Entries Tagged 'Erasmus Mundus' ↓

Long time no see, eh?

OK, here we go:

Bazaar Indonesia @ Madrid

Luthfi and I made kolak to be sold in the bazaar. I joined the PPI-Spanyol booth and managed to sell some of the goods (mainly clothes, small purses, etc) using my broken-Spanish. Some of my classmates came to the bazaar (thank you guys!) and most importantly I had fun!

It’s Summer Time

In Madrid and Spain in general, the temperature rises to 30 degrees centigrade on average. Meaning: v e r y h o t! Also means: open that window wide while you sleep at night. At summer, the sun sets at around 10 PM and rises at around 6 PM. Must adapt.

School’s Over (but Thesis/Dissertation/Project is here to stay)

All of the taught part of my program, Erasmus Mundus MSc NeBCC, has been, er…, taught and I must say that the results are not too dissapointing :p I think I’m not one of the top students in the class, but anyway, I passed almost all of the modules (just waiting for one more result to be announced).

I will do my project at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, España, starting from October (but my supervisor insisted that I should start this summer). The project will be about BPEL and web wrappers. I hope I can post about it later.

Sport and Cultural Events in Spain

This summer, there are quite a bunch of events in Spain:

• Spain won the Eurocup 2008
• San Fermin festival starts at Pamplona (the one you can run for your life before a horde of bulls running after you)
• Rock in Rio Madrid festival, boasting famous artists like Alanis Morisette, Neil Young, Shakira, Lenny Kravitz, and Spain’s very own, El Canto del Loco
• and, the most shocking of all, Madrid Orgullo ‘08, a very-very large Gay Pride.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately for the last thing on the list), I missed them all. At Eurocup final match, I was studying for the next day’s exam. But I was able to hear from my room, the crowd cheered as the Spanish team scored the only goal and after the won the match. As for San Fermin, I didn’t manage to make it because it is not exactly close to Madrid, and did’t have enough time. Rock in Rio is far too expensive for me, I watched some of its highlights at TV though, Shakira was incredible! And as for the Pride, just browsed in the local news (do you know that Madrid is supposed to be the gay capital of Europe, what a world we live in).

That’s it! Sorry haven’t had the chance to upload pictures though.

In this NeBCC international programme, I’ve been in to several groups for doing group assignments or labs. I could identify several specific issues I encountered in becoming members of these groups, namely:

• Language
• Tools
• Communication (and Team Work)

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It’s been a while since I wrote something a little bit serious. Let me try to do just that now.

I spent two weekends watching two concerts and went to a museum in Madrid. The concerts were held by Escuela Municipal de Música Pablo Casals, a municipal music school in Leganés, while the museum is one of the biggest and most important museum in Spain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The first concert was a percussion concert, the second was a flute concert, and in the museum, there was an exposition of Pablo Picasso which showed joint collection of Museo Reina Sofía and Museé National Picasso, Paris. I didn’t have to pay anything to enjoy the concerts and Picasso’s artworks, they are “gratis” (Ha! A Spanish and Indonesian word at the same time).

Being concerts from a local school mean that most of the spectators were also locals, families of the performing students or teachers. When I came to the concerts, the hall of the school and a public municipal hall were full of people, they were “sold-out” concerts. The performances were also great, they held the percussion concert to give honor to a percussion teacher who just recently passed away, while the flute concert was held in collaboration with another public musical school of another city.

The admission to a museum in Spain mostly is free on weekends (for Museo Reina Sofía, it’s free on Saturday afternoon and Sunday), and tourists and locals do make use of this policy. There were lots and lots of people: young and old, boys and girls, men and women, families and singles, international tourists and locals, all of them visit the museum. I almost felt overwhelmed by the number of people visited the Picasso’s exposition.

At the back of the programme sheets given to spectators in the concerts, there was a logo of Ayuntamiento de Leganés, Delegación de Cultura, while on the museum’s brochures there was a logo of Gobierno de España, Ministerio de Cultura. What does this tell us? At least for me, it shows that Spanish have access to public spaces where they can meet their fellow Spanish and, at the same time, enjoy art and culture. It also shows that Spanish government do something that ensure people in their area have access to cultural events.

Can we make this in Indonesia? As a country rich with different cultures, I think the government should do something like this as well. They should provide us with a “public room” to held cultural events, and make sure that most of us (if not all), have access to experience that.

One of the main hurdles for a “Unit Kegiatan Mahasiswa Kesenian” (Art and Cultural Students’ Activities Unit) in ITB, to do a cultural event, is the fund. They have to raise the money themselves to do a show. They have to seek for themselves a place to do rehearsals. They sell tickets for their show because they needed the money, there’s no (or very little) fund from the campus. I’m not ignoring the assistance of ITB (if any is given), but I think the campus can do more. ITB, as a public university, is changing to “privatised-public university”, a step that is hated by many but also defended by others. Hey, if you are a member of these students’ activities units, tell us your story (and probably correct me if I’m wrong) in the comment.

