Oh wow… Another year is almost gone. Soon, I will be saying goodbye to 2008, and hello to 2009.

Shall we do a flashback along 2008? Sure, why not!!!

Lets see… In the case of my literature life, I’ve had many stuff going on in 2008. I helped published the Student Lounge Century College literary magazine as a coeditor and got one of my works (Bring Me Time) published. I [felt like I] failed the TANTANGAN program from www.kemudian.com and withdrawed myself out of the website. I participated in Poetry Slam and was brave enough to perform a poetry at MSCSA Fall General Assembly. I met the Barnes&Noble paradox (see post in January). I read a lot of awesome Indonesian books like Edensor by Andrea Hirata and Negara Kelima by E.S. Ito.

In my academic endeavours, there are a lot that I am thankful of. I got 4.0s for Spring and Fall 2008 semesters. I won 2nd place cummulative for 2007/2008 AMATYC and 1st place in 1st round of 2008/2009 AMATYC. I was a Peer Tutor during Fall 2008 semester. I am also accepted at U of M for Spring 2009.

Leadership aspect of my life got the biggest change in 2008. After volunteering and participating in numerous events and clubs, I was accepted as the Student Ambassador starting summer 2008. I was also elected as the Director of Information Technology for Century College Student Senate. Moreover, I was also he Director of Communication in Phi Thera Kappa. I have attended the MSCSA Fall 2008 General Assembly in which I learned LOTS and ignited my interest in student activism.

There are also some random events in 2008 that I would like to look back upon. I went both water AND snow tubing this year. Beijing summer olympic was also a memorable time. And then there was also the Relay For Life in which I rediscovered my love of running. In May, I had to ‘defend’ my dear red bicycle over biggie motorbikes in front of movie theatre. And some sad events, February saw the Northern Illinois University shooting, not even a year after the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007. And then the US economy ‘kinda’ crashed and brought down Indonesia’s currency too.

Love life? Ehmm ehmm!!! Can we not talk about this? LOL The tulip has grown way out of my reach so I am nurturing the Plumeria now…

But the most memorable of all are all of my friends back i Century College. I will not be attending the same school with them anymore in 2009. But they’ve given me GREAT experiences in my 1.5 years in Century. For that, I give them my greatest thanks!!!

So, how’s 2009 looking? Well, I’ll be in University of Minnesota so I’ll be busy with classes. I have my plans for my leaderships. I have a new apartment. I’ll have o make new friends. I’ll have to keep nurturing the Plumeria.

For now, I will say, goodbye to 2008. The time is 23:03 in Maplewood, Minnesota. Over and out…

Look up at the banner of this blog and you will see a quote. I took it from T.S. Elliot’s poem, Little Gidding, No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets‘. Here’s how it goes:

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

I took that quote because I believe that I am in a middle of a big exploration now. I also believe that I will finish my explorations successfully and come back home gloriously, full of victory and achievements.

But…

I’ve just been looking around pictures of my friends back home. I just feel like I’m drifting away from home… If what I understand from the quote is right, I will be GOING BACK home, right? Because, I thought, home is where I started.

…to arrive where we started…

Isn’t that what the poem meant?

Although, now that I think of it, perhaps, home is not what Mr. Elliot talked about. Perhaps I’m not meant to go back ‘home’. Perhaps, by arriving back where I started, I will realize the true reason why I started my explorations. I will finally understand why I started my explorations.

I’m drifting away. Away from my birth place, away from my goals and dreams… Yet, I am not entirely sad. I’ve built a new family here. I’ve made a lot of friends who I care for, just like what I had… have… back home. Have I torn my heart into two?

There is also this in the same poem:

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle.

So, maybe, I will have to choose someday…? Either I strengthen the attachment to one and detach from the other, or maybe I can become indifference, living with both reality equally…?

That is yet to come. I only hope that it ends like the end of the poem:

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well

Although this post might seem a little bt too late, I want to say merry Christmas to anybody who reads this blog, all my friends and families.

May God shower you and your family with blessings.

It’s been awhile since I wrote. ARGH!! I hate friendster blog. There’s been a lot of problems nowadays.

