Turning rocks to golds

In the early 2012, especially during Chinese's new year when the dragon took the rabbit to become the king of 2012, I was predicted to have bad lucks. My family believed it and I fifty-fifty believed it. Let us warp to the current situation. Today is still the dragon's year and I was married. Did I really have bad lucks during this year?

First, I did not have bad lucks instead I have been blessed with activities whether or not I liked it. This year I was extremely busy with administrative duties as I am the current head of department in Mathematics. Lots and lots new policy had taken my time. I was super busy with my teaching loads, I taught many courses, some of those I have not taught before. Last, I was busy preparing this marriage. 

Second, I did not have bad lucks this year because of the following. My life has been deeply in touch with academics. I have never left academic environment in my life. I have gone through elementary school, secondary school, high school and then university. I then worked in university for one year and then went to take my doctoral degree. Then I have been working (until now) in a university as a lecturer. Even my marriage was held in the chapel inside a Catholic school. 

Third, I did not have bad lucks this year because I have been blessed by my parents and family. Long and long time ago, my parents were divorced and it was like rocks was thrown at me. I then catch the rocks and turning those into golds in my marriage. I had two mothers and two fathers (both of my parents married again) and now I have three mothers and three fathers (mother and father in law). 

Fourth, I did not have bad lucks this year because I have been blessed by my friends. I thank you so much for all of your wishes we got in facebook, twitter and many more messaging gadgets. 

For those who coming. we realise it was not a perfect wedding. We are sorry since the wedding was running late. We are sorry for the food if you didn't like it. We are sorry for the distance you had to took to come to the wedding. We are sorry for everything. 

Thank you. 

Ivanky and Lea

First time in Universitas Gadjah Mada

This was another conference I participated. This time I contributed something, I brought a presentation and try to publish it in this conference's proceeding. The title of this conference is International Symposium in Computational Science. This was the fifth time this conference was held. To my surprise, even though the symposium is about computational but the participant were from Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and even Chemistry. We all need a computational skill and we brought the computational issues in this conference. I myself tried to disseminate and perhaps publish one of my students works in this Conference. The participants of this conference were from few universities. Most of the participants were from Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and Kanazawa University. Why? Because this meeting was initiated by these three universities.

Talking about the city of Jogjakarta, last time I was here was more than 6 years ago. The city of Jogjakarta has many universities and Indonesia calls the city of Jogjakarta as the city of culture and education. This city is bigger that any general cities in Indonesia but is relatively smaller than Bandung or Surabaya. The weather is very very hot for me, even though there had some raining when I was there.

Universitas Gadjah Mada was one of the Indonesia's top universities in Indonesia, other than Universitas Indonesia (UI) and ITB. Department of Mathematics in UGM is a big department, that is exactly opposite in UPH. If we only have 6 lecturers they have 60 lecturers. To my surprise, I know some of them and I know them well. It is a good opportunity for me to have a collaboration with them some day.

Overall, I like to be in this symposium. This symposium was a two day symposium but I found that many people still struggle in their computational issues. I managed to befriend with someone from Physics who is experts in Gnuplot. I should follow up by keeping in contact with him.

Lost in Purwokerto

In April, 21 2012 I went to the city of Purwokerto in Middle Java, Indonesia. There was a national symposium in Mathematical Analysis. This symposium was hosted by Department of Mathematics, Universitas Jendral Soedirman, Purwokerto. This was the fifth symposium and this was my first time to be in the activity of Mathematical Analysis group in Indonesia.

The symposium was very nice. It was a one day meeting, consisting of three main talks and three parallel sessions. In each parallel session, there were 6 or 7 talks presented by participant who is interested in Mathematical Analysis. Most of the presenter were students who were eager to disseminate their works in front of Mathematical Analysis experts which I am not.  The symposium was rather small  compared to other conferences I had. This is probably because Mathematical Analysis is not a favorite topic for students. However, the conference ran well  and even though I did not present something but this symposium is a promising event at which I could present something someday.

The city of Purwokerto is quite a small city. I departed from Universitas Pelita Harapan at 10 am in the morning to Bandung. In Bandung (approximately 3 pm), I met my colleagues and departed to Purwokerto by car. We arrived at Purwokerto at 10 pm and it was not a journey that you enjoyed. However, the hotel we were staying was quite nice and I had a good rest. In the morning, from the hotel we departed to the university. Purwokerto is located near the base of Mount Slamet, the city is not that hot that you will experience in Jakarta but it is not as cold as you will find in Bandung. The city is a small city and is famous for the food namely Tempe Mendoan.

Finally, I would like to talk about the Mathematical Analysis group in Indonesia who initiated this kind of meeting in the first place. The mathematical analysis is one of the branches in mathematics. The other branches are applied math, combinatorics, algebra and statistics. Analysis group is probably the smallest among all, however, I find the this group is the most active one in Indonesia. We do not have many people as the other groups do but this group manages to be existed.

