road trip!

finally... road trip! with only 2 boys and 6 loud girls, we were heading to the same direction 4 months ago: Lengkongbarang! so happy that we finally got to do this although not with full team. but i had a full day blast. nothing has changed (well not dramatically). so glad people still remember us and still welcome us in open arms. hope someday we could do this road trip again. maybe in the next 4 months? 4 years? who knows.

Habibie & Ainun

this is actually my first time ever reviewing Indonesian movies. well because this is actually one of the best Indonesian movie that i watched in a really long time. and may i say, that Indonesian movie industry are back on track. after watching 5 cm (which have a breathtaking cinematography. must watch also) and this movie, i can't wait to see what's in store next. i love love love Reza Rahadian's acting. he's a gorgeous actor, but in here, he just look like Forrest Gump. but that's a good thing! that means he nailed being Habibie. this movie also makes me like BJ Habibie more. he is super genius and always so sure about himself.

and the manta awareness still going on..

although our 'Komodo' times has passed, Ichsan and I still very much wanted people to know about mantas. so our dive organization decided making us as one of the keynote speaker in our second annual expo! and yes, it was nerve wracking! i mean come on, i never am confident enough to talk in front of my class, and now i have to do what?! but it went well, don't get me wrong. i was just sweating like crazy, and i talked really fast. after this? no more public speaking please ;p (well maybe not this time around)

by the way, i am very proud to be one of the two people that got an amazing opportunity as a MantaWatch intern. i mean come on, for one month i got to meet mantas (that means constantly diving) and i don't have to think about all my campus assignments? what could be better than that? haha! PS: if you guys want to know more about mantas and how you could contribute to conserve them, go here. come join us to be the manta protector :D

playlist

i won't deny that i love and always will top 40 songs. but recently (and i think Tumblr has a big influence on it), that i started listening to indie songs and stuff. even though most of my playlist still come from big musician such as Bruno Mars, Jason Mraz, and Demi Lovato, but it has been mixed up with musicians that maybe only a few of you ever heard such as HAIM, St. Lucia and Swimming With Dolphins. you should hear them, and like me, you will get addicted by some. as for me, right now i'm playing Frank Ocean and HAIM. but too bad i couldn't find the acoustic version of Go Slow? you guys have it? if you do, please contact me :)

jadi kenangan setelah lengser

gw officially lengser jadi pengurus OSEANIK sejak tanggal 29 November 2012 kamis kemaren. rasanya seneng sekaligus sedih. dan gw kira gw bakal merasa lega banget karena gw ga harus musingin ngurus acara2 lagi dan bleketek lainnya, tapi gw malah ngerasa kayak ga ada yang berubah. gw masih merasa punya tanggung jawab akan hal2 yang menyangkut OSEANIK (well pastinya, karena walopun gw udah lengser tapi gw masih harus 'ngawas'). semua kenangan2 yang udah gw lakuin sama temen2 OSEANIK bener2 menyenangkan, dari yang ngeselin, makan ati, nyenengin hati, sampe yang bikin sakit perut gara2 kebanyakan ketawa. i'll miss them and our crazy talks every time we spend times together. semoga gw masih bisa meluangkan waktu buat ikutan acara2 yang dibuat OSEANIK. one thing i can't wait: our next expedition! sign me in! :D

cold Arch

5 mm wetsuit, 21 degree water, dive site nobody knows, deep dive, the greatest dive experience ever! i got it all in The Arch, Komodo National Park. my dive guide said only a few people have dived here so i kinda feel exclusive ;p despite the (very) cold water and terrible headache after, i really enjoy this dive. too bad i only got to dive here once. the most fun part was when we pass a little cave. i felt so adventurous! haha

giraffe overload

i'm a happy girl. my room is filled with giraffe ;p

(not) the last time

me with Andy (my mentor), Fabi (the winner of the Canon S100 and housing! lucky guy), and Ichsan (fellow intern). one month seems really quick. miss everyone in Labuan Bajo. but not to worry, i will be back. sooner or later :)

