Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
Christmas is coming...! I don't realize that one year went by so fast.
It feels like last Christmas was a day ago! :p
This time, I'm going to be one of the altar servers for Christmas Eve Mass at Bellarminus Chapel. That's going to be my first time serving on Christmas Day. Despite my inexperience, I hope to do my best. I can't wait for that day to come! :)
Perhaps, for a lot of people, Christmas is closely related to Christmas trees and gifts. They feel that they can grow their spirit of Christmas by the existence of those things. Well, if you visit my house, I don't even have Christmas tree. So, don't expect that you will feel Christmas season here. :p
My parents used to set up a Christmas tree and give my brother and me gifts on Christmas Day. They pretended to be Santa Claus. Now they don't do it because we have grown up and we're not little children anymore.
It's true that sometimes I miss the time when I could see the beauty of the Christmas tree at my house. The sparkling lamps and the star above the tree really astounded me. But I know it doesn't always have to be that way. Christmas is the time to change our hearts and become a better person.
So, my house may not be "Christmas-like", but in my heart, I have the spirit of Christmas. I am ready to greet Him with all my heart. I'm very grateful that He has born in this world to save us all. He is our Savior!
Have a great Christmas, everyone! Hope you all find the true spirit of Christmas :D
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
A Bad Day
I just got out of Basic Writing test class. Actually, the test wasn’t difficult. But, I was the last who finished it. Do you know why? Well, there are 2 reasons:
1. I didn’t notice the instruction (I always hate myself for doing it over and over again) which asked us to write in every other line (which means that we have to leave one line blank everytime we finish writing on a line). I didn't leave one line blank and that made me erase all that I’d written. So, I wrote THREE times more than my friends (I had to rewrite my wrong-formatted composition on a blank paper, erase the wrong-formatted one from my examination paper, and rewrite my composition in that erased examination paper in correct format) I was so stupid that I didn’t ask the proctor for a new examination paper. But what can I do? I panicked because the time to do the test was only 30 minutes left.
2. My dictionary can’t be trusted at all! There are a lot of pages missing in that dictionary. Can you imagine? I was searching for simple words such as ‘lack’ and ‘eve’, but those words weren’t there! I thought to myself, “How come a popular dictionary doesn’t have such common words?” I kept flipping the pages of the dictionary, but still I couldn’t find it. Then I realized that it’s only a fake dictionary, which I bought at such cheap price (the real one is 6 times more expensive than the fake one). Oh My God, I think I’m going to buy the real one as soon as I have money. :(
I am SO annoyed.
However, I am still sure that there won’t be many mistakes, but there must be SOME. My lecturer is so careful towards my writing and she is always able to find my mistakes. My writing is never perfect and I think this time the mistake will be more than the mistakes in my previous compositions because I didn’t have time to check it. I was too busy erasing and rewriting. :(
I'm upset.
Today isn't my lucky day. This is such a bad day!
:(
1. I didn’t notice the instruction (I always hate myself for doing it over and over again) which asked us to write in every other line (which means that we have to leave one line blank everytime we finish writing on a line). I didn't leave one line blank and that made me erase all that I’d written. So, I wrote THREE times more than my friends (I had to rewrite my wrong-formatted composition on a blank paper, erase the wrong-formatted one from my examination paper, and rewrite my composition in that erased examination paper in correct format) I was so stupid that I didn’t ask the proctor for a new examination paper. But what can I do? I panicked because the time to do the test was only 30 minutes left.
2. My dictionary can’t be trusted at all! There are a lot of pages missing in that dictionary. Can you imagine? I was searching for simple words such as ‘lack’ and ‘eve’, but those words weren’t there! I thought to myself, “How come a popular dictionary doesn’t have such common words?” I kept flipping the pages of the dictionary, but still I couldn’t find it. Then I realized that it’s only a fake dictionary, which I bought at such cheap price (the real one is 6 times more expensive than the fake one). Oh My God, I think I’m going to buy the real one as soon as I have money. :(
I am SO annoyed.
However, I am still sure that there won’t be many mistakes, but there must be SOME. My lecturer is so careful towards my writing and she is always able to find my mistakes. My writing is never perfect and I think this time the mistake will be more than the mistakes in my previous compositions because I didn’t have time to check it. I was too busy erasing and rewriting. :(
I'm upset.
Today isn't my lucky day. This is such a bad day!
:(
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Pindah???
Aku sebenernya cukup senang dan bahagia kuliah di PBI Sanata Dharma...
Aku sudah bertemu dengan banyak teman yang baik padaku. Rasanya aku sudah bisa menyesuaikan diri.
Tapi aku takut. Kebersamaan kami mungkin akan terancam..
karena aku akan pindah..
ke tempat yang berbeda, yang nggak aku kenal dengan baik...
Papa bilang, "Memang harus pindah, kita nggak bisa tetap di sini."
Aku bilang, "Kenapa nggak di sini aja?"
