,
and I just fell in love with the lyrics.
And I think it's true :)

Smile, and the world will become a better place
(somehow, maybe, I hope :P)

Listen here

Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You'll get by...

If you smile
With your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just...

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just...

Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You'll get by...

If you smile
Through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile...

That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

The Art of Being Angry

It's one of those negative feeling, that would make you feel all your blood had risen up to your head. That would make you feel as if you are ready to explode.

I remember reading this quote from Aristotl back then about being angry, and I was deeply impressed by it.
I tried my best to remember it every time I have such negative feeling.
But I guess it's time I put it here so I can refer back to it easily when I'm angry.

Anybody can become angry
- that is easy,

but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree
and at the right time and for the right purpose,
and in the right way

- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

Because words slice right through the heart easily.
And the word sorry hardly could mend even the surface of that wound...

What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger

Wow, look at that, been such a long time since my last post.

J always protects me from anguish.
Like this morning, he told me to look away when he's looking at some violent/brutal video clips. Since I'm usually deeply affected by such vids.

I guess everyone tries to protect their loved ones from despair and bad things, etc.
But what's the limit?
How do you know when you should protect someone from something and when you actually should let her/him to experience it firsthand to learn from it?

I guess that's the key point in good parenting/teaching/guiding etc. To know the limit.
But then there's no such manual or defined measurements for such limit.
My mom always said that parenting us, her children, was always a trial and error process.
And... whew, I don't think I'm ready yet to do that. Ever xP

Terharu =')

A senior asked to meet to discuss about the tool I am developing for my research.
When I met her, she was scribbling, studying some paper.
And I found that... it was the paper I wrote.

The printout of my paper was full of her scribbles here and there. Some sentences were underlined. She has a bigger diagram from my paper printed out, as she said some diagrams can't be successfully printed out in small size. The folds and creases showed she has turned over those papers again and again.

Aww... =')

I thought I was going to melt at that time.

Never did it occur to me that someone would read my paper that intensively.

I can't help but think, oh, God, I hope there weren't any silly typos that I missed out >_<

I'm moved beyond belief.

May this moment motivates me more to do my research =)

Random act of kindness

I have forgotten already how does it feel to accept random act of kindness.
Today I received one.
I was just running an errand, buying groceries for survival, in the nearby supermarket this afternoon. The closing time of the shop was not really convenient as I still had roughly 20mins to wait for the next bus going to my place.

As I crossed the street to the bus stop, a lady and her daughter suddenly said hi to me (in Italian). I greeted her back, having no idea what she might asked. Unless they are fellow students, or old people, it's pretty rare to have Italians struck a conversation first with a foreigner like me. As it turned out, she asked me if I wanted a ride with her since she said she's living nearby and going home now.

I was honestly...surprised, mesmerized, speechless.... and ashamed >_<
First, I somehow can't recall ever seeing her in my neighbourhood, yet she recognized me. Second, she graciously offered a ride while she could very well just ignore me as I could get on the next bus anyway. Third, it's been a long time that I don't find this side of Trento, of a small city where almost everyone knows each other and talks to each other in public .And last but, yeah, very least, I'm so not in a proper public clothes; as I thought I was just running a small errand, I only wore a jacket, my crumpled baggy pants, and my flip-flops. Oh, God.

And, curses to my very very limited italian language vocabulary, I can't convey any of those mixed feelings in proper italian sentences to communicate with her.

With my super broken Italian I tried to tell her it's fine, I could wait for the next bus. She simply replied "come vuoi..." (I don't know how to properly translate this, literally it's "however you want", but in conversation this is more like saying "up to you") and continued that she was going home anyway with her daughter.
I could finally only sheepishly said, yes, thank you, to her.

And so we rode her car. Her name is Patricia and her daughter is Adelle, 9 years old. She's a native of Trento, living in the upper side of my neighbourhood. I told her I'm a student here, from Indonesia. And I'm so embarassed that I had to tell her I've been living here for 3 years, but still can't use proper Italian for small talks like this >_<
(Note to self : it is of high importance to take the advanced Italian course now!)

And so.. the short ride ended, and we parted our ways.
Once again I cursed myself since I didn't even know how to express my gratitude other than saying "grazie mille". In english at least I would go on with 1 full long paragraph of gratitude sentences to thank her for her help. But all I could say in Italian was just grazie mille...grazie mille (repeated until the car door closed).