Public Seminars - Science in real life

Just yesterday, Department of Mathematics and Department of Biotechnology had a public seminar. The presenters are the dean of Faculty of Science and Maths, Ms Helena Margaretha, the head of Biotechnology Department, Mr Reinhard Pinontoan and myself. As we all three are from different background, there were three talks, each talked different topics but all the talks had a common thread, which is Science in the Real Life.

For your information, the seminar is part of the student activities, so called Discovery III. I will discuss more about what is Discovery III in the next posts. We are very honored to get a chance to have a seminar. As it was a public seminar, the topics is rather general. The audience mostly are teachers and teachers to be.

Even though the topic is about science in our real life, as my background is mathematics it is quite hard to give a talk about this. Yes, we know that we use math in our everyday life but still the daily math is significantly different with  the university mathematics. However, we are very happy that there are still a lot of people interested in our seminar. Thank to the students who organised such an event.

Officially graduated

In the first of March, the Department of Mathematics, Universitas Pelita Harapan had 13 candidatures to be graduated in the next graduation ceremony. Together with the board of bachelor degree, we had decided that all of the candidatures have fulfilled all the requirements and we can now congratulate all of them.

The interesting thing is that eleven of them are not only graduated from Department of Mathematics. They have another degree from the same university but from the Department of Informatics. They are the first batch of the double degree program that have successfully completed their double degree.

One of the advantages of the double degree program is about the final project. Even though each department in this university has its requirements when doing the final project, the double degree students are required to do only one final project. Of course, the topic must be significantly related to both department they are in. Fortunately, mathematics and informatics are not so much different. There are a lot of topics that works in both departments. Hopefully, I would be able to publish the topics of their final project in a poster (coming soon).

Have a Merry Christmas

It is a Christmas season and I am in my hometown Bandung Indonesia at the moment. I came to this town yesterday, which was on the 25th of December. I am on the break from work as UPH, the university I am working is closed during Christmas and New Year Season (18th of December until 3rd of January next year). I always feels happy during Christmas and there are a lot of reasons such as the mass at the Christmas eve,  two week holiday, the Christmas day, gifts, songs of Christmas, meeting old friends, good foods, and et cetera.

And from now on at every Christmas I will always try to memorize a Christmas song, which this year I chose "Have your self a Merry Little Christmas" song. This song is just fit enough to explain my situation during this visit to Bandung. Merry Christmas.


Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on your troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide day
From now on your troubles will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
They gather near to us once more

Through the years we all will be together
and If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bow
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

National Science Olympiad

OSN Pertamina is a national scientific competition held by PT. Pertamina once in a year. There are usually four subjects to be competed which are Math, Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Every enrolled students from any Indonesian universities could apply for this competition with one condition, the students must be at least in his second year.

As a Mathematics Department in UPH, we sent a few students to compete in the province level. There were two stages which were the province level and the national level. We were very proud because two of our students (John and Andre) won the first and the third places in the province level. As the first place of the province level was from UPH, John, the winner will represent our province to compete in the national level.

And we were very glad that our students won the second place in the national level. We were very very proud as we managed to compete with other good universities in Indonesia such ITB, UI and UGM.

The question now is what next. There is the National Science Olympic held by Indonesian Education Ministry which is normally a selection for International Science Olympic.

Graduation

Last Saturday was the graduation day in the university i am working, UPH. As the new head of department I must attend this event because there are students from our department graduating today. I have been in two graduations in my life, the first was in ITB Indonesia and the second was in Latrobe University Melbourne. Last   Saturday was my third time, but this time the graduation was not for me but for my students. The interesting thing is that in all graduation I must wear a gown.

Another interesting thing about this graduation is the fact that there were only two students from our departments graduating last Saturday. And we as the new and the youngest department in UPH are very proud because one of our graduate is the best student in UPH. And we got the Rector Cup for achieving this thing.

Moving to a new place

Today i will officially move to a new acommodation. It is quite exciting to move into a new place as i have been living in the old place for two years. I would like to have a new environment. But in fact, i move because I need to save some money. I have started to find a house and if the finance will be approved, i will need to save some of my salary. This means i cannot live in the old place as is it is quite expensive. For i have seen in my life, i often meet a lot of people who have already started financing to have a house. They admitted that they have been struggling for the first three years of their financing life. Some of them did ten years financing, and some of them did fifteen years financing, and i still do not know how many years i am going to ask the bank to finance my hopefully house. Regardless of that, i need to immediately start saving. There is no room for expensive foods, or for watching movie in the premiere class, or eventhere is no pertamax for my car, premium is enough.