So, what’s up with me? Umm… Well, final exam week was done. Lets see… The O chem. final exam was horrible. I positively felt retarded when taking the exam. I was like “did I miss something in class?!?!” The lab section turned out better though, at least, that’s what I thought. We were told to identify an unknown compound. My test results show that it is chlorotoluene. However, I went to Mr. Blackburn’s office on Thursday, and he said I was wrong!!! It should have been chloroBENZENE!!! I had an extra CH3 alkyl…. Damn…

The funniest thing is from the calc 3 finals. There were 2 parts: a take home part (coz we have to do graphs and stuff by computer) and the in-class part. When I calculated my total semester score, I found out that I only need 47 points from the total final exam to get an A in the final grade. I was pretty sure I got all right in the take home part (40 points). That means that I only need 7 points (out of available 60) in the in-class part!!! LOL It was hard though!!! I was confused most of the time for the in-class part.

Well, some scores are up. I got 88/100 for the O chem. My writing portfolio was graded 285/300 and now I’m just waiting for the research paper. I think I can pull up at least 2 As this semester.

It’s snowing outside right now. Supposed to go on until tomorrow. 4 inches accumulation already!!!! Oh my God I can’t see anything outside my window!!!! Well, I ain’t got anything to do now… Holiday is sometimes bored. LOL Have to pack my things now to get ready for moving day. YAY!!!

Well, this is my first day in finals week. The class was C++ programming class. I woke up late at 9 o’clock (usually I wake up at 6 LOL) and rushed but did not hurry because the exam was at 6 o’clock AT NIGHT!!! LOL

So I got to school and study some. At noon, there was student senate meeting and we went to meet with the college administrators at 2 o’clock until 3. Then, I spent some time working at call center. After that, I went back to studying.

So, to the main point. The exam was very2 VERY hard!!!!! Especially the essay part, third problem. We were required to create a program that prompts the user to enter some data, which will be written into a separate file, and then later be used again for output.

By the way, I just realized that I did a stupid mistake. I did not specify in the program which separate file to open. It’s supposed to be:

file.open(”test.txt”);

But I only wrote:

file.open();

Oh boy….. Oh well… That’s one final exam gone…. All in all, it was not that bad. It was a good class too. I had fun, even though I spent the second half of semester dozing off in class. LOL *Sorry Mr. Niemann!!!* I actually learned a lot of new stuff, unlike the stuff back in highschool.

Now I gotta go home and study for tomorrow’s finals: ORGANIC CHEMISTRY!!!!! This one will be tough coz there will be lab test too… Oh my… oh boy…. Wish me luck, guys!!!!

…That was pretty much what a fellow tutor kinda mentioned. I guess I better start the story from the beginning so we all understand why I’m writing this.

Well, today, I started working (tutoring) at 10 in the morning and a guy I had appointment with came in to have a tutoring on organic chemistry part of CHEM 1020 (Chemistry concepts). Our appointment was for 1 hour. So I explained to him everything he asked about alkane nomenclateru, how to name and how to draw the Lewis structure. I think he kinda understodd my explanations.

An hour had run out and I had another appointment, so we’re done. While I was tutoring my next appointment, I kinda noticed that the guy was still in the room. He asked another person to continue tutoring him (coz I’m not the only one who tutors CHEM 1020. The surprising thing is, the tutor he asked didn’t understand the answer to his question. So, she asked another CHEM 1020 tutor (who just happened to walk in), “do you know about organic chemistry?”

That other tutor said, “No, I don’t. It’s hard stuff. Nobody likes it.”

The girl said, “yeah. It’s complicated and hard.”

In the end, I just mentioned that the guy better schedule another appointment with me on Thursday.

Well… I’m in the REAL organic chemistry (CHEM 2041) class now. And If I had said that alkane nomenclature is hard, I wouldn’t have survived the rest of the class. But, my point is, it’s very different in US. Students come into college without ever taking chemistry (or physics, maybe both). And sadly, it is one of the program requirement. So, they struggled really really hard in classes that I consider myself familiar with.

A lot of the students I’ve helped in chemistry and physics called me really smart for understanding both subjects. The fact is, even now, I still don’t understand some of the concepts. I’ve made mistakes in tutoring physics. But it is because I’ve been taking 6 years of physics + 4 years of chemistry before college that I am able to “know” physics and chemistry.

Back to the title, I guess I don’t like chemistry, I guess I liked it, maybe even still like it. I guess I like physics more… or less… I don’t know…