Saturday, October 3, 2020

Finding good inspiring talks is like fate! Another side of my naïve life, ride-hailing loyalty, to life lessons.

So, hello!

This would be my first ever blog post written on a whole new Blogger interface. I have been getting the prompts about the update being rolled out soon and it kept on asking me whether I want to try first or not. And I kept on ignoring it too! I've been on this platform for too long and I think they did make changes several times but nothing has been significant enough to confuse me. I gotta say, this newest change that they make is by far the most significant. The interface is much simpler and probably cleaner (thus it should be more aesthetically pleasing?); however, I think the thing with the back-end is that sometimes functionality rules over aesthetic.. And with the new massive simplicity that is being offered at the table, I just miss the old-school complexity where I just knew which to click when I need something. Basically what they removed (and I can't seem to find how to reverse/show this feature) is the HTML part.. now it's weird for me to embed videos from YouTube on posts because the code won't work and I need to copy-paste the video frame, which works too but it's more unreliable on the UX.. okay enough with the ramble.

Basically I'm sharing you guys another video from YouTube! Only this time, it's not a K-pop song recommendation, though I would definitely still have a lot on my hand to give you hehe.

Tonight, on a random event of YouTube-ing (and I gotta say, fate!) I stumbled upon this inspirational video:

I say fate too because I wouldn't have gotten the recommendation to this video and would never click on it if I didn't read my friends' tweet on the other day. On that tweet, he was complimenting on Pak Gita's presentation skill. I was intrigued and did a quick look on his videos on YouTube. At some point, it got me to a video of Sacha (a Youtube) who did review on Pak Gita's English. I think people's good English pronunciation has always been my weak points.. hahah so I did watch the video and wow he is one of the most fluent Indonesian I have ever seen!

On that video, Pak Gita was moderating a talk with Nadeim Makarim. Nadiem is also a cool person that I kinda look up to. He is intelligent, he is eloquent with words, and he is (from what I perceive) quite sincere too. In this (what I planned out as a short reflectional writing), I will try to lay out several key take-aways that might be useful for me to read again and for you to know :)

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

#Random 18: I'm a sucker for good K-pop songs!!!

By this time, I think I know what kind of songs that can move me (duh dramatic me). I like songs that convey certain melancholy to the songs, that make me feel joyous yet sad? at the same time. They are most certainly not sad songs so that's what makes them special. Listening to these songs make we want to scream the lyrics out loud due to the melancholy. It makes inner me scream lololol have you ever felt that?

Note: there were actually many K-pop songs that become my personal favorite, so this list may be biased since it's heavily influenced by my state of mind as per writing hahaha. E.g., once in my life I also like BTS's Best Of Me, Wanna One's Energectic, BTS's dimple, but I guess I don't really feel like listening to them right now?

So...

SELECTION CRITERIA:
  1. Sentimental K-pop songs with joyous vibe in it so you feel safe and happy when hearing it but not too upbeat
  2. Songs that I feel like listening as of writing hahhaha

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

#Random 17: K-pop wrecked my playlist!!!

My K-playlist
It has been going on for quite some time --the trend of me discovering so many good K-pop songs, but now K-pop literally is the theme of my playlist... It now comprises 204 out of 647 of my liked songs, almost reaching 30% of it!

As you can see from the image above, I started collecting K-pop songs in 2016. At that time, I actually used YouTube a lot more than Spotify. While doing my school work at night, I usually shuffle my YouTube playlist and was so happy singing along to the songs. At one instance, my YouTube recommended me so much of K-pop songs and it just.... grew on me.

I remember the first non-mainstream K-pop song I discovered was I Am You, You Are Me by Zico (only recently I found out that the song is actually SOTY 2016 material, up against Cheer Up and Blood Sweat & Tears, no wonder). I was recommended that song by one of my friends (who has just started being an early ARMY hahaha I see u chingu) and I quite liked the song. Somehow, the song was played on V-Channel (RIP..) and I finally noticed the K-pop segment there, searched some songs myself on YouTube, and this started the K-pop recommendation frenzy in my channel lol you now how persistent YouTube can be once they decided you like some topic. I was not even mad.... they were gold!

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

#Random 16: Why I have been writing so much here (and how I have always been so extra about publicizing writings)

It's because of work-from-home!!!!!!!

I got so much time for me to open my laptop and not opening work-related decks that I was kinda inspired to type things that are personal to me. I think the newly trending again Twitter also plays a role. I have loved writing and expressing myself in text since forever that sometimes I find it hard to articulate my thoughts on limited characters on Twitter (funny that I was one of those opposing the idea of extending the 140-char limit to 280-char limit!!!). The emergence of people making thread really boosts the popularity of Twitter. It makes reading so much easier since the passages are divided into 280-char chunks. I mean, it's back to microblogging again!

Then why do I blog instead?

Aside from the character limit, I just find it quite exposing to write on Twitter. I felt the pressure to write things that are expressive of me rather than these random thoughts. My twitter has become just like another internet personality that I have to maintain and I felt more limited to express anything that I want there. It's like your personal wall magazine! However, blog is just like a public diary for me. The platform is 100% for me to handle and I do not need to worry about whether other people care or not. My blog posts won't trespass other people's lives by showing off at their feed because no such thing exists in this blog thingy!