Castle Rock

one of my favorite dive spot in Komodo National Park. it got huge rocks that almost looks like a ship wreck, but it was actually a rock. that's why this dive site called Castle Rock. the rocks are as big as a castle! it was a really cool spot

pembuatan visa (again)

tahun lalu gw bagi2 cerita tentang pembuatan visa di embassy jerman yang ribetnya minta ampun dan heboh. sekarang, gw alhamdulillah (punya dua makna sebenernya hehe) mendapatkan kesempatan membuat schengen visa lagi, tapi kali ini di embassy norway. nah sekarang lebih heboh lagi karena gw cuman dikasih deadline 2 minggu!
abis pontang panting nanya sana sini, akhirnya hari ini gw udah ke embassy dan alhamdulillah lancar. orangnya baik2, mau ngebantu kalo kita ada pertanyaan, tidak memasang muka jutek layaknya orang yang belum dapet gaji, bisa diajak curhat (loh?), dan prosesnya ga ribet. proses pas di embassynya loh ya. tapi kalo proses ngumpulin dokumen2nya, sedap banget! oya, dibawah ini adalah dokumen2 yang bikin gw pusing selama 2 minggu:
- paspor asli (disananya sampulnya minta dibuka gatau kenapa)
- pas foto yang udah memenuhi kriteria (3.5 x 4.5)
- surat keterangan mahasiswa (yang udh diterjemahin ke dlm bhs inggris)
- travel + medical insurance at least 30.000 euro, +15 hari dari rencana travel kita (jangan lupa di fotokopi)
- bank reference (dalam bhs inggris)
- print an rekening bank orang tua (kurang lebihnya gw gatau soalnya ga terlalu dipermasalahin sama mereka)
- letter of guarantee dari ayah/ibu yang di kasih materai 6000
- undangan dan rekomendasi dari ISFiT (yang attorney ga usah, karena kata mbaknya kita apply sendiri, bukan diwakilin sama org lain)
- covering letter yang udah di ttd, receipt (biar uangnya bisa di refund), sama application form yang udh diisi online)
- bukti booking tiket round trip
- kalo yang mau extend, lampirin semua bookingan hostel, invitation letter (kalo mo visit temen/keluarga/nginep di KBRI)

banyak bukan? emang sih pas diliat orang2 pasti bilang oh segini doang? yaa.. standar lah ya kayak embassy yg lain. tapi kalo dikerjain selama 2 minggu doang, beuh! enak banget! gw sampe nyusahin nyokap gw (emang selalu sih hehe), jadi keliatan bawel banget di grup ISFiT Indonesia (sorry guys), dan dalem sehari gw bisa mantengin laptop buat bikin travel gw se ciamik mungkin. yaah.. inilah namanya perjuangan. kalo kata Uncle Ben, "from a great power, comes a great responsibility". jadi, inilah sisi perjuangan dari kebahagiaan mendapatkan sebuah student festival sebesar ISFiT dan bisa pergi ke Norway. kebanyakan orang pasti cuma liat betapa menyenangkannya pergi ke Norwaynya doang. tapi lihatlah kawan, di dalam kesenangan pasti ada perjuangan. dan perjuangan gw belom selesai sampai disini (caelah).

power rangers kalaaah!

the perks of having crazy friends (and the ones that can actually dance) in your KKN group. i had a blast practicing the routine with them because it was full with laughter and jokes i can't even mad at them for not being serious as i used to. in conclusion, i missed that feeling, those moments.

invitation!! :D

so proud of myself! see guys? dreams do come true if you didn't give up on them. so february next year i will experience my first ever snow and minus degree temperature in Scandinavian countries! :D

ekspedisi perdana

 dulu gw pernah posting tentang Pulau Biawak. tapi dulu gw kesini with the purpose of having fun. sekarang sedikit beda. OSEANIK ngadain the first expedition ever: COELOSERIS! so happy akhirnya kita bisa bikin ekspedisi setelah beberapa bulan ngerencanain. yang belum tau letak Pulau Biawak, pulau ini terletak di utara Indramayu. sekitar 4 jam lah ya dari sana kalo ombaknya ga kenceng dan cuaca lagi mendukung. kalo kayak kemaren mah gw balik aja ke Indramayu makan waktu 6 jam! jadi lah gw nahan pipis 2 jam. 

dulu kalo mau mandi di pulau ini harus di sumurnya langsung karena kamar mandinya unbearable banget. tapi sekarang udah lumayan lah ya buat dipake. gw aja alhamdulillah bisa buang air besar hampir tiap hari disana hehe (itu berarti membuktikan kamar mandinya udh bagu kan?) dan emang lagi ada pembangunan sih disana. jadi kamar mandinya mo diperbanyak, rumahnya juga lagi dibangun biar kalo ada banyak orang yang mo dateng bisa ketampung di pulau ini. soalnya menurut gw pulau ini banyak banget potensi wisatanya. sayangnya masih kurang pembangunannya aja. semoga aja 2 atau 3 tahun lagi nih pulau udah bisa sebagus Pulau Hoga ;)

