Monday, May 09, 2011
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
I Hate This Feeling
Oh man..it's been a while since I had this kind of feeling. It really bothers me...Hmmmm... However, I don't want this feeling to go away...I really need the courage of the heart.
Tanggung Jawab
Dulu sekitar tahun 1996, seorang guru Ekonomi saya waktu SMP, namanya Bu Endang lagi berbicara sesuatu dan akhirnya sampai pada suatu topik, jadi dia bilang..saya itu walaupun sakit, tetap berangkat sekolah dan mengajar kalian. Terus dia tanya, kira-kira kenapa saya tetap mengajar ke sekolah? Samuel, kira-kira kenapa?
Waduh, aku sih waktu itu, yaaa namanya anak kecil polos ya hehe, hmmm setelah ngajar jadi lupa sakitnya Bu! Si Ibu raut mukanya berubah, bingung..kayaknya rada kecewa gitu dengan jawabanku hehehe.. Ya dia bilang, karena dia ada rasa tanggung jawab.
Selama 15 tahun, saya merasa jawaban dia biasa aja..Tanggung jawab. Namun sekarang saya bisa merasakan apa yang dia rasakan.
Waduh, aku sih waktu itu, yaaa namanya anak kecil polos ya hehe, hmmm setelah ngajar jadi lupa sakitnya Bu! Si Ibu raut mukanya berubah, bingung..kayaknya rada kecewa gitu dengan jawabanku hehehe.. Ya dia bilang, karena dia ada rasa tanggung jawab.
Selama 15 tahun, saya merasa jawaban dia biasa aja..Tanggung jawab. Namun sekarang saya bisa merasakan apa yang dia rasakan.
Matematika
Sejak SMU, pelajaran yang paling saya suka rasanya ya Matematika ya. Yah alasannya klise-lah, ga perlu ngafal seperti biologi.. Fisika juga rada suka tapi logicnya ga terlalu suka hehehe..Ga cocoklah..Long story short, setelah menempuh S1 dan S2 di bidang Ilmu Komputer/Informatika, baru kerasa banget yang namanya matematika itu the queen of science deh..Lebih spesifiknya matematika yang rada abstrak gitu deh..e.g process algebra dan sejenisnya.
Setelah belajar di luar dan ngeliat inovasi-inovasi yang para peneliti lakukan ya dasarnya dari matematika yang fundamental..yang abstrak-abstrak..Jadi rada nyesel dulu ga terlalu hardcore mendalami matematika yang abstrak-abstrak.. Ngeliat simbol-simbol formal method dulu aja udah males duluan..Hehehe..
Kalau di dunia IR sekarang sih, inovasinya berangkat dari ilmu probabilitas dan statistik ya..
Setelah belajar di luar dan ngeliat inovasi-inovasi yang para peneliti lakukan ya dasarnya dari matematika yang fundamental..yang abstrak-abstrak..Jadi rada nyesel dulu ga terlalu hardcore mendalami matematika yang abstrak-abstrak.. Ngeliat simbol-simbol formal method dulu aja udah males duluan..Hehehe..
Kalau di dunia IR sekarang sih, inovasinya berangkat dari ilmu probabilitas dan statistik ya..
Emotional connection
Mungkin bagi sebagian orang, menjadi penggemar bola/basket atau olahraga itu hal yang aneh. Kok bisa ya kita menggemari suatu klub atau atlet.. Padahal kenal saja enggak, ketemu aja enggak pernah..Kita cuma lihat permainan mereka di TV. Kok bisa ya kita menggemari permainan mereka. Belom lagi ketika mereka kalah kita sedih dan ketika mereka menang kita juga ikut senang..Kok bisa ya? Hahaha..
Masi inget dulu pas tahun 1996, Liga Champions AFC Ajax Amsterdam vs Juventus. Wah Ajax kalah adu penalti, Edgar Davids gagal masukin bola ke jaring. Buset, waktu itu tanpa sadar aku meneteskan air mata hahaha... Terus pas Patrick Kluivert mulai naik daun di Ajax dan di timnas Belanda, aku selalu ngikutinnn terus beritanya di koran..Pas dia terlibat kasus apa gitu, aku juga ikut sedih haha..Pas performanya jelek di AC Milan, juga ikut sedih... Lalu waktu Olimpiade 2004, Taufik Hidayat di final bulutangkis, waktu itu dia diragukan oleh publik..tp amazingly dia bener2 tangguh di olimpiade dan membuat semua lawan..Gak tau, pokoknya setiap liat klipnya..terus pas dia nangis habis menang, rasanya terharu juga hahaha..