And here I am in my home, safe and sound without having to wait for the bus in the cold, with warm and fuzzy feeling after receiving such random act of kindness. I hope I could return the favour someday, somewhere, somehow, and I hope I could do such an act of kindness to stranger here too next time. Amen :)

my kuing kuing

The Reason Why "RS" Is Deemed "An Expert"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227115.500

xenophobic italy?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5622156.ece

Italy is going further and further into this direction...

In my city there were only 2 small mosques, one of them was so small that it is only for men. It couldn't afford any space for women. And yet still, on friday prayers, the rows of people would spill to the street in front of it.

The second mosque is bigger than the first. At least there is a small room for women. On Ramadhan we would be tightly packed on tarawih prayers in that room. It was usually hard to properly sit and bow during the prayers.

For Eid-ul Fitr and Eid-ul Adha prayers these years an indoor sport hall was always rented. Thus, bigger number of people could be accommodated.

Last year the moslem community of my city began to build a masjid from scratch. Not in the city, but rather in the outskirt. It was planned to become a centre of activities not only for people in my city but also for moslem in other cities in this region. It was planned that on last Ramadhan we would have our Eid-ul Fitr prayer there, and not in the sport hall. But the masjid building was still not yet finished by that time.

During all the process of this building there were already some movements to object having a masjid in this region. I heard there was one moment where they hold a petition signing event in a piazza, talking about the act of terrorism and ask people to sign their petition to object to masjid building.

I read in the paper that actually there was a statement from the church in the region that support the building of this masjid. They recognize that it is a facility for prayer and people with religion needs such facility (CMIIW my italian is not that good). I talked once with my professor too, (an Italian, and he was the one who brought up the topics) and he expressed how ridiculous and made non-sense it was to object a facility of prayer to be built.

But, then... the government decision was issued. The building process had to stop, they withdrew the permission to build the masjid.

That was last year.

I just recently came back from a vacation in my home country. And upon coming back I learnt that now the small mosque is closed. There is only one mosque allowed now in this city...

And here comes the banning of food...

I enjoyed staying in Italy because the people are warm, just like Indonesian.
they smile and say ciao to strangers, they chitchat on the bus. All italians I came into contact with are nice, friendly, and kind.

CMIIW but I think how the situation advanced now is scary...

lie to me

It's a title of new tv series j downloaded based on the ads we kept on hearing in yahoo launchcast. It builds the story around the fact that there are many things in body languages people can take hints from to tell whether someone is telling the truth or not. Because simply a slight right shoulder shrug could betray a full rehearsed lie.

But then maybe it's not the body languages who betray people,
more like people are betraying their own body by involving it in an act of lie.

When we see it that way, it is amazing how our whole body parts are actually given with an inherent resistance system towards making lies. The faster heart beat, the cold sweats, the shame, the guilty feelings that would churn your guts after you did something bad. It is a bad thing, therefore our body parts are encoded to make it harder for us to lie, or do something intentionally bad in general. In wars some studies have shown that actually more bullets are shot to a random direction, as it is not in human basic instinct to kill someone else. The corollary is shown in studies concerning how there are many soldiers suffered from depressions after war. As they are essentially fighting the will of their own body and mind by killing other people.

I guess this thought will go with some verse (or hadith?) which said that later in the judgement day our body parts will stand by themselves as the witnesses for us, and reports all things, good and bad, that we have done. Jokingly we can say our body parts have their own free will ^^.

Another possibility is that actually it is not about something encoded in the body. The conscience already know that a certain something is bad, therefore, although maybe repressed, it sent this signal to the whole body which then reacts. After all, mind controls everything in our body. People could say love hurts, because when you feel sad by love it goes to the same part of brain which sensor hurts literary, thus you feel the hurt.

Anyway you look at it, -whether it is something already encoded or it's something our own conscience is telling our body-, then it is actually easy to stay away from doing bad things, doing harms to ourselves.

May for our lifetime we don't need to betray ourselves from the true path. May we always be sensitive to listen to our conscience. May our conscience always be guided to always know the truth.

ps. no, don't lie to me though. i picked the title just because it's that series which sparked this thought. I myself am a bad lie detector and therefore a bad liar.