Teacher Seminar

Today I will talk about solving mathematical problems in a seminar for (high school) teachers in Jakarta. The attendance will be teachers from all over Jabodetabek (Greater Jakarta). I still do not know how many are going to be there but I hope the number of people is just enough. This is the first time I talk about this topic. I choose this topic because I have heard that teachers from high school would be interested.  My main resource for this talk is no other than the legendary book by Polya 1957. In the first part I will be talking about the general strategy when solving mathematical problems. And in the second part I will be solving a few (difficult enough) mathematical problems using the strategy explained in the first part.

Although my major is not in mathematical education, I am a bit interested in teaching and training and preparing students to go for a mathematical competition. My ultimate and greatest achievement is to train my student to get to international mathematics Olympiad whether it is in high school level or it is in university level.

Anyway, I have one hour before the seminar is started. Lets have a lunch first.

International Workshop of Extreme Climate

Since 2010, Mathematics @ UPH has a collaboration with one of research division of BMKG. For those who does not what BMKG is, it is a government institution which monitors Indonesia's climate activities, volcanoes, earthquake and things that are related to the earth's activity.

In 22-23 November 2011, our Math Department was invited to attend to an international workshop held by BMKG. The general title of this meeting is the World Delta Summit and one of the activity of this event which is one of our main concern is the Workshop of Extreme Climate, organised by one of division of BMKG.

Even though not all the staff of Mathematics UPH could attend to this workshop (only one though) but we hope   that by this meeting we can extend our collaboration furthermore and gain a new research that is useful for both parties. 

Renewing a passport

In February 2012, my passport will be expired. Actually I am planning to go for a holiday in the middle of January 2012. They said that I cannot go outside of Indonesia because of that. So, the solution is I need to renew my passport.

Last week I went to the Indonesian Immigration Office to renew it. There were some requirements that I need to bring and I have brought almost all documents that I have to bring, yes almost. The documents that we need to (perhaps we must) bring are the old passport (yes of course), the copy of my birth certificate, the copy of Indonesian citizenship, the copy of Family Card, and the recommendation letter from the company I am working. I did not bring the last document FYI. And note that although we submit the copies of all the documents, we need to bring the original ones during the interview.

In the total, we will have to come the office three times, first we come to submit all the documents (we dont need the original in this case), second, we come to pay, to take a photo and to be interviewed (please bring all your original documents and the cost of new passport is 255 thousand rupiah). And finally in the third coming, we come to get our new passport. 

Today, this is the day I am going to come to the Immigration Office, to get my new passport (yepiiii).
And it is another information from my experience, by default, the old passport will be kept by the immigration office. This is quite strange, why can't I keep my old passport. After asking this thing, I was able to get my old passport back by submitting another form. I just need to pay six thousand rupiah only for a stamp. 

Actually, today is my fourth time coming to the Immigration Office as I have a problem with my birth certificate. I hope this note can remind me in the following five years, I need to fix my birth certificate. 

Thesis for bachelor degree

Thanks to one of lecturers in this Math Dept, we have now a proper guide for our students who want to write thesis for his/her bachelor degree. This guide is well written and we hope this guide can help students as well as the thesis advisers. And on Monday, I shall have to distribute this guide to all the lecturers and socialize it. Perhaps I shall upload it and everyone especially my students can download it easily. Just wait, I am gonna do this on Monday.

Next week on Tuesday at 11am, if I am not wrong, we shall have one of our students having her thesis defense, and good luck for her. She will be the first to do this defense.

Again, I must remind myself for the near future (it would be good if I can do this next week) to write a report about the fact that we have improved this thesis guide.

Math Curriculum

Two or three weeks ago, our math department was audited. Three people came to see whether our department has met the standard that our university has approved. One of the things they ask was the curriculum run by our department. I gave the current curriculum ran by this department and I told them that this curriculum was revised a month ago. We agreed to drop some of the lectures and to add new lectures that we think are more useful for our students. And they ask whether we have a report of that action and we didn't.

Yep, at that time I learned that there has to be a report in every action in this department. Today we just made a new amendment in our Math curriculum and I hope that I do not forget to make a report of this action. I hope this note can serve as a reminder for me.

ICTP - Trieste

Finally I have a time to write about my last academic trip this year. I went to Italy, to be precise I went to ICTP in Trieste and I loveee it. It was so beautiful there. My trip happened to be around June-July and guess what, it was during summer. It wasn't freezing and it wasn't that hot either.

I was there for a Math summer school. The title of the school was Computational Methods in Dynamics. I learned a lot there. I met new friends from around the world and it was such an experience.

One thing I like about ICTP is that this institute is dedicated for people from third world countries. We are able to get support from the institute to come for a short visit for either a conference or a school or just an academic visit.

I really hope that I can come to ICTP in the near future.