Bukan cuma olahraga..ngeliat film juga gitu kan? Ngeliat orang akting kita juga bisa terbawa suasana hehehe... Yah banyak hal yang bisa membuat hati kita "moved"
Masi inget dulu pas tahun 1996, Liga Champions AFC Ajax Amsterdam vs Juventus. Wah Ajax kalah adu penalti, Edgar Davids gagal masukin bola ke jaring. Buset, waktu itu tanpa sadar aku meneteskan air mata hahaha... Terus pas Patrick Kluivert mulai naik daun di Ajax dan di timnas Belanda, aku selalu ngikutinnn terus beritanya di koran..Pas dia terlibat kasus apa gitu, aku juga ikut sedih haha..Pas performanya jelek di AC Milan, juga ikut sedih... Lalu waktu Olimpiade 2004, Taufik Hidayat di final bulutangkis, waktu itu dia diragukan oleh publik..tp amazingly dia bener2 tangguh di olimpiade dan membuat semua lawan..Gak tau, pokoknya setiap liat klipnya..terus pas dia nangis habis menang, rasanya terharu juga hahaha..
Bukan cuma olahraga..ngeliat film juga gitu kan? Ngeliat orang akting kita juga bisa terbawa suasana hehehe... Yah banyak hal yang bisa membuat hati kita "moved"
Momen Seorang Juara
Salah satu hal yang membedakan seorang juara dan bukan juara adalah kemampuan melakukan sesuatu hal yang luar biasa pada saat yang menentukan. Barusan ngelihat-lihat lagi highlight-highlight NBA playoff jaman 1990-an dan awal 2000 dimana pemain seperti Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant berjaya (yang ini masih sih).
Berkali-kali mereka (terutama Jordan) menunjukkan bagaimana pada skor yang sedang ketat/draw mereka mampu membuat perbedaan. Bagaimana mereka bisaaa ajaaa masukin tuh bola ke basket pada keadaan yang super genting. Masih aja enggak abis pikir bagaimana di saat shot clock hitung mundur, tekanan yang begitu tinggi mereka bisa fokus banget dengan apa yang harus mereka lakukan. Dan mereka melakukannya bukan cuma 1-2 kali, tapi BERKALI-KALI..Wow man..tetep gak abis pikir ada orang-orang seperti itu...
Berkali-kali mereka (terutama Jordan) menunjukkan bagaimana pada skor yang sedang ketat/draw mereka mampu membuat perbedaan. Bagaimana mereka bisaaa ajaaa masukin tuh bola ke basket pada keadaan yang super genting. Masih aja enggak abis pikir bagaimana di saat shot clock hitung mundur, tekanan yang begitu tinggi mereka bisa fokus banget dengan apa yang harus mereka lakukan. Dan mereka melakukannya bukan cuma 1-2 kali, tapi BERKALI-KALI..Wow man..tetep gak abis pikir ada orang-orang seperti itu...
Monday, February 07, 2011
Super Dan
Being attacked in the media by Lee Chong Wei (LCW) and Taufik Hidayat (TH) regarding his suspicious walkover in the Malaysian Open SS, Lin Dan (LD) proved once again that he is still the best in the world of badminton by winning the Korean Open SS 2011. The Olympic Champion made his way to the final comfortably by crushing TH & Simon Santoso in the semifinal to meet his big rival, LCW.
The final match was as intense as it could ever be. The two traded fast & deadly smashes, nasty drop shots, a centimeter precision of net play, while pounced the shuttle whenever it flew above the net tape. In the beginning of the match, it was LD who took control of the game. It's interesting to see that he can collect points after points without need to pull the trigger too often. Different with his usual style of play which is very explosive & aggressive it seems that he changed a bit, we can see that he's more relaxed and patient to wait for LCW's mistake. LCW, the current world number one, showed that he's the only player who can earn respect from LD. Although he lost in the first set, he succeeded to force a rubber set match. The third set was quite tight, however, LD is LD, a type of a player who can dictate the game play whatever he wants and whenever he suddenly increases his speed, no one can match him. In addition to that, some of LCW's unforced errors really made LD to close down the score deficit. Advice to LCW: never give free donation points, especially if you play against LD!
Looking back from the past 5 years until now, the men singles has been boring as the gap between LD&LCW and the rest of the world is quite significant, especially when TH already out from his hey days. I think we need some more brilliant players to ignite the fire of the competition, we need a wonder kid we saw in TH 11 years ago, we need European players who are on par with Chinese players, we need more talented Indonesian players to bring back the badminton domination to our country. Nevertheless, I must admit, Lin Dan is the king right now, and if he can keep his performance until next year, a back to back Olympic champion is not a dream. Super Dan.