I went to college and worked in Bandung, a prominent Sundanese city in West Java. I lived there for almost 6 years and I have never visited the Bandung Geological Museum, one of the most important museums in the city. This is mainly because I have the impression that local museums in Indonesia are old and forgotten buildings with unmaintained collections. And generally, that is the case. Only recently, there have been some interests by locals to visit museums and it probably forced the government to renovate several of these museums.

Am I the only one who is hoping that I can also enjoy free cultural weekends in Indonesia?

*) Image for Picasso’s painting is shamelessly taken from Musée National Picasso, Paris’ site.

Hola a todos!

I arrived at Madrid, Spain, safely yesterday, and currently I’m staying at Luthfi Darmawan’s place. He was my senior in my undergrad years.

Today, I’m going to Leganés, to see my campus, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and to search for a room nearby. Hopefully I can have a room today. If not, I’ll still stay in Luthfi’s place.

Adios!

Three months passed by so quickly, and it’s time for me to, yet again, move. It has been a very busy three months for me, but it’s definitely unique compared to Reading, UK. All the problems with language, food, assignments have all passed now. Several issues are still with me:

• I haven’t submitted one assignment (from Reading!) yet
• I still haven’t secured any accommodation in Madrid, Spain, yet
• Probably I will experience excess baggage for the first time, ie: I think my luggage is overweight!

But before I go to Madrid, Spain, to continue this journey, my next stop will be Rome, Italy. I will spend several days there to relax (and to finish my assignment!)

So, see you when I see you.
Yia sas!

Greece is recovering from yet another national strike. Like the previous strike I posted before, but in a much greater scale. Last Thursday was the big day when the Greek parliament, despite all the strike, decided to pass the new law which will make a great negative effect on the Greek workers’ retirement fund scheme.

Here, in Thessaloniki, I also experienced the effects of the strike. The garbage collectors stopped working at least for two weeks. Garbage litter-ally (pun intended) piled up everywhere, making me remember about the garbage problem Bandung had last year. Also, we had several blackouts, allegedly connected with the strike. I don’t often use bus, but my friends said that buses were scarce, even one of them had to walk to campus for the first time. The students’ cafeteria closed one day and the other day they are serving the food while they were having electricity blackout. We had an unplanned semi-buffet for that day. Usually, we were given a tray with all the food in it over a window, like a (parking) ticket booth. But then, they arranged the food in an empty space of the cafeteria and we were given an empty tray so that we can take the dishes we want.

After the parliament still decided to pass the law, it seems that the workers started to work again. Yesterday, most of the piling garbage were collected, and since Friday we haven’t had any electricity blackout. I hope that everything will return back to normal. It’s my final week in Thessaloniki and it’s also my exam week. Wish me luck!

Tonight, while I was having my dinner in the university cafeteria (Greek students have lunch and dinner for free), I saw a man reading a French newspaper. After I finished my potatoes (my first serving) and beans (second serving, we can have as many food as we can, I’ve seen a guy had 4 servings!), finally I managed to say “Excusez-moi, Monsieur, vous etes francais?”

It turned out that he is a Moroccan. When we exchanged few words, I kept using “Ne” (Ναι), which is “yes” in Greek, instead of “Oui”. (Sigh) I must practice my French again.

Basically, we agreed that living in Greece is very difficult mainly because of the language. I told him that I am an Indonesian student and just arrived one month ago. He told me that he came to the cafeteria because the food is free (they don’t even check who you are, I can see a lot of people who I think most definitely not student). We talked for just a brief moment.

What amazes me is that, minutes before I finished my dinner and spoke to the Moroccan in French (and mistakenly used a Greek word), I listened to a learning Spanish podcast (from CoffeeBreakSpanish) taught in English with a heavy Scottish accent. So how’s that for an international environment?

(And I can still remember my IELTS teacher told me that I am too old to learn a new language)

One of my teacher mentioned that he would like us to somehow measure the area of a triangle. Not any triangle, but a special triangle, the one whose points are from the countries of each members of our assignment groups. So far, I had already three group assignments, the group arrangement for one was decided by the lecturers and the other two were decided by the students ourselves.
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I just want to tell that I’m missing home very much. Back when I was still in Bandung, studying and after that, working, I had the chance to go home at least once in a year, and I often take that opportunities for granted. But now, I’ve only been abroad for just less than four months, I’m missing my home very much. Continue reading →

After a few sleepless nights (few? yes! see the title, please), here I am, again in the nearest cyber cafe from my studio at Thessaloniki, Greece. I have just submitted an assignment very close to the deadline. What’s more is that the assignment is the only assignment of the module, and the module is a coursework module. So, to cut this unintelligible story short, to pass the module I would have to succeed in doing the assignment, the only assignment. See the importance of this assignment? Continue reading →