"Di sana jauh lebih baik. Kamu juga pasti senang."
"Bakal kembali lagi ke sini gak?"
"Udah pindah, ngapain balik lagi?"
"......."
Terus ntar kuliahku gimana?
:,(
Sedih sih, tapi mau bagaimana lagi...
Kalau memang harus pindah, ya sudahlah..
Aku sudah bertemu dengan banyak teman yang baik padaku. Rasanya aku sudah bisa menyesuaikan diri.
Tapi aku takut. Kebersamaan kami mungkin akan terancam..
karena aku akan pindah..
ke tempat yang berbeda, yang nggak aku kenal dengan baik...
Papa bilang, "Memang harus pindah, kita nggak bisa tetap di sini."
Aku bilang, "Kenapa nggak di sini aja?"
"Di sana jauh lebih baik. Kamu juga pasti senang."
"Bakal kembali lagi ke sini gak?"
"Udah pindah, ngapain balik lagi?"
"......."
Terus ntar kuliahku gimana?
:,(
Sedih sih, tapi mau bagaimana lagi...
Kalau memang harus pindah, ya sudahlah..
Friday, December 10, 2010
Hani
(By Jamie Winship, taken from Chicken Soup for the College Soul, Copyright 1999 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen)
The day I met Hani Irmawati, she was a shy, seventeen-year-old girl standing alone in the parking lot of the international school in Indonesia, where I teach English. The school is expensive and does not permit Indonesian students to enroll. She walked up to me and asked if I could help her improve her English. I could tell it took immense courage for the young Indonesian girl in worn clothing to approach me and ask for my help. "Why do you want to improve your English?" I asked her, fully expecting her to talk about finding a job in a local hotel. "I want to go to an American university," she said with quiet confidence. Her idealistic dream made me want to cry. I agreed to work with her after school each day on a volunteer basis. For the next several months, Hani woke each morning at five and caught the city bus to her public high school. During the one-hour ride, she studied for her regular classes and prepared the English lessons I had given her the day before. At four o'clock in the afternoon, she arrived at my classroom, exhausted but ready to work. With each passing day, as Hani struggled with college-level English, I grew more fond of her. She worked harder than most of my wealthy expatriate students.
Hani lived in a two-room house with her parents and two brothers. Her father was a building custodian and her mother was a maid. When I went to their neighborhood to meet them, I learned that their combined yearly income was 750 U.S. dollars. It wasn't enough to meet the expenses of even one month in an American university. Hani's enthusiasm was increasing with her language ability, but I was becoming more and more discouraged. One morning in December 1998, I received the announcement of a scholarship opportunity for a major American university. I excitedly tore open the envelope and studied the requirements, but it wasn't long before I dropped the form in despair. There was just no way, I thought, for Hani to meet these qualifications. She had never led a club or an organization, because in her school these things simply did not exist. She had no guidance counselor and no impressive standardized test scores, because there were no such tests for her to take. She did, however, have more determination than any student I'd ever seen. When Hani came into the classroom that day, I told her of the scholarship. I also told her that I believed there was no way for her to apply. I encouraged her to be, as I put it, "realistic" about her future and not to plan so strongly on coming to America. Even after my somber lecture, Hani remained steadfast.
"Will you send in my name?" she asked. I didn't have the heart to turn her down. I completed the application, filling in each blank with the painful truth about her academic life, but also with my praise of her courage and her perseverance. I sealed up the envelope and told Hani her chances for acceptance ranged somewhere between slim and none. In the weeks that followed, Hani increased her study of English, and I arranged for her to take the Test of English Fluency in Jakarta. The entire computerized test would be an enormous challenge for someone who had never before touched a computer. For two weeks, we studied computer parts and how they worked. Then, just before Hani went to Jakarta, she received a letter from the scholarship association. What a cruel time for the rejection to arrive, I thought.
Trying to prepare her for disappointment, I opened the letter and began to read it to her. She had been accepted. I leaped about the room ecstatically, shocked. Hani stood by, smiling quietly, but almost certainly bewildered by my surprise. The image of her face in that moment came back to me time and time again in the following week. I finally realized that it was I who had learned something Hani had known from the beginning: It is not intelligence alone that brings success, but also the drive to succeed, the commitment to work hard and the courage to believe in yourself.
_______________________________________________
That story inspired me so much. I just realized that there is nothing you can't reach if you keep trying and believing. Nothing is impossible :)
The day I met Hani Irmawati, she was a shy, seventeen-year-old girl standing alone in the parking lot of the international school in Indonesia, where I teach English. The school is expensive and does not permit Indonesian students to enroll. She walked up to me and asked if I could help her improve her English. I could tell it took immense courage for the young Indonesian girl in worn clothing to approach me and ask for my help. "Why do you want to improve your English?" I asked her, fully expecting her to talk about finding a job in a local hotel. "I want to go to an American university," she said with quiet confidence. Her idealistic dream made me want to cry. I agreed to work with her after school each day on a volunteer basis. For the next several months, Hani woke each morning at five and caught the city bus to her public high school. During the one-hour ride, she studied for her regular classes and prepared the English lessons I had given her the day before. At four o'clock in the afternoon, she arrived at my classroom, exhausted but ready to work. With each passing day, as Hani struggled with college-level English, I grew more fond of her. She worked harder than most of my wealthy expatriate students.