RTSS nightmare

Just attended a mock-presentation as a rehearsal for the presentation of my first paper in RTSS.
I'm working on this paper with two profs, one from the embedded system background (my main PhD tutor), the other from the formal method background. It's my main advisor who will present the paper.
People from both area gathered for the presentation, and ... the question session started...
all hell break loose >_<
oh my, while my prof seems could manage all the questions, my guts churned listening to the questions coming.

I still have sooooooo much to learn in formal area T_T

It's half an hour after it finished, and I'm still disturbed in that how I'm still lacking all those knowledge.

I'm so far away from having the ability to present my own paper and defend it from all those questions.

While it's a consolation that
it won't be me who present it myself anyway, and I won't be able to even help answering the question since I couldn't attend it, and that I'm still a first year PhD student (well, ok, starting my 2nd year now),
still... I thought that at least I could possibly manage some of the questions.

It's so overwhelming in that this formal area is such a vast body of research.
Unlike when it was way back in high-school, or even in bachelor degree, where you have a finite set of references. And reading and mastering them will grant you the knowledge to master the material. Now, it's all current researches and papers which made up this body of knowledge. New papers published every so often. And I thought I've read soo many papers on it. But still I it doesn't seem to be enough. and the show of force (show of knowledge?) in that discussion forum scared me...

I'm still a looong loong way from home....

For my fellow Indonesian students...

Pesan Sukarno kepada Pemuda Indonesia

“Engkau hai pemuda pemudi yang ada disini, sedang mengerjakan investment. Kerjakanlah pekerjaanmu dengan sebaik-baiknya. Kerjakanlah sebaik-baiknya oleh karena apa yang kau kejar sekarang ini ialah ilmu, dan ilmu itu bukan untukmu sendiri, tetapi ialah untuk anak cucumu, untuk bangsa Indonesia, untuk rakyat Indonesia, untuk tanah air Indonesia, untuk negara Republik Indonesia … semuanya menunggu-nunggu akan kedatanganmu kembali agar supaya kamu nanti dapat memberi sumbangan kepada pembangunan tanah air dan bangsa.”

(Pidato Bung Karno di depan mahasiswa Indonesia di Amerika Serikat, tahun 1956)

I got this quote from a random mail, I just can't help crying somehow reading it...
Maybe it's because I'm just too stressed with my work here now...
but then, have I really done my best? Have you?

playing around with style

When I was little one of my ambitions was to be a fashion designer :D
what do u think of these sets? :P

About suing for emotional distress

There is something that doesn't sit right with me about this article.
I've read the initial article I think months ago,
about a girl who sued a hairdresser where she applied for a job,
since she wasn't even given a chance to show her ability.
she was just turned down because she couldn't show her hair while working.
I'll put that initial article link later if I could find it.

While I found the salon owner reasoning is pretty sound,
given that the notion of veil must be unfamiliar for her,
let alone the notion of a hairdresser wearing veil while treating a customer's hair.
Yet, I also found that despite the novelty of such idea,
I think she still could have given her a chance to show her professional skill first
before really turning her down.

The problem is about the equality of the right to work professionally.

However, then in this new article the focus is then shifted to about the emotional distress of the girl having turned down by the salon.
And for that she is granted 4k pound sterling.

Somehow the court ruling doesn't seem fair and wise to me...

In the court the suing hairdresser won because

She (the salon owner) was not able to prove her contention that employing someone with a headscarf would have the negative impact on her business's stylistic integrity that she feared.

Thus, I think the proper solution would be to have some kind of legal base that ensure
for the future that every person, despite her headscarf, must be allowed the chance to
win the hairdresser job just based on their professional skill.

The part involving money to pay for the emotional distress part is the one that doesn't sound right to me.

It sounds....kinda greedy?

Emotional distress can happen.
It's just parts of human life in society.

How can you measure an amount of money to heal your heart wound from emotional distress?

Having the problem settled in court with an amount of money paid for you for your emotional distress, how would that heal your depression?

Isn't a fair apology from the person feels better?
A sincere admittance of apology with warm handshake and eye to eye contact that convey the empathy and understanding of your distress,
and then also your own act of forgiving that person.

Isn't that what heal heart wounds?

To me the court decision with the money grants somehow sounds like its going to add more social tension...