Looking back from the past 5 years until now, the men singles has been boring as the gap between LD&LCW and the rest of the world is quite significant, especially when TH already out from his hey days. I think we need some more brilliant players to ignite the fire of the competition, we need a wonder kid we saw in TH 11 years ago, we need European players who are on par with Chinese players, we need more talented Indonesian players to bring back the badminton domination to our country. Nevertheless, I must admit, Lin Dan is the king right now, and if he can keep his performance until next year, a back to back Olympic champion is not a dream. Super Dan.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Semester I - 2010/2011
The teaching experience last semester was marvelous for me. It was a honor to stand in front of so-called Indonesia's smart & brilliant students for about a half semester. However, the excitement to teach Programming Foundations to the students also posed some challenges.
Challenges, written randomly & unstructured:
- Skills were varied
The profile of the students were varied, some of them already exposed to programming for years with exceptional achievements, some of them had a bit experience and the rest had no prior experience at all in programming. Teaching a subject for a group of people with different skills such this is a bit tricky. If I explained something slowly in details, the students who already mastered the subject will get bored easily while if I explained only the concept the other students may feel lost in space.
- Student: Why should I learn this?
Imagine you just got graduated from senior high school, proud to be accepted in a good university, overflowed with the euphoria then you got flooded with a creature called Java while you don't have any experience in programming. I can imagine it can be very frustrating for some students. You learned about class, objects, arrays, iterations, recursive functions and you end up in a situation to questioning all of the concepts you just learned, "Why do I have to learn all of this?" In practice, I would say many students will feel that the course is too abstract and extremely boring. In order to trigger up their motivation, we need to show something that we can do with the programming thingy in the real world e.g. make an useful & fun application/software as examples/ course assignments. But um..maybe we should try to use Greenfoot next semester as advised by Mas Rizal Fathoni?
- Thinking recursively
Not everybody can plug in to the recursive paradigm easily. Moreover, in my opinion learning recursive topic with Java is painful. I think it is best to learn recursive paradigm by using programming languages which use functional paradigm e.g. LISP. I'm grateful back in my undergrad study they taught me LISP for one semester. Yes, one semester to build the sense and mindset to understand recursive paradigm.
- Grading
Sometime ago, a fellow lecturer wrote in an email saying that after some periods of teaching he can determine which student may pass/ fail the course and grading is just a matter to justify whether the student will earn A, A-, B+ , etc I have to say that I experienced the same feeling as well. As for me, it is not necessarily true that a student with an A is absolutely better than a student with B+, B- or C. It's just a grade anyway, and there are many factors which contribute to a grade. Even in an exam, you cannot judge the full potential of a student. However, a good student tends to do well in an exam. But again, don't judge a student by looking only to his grades.
- Do they understand?
Reading student's "faces" is important, I need to know whether my explanation is clear enough to them. Sometime if I see many of them seem puzzled, I will try to explain something slower than before. However, I cannot ensure that every students always understand about every single concept that I delivered. If I may cite my undergrad lecturer's advice, Inggriani Liem, "read again about the topic in the afternoon while drinking a cup of tea and grabbing a piece of bread". Yes, the bottomline is,some concepts need more time to sink in your head.
- This is not my place!!
After several weeks/months some students will think, oh man this is not a place for me. Programming is not for me. I hate programming. Programming sucks etc. Well this is not a situation everybody wants to undergo, however this is a concrete situation which often happens. Computer science is not just about programming, however, still, programming skills are essential for computer science students.
- Mutual understanding
Speaking in front of others is never easy, especially for a shy guy like me *haha*. But fortunately I'm confidence enough to talk about something that I know much about it. Speaking in front of, about 50 other people is indeed intimidating in the beginning, especially when they just ignored you *haha*. Sorry to say, but I feel really bad when someone (during lecture) is just busy with his laptop, mobile device etc and begin twittering, facebook-ing. In order to reach the goal of the course, we need to have a mutual understanding and cooperation. I did my job as a lecturer and they also should understand their responsibility as students. Don't get me wrong, I never entered the class with an empty headed and talking about nonsense things. Before the lecture usually I read every section of the book & slides carefully, try to make an interesting example of it. Even the other DDP senior lecturer , also does the same thing. Having said that I always give my best to prepare the lecture, I also the expect the students to also give their best during the lecture. However, it's not always the case for the students :D But um..they just teenagers anyway and 6 credits for a course is indeed a bit overwhelming.
Ok, enough about the challenges, the bottomline is there is still a lot of room for improvement, both for the students and me.