The Expendables 2

as i expected, this movie is really incredible! great action movie (well of course. look at the actors!), and my favorite part is that it has a biting sense of humor. especially when Silvester Stalone said: "that thing should be on a museum", and Arnold said: "we all should be on a museum". i don't know why, but that one was really hilarious. too bad Liam Hemsworth died too soon in this movie. i really wanted to see him in action.

dragon and decompression

this week there are two highlight of my internship with MantaWatch. first of all, the fact that i couldn't dive for a day! well this is because i spent too much time in the deep (if i'm not wrong, it think it's around 25-27 m). i did realize that there was something wrong with my dive computer because it showed that i have to come up (ascending time) to shallow water no more than 3 m. but because Andy and Ichsan looked fine, so i thought maybe it is fine. that was my first mistake. after i surface, the computer started beeping and showing error sign. and i thought maybe the error would go away itself. that was my second mistake. so the following day i went diving again, and it still showing error. so i asked Andy why, and he told me that i shouldn't dive anymore until the computer stop showing error, and he told me that i won't get a decompression sickness (fiuh!), only a higher risk to get one. so i have to sit on the boat for a day. 

but that day turned up pretty great when Andy told me that whether we want to switch boat from Divine Diving boat to DiveKomodo boat because they are going to Rinca Island to see the dragon! of course i said yes immediately! i have been waiting for that moment. and that was my second highlight of this week, to finally see the dragon!

belajar mengajar

 selama ini kita ngeliat guru dalam perspektif seorang murid. ada guru yang ngebosenin lah, ada guru yang killer lah, ada guru yang kepo lah, ada pula guru yang doyan ngasih tugas. tapi pernah denger ga sih guru ngeluh gara2 kecapean ngajar atau ngeliat guru bener2 down ato stres gara2 kecapean ngajar? kalo gw sih ga pernah. setelah akhirnya dapet kesempatan ngajar anak SD di 3 sekolah di Desa Lengkongbarang, gw baru ngerasain betapa capeknya jadi guru! haha! harus mengeluarkan suara ekstra (apalagi kalo udh kelas 4,5 atau 6 yang udah mulai bandel). ngajarin nyanyi sih emang awal2nya seneng dan semangat. tapi lama kelamaan stamina berkurang dan jadi capek. lebih2 pas gw ngajarin pelajaran matematika sama bahasa inggris. kadang2 ditengah2 ngajar mati gaya! bingung mo ngapain lagi.

bukannya gw sebelumnya underestimate seorang guru, tapi gw cuman ga ngira aja bakal secapek ini jadi seorang guru. padahal gw cuman ngajar sehari setiap satu sekolah. emang bener banget deh kata2 guru itu adalah "pahlawan tanpa tanda jasa".

first of everything great

 the them for this week is obviously experiencing first things, which i will explain it to you one by one.

first, i had my first live-aboard experience for four days. MantaWatch arranged a four days manta safari. we went with a small group of amazing people. the boat was very nice, even though at my third day in it i felt a little seasick. i had my own cabin, and my favorite part was the food! the food was always nicely prepared and so tasty, it was always take the hunger away after diving.

second, and this was the most memorable of all, my very first ever night dive! at first when they asked me if i wanted to go, i felt hesitant. because i always have anxiety every time before i dive (i don't know why and i still couldn't get rid of it). but thankfully i said yes, and i had a great time during that night dive although most of the time i'm always thinking: 'don't get lost, Dita. try to look over everybody around you.'

third, still about my first diving experience, my first deep dive! the water was so cold and even though i was wearing 5 mm wet suit, i still feel cold. but i love the dive site. it's called the arch. as i was explained by the dive master on the boat, it has a chair like contour with may reef fishes and corals. at first they didn't tell me how deep we're going to dive, so when i looked at my dive computer, i was surprised that we went until 34 m! but it wasn't so scary because i was mesmerized by how there are so many fishes, and of course, the highlight of that dive is when we passed to a little cave. that felt amazing and i wish the cave were longer and wider so it could be like experiencing a little bit of cave diving ;p

fourth, and i think this was the most challenging of all, my first English presentation about mantas. it was pretty hard for me to present something with indonesian language, i couldn't imagine how it goes. but to my surprise, and for the helpful advise from Andy and Laura, i did pretty well (well at least for me it did).

