O' week

This is the end of my O'week (Orientation week -red) in Monash University Clayton Campus. It was an awesome two-weeks i can say. The programs is not just about academic and campus stuff, but also about australian campus, melbourne, and making friends here.

During the first week of orientation, Monash Abroad introduced us to Australia in general, and Melbourne in specific. I met lots of exchanges student from around the world, Malaysia, US, Germany, Japan, and many more. The one i like the most during the orientation is,, free food are provided!! WOoohohoo.. don't be naive. It's Australia. and food are extremely expensive here. So anytime we have a chance to get the free one, why don't we take it?! ;)

Pancake and muffin for breakfast, BBQ and pizza for lunch. Ahh. i just can't resist it. Sllrrpp..
By the way, since the meal is so expensive here, i HAVE TO cook at home, besides, all the shop will be close at 6PM everyday, no more mamak, no tenda-an, so COOK is a MUST. I bought some groceries together with nukke. And we had our first cooked food, bake potato. It was okay, except in the beginning i actually grilled it, because i couldn't turn the oven on. It ended up burning on top. hahaha. but again, it was not bad, we just throw the burning part.. :P

We quite often went to the city in the first week, with the guidance of Monash Abroad team. Queen Victoria Night Market, Super Nice Durian and Ferrero Gelato Ice Cream which i forgot what's the placed called, Koko Black, Pacific, Shanghai Dumpling in China Town, Bimbo Place where we can get $4 home made pizza per pan :), Melbourne Central, Art Gallery.. Those are some places i went in our first week of orientation. Not bad huh!

Durian-Ferrero-Strawbery gelato

And today, as the closing of the Orientation Week, we went to Healesville Sanctuary to see koala, kangaroo, platypus, wombats, emu, and others local animals. It's FUN :)

Hello, Mr. Koala!

Hello, Uncle Emu!

Fun fact about emu :
In a season, female emu can lay 3 x a dozen eggs. Once it lays eggs, male emu incubates them for 3 weeks and raise their children for months.

Red Scooter Welcome Party

cold summer

Is summer identical to hot sunny day??

Not really actually. At least that's what i experience here in melbourne, australia. I'm wearing jacket while blogging inside my room at the moment. It's the same as Puncak weather! Puncak can u imagine, not even bogor, but Puncak. You can see the weather forecast below, it's 13 degree during the summer! I hope it won't be too cold in June :S

Weird summer.

14 february

It's not about Valentine's day.
It's more about my arrival in Clayton, Melbourne.

Saturday, 12 feb 2011
I flew from Jakarta to bali, with all my luggage for Melbourne. I thought i could go out, spending some of my waiting time around kuta and having dinner there. failed. because of 1 hour delay, i just sat in solaria, Ngurah Rai, enjoying my dinner all by myself while waiting for Nukke's arrival. Bali was hot and only solaria and starbucks have the proper indoor-aircon-system.

After around 40 minutes, Nukke came and we checked in for our flight to Melbourne. On that 5-hours night flight, i think i could only sleep for 1 to 2 hours. Different with most flight from indo, flight from bali have more foreigners than local. it makes us feel departing not from indo. However, a Balinese guy sat right beside me. We had quite lots of conversations about him being Australia-graduated-scientist and about me studying science. We ended it when the light turned off and both of us fell asleep.

Sunday, 13 feb 2011
Arrived at Tullamarine airport on 7.40 am (4 hours ahead Jakarta time), Dion fetch us. Arrived safe at 30 Evelyn St, finding that the room is far larger than i expected made me happy. Huhh. i kinda worried took the house without doing any inspection before. But fortunately, the house is okay, the landlord is kind, and hopefully the housemates too.. It's a multinational accomodation i can say. We're dealing with Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Chinese, and Vietnamese as our housemates. Guys and girls.

We continued our journey to do some urgent groceries. Our landlord drove us to the groceries centre and he explained how to walk back. The shopping was okay, except the 9100 rupiah per i dollar part =.= On the way back, we walk walk walk, but we didn't even know where we were. it was a long tiring walk in the hot sunny day. lucky, we met someone who roughly know where our house is. Finally we arrived home safe.

After a while, Melissa, an indo friend came by and asked us to visit her place. She introduced us to all of her friends and we watched movie together in her cozy apartment. It's very nice to be surrounded by kind people. Melissa helped us a lot, she gave lots of info before we arrived melbourne, and lent us some stuff we didn't have like pillows, bolster, and hangers. She fetch us to her place which is around 40 mins drive and send us back to clayton at night. She treated us like old friends, even it was our first time meeting her.

14 feb 2011
Met Ola and Shin Hui (both are our friends in Malaysia) by accident, ended having lunch together. I haven't got any australian phone number yet, it takes time to activate the bb service :( We spent the afternoon by cleaning the house with its kitchen appliances. It's kinda an exercise too. :P

It's the end of the day and i'm sleepy..
Get ready for tomorrow orientation! Woohooo..
Good night world. :)

abu-abu

seorang teman bertanya, "apakah A yang benar dan B salah? ataukah B yang benar dan A salah?" saya memilih mengambil jalan tengah. "A tidak salah, tapi B juga patut dipertimbangkan."

di dunia yang begitu rumit dan penuh dengan probabiliti saat ini, tampaknya semakin susah menentukan benar salah. kalau saja ariel tidak berada di kalangan selebriti, mungkin dia tidak dicap salah dan dijatuhi hukuman tiga tahun penjara 'cuma' gara-gara medokumentasikan kegiatan pribadi. toh kita yang orang awam juga tidak salah mau foto-foto kayak gimana. bukankah berekspresi itu bagian dari hak asasi?

satu hal yang saya simpulkan, banyak hal yang tidak terlalu hitam, tapi tidak juga putih. mereka abu-abu.. relatif. terserah bagaimana dan dari sudut mana kamu dan saya mau melihat. daripada ribut jadi hakim benar salah, apa salahnya mengikhlaskan apa yang terjadi, yang penting saya, kamu, dan dia senang kan..