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.