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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.

Happy birthday… Happy birthday… Happy birthday to me…

Hehe… Thanks a lot to all of you who remember this-maybe-special-day. Most of all, thanks to someone who have an international phone at zero hours. I was surprised, I thought you’ll just send me a message, hehe… Thanks to Belva, Dilla, Nia as well who have accompanied me through the midnight in tutorial room (thanks for the video). Thanks to Wina and Eyin, a phone call woke me up this morning mentioning a packet and I exactly knew he isn’t courier! Thanks to Krishna, my room-mate, I didn’t think you’ll remember my birthday (I only told you once). Thanks also for Ivanna, is it a real card or edited one? Last but not least, thanks to my family (my dad’s message is right at zero hours, it’s a coincidence, hehe…).

Well, this is my last year in “teen” age (seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, hehe…) and hope this age will be one of my best time.

Some resolution for my 19th age: URECA, GPA>4.5, Yellow Rate TC, ICPC Regional Winner. (Amin)

Arrgghhhh… JAVA + TOPCODER = CRAZY!

I did it twice! Yeah, I did a little-Javanase-bug for twice!

Firstly, in my SRM 390 competition, I did a typecasting of (int) which should be (long).

Secondly, in my Second Qual of TCO08, I just knew that we can’t assign an operation of character to a string variable in JAVA, we should assign a single character one after another.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gong XI Fa Cai! Happy Chinese New Year to all of you who celebrate it. May the joy of the new year lightening up your whole year.

For someone there, happy birthday, wish a nice age for you, God bless you… Glad to hear your voice last night…

Welcome 2008! Hopefully this will be another good year or even better than before…

I don’t say it’s resolution or plan or something like that, just things in my head now about this year:

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)
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).
3. I have to try to be a more punctual person since I realize that I didn’t do very well before, hehe…
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.
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…

Hi, 2007 will soon be gone! But I think the memories that I made will not.

Well, thanks God who gave me a good year and now let me have a little review about this, two thousand and seven…

1. In the early of this year, I had 7 days trip to Bali with my school, it was such a great trip, Bali was so beautiful, and so were my friends (I have posted about it).
2. Soon after my trip to Bali, it was getting very busy. Due to my plan to go take NTU and NUS entrance exams, I had to join 3 private courses (Mr.BoenFie’s and Mr.Kheng’s for mathematics and Mr.Yosef’s for english).
3. February 10, my school had a Valentine Night Event, but sadly I couldn’t go there because in the same time I was on Canisius College to take NTU entrance exam.
4. I think March and April were the two busiest months in my school, yeah, I’m talking about final national exam and its preparations.
5. After my last exam, I was directly go to the 2nd National Computer Olympiad Team Training Camp in ITB, there was something sad for me just before the camp and that was my first time blogging. Passed the selection, a week after that camp, I went to 3rd camp. In the middle of the camp I have to went back to Bandung having ITB entrance test (without any preparation, hehe…).
6. Juni and July were full with my preparations since I passed the 3rd camp which mean I would go to IOI, yeah, at last!
7. Maybe August was the hottest month of this year because I went to IOI 2007 and thanks God I got the bronze! Besides that, it was my first time go to university, thought I won’t graduated from the same university (yes, it’s about ITB).
8. After that, I also invited to OSN 2007 as a jury there, an extraordinary experience.
9. Surprisingly, soon after my IOI, I got mail which said that it’s possible for me to be NTU’s student of academic year 07/08. I met NTU’s Dean of Admissions in Soekarno-Hatta and had a deal, not only that, I also got the ASEAN scholarships for my study there.
10. I passed October and November with my “short” study in pure mathematics faculty in ITB, not bad, I got new friends, new knowledges and get closer with someone (although, problems really did headache and heartache to me).
11. Finally, December, I spent my time mostly in the 2nd National Computer Olympiad Team Training Camp as a coordinator of assistants. Without any serious preparation after the camp, I went to Singapore joining ICPC Regional Contest. Not really bad, we got the 9th place.

Several special facts about this year:

1. There were 3 international competitions (APIO, IOI and ICPC).
2. Though overall I only got 7 achievements (not as 2006 when I got 14 achievements), 2007 still the best so far, coz I got my best medal so far, bronze IOI 2007.
3. Thanks God that gave me good health so that I could travel a lot. If I count every single way that moved me from one city to another one (went and back again counts as 2 single way), I did 41 single ways in 2007 (it tooks about 160 hours on the move - about 2% of the whole year): 6 Bandung-Jakarta, 7 Jakarta-Bandung, 1 Bandung-Surabaya, 1 Surabaya-Bandung, 1 Jakarta-Surabaya, 1 Surabaya-Jakarta, 1 Bandung-Bali, 1 Bali-Bandung, 5 Bandung-Depok, 4 Depok-Bandung, 1 Depok-Jakarta, 3 Jakarta-Singapore, 3 Singapore-Jakarta, 1 Singapore-Frankfurt, 1 Frankfurt-Singapore, 1 Frankfurt-Croatia, 1 Croatia-Frankfurt, 1 Bandung-Purwakarta, 1 Purwakarta-Bandung

Well, I think that’s enough “A Brief History of Brian Marshal in 2007″, hehe… Soon I’ll try to write about my resolution in 2008, but first let me thanks for everyone around me, my family, my friends, and you (who read it) for your supports and affections, without all of you the history might be different. Thank you. God bless you all…

A nice picture-story-book made by b.wing. It was a little bit weird when I first saw its pages, it only consists half or one sentence for each, moreover some pages just left blank. But I do believe you’ll get something when you focus on its background. A picture is worth a thousand words, hehe…

Can I have you back?

I can’t play alone

or I must call in vain through the long long summer hours?

You may see often this sentence in my YM status “Occupé mais disponible” and also you may wonder what that means? The sentence is French which means “Busy but available”, yeah, recently I was very busy with my tasks but I always manage to be available in case there is something urgent to talk about.  Well, about the French, I really want to learn more about it, hopefully I can learn more about it in NTU as an elective subjects (if I’m not too busy with the core subjects, hehe…).