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.

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.