I really want to start writing longer stories of myself here though, like my last trip to UK just for memorabilia purposes. Wish I had the time (and will of power)!

Oh oh oh and another thing why I like to blog, I know it's weird of me but I like reading my own blog posts over and over again, especially on mobile phones. HAHAHA it's just some weird pride seeing myself write a long piece that has sentimental value to me and mobile-format texts just looks... amazing! It's hard to describe but I think that's that, I like reading my own writing especially when it's personal and not cringey. Mobile-format look adds the coolness of it.

(my random mind got me writing about literally another topic on how I was always being extra about getting my writing publicized in an enjoyable manner)

This must explain why back in junior high I made a blog about our class (HERE!!!) and twitter accounts of my classes (I made three: this is for my junior high class, though the blog was much more memorable; then this second one, I swear THIS Twitter handle was such a bop back then with me sharing our daily quirks with #X5lol, no one ever had it before and even followed me after!; and THIS ONE for my 11th grade class). I swear I was fucking extra.... honestly being a journalist or writer could be a passionate career path for me. I always loved taking extensive notes during classes or even debates in uni (wtf right). When I was bored during school holidays when no phone existed I write stories on notebooks! It's a wonder why I haven't tried being a Wattpad writer lol.

#Random 15: it's 9.43pm

I was watching Netflix on a calm night. Everybody's sleeping already (I live with my grandparents so they sleep early). Then suddenly I got curious at the time, what time is it?

It's 9.43pm.

It's only 9.43pm!!!

Wow, at just 9.43pm (below 10pm is SUPER EARLY for me), I was already enjoying myself watching some Netflix....... It was surprising because it felt like time has passed so much ever since I closed my laptop and cooked and ate dinner. I have done so much after work! And it's only 9.43pm!

Just yesterday I was pondering to myself, God I was really afraid on adjusting myself to work after this work from home thing ends. I was sooo used to, for the whole two months, of not spending hours commuting, of not spending hours under the glaring sun and on a bad traffic. It was a new normal and I'M LOVING IT! I can even cook when I want to at night and do not need to eat cold dinner because I need to spend 1-2 hours on traffic before I can finally get home.

I knew just how much time I had been wasting on commuting all this time and it had been the normality for me. I have never thought of any other way of living, then this absurd situation came. Suddenly I knew how much was lost and taken from me.

You also don't know what you don't have til it's there.

Monday, June 1, 2020

#Random 15: Preferences

When we were little, filling out personal information or biodata on our friends' binder was such a trend. I remember this suddenly because yesterday one of my friends posted her binder on Instagram and wow it did bring back memories!

This is yet another random thought from me.

I was just scrolling Instagram and I realized that during this WFH, I did buy or do a lot of things that I like. I like pasta a lot, so I buy so many pasta ingredients and explore so many recipes to make pasta on my own. I like noodles so much so I was almost always spontaneously buy noodles when my friends sell them (during WFH, so many people become sellers haha). I like dimsums and just now I bought dimsums from my friends!

Today, my idol has just released new songs. I can tell that I like their b-tracks but I haven't really
become obsessed with the title track. I can also tell that even though their MV is superb, I still prefer other groups' MV concept.

Linking this back to my introduction, growing up I wasn't someone who has strong preferences of something. When I filled the MaFav or MiFav part, I just add food that I tried before or sounded cool, I didn't really have something favorite that time, though.

I realized that now, I can finally have preferences over something. I am still a very agreeable person to the point that I think that this is my weakness. I don't know, is it my pacifist self over compromising things? Or just like favorite foods or favorite drinks or favorite MV, probably I should just try to explore more things so I can have better opinions on things, thus being less agreeable and more critical on things?

And like other #random tagged posts should be, this is where I will end this random self-reflection.

(Wow, WFH really gives me time to reflect on things and actually write them here!)

BONUS (added per June 4)
You know I love to re-read my own writing and suddenly I found this page on my blog where I talked about myself. You can see the cringe page here and if you are wondering why it has '(2)' that's.. because I have the original About Me version that is much much moreeeeeeeeee cringey. :)

SO I dare myself to ready that cringey post and oh what the hell how.. could.. I.. even.. think.. of writing that!?!?!?! It's soo sooo bad and self-conceited omg I don't know 10th grader me was THAT pathetic. Ew.

Why I decided to add a bonus part here after rereading that page is because I found this part:
excerpt from my About Me (1) that was so so so so cringey
EXACTLY! I wrote myself a biodata! And you can see there just how basic and mainstream my favorite things were... duh I clearly hadn't been exploring the world. Also 'profesi yang ditetapkan Tuhan Yesus' what the hell man hahahahaha it's like I gave up in actually deciding things on myself and wanted to just accept anything my parents wanted but justifying that it was all God's fate lol. Though not gonna lie that following what my parents wanted worked quite okay for me now, but just I really did not look up into any other choices at that time! Hahahaha.