What's the common between water, antonio gaudi, and detectives?

Ola amigos!

Yesterday I stumbled upon a personal blog of Dieni Fitriani (the chronology started from me cleaned up my gmail inbox, includes google+ folder, when it contained some new email about recommendation on 'what you missed from Dieni' thus I lurk into hers and spent almost 2-hours there). Afterward, it feels compulsory to write here (as usual ahah), well, after a period of my academic progress. What have I done so far? The third block of my master program just finished. I just received my final grade on one course titled Quantitative Water Management where I am Alhmadulillah passed with not so bad (but not so good either) grade. Moreover if you compare it to one of my classmate who achieved 9.5/10 for a final grade. Holycow! I have to keep reminding myself that I should be more thankful to at least meet the requirement for this course. My exam grade is free-falling but thank Lord I did okay on assignments, thus I passed! For the other course, Managing Future Delta, there was no exam, but we had to submit a 50-pages group paper and an abstract abstract (literal meaning of abstract, if you dont get it maybe bcs it is more like a inside joke of my class). We havent received any news about grade, but I am quite confident in this as my group consisted of silly but great people and we already spent so much time to work on the paper (long live Sunderbans!!!). On a side note, I actually love this course with broad scope in delta management but somehow focus on many things involved per-lecture. We also had excursions, twice; to southwest delta where krammersluice-brouwerdams-neeltjejans-maasvlakte is located and to zandmotor where the magic happens the Dutch again succeed to implement such out of the the box approach on their ecology friendly water defense. It was nice and all but dont get me to start complaining about how the weather always betray us. Oh the perks of living in the Netherlands. 

As in currently, I have again two courses which in more social side (Water Policy, Governance, and Law & Drinking Water and Sanitation). I started this period in a lighthearted mood after 10 days of day offs (that was too much holiday, actually) followed by a symposium about water management in TU Delft. The later one was so interesting eventhough it felt like a very long day full of lectures (there was 6 spokesperson) but I got so many new insights about water related challenges, some subject stroke me the most are the water and sanitation problem in disaster area (by Biserka, MSF consultant), urban design for city protection (by Kees Christiaanse, ps: when we had discussion with him, he thought that garuda plan in Jakarta Bay is a stupid idea), also a lecture about how to resolve water problem in conflicted area (remind me of Banglandesh-India dispute, Mr. Rens de Man). Lisanne and I had a great time there as well as motivational reflection on how to search suitable internship for me (dank je wel, Lisanne!). Anyway for the next part, please envyjoy the sightseeing from Madrid and Spain where I explored only in 4 days (not enouuuuugh!)

Madrid is fine but Barcelona steals our heart, thanks Mr. Gaudi to make this city sooo beautiful 

Since I had too many day off recently, I watched all new movies in the cinema, as well as, streaming some old movies online so.. one more rambling for this post, why is action/superhero movies (almost) always let me down recently? London Has Fallen, Huntsman: The Witch's War, Batman vs Superman, Capt. America: Civil War.. all of them failed me (in different aspect). Instead, movies like Zootropolis and The Jungle Book blown my mind (well, this is mainstream opinion). Also, I finished a fairly new k-drama titled 'Signal' where this time I finished it until the last episode, unlike the last time I, and million other people, lost interest in 'Cheese in The Trap'. It is one of the best drama I ever watched! Minimum cheesy romance, superb acting, and brilliant plot, who could say no to an amazing cold case-solving-detective storyline, eh? I really recommend this one :)

It seems I already write above my average word counts here, so.. lets part ways for now. And dont forget to be happy!

Ciao,

A. Noyara Rahmasary 

Rubbish as usual (just from different IP address)

Hey october!

Reading this blog all over again, I realized that I always made the same mistake. Promising to write regularly then poff.. gone! That is the same bullshit I tried last march, which is more than half year ago. I guess it best if I dont make any promises because who knows in that way can turn me out into "more productive" owner here.

So what happen in these past 7 months? Well, the biggest change is now I already live in utrecht for almost two months. Crazy eh, when last year it was only all dream. Frankly, living here is not easy (duh) in a good way, it drag me out from my comfort zone. The city is quite big (number 4 of largest city in netherlands after amsterdam, rotterdam, and den haag) yet it doesnt get crowded so much thus make it much calmer. I bike 35~40 minutes to the university everyday, usually early in the morning because all my classes start at 9.00. Anyway last week was uber cold, it hit 0'C (with real feel temperature around -3'C) in the morning.. and it just mid-october; guess I wont take my bike out during winter. Nevertheless, I love living here, the city is vibrant and serene at the same time. The one thing that challenges me so much is.. ta-dah.. the campus /slash/ academic life. Not intended to bring down my beloved GFM or IPB or Indonesia education system in the general, but obviously, studying ethic here is so different. You cant just come in and sit with empty head and expect to be feed by knowledge. You cant just skip homework or copy paste your friends' answer to yours. You cant just lying around every other night and depend on one night study before exam day. Wait I make it so terrifying lol but indeed its true, but those thing are bad in a good way, right? I currently attend two course for this period (exam on oct28 and nov6, wish us luck!) which are both interesting. I expected my self to love this theoretical/opinion based course and suck at technical/mathematics one but it is the other way around. Can you believe if I get more excited now to meet numbers than words? No? Neither do I ;) And how about social life? Well, utrecht is unpopular between Indonesia student, only six of us came to Universiteit Utrecht this academic year. We hang out together during weekend (its a must! you have to prepare your mind for another weekday) and thankfully utrecht located in the middle of netherlands with busiest train station (imagine manggarai). I havent had a chance to get together with classmates yet, except for the first time during orientation day. We meet outside the class almost only for work/study group, or simply biking together when class is over. They are all really nice.. and bloody brilliant, I am such a lower outlier.

Well, my life just started here so I cant complain much (I shoudnt, right). I still have bits of my regular life back then.. watching doctor who every sunday (this season is better than last year, thankfully), going to the cinema sometimes (it's so damn expensive to watch a movie here, but I registered as a subscriber so.. yayness), having two cups of coffee a day, and hanging out to somewhere new in every chances (well.. hellooo, youre living 11000 miles away from home). Like I said million times before, being here is exciting and challenging at the same time :)

I hope to fulfill my promises to write about sawarna, gunung padang, and PK28, but not sure when and how. A lot of things going on my mind (yea you're not the only one). 

One day, I should manage to get to top of that :p

Ehm, so see you later, and good luck in life?

Het beste,

Noya