Working Today

It feels incredibly refreshing, starting to arrive early in the office like what happened in my early years of working here (I mean, until the midyear of 2016 I still arrive at the office before 7 AM sharp). Don't get me wrong, my office has a flexible entry time ranging from 7 AM to 7.30 AM so when I say I don't arrive early, it means I arrived like 7.30 AM-ish. And then this noon I received this job-anniversary certificate, stating that I've been working here for five years.

FIVE YEARS!!

Wow! If they include those OJT year it supposed to be 6 years, no? How time flies...

Oh and so you know again, I've been stagnantly here for 4 years now. So basically I've spent most of my entire career here in Palembang. And to be honest, it equals with, growing older (and wiser? dunno) here. Like my adulthood is starting and progressing here from 24 to 28 yo of my age (I'M THAT OLD, I KNOW!). Ah.. what is it with Palembang? Sometimes it feels bleak and empty. Especially when my mood is in some kind of juggling state. Up and down and up and down. Often it felt like it was gonna break into pieces.. but it didn't.

This city has became one spot of comfort zones. Four years is not a short period. If it's a relationship then it'll be time to decide whether we should continue or just cut it.

Continue. Or Leave.

Of course it's never been an option for me, as a corporate worker whose the fate decided by those upper-level-men. But I don't know. I feel like I have a choice. By choice I mean I have another life to consider. The new one. (So basically it's not even a choice). I need to take a step and I know this time I won't be alone.

Those Who Can't Do, Teach (?)

WRONG. Totally wrong. Here's why.

I must say, having a teaching experience is always something else for me. Considering my forever-felt-anxiety strikes every time I take courage to raise my hand, volunteering myself to speak or just having people recognize me, like "hey, I'm exist!" (kind of), well it was just something. And maybe because I'm getting used to this, I now have a good time and starting to enjoy.

Salah satu pemateri di Training for Trainers pra pendidikan BPS; tinta di atas kertas biasa. Original picture by me.

Karena beda loh, maju ke depan, present something, dengan mengajar. Hmm ada persamaannya siih. Misalnya, sama-sama siap pasang badan dihakimi, sama-sama ada ekspektasi dari penontonnya, juga sama-sama butuh persiapan hehe. Kalau ditanya "susah mana", hmm saya pribadi sih menganggap "ngajar" itu lebih susah.

Gini, lho. Ketika presentasi - taro lah, memaparkan topik tertentu pada saat rapat kerja, kita tuh sudah tahu kalau audiens itu tahu apa yang kita paparkan. Maksudnya gini, tidak ada orang yang datang ke sebuah rapat tanpa tahu minimal judul dan garis besar topik rapatnya. Maka tugas si presenter akan lebih mudah dalam mengarahkan dan menyamakan persepsi dengan audiens. Istilahnya tuh kadang mereka datang ke rapat hanya untuk re-konfirmasi atau menanyakan hal-hal yang kurang jelas saja. Apalagi kalau audiens-nya bos-bos, bisa-bisa kamu presentasi hanya untuk dihakimi hehe. Mereka expect kamu tahu dan bisa jawab semua re-konfirmasi yang mereka ajukan. Itu saja!

Almost Ravenna

Ada yang pernah baca "titik"? Ya, sebuah tulisan semi asal-asalan yang saya buat dua bulan lalu, yang agak-agak semi curhat juga mengingat itu khas banget omongan mbak-mbak twenty something yang sok-sokan kuat padahal galau (apaseh), yang sebenernya saya udah lama banget pengen bahas dan isinya lebih luas dari yang kamu bayangin. That's right. Tentang sebuah kegagalan. Tepatnya, pembenaran terhadap kegagalan. Gak deng, saya gak seneng dengan kata "gagal". Saya bilang, sebuah ketentuan-yang-gak-persis-harapan-tapi-paling-baik-menurutNya-namun-belum-kita-mengerti-artinya. Such a phrase, ryt!

Tentang LPDP.

Selfie. That eerie portrait I drew to capture my feeling that day lol. Illustration by me. Watercolor and Ink on Regular Paper.

Ya gua pernah ikutan LPDP lohh btw. Dan misalkan elo search "LPDP" di Google pun, akan ke luar banyak bacaan, banyak yang bahas, baik yang berhasil maupun yang belum. IDK, perhaps LPDP is popular among bloggers? So walaupun saya tahu di luar sana banyaaaakk banget yang bahas ini, saya tetep akan bahas karena saya blogger, dan saya pernah ngomong kemarenan:

"That's right, successful or not, I'll be still own something to write on my blog".

Dan bener aja! That "not" was happened.

Rasanya sedih banget at the moment. Karena saya kayak udah merencanakan ini sejak lamaaaa banget. Sejak penghujung 2015 kali ya hehe. Butuh berbulan-bulan untuk saya berhenti menapakuri hal tersebut. What's wrong about me? Why did I fail? Something like that. I must say, something that a snobbish would say and I've said them a lot. Bukan gak terima sih, cuman kayak, self-esteem saya tuh pernah jatoh banget gara-gara ini. Well, kini gue nyesel sih udah mikir begituan. Gue lupaaa banget ada hal-hal kayak gue bilang di atas, hal-hal yang gak bisa kita kontrol seenak jidat, yakni ada ketentuan-yang-gak-persis-harapan-tapi-paling-baik-menurutNya-namun-belum-kita-mengerti-artinya. That Higher power. Ini salah satunya.

Disclaimer: buat temen-temen yang tersasar ke blog ini karena pengen tahu soal LPDP secara detail, my apologize, mendingan skip deh, karena saya gak akan cerita "how to" dan semacamnya. You know the result.

01.04.17 Urban Sketching Report

At first it's quite a long tough thought to report this event (because it was happened more than a month ago lol), but then I decide to challenge myself to recall the memory because yeah, I LOVE THIS EVENT SO VERY MUCH - I think I can remember a lot of detail.

So let's begin with how I discover this event.

I've been following a lot of artsy Instagram accounts lately. If you look closely to my following list on my Ig (self-endorse detected lol) you can find them easily. And I don't follow only one kind of arts style, I follow a lot of them from comics to doodle, from fashion to children illustration, etc. and today I found out that urban sketching is also a thing! I was into architectural kind of drawing (did I tell you that I once wanted to be an architect? Too bad, I was really bad at mathematics and similar engineering-starter-pack stuff lol) for so long only I never knew that we can actually draw ones without: ruler!

Lol.

To be honest ruler and eraser are not my favorite drawing tools.

Long story short, I found that event on Indonesia Sketcher's instagram and at first I didn't interested because it was in Jakarta - too far from my place. Luckily, my boss asked me to attend a business meeting in Bogor two days before that event so I finally could join (yeayy!).

Dari sini gue pake Bahasa Indonesia ajalah lagi pusing kebanyakan kerja (pfft). Btw ini bakalan panjangg banget!

First time urban sketching at Pasar Palmerah.