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Come and join our Chinese New Year Celebration!

Well, here we come to the end of 2008!

Actually, I really don’t know what to write right now. This semester I didn’t wrote as much as before (am I busy?). Well, just because this is the end of this year, I push myself to write here, at least for a short flashback. Ok, let me try to remember.

• January - Finally I moved to Singapore to read computer science in NTU. Luckily, I had a short opportunity to talk seriously with someone before my flight and the conversation was very important for the entire year indeed.
• February - Nothing so special, I just remember two things. The first is I was chosen to be PINTU’s main committee in media information division and the second is a Singaporean movie named “The Leap Year” which I watched exactly on the leap day.
• March - I only remember that in March I was quite busy with my study while I try to train some students in SMAK 1 BPK PENABUR Bandung facing OSK 2008. Oh ya, that was my birthday when someone did international phone call, hehe…
• April - First exam in NTU! Thanks God, the results are fairly good.
• May - I came back to Indonesia, really miss someone! I remember spent sometimes in May to train some students in SMAK 1 BPK PENABUR Bandung facing OSP 2008.
• June - Vacation! You can see that I posted nothing in this month, hehe…
• July - A month full of travelling. I went to Purwakarta (visiting my mom’s family), Pangandaran (youth camp by my church) and Toba Lake (national computing training).
• August - The long vacation ended as I went to Makassar as informatics olympiad committee. For TOKI, this month was also special since after a very long time, TOKI grabbed another gold medal!
• September - My first month doing research (URECA) and joining KTB (Eng. Small Christian Group).
• October - An ordinary month with extraordinary absences (lol).
• November - Exam again! Was very busy catching up the material since I missed a lot of classes. And not surprisingly, the results shift down my cumulative GPA (luckily it was only about 0.05 out of 5).
• December - Full with ICPC preparation, although the result was not as good as I predicted (however, I can try again next year). Of course, I came back to Indonesia (sadly this vacation is only 3 weeks long).

Hmm, since I wrote a kind of resolution in the beginning of this year, here I try to review those points:

1. Last year I still wore a white-gray uniform in my senior high school, but in 2008 no more senior high, just university. Yup, soon I’ll go to Singapore pursuit my undergraduate program, I hope it will be nice and useful for me.  New faces, new people, new culture, new system will face me. I have to adapt and be a better achiever there (moreover I have to keep my results so that I won’t lose my ASEAN Scholarship). >> Quite success, I think.
2. In financial perspective, I want to try not to use my parents money anymore, I’ll start to buy and pay everything by myself. Since I got ASEAN Scholarships, I think it’s possible (moreover I can try part-time work in my spare time). >> Quite success as well, I can survive with my own money without doing part-time job.
3. I have to try to be a more punctual person since I realize that I didn’t do very well before, hehe… >> Haha… It’s difficult to say whether I did a positive change or not.
4. I have been single for about 4 years, hehe… Until this post published still don’t know about “something”, but I think in 2008 everything will be clearer. >> Something really clearer, thanks God, though it is not official yet. There will be a proper time for everything.
5. Hmm, computing achievements, my target in 2008 is to get the ticket for ICPC World Final and also I want to try to compete in TopCoder (for now, my target is yellow upper in algorithm), hehe… >> Really bad on these targets since I didn’t get the World Final ticket and also my rating is still blue in TopCoder.

Ok, I think that’s all for now. I’ll try to write some resolutions for 2009. Thanks to read this. Happy New Year! Hope you also have beautiful memories of 2008 and your plan for 2009 will works nicely. God Bless You.

 Just few hours ago, I came to a quite big concert (maybe for the first time in my life). It was Emi Fujita who sangs 22 songs accompanied by 4 acoustic players. These are the songs sorted chronologically:

1. Melody Fair
2. Tears in Heaven
3. I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song
4. All My Loving
5. The Rose
6. (I don’t know what is the title of this one)
7. Over The Rainbow
8. (Solo guitar)
9. (I don’t know what is the title of this one - it is Emi’s Japanese hits in “Kokoro no Shokutaku”)
10. (I don’t know what is the title of this one - it is Emi’s Japanese hits in “Kokoro no Shokutaku”)
11. (I don’t know what is the title of this one - Chinese old song)
12. (I don’t know what is the title of this one)
13. Angel Voices Calling
14. Wishes (in Japanese - Hidamari No Uta)
15. White Christmas
16. Silent Night
17. Unbelievable (in Japanese)
18. (I don’t know what is the title of this one)
19. Desperado
20. From A Distance
21. Perfect
22. What A Wonderful World

Most of the hits above are very familiar for me. Well, actually I still have much things to share. However, I feel very tired now, so I think I have to sleep now. I’ll continue later on, if I have time before my “trip” to Kuala Lumpur.