Last but not least, now I realize why Bu Inggriani Liem was so strict when she taught us programming. Bu Inge, wherever you are, my BIG thanks to you. God bless you.
Challenges, written randomly & unstructured:
- Skills were varied
The profile of the students were varied, some of them already exposed to programming for years with exceptional achievements, some of them had a bit experience and the rest had no prior experience at all in programming. Teaching a subject for a group of people with different skills such this is a bit tricky. If I explained something slowly in details, the students who already mastered the subject will get bored easily while if I explained only the concept the other students may feel lost in space.
- Student: Why should I learn this?
Imagine you just got graduated from senior high school, proud to be accepted in a good university, overflowed with the euphoria then you got flooded with a creature called Java while you don't have any experience in programming. I can imagine it can be very frustrating for some students. You learned about class, objects, arrays, iterations, recursive functions and you end up in a situation to questioning all of the concepts you just learned, "Why do I have to learn all of this?" In practice, I would say many students will feel that the course is too abstract and extremely boring. In order to trigger up their motivation, we need to show something that we can do with the programming thingy in the real world e.g. make an useful & fun application/software as examples/ course assignments. But um..maybe we should try to use Greenfoot next semester as advised by Mas Rizal Fathoni?
- Thinking recursively
Not everybody can plug in to the recursive paradigm easily. Moreover, in my opinion learning recursive topic with Java is painful. I think it is best to learn recursive paradigm by using programming languages which use functional paradigm e.g. LISP. I'm grateful back in my undergrad study they taught me LISP for one semester. Yes, one semester to build the sense and mindset to understand recursive paradigm.
- Grading
Sometime ago, a fellow lecturer wrote in an email saying that after some periods of teaching he can determine which student may pass/ fail the course and grading is just a matter to justify whether the student will earn A, A-, B+ , etc I have to say that I experienced the same feeling as well. As for me, it is not necessarily true that a student with an A is absolutely better than a student with B+, B- or C. It's just a grade anyway, and there are many factors which contribute to a grade. Even in an exam, you cannot judge the full potential of a student. However, a good student tends to do well in an exam. But again, don't judge a student by looking only to his grades.
- Do they understand?
Reading student's "faces" is important, I need to know whether my explanation is clear enough to them. Sometime if I see many of them seem puzzled, I will try to explain something slower than before. However, I cannot ensure that every students always understand about every single concept that I delivered. If I may cite my undergrad lecturer's advice, Inggriani Liem, "read again about the topic in the afternoon while drinking a cup of tea and grabbing a piece of bread". Yes, the bottomline is,some concepts need more time to sink in your head.
- This is not my place!!
After several weeks/months some students will think, oh man this is not a place for me. Programming is not for me. I hate programming. Programming sucks etc. Well this is not a situation everybody wants to undergo, however this is a concrete situation which often happens. Computer science is not just about programming, however, still, programming skills are essential for computer science students.
- Mutual understanding
Speaking in front of others is never easy, especially for a shy guy like me *haha*. But fortunately I'm confidence enough to talk about something that I know much about it. Speaking in front of, about 50 other people is indeed intimidating in the beginning, especially when they just ignored you *haha*. Sorry to say, but I feel really bad when someone (during lecture) is just busy with his laptop, mobile device etc and begin twittering, facebook-ing. In order to reach the goal of the course, we need to have a mutual understanding and cooperation. I did my job as a lecturer and they also should understand their responsibility as students. Don't get me wrong, I never entered the class with an empty headed and talking about nonsense things. Before the lecture usually I read every section of the book & slides carefully, try to make an interesting example of it. Even the other DDP senior lecturer , also does the same thing. Having said that I always give my best to prepare the lecture, I also the expect the students to also give their best during the lecture. However, it's not always the case for the students :D But um..they just teenagers anyway and 6 credits for a course is indeed a bit overwhelming.
Ok, enough about the challenges, the bottomline is there is still a lot of room for improvement, both for the students and me.
Last but not least, now I realize why Bu Inggriani Liem was so strict when she taught us programming. Bu Inge, wherever you are, my BIG thanks to you. God bless you.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Last day at ASML (Old Draft, Released!)
Last Friday was my last day at ASML as I'm going to leave Netherlands soon. To describe my feelings, it was kind of mixed. I'm happy as I'm going to be closer to my sister and my mother, however there was sad feeling as I will leave the people that I worked with in the last 1 year. The last day was just as the same as another day except thatI have to complete all the leaving checklist and get the signature & stamp from several people. I got a very precious gift from my team, a thing that I actually wanted to buy before I left NL, Netherland's football team jersey!
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