Accreditation

I am now working at UPH, one of universities in Indonesia, and I happened to be working now in Math Dept. This is a new department as it started in 2005. At the moment we are preparing for 'the' Accreditation which is the act of getting recognition for an educational institutional that maintains suitable standards. The question is what standards are we using? The standard we are using is from The Ministry of Education run by Indonesian Government. Actually, I am wondering whether or not this accreditation needs to be done in other countries?

I am not the only one in this Department doing this accreditation. There is a team for it, and the main reason there is a team is the fact that there are lots and lots of work. I am part of the team and we have to make a book that explains that our Math Department really conducts its job according to 'the standard'. We started at August this year and until now (November 2011) it hasn't been finished, you can imagine!

One of the main points why we are working very slow is because we do not have a record of what we have done for the past 6 years. I joined this dept since 2010 so i have nothing to say, but I promise myself that I will always write a record (might be in this blog) about what this department has achieved and done in the future.

Menado - 29 June 2010 -- 03 July 2010

In March 2010, I screamed secretly as I was so excited I was going to Menado June this year. Actually, you should not call the city Menado as it should be called Manado. There was a mathematical conference there and this trip was going to be my first academic trip since I went back to Indonesia back from Melbourne.

The conference was from 30th of June until the 3rd of July, so we decided to buy a return ticket that was departed from Jakarta on the 29th and returned on the 4th of July.

Here was the picture taken when we were just arrived at Manado. The name of the airport in Manado is Sam Ratulangi Airport who was the first Governor in North Sulawesi. Sam Ratulangi is one of the national heroes that has a slogan "Si tou timou tumou tou" meaning that a human could be called a human if he is useful to others.

Thus, I found a few interesting things when I was there.

1. Cewek
In Indonesia, especially in Java, we usually called "Mbak" to a waitress. But in Manado, if you call a waitress "Mbak" she would not respond. You should call her "Cewek" and she would respond. This fact amazes me as in the city where I live, if you call a girl, a waitress "Cewek," this means you mock her.

2. Adipura
Manado is the cleanest city that I have ever been. Of course I must exclude cities that are outside Indonesia. It is very rare that there is a city in Indonesia that is as clean as Manado. And the government awarded an Adipura for the city of Manado.

3. Bunaken
If you go to Manado, it won't be incomplete if you don't go to Bunaken. Bunaken is an island that is one hour from Manado. It has a very beautiful marine park where we can do a scuba diving.
The water temperatures ranging between 27 to 29 °C. The park has a high diversity of corals, fish, echinoderms or sponges. Notably, 7 of the 8 species of giant clams that occur in the world, occur in Bunaken.

4. Angkot
Angkot is the most common public transportation in Indonesia. It is a van, usually, and it could contain 12/13 passengers. But the best thing about Manado, angkot (they called it Oto there) has only 7/8 passengers which makes we sit far more comfortable than angkot in Java.
5. Bukit Doa
Other than Bunaken, we could go to Bukit Doa. This is a small mountain and is a site of Catholic Pilgrimage. The hill is so beautiful and peaceful make you do not want to go home. On the top of the hill, they made a chapel. From there you can see a good view of Manado and places around.

Istana Plaza - Bandung 2009

One day in 2009, I remembered how and where we first met. It was in Department of Mathematics of Institute Technology Bandung. We were students of this university. Some of us enrolled in 1999 and some of us enrolled in 2000.

Four years had been passed and we took our steps separately. We were still contacting each other though, via the most useful communication at that time, email.

Let us skip the history and go back to the present time. In March 2009 we met again after so many years. It was unfortunate that there were other friends that were not there. However, that other friends were not satisfied to the fact that they could not meet and share each other's stories so we made a second get together in May.

Apparently, the third, is going to be tonight.
I ll see you there folks.

Melbourne City - 2008

Perhaps you do not believe it but it was really my bike. I still have the bike even though I do not have it right now as it is now in Melbourne while I am somewhere else.

The bike helps me to adjust my first few months in Melbourne. When I did not have my bike, I was always afraid if I missed my bus, as a consequence I'd have to walk to my house which is quite far. So, instead of planning to catch a bus to get home from work I choose to ride my own bike.

This photo was taken by Sonnya. She is quite good as she was able to take the above photo which became one of photos that I really like. After having some gathering with all of my mudikan friends, we went to city of Melbourne to have a coffee.

La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary

In the picture at the left, you are looking at the La Trobe wildlife sanctuary. I was in one of the natural places in La Trobe University, where I studied for my degree.

There are me, Lennaert, Dave, Ya Juan and Will. They are my collagues. There is also one more of my collagues, who was the one taking this photo. She is Priscilla.

La Trobe University is very nice. It is located quite far away from the city, therefore it still has natural attractions. The sanctuary has many animals that people not from Australia would like to see. There are kangaroos, kakatua birds, and many native Australian animals.

We were there to take Ya Juan that was about to leave the country. She has never seen Australian native animals so we took her to the sanctuary.

More pics please visit : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanky/sets/