Oh ya, one last thing, after the show, I took a part in 30-minutes-long-autograph-queue and got this photo, hehe…

For some reasons, my topic for URECA was changed. It is now “An approach of evolutionary and local search for solving job shop optimization”. A co-supervisor also involved now, he is Dr. Ho Nhu Binh from SIMTech. So, mainly, now I’m dealing with memetic algorithm (evolutionary algorithm + local search). In a way, it’s a totally new thing for me. Somehow it changes “my belief”, from the one who usually dealing with something can be proven mathematically into something which can not be proven mathematically. So, it’s like a magic (from the amazing natural world behaviour) which just do thing better in average. I’m open for discussion with everyone who also interested in this field.

Come and join, IEC youth fellowship, this Sat. See the poster below.

Here is a photo taken from “meet and greet” TOKI 2008. It was in Sakae Sushi at Changi Airport, just after TOKI 2008 grabbed 1 gold and 3 bronzes from IOI on Egypt. There were 4 students (Irvan, Adhit, Risan, Gogo), 7 coaches (me, Prima, Bram, Felix, Mr.Adi, Mr.Julio, Mr.Suryana). It was a nice experience, although I have to travel for almost 3,5 hours (round-trip) to go there from my campus.

(from left to right : Brian Marshal, Mr. Adi Mulyanto, Mr. Julio Adi S, Risan, Prima Chairunnanda, Mr. Suryana Setiawan) 

(from left to right : Bramandia Ramadhana, Listiarso Wastuargo, Felix Halim, Irvan Jahja, Reinardus Surya P) 

Finally, I’ve decided my topic for URECA. It is “Bee Colony Optimization : Travelling Salesman and Jobshop Scheduling” under Asst Prof Yoke Hean Low, Malcolm.

Mainly, I will studying some meta-heuristics algorithm for some operational-research problems. Specifically, I will do some investigation on bee colony optimization (which just popularized this year) for solving some benchmark problem in operational-research (i.e. Travelling Salesman and Jobshop Scheduling, as the title state).

I hope I can get some extra-ordinary experiences, knowledges, and adventures doing this one-year-project.

[left to right : Felix Halim (coach, TOKI 2002), Mr. P. Naiborhu (head of DEL foundation in North Sumatra), Reinardus Surya P (TOKI 2008), Risan (TOKI 2008), Mrs. Inggriani Liem (director of PIDEL), Irvan Jahja (TOKI 2008), Listiarso Wastuargo (TOKI 2008), Mr. Heri DS (co-director of PIDEL), and me]

(see more photos here)

Far away from the city (place where TOKI training usually takes place), now TOKI 2008 is doing a training in PIDEL (DEL Informatics Polytechnic), a beautiful place of study in the edge of Toba Lake (the largest volcanic lake in the world, lies in the northern part of Sumatra). This training is a part of TOKI preparations facing IOI 2008 in Egypt which will be held on 16-23 August 2008.

TOKI 2008, Mrs. Inggriani Liem (director of PIDEL, also active in TOKI training), Felix Halim (member of TOKI 2002), and me arrived at PIDEL on 12th July 2008. Training will be held up to July 17, on July 18 they will go to Samosir Island (in the center of Toba Lake) for vacation, before finally on July 19 they will go home.

*TOKI : Tim Olimpiade Komputer Indonesia (Eng. Indonesian Computing Olympiad Team) : www.toki.or.id
*related news : http://www.pidel.org/?menu=Home&submenu=pdetail&NEWS_ID=0b4a57jpr9pdm1noefut

Today is the 1st anniversary of this blog!  Time is running so fast, here I am with this blog after 1 year. FYI, this post is my 169th. Hope you enjoy keep your eyes on this blog, I will try my best to keep improving the contents  of this blog.