Saturday, April 16, 2005

I'm blessed in the midst of trial...

In the middle of my trial with my thesis, God still grants me the blessing. I'm honored to be given the title of the third winner of 2005 Cyclone Idol [Iowa State Daily article here]


Full concentration! Posted by Hello

Thank you, Christine Goeltom, for your beautiful play with the piano. You made my song for the final complete. Thank you all friends who showed up and supported me during the whole process of Cyclone Idol. Thank you some friends who gave me hugs, cheers, applauses, flowers and chocolate to celebrate my performance tonight. I'm "Saving All My Love for You" (this is the song that I sang for the final).

I'm thankful. Pray that God will help me during this ordeal of my thesis.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Acknowledgements

A list of thank-yous....

  • God -- for all the opportunities, blessings, trials, temptations which make me able to experience many facets of life and to grow better as a person.
  • my family -- for trusting me, supporting me and criticizing me in all the decisions and actions that I make, for loving me no matter what, for being there and listening to my rants.
  • my friends -- for giving me assistance when I need it the most, for sharing my joy and pain, for assurance that I can do it, no matter how hard the obstacles are.
With that, I rest the endeavors of my life in Your Great Divine Hands...

Monday, April 11, 2005

Pumping my ego...

If you google my name today, here are some things that I have done in the past months:

Translation Project for Tsunami in Aceh here (IndonesiaHelp.org)
IFF in Beaver Creek during Spring Break here (the Des Moines Register)
Indonesian Night 2005 MC and performances here and here (Iowa State Daily).
TESOL conference in San Antonio, TX here (CALL Club) and pics.
Blogshares: The fantasy stock market for weblogs here.

Not really important, huh? But big enough to pump my ego *wink*

Friday, April 08, 2005

Pray for me...

In the midst of this chaos of my thesis process, I ask you to pray for me....

Pray so that I can find subjects...
Pray so that I can collect my data soon...
Pray so that I can have a clear mind in writing...
Pray so that I can meet all the deadlines...
Pray so that I can finish my study on time...

But more importantly, please pray so that I will be healthy and sane in doing all of this...

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Lesson Learned

I went to San Antonio, Texas, for a week, attending TESOL conference.


Anne, Monica, Dr. Chapelle, Mehmet, Reiko and me
after our presentation in TESOL Posted by Hello

Going back from San Antonio, I started to perceive my friends differently. It turned out that I took for granted the ability of human beings to act both positively and negatively. Probably because I was never put to a situation which required me to be constantly with other people for 24 hours, I had never seen the dark side of my personalities. When I was put in a condition which hampered me to be nice all the time, I eventually learned that at some points, I had to show the real me, which means that I did not only show my positive characteristics (nice, smiling all the time, generous, understanding, etc.), but also my negative traits (egoististical, lazy, careless, etc.).

When people are tired, after a long day of conference sessions, they might be more sensitive and easily angry. When people are crappy, looking for a privacy time, there may be a tendency of treating other people badly. I, of course, being tired of walking from session to session for a whole day and being in a need of quality time with myself, became sensitive, bad-tempered, and crappy. I don't like being treated badly, but I have to realize that as human beings, it is impossible to be "angels" all the time, particularly after a long tiring day without a time to be alone, just with yourself.

My experience in San Antonio, traveling with my three closest friends, has taught me to understand more the nature of human beings of being an "angel" at one time, and an "evil" at the other time. Quite a number of times when I was with them, I wanted to yell at them to shut up and to leave me alone. I had the urge to debate any decisions that they made for going to certain places or doing certain activities, either because I did not want to go to those places or to do those activities. I also learned that my friends who were angelic most of the times in the past or in San Antonio (understanding, attentive, willing to help and listen), sometimes they too showed the teeth of their evilish smile (being difficult to deal with, giving others a hard time, yelling).

What can I do? Patience, patience, patience. Do to others as you do unto yourself.

A hard task to do, but I'm learning and trying and applying....


At the background is the "trolley" of San Antonio Posted by Hello
more pics are here. Enjoy!