I really hope the aspiring hairdresser with veils will find her dream job.
I really hope that the salon owner will be able to pay the money and prosper in her salon business and might take a hairdresser with veils as an employee in the future for her awesome hairdressing skill.
And I hope the same for all other aspiring hairdressers in veils and other salon owners in the world...

And may peace fall upon the world...as Islam is rahmatan lil'alamin..

my daemon :P

Hihihi, cantik, ya ;)
namanya kurang asik, tapi.
masa sangar2 cantik begitu dinamain Olin.
minimal....ummm...apa, ya...Antoinette! xD

btw, ini gw dapet dari raiza yang konon dapet dari sandy.
Jadi trendsetternya si Sandy, ni, tampaknya ;)

yang ini daemonnya j, niii, hihihi,
keren, ya;D
padahal tadinya dia dapet yg lebih keren: snow leopard,
tapi terus ilang linknya.
kata j ntar kelinci habib dimakan tu ma si Loreana ;P



masih berhubungan ama kucing-kucing cantik kaya daemon2 di atas...

tadi daku nemu daftar kucing kucing langka di dunia.

hiks..hiks...hiks...sedihhhh ='(

kucing cantik cantik & lucu lucu begitu ampir punahh, huhuhu.
gw bahkan baru denger sekarang yg macan biru itu..

gmn, ya, caranya nolongin biar ga punah?

dikate suruh nyumbang ke organisasi wildlife juga,
kok jadi kayanya miris,
nyumbang banyak2 ke indonesia masihhh aja banyak banget yg perlu
(abis baca ini beberapa hari yg lalu, sedihnyaaaa T_T),
ini mo nyumbang ke kucing =(

oh kucing kucing tersayang,
pada survive, ya *hugs hugs*

gw nunggu nunggu bioteknologi yg bisa ngerealisasiin mimpiku, ni:
pengen bisa pelihara macan, singa, polar bear, dan semua yg ada di list kucing2 langka itu,

tapi yg selama2nya kecil aja,

jadi lucu bisa buat maenan =D
*namanya teknologi forever-young-kittehs, kali, ya? ato bonsai kitteh? xD*

away from home

it began with a simple birthday card,
and me planning to write some simple words,
some wishes for my daddy dearest.

then my mind wandered
and I realized that
i hardly can remember the last time I was home to wish you a happy birthday in the morning, Dad...

I've always thought that being away from home,
something which I've done since I was 14,
is something that makes me stronger.

but, is the price I pay worth it?
wouldn't I be stronger if I spent more years learning from my parents wisdom?
building closer bounds with my dearest brothers and sister?
have i alienated myself from my family with all these years away from home?
have i done the best as a daughter for my parents?
have i been wasting my not-so-long-time in this world away from you, my Mommy and Daddy dearest?

Suddenly I just wanna go home...

And after a sleepless night
just to find out in the morning that I could right away sleep peacefully after some calls with my parents,

and some chats with my friends dearest,
I found out that home isn't just my family,
my old friends too...

with all my works now, have i been wasting moments I could have spent with u guys?

and i wanna go home more and more...




ps. but someone is going nearby here instead ;P yayy for velly! =D)

being busy and twitter

hehehe, those two are actually contra productive to each other :P
but anyway,
in the middle of tons of works that I have to finish for my paper submission due this weekend,
my dearly devoted dJ found twitter (although initially he misleaded me to tweeter which resulted in me frowning, "huh?")

I've known this twitter thingy since quite some time ago.
Yet, I restrained from joining it since I viewed it just as a blog for ultra obsessive writer that likes to report every second of his/her life. Plus it is so much prone to stalkers (being a stalker myself makes this possibility sound creepier :P).

But, anyway, it's true such a thing is very handy for J who is too lazy to write something like a long post entry for a blog.

So here i am joining him in twitter.
Hmm, then....what else? who else is there?
....seems no one that we know r there.

oh, the horror. lol.
either the hip of twitter has passed, or none of our friend had known it yet, or everyone chose to shun it just like my initial thought xD

so since we are in it, would you like to join us in twitter? *wink wink*

ikut2an habib ;P

wiii, heboh deh, avatar gw :P
jadi inget account gaia daku.
dulu dipaksa-paksa bikin ma temen ;P
tapi karena gw nya males bener bergaul disana jadi miskin deh, avatar macem gini ga bakalan kebeli dah xD