so to wrap things up, i had an amazing weekend, a lot of things for y head to wrap into, but in a good way though. so how's your week? did you experience first things like i did?

must visit: Citumang

 setelah beberapa jam duduk di kol bak masuk angin, kedinginan, menyanyi untuk menghangatkan diri, dorong mobil gara2 ban kempes, tidur begadang gara2 ngebenerin ban, tidur di masjid karena ga dibolehin tidur di tempat seseorang (ehm maaf tidak bisa disebutkan perusahaannya), akhirnya... jeng jereng jeng jeeeng! kita sampai di Citumang!

 kalo kalian lagi pada main deket Batu Karas, kudu mesti main ke Citumang! gw kurang hafal jalan pastinya kesana, yang gw inget cuman sawah kanan kiri yang sangat indah. mungkin lo bisa tanya arah ke warga sekitar, biasanya mereka tau. kalo udh ketemu plang kayak gambar diatas, you're on the right track. di Citumang bukan cuman bisa body rafting, tapi bisa juga lompat ato bahasa kerennya cliff diving setinggi 12 meter! rugi banget kalo udh sampe sana cuman body rafting doang. lo juga bisa camping disana kalo emang punya waktu luang yang banyak. airnya ga terlalu dingin, dan guidenya baik2. mereka pun rela foto2in kelompok gw (haha!)

Majid Tavakoli

as an International Ambassador for ISFiT 2013, it is my job and my honor to present to you 2013 Student Peace Prize Winner: Majid Tavakoli.

"he is a student leader who is serving a nine year long prison sentence in Iran. He is imprisoned because of his criticism of the government in a speech he held for the student organization Islamic Students' Association at his University in 2009 and a letter he wrote from prison the following year. even from prison, he is a strong voice for democracy and academic freedom in Iran, and against the human rights violations he and many others are being exposed for. Tavakoli has become a symbol of student resistance against the regime in Iran. He is a public defender of a free Iran, even though he is aware of the risks this entails."

i'm really touch by what he did. even though he knows the risk, he still made it happen and he knows because it's for a good reason. he believes in freedom and human rights, and actually do something about it. i really am speechless how to describe this guy. you could all just go to isfit.org to see the complete detail of him.

just ordinary days

september has been really fun for me. first i 'celebrated' my 21st birthday on a boat in the middle of the sea between Indramayu and Biawak island, and it only gets better: right now i'm in Labuan Bajo, NTT, doing an internship with MantaWatch and supported by the Guy's Trust Foundation. both of them are based in UK. and as you can see by the name of the organization, yes, they are specialized in manta rays. and yes, i will be (well hopefully) diving with mantas a lot. from the second i applied for this internship i knew that i would be having a blast. no kidding. my first day with them, we spend a night in Bali and i got the chance to go to a shark sanctuary in Serangan Island, and actually swam with them! never i my teenage life that i thought i would ever swam with a shark! well i know they're only reef sharks, but hey, shark's a shark.

of course the excitement didn't end there. by the time i got to Labuan Bajo, i went straight into the water after a day break exploring the town and settling in. the first dive that i did here was to refresh some underwater techniques such as mask clearing and regulator recovery and just to be comfortable in the water. second dive that i did was the following day, the same spot which is in Bidadari Island. but this second dive is to know how well we are to take a picture underwater (of course i got my own camera, lend by MantaWatch) and to experiment and to get familiar with the camere we're using.

my third and fourth dive were probably the most exciting dive i've ever done because i saw 4 mantas in total with one that was really huge and swimming just a few feet from me! if only i could swim away with it, i probably would and turn myself to a mermaid. but that wasn't just the reason though. i encountered some animals that i've never seen before such as cuttlefish and leaf scorpion fish. last but not least, and may i say, the cherry on top, was the drift diving. i'm not a fan of strong underwater current, but after i just let the current take me, i started to feel more relaxed.

by the way, if you're wondering about the 'we' i mentioned above, that's because for the next four weeks i'm going to be accompanied by Andy and Laura (MantaWatch staff) and my fellow intern, Ichsan who happens to be my classmate from marine science.

so English

malem2 males cari makan atau ga punya duit, this is what i do. teh peppermint hangat, cheese sandwich dan sebuah apel. menyehatkan, sekaligus hemat ;)