Hani lived in a two-room house with her parents and two brothers. Her father was a building custodian and her mother was a maid. When I went to their neighborhood to meet them, I learned that their combined yearly income was 750 U.S. dollars. It wasn't enough to meet the expenses of even one month in an American university. Hani's enthusiasm was increasing with her language ability, but I was becoming more and more discouraged. One morning in December 1998, I received the announcement of a scholarship opportunity for a major American university. I excitedly tore open the envelope and studied the requirements, but it wasn't long before I dropped the form in despair. There was just no way, I thought, for Hani to meet these qualifications. She had never led a club or an organization, because in her school these things simply did not exist. She had no guidance counselor and no impressive standardized test scores, because there were no such tests for her to take. She did, however, have more determination than any student I'd ever seen. When Hani came into the classroom that day, I told her of the scholarship. I also told her that I believed there was no way for her to apply. I encouraged her to be, as I put it, "realistic" about her future and not to plan so strongly on coming to America. Even after my somber lecture, Hani remained steadfast.
"Will you send in my name?" she asked. I didn't have the heart to turn her down. I completed the application, filling in each blank with the painful truth about her academic life, but also with my praise of her courage and her perseverance. I sealed up the envelope and told Hani her chances for acceptance ranged somewhere between slim and none. In the weeks that followed, Hani increased her study of English, and I arranged for her to take the Test of English Fluency in Jakarta. The entire computerized test would be an enormous challenge for someone who had never before touched a computer. For two weeks, we studied computer parts and how they worked. Then, just before Hani went to Jakarta, she received a letter from the scholarship association. What a cruel time for the rejection to arrive, I thought.
Trying to prepare her for disappointment, I opened the letter and began to read it to her. She had been accepted. I leaped about the room ecstatically, shocked. Hani stood by, smiling quietly, but almost certainly bewildered by my surprise. The image of her face in that moment came back to me time and time again in the following week. I finally realized that it was I who had learned something Hani had known from the beginning: It is not intelligence alone that brings success, but also the drive to succeed, the commitment to work hard and the courage to believe in yourself.
_______________________________________________
That story inspired me so much. I just realized that there is nothing you can't reach if you keep trying and believing. Nothing is impossible :)
Monday, December 6, 2010
Be Grateful, Things Could Be Worse
Be grateful when you were late to the campus in the morning
It could be worse if you were early
for you wouldn't be able to meet your good friends to walk with
and you would go to the class alone
Be grateful when there were several mistakes on your test
It could be worse if you made no mistakes
for it would make you feel
you don't need to study at all
which causes total stupidity
Be grateful when the lecturer explained boringly
It could be worse if the lecturer got your attention
for you couldn't talk to your friends at the class :p
Be grateful when you had to wait longer in the campus when the class was dismissed
It could be worse if you were able to go home directly
for you wouldn't have the chance to register to join free seminar
and you wouldn't be able to get free ticket and certificate
Be grateful when the rain fell on your head
it could be worse if the rain didn't fall at all
for the sunlight might sting you
and make your skin burned like barbeque
Be grateful when none of your friends accompanied you to meet the lecturer
It could be worse if all of your friends accompanied you to meet him
for the room would be jammed because of the students
Be grateful when you had to walk alone at night
It could be worse if you walked with your friends
for you wouldn't be able to get home faster
cause you'll not only walk, but also gossip through all the way
Be grateful for everything
Things could be worse... :)
It could be worse if you were early
for you wouldn't be able to meet your good friends to walk with
and you would go to the class alone
Be grateful when there were several mistakes on your test
It could be worse if you made no mistakes
for it would make you feel
you don't need to study at all
which causes total stupidity
Be grateful when the lecturer explained boringly
It could be worse if the lecturer got your attention
for you couldn't talk to your friends at the class :p
Be grateful when you had to wait longer in the campus when the class was dismissed
It could be worse if you were able to go home directly
for you wouldn't have the chance to register to join free seminar
and you wouldn't be able to get free ticket and certificate
Be grateful when the rain fell on your head
it could be worse if the rain didn't fall at all
for the sunlight might sting you
and make your skin burned like barbeque
Be grateful when none of your friends accompanied you to meet the lecturer
It could be worse if all of your friends accompanied you to meet him
for the room would be jammed because of the students
Be grateful when you had to walk alone at night
It could be worse if you walked with your friends
for you wouldn't be able to get home faster
cause you'll not only walk, but also gossip through all the way
Be grateful for everything
Things could be worse... :)
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