Saturday, May 17, 2014

REALIZATION

Recently, I was informed by my supervisor that he is going to look for dinosaur fossil, since there was a recent discovery in Malaysia by one of my lecturers from japan, and it was the first dinosaur fossils ever found in Malaysia eventhough just a tooth. So my co-worker and I are invited to accompany him, and hopefully we can find new fossils but the whole skeleton of dinosaur not just a tooth or claw.

Most of the international people I met in my life could not recognize my originality, nationality or even my race correctly at first. Recently, while I was jogging in the park, I saw a bunch of people doing some aerobic exercises. It looked so interesting so I joined that group. After like 10 minutes of exercise, a Chinese lady approached me. She was one of the organizing committee members and asked my name, age, phone and stuff for record. Then she asked me where I came from, so I replied Indonesia. Then she looked at me like I am a ghost or something. She did not believe that, and thought that I'm a Chinese. I mean I don't think there is even a bit of chinese's characteristic shown in my face, besides I'm dark which is the opposite of chinese, and it was not the first time I got such an impression and trust me there are more. I don't really understand why, I mean I thought it is obvious that I look like an Indonesian. But why do they still get it wrong? Do they really see me as hybrid of mixed from several different races or something? These are several incidents and conversation that I can recall and all happened in my university life.

1st year

I was walking back from English presentation class and out of nowhere a black guy appeared, I think he is from Nigeria because of his accent. Then a little conversation happened.

Nigerian: Excuse me, Do you know the way to ISC?
Me: yeah sure, just go straight, cross the road and bla bla bla.
Nigerian: oh ok, Thank you very much. Are you chinese?
Me: what? me? nope. I'm Indonesian.
Nigerian: Really? you look like chinese to me. anyway, thanks for the direction.

2nd year

There was an event for international students at my university and I attended because one of my friend was performing. I met a lot of new students both full-timed and exchanged. So there was this guy, from either Uzbekiztan or Kirgiztan(I don't remember exactly his origin and how to spell it) said hello to me. He introduced himself so did I. Then he was shocked knowing that I'm from Indonesia, because he thought that I'm a japanese. Inside I was like flying without wings, it is better than someone said that I'm genius or awesome. Well, to be honest my race is javanese, it's close to japanese, just replace the "v" with "p", so I guess that explains everything.

During the journey back to the university from my last second year fieldwork, we stopped at a stall selling sweet corn. So while I was eating and talking with friends, one of the lecturers joined and had conversation with us all. Then, there was one topic where we talked about how different we see rocks before and after studying geology. So during my turn to talk, I told something that revealed my origin to this lecturer. Everyone knew where I came from except this lecturer. Then he surprised after heard my story and he told me that he thought I came from nepal(really?), everybody laughed and I've never seen them again.

3rd and final year

One day around 8 p.m., I was starving like I haven't eaten for few days, so I sent text-message to my girl-friends(friends which are girls) and asked whether they already had dinner, because my room-mate has already gone with his gang and my gang had already moved out from the dorm. Then the girls said meet them in 10 minutes coz they need to get ready. So because I'm a guy, I did not need much time for that, just put my cloths on and ready for anything. I got out the room and went to a small hall. It was not actually a hall, just a place where there are roof and chairs just to hang out. So I took a seat, played a game in my phone and out of nowhere, beyond my imagination a chinese girl appeared in front of me. I didn't see her coming, it just that suddenly there were feet in front of me. So I raised my head because I was looking at the phone, and looked at her. She started talking whether in cantonese, hokkien or mandarin I don't know. So I replied "What?". Then she talked again in her language, so I told her that I don't speak chinese. She was shocked, looked like she disbelieved what I just said, so she said sorry and ran off.

My last semester was the toughest semester in the history of all semesters. Everyday after 5 p.m. I needed to go to the workstation to do interpretation on data that have been given to me and the result was 7500 km square map. Sometimes I went back to the dorm around 12 a.m. and the worst was 2 a.m. and it happened for 3 and a half months. So there was one day, when my eyes could not take it anymore, because I worked on computer, besides my works had lots of bright colour lines. So that day, all my classes finished until 3 p.m. I decided to go to take one day off and went to library to do some reading, comic reading. Then after approximately 2 hours I got bored and decided to go back. Then before I exited the library, a group of chinese (3 people) approached and one of them touched my shoulder, and a little conversation happened. I call them 1C, 2C and 3C.

Me: yes?
1C: bla bla bla bla bla *speaking in their language
Me: what? *confused face
2C: Bla bla bla bla bla *speaking in their language with serious tone
Me: Hah? * with my wth face
3C: Bla bla bla bla bla *speaking in their language with a bit angry tone
Me: What? I'm sorry I don't speak chinese. English please.
1C,2C,3C: oooooooo, I thought you chinese, you look like chinese. very sorry. *of course they did not say that together but that's what I heard.

The same day which I went for jog and accused as a chinese by a lady, she told me what she thought is a good way to lose some fat or body weight. She said drink alot of plain water. She said, before she did that she had severe migraine and she used to be fat(I don't know how fat). She thought that it was because she has never exercised, so she decided to do routine exercise, 3 times a week, each in 30 minutes. But she still had the migraine so she went to a certain programe where was taught some basic exercises and foods that are and are not to be consumed. So after talking to her for like 10 minutes, she concluded that drinking a lot of plain water helps to increase the loss of fat in the body during exercise. Because the more you drink, the more you sweat or excrete and those processes carry fat along with them. eventhough not so much, but better than drink less.

Finally after waited for almost 8.467.200 seconds, I'm now officially a postgraduate student plus a research assistant. Ofcourse there were troubles along the way to reach this level, including crossing the road, walked for over 1 km, went for 30 days fieldwork and gained some weight after that. Yup I've gained some weight. I knew this after went back from medical check-up on tuesday 6th. It seemed that those 30 days field work did not really do anything to my body while I was expecting to lose some weight. Well, s**t happens. At first I was not sure how and where did I get those fat from. I mean I did some little exercise each day after the fieldwork. But now, I think it was because I drank I lot of water ever since the lady told me that water is good to lose some weight. Because after she told me that, within that day itself, I probably drank 4 liters of water(no joking), coz I bought this 9.5 liters mineral water and finished it within 2 days. So basically if I count it correctly, 1 liter equals to 1 kg and I use 20%(I don't know how I got this number) as percentage of water retained by the body within a day since we are composed of mostly water. So based on nothing, I have invented two formulae. Therefore my actual body weight in the day of my medical check up was:

Actual body weight = Current weight - 20/100(amount of water consumed within a day X day elapsed since I talked to the lady before medical check up) *if you drink same amount of water daily.

or

Actual body weight = Current weight - 20/100(sum of water consumed) *if you drink different amount of water daily.

So if my calculation is right, I should be smiling now. I will call it the "non-sense equation". Limitation of these formulae are they can only be applied at maximum 5 days after water consumption to the day you weigh your weight and only applicable for water not food. But I wont dare to try with food since it is harder to be expelled from the body compared to water.

What is the most expensive thing a person can have?

"A MASK"

Why is that?

A Mask I mentioned here is not a mask which you wear during halloween or dance, but a mask which we use to impress people, to show them that we are as level or higher. Why is it the most expensive? Because you tend to use everything you got to get it, despite the price that may even make you suffer to get it, just for people's sake. For me it just does not make any sense. You suffer to impress people, which will only last for maybe 1 week at most and after that everything goes back to normal. I used to have this one friend, who bought RM 200 Z**A plain-thin-shirt, plus two buttons. While I can probably get the same shirt with different brand for RM 15-30. So with RM 200 I can get at least 6 to 7 plain shirts with maybe a bit low in quality but I would say it is better than buying a RM 200 shirt. Buying it, is one thing, but taking care of it, is another thing. I mean we expect expensive stuff are more durable or harder to break or destroyed compared to cheap ones. But here, we are the one who need to take care of it, unless you can swim in money than it's different story.

What I'm trying to say here is spend the money wisely. People are mature enough to differentiate "needs" or "wants". If you have problems fulfilling your needs then don't think about getting what you want, coz it will just make the condition worst. You may do something stupid like steal or borrow from someone just for the thing that does not even gonna improve or bring advantages to you. You don't need expensive stuff to get attention, the best way is I think to be different than the others, but in a good way. I have a friend travelling around the world not because he is rich, but because he's different than others. yes he's talented, but everyone is talented, but in different way. Make the most of your talent, don't just sitting in front of computer like me. Well, at least I'm learning to typewrite. yes, grammar mistakes everywhere, but who cares?(except my high school's english teacher) as long as my points are delivered, then it's good enough. You don't know what you are capable of until you do, not try. Because try is half-hearted. Well, it is all my opinion anyway, just ignore it.

So I have a week more left before off to sarawak for the real thing. Hopefully, I can find good outcrops and sufficient for my paper, otherwise I will have to go again next year, since I'm planning to go finish all my fieldwork this year.

Funny sayings "Everyone is born as creators, but most are creating problems"