First Post in Down Under!
It has been two months since I arrived safely in Melbourne, Australia and yet I have not posted a single post on this little space of mine yet. Sorry for that!
I guess I should start from 2 months back, to the point before I boarded the plane which brought me here.
I had to leave everything behind in the beautiful island I was from, Bintan and hopped on the ferry to Singapore on that very morning. My flight was scheduled on the 15th of February 2010 from Terminal 1 of Changi Airport, Singapore.
It is interesting to sit down here and realise that I actually had to leave two places where I had spent most of my years on the same day. I spent 15 years in Indonesia, a place where it all begins, a place where I first got to know this world. And I spent the next following five years in Singapore, where most of my principles, values, thoughts and opinions are shaped. This is the place where my life started to change. So, these two places are important to me.
I did not have much feeling (maybe not at all obvious) when I was on the ferry, but it was all different when I was on the way to the airport. My uncle was kind enough to send me to the airport along with my aunt and parents. As I was sitting on the car, my stomach started to turn. I felt butterflies fluttering their wings in my stomach. It was that point of time where I first had this thought, “Shit! Why the hell did I choose this path?”
However I knew I was just being nervous. Seriously nervous about what is going to come. I felt like crying. Felt like crying. Obviously I did not. I swallowed that feeling and managed climbing out of the car, appearing perfectly normal.
So I saw quite a number of good friends in the airport, those who were nice to send me off despite the festive season of Chinese New Year. That day was just the second day. I really need to thank them for coming (I am sure we will see each other soon! (: ). As usual, my parents would bid me goodbye by giving me advice to be good and to take good care of myself.
Entering the gate was difficult, I knew someone would start crying, my mum did, my dad followed shortly after. I tried not to be too emotional, it does not make the situation better. I braced myself to quickly walk away from the custom once my passport was checked.
I took a direct flight with a bunch of ‘then potential’ coursemates which made the seven and a half hour journey much less painful than it could be if I were to be alone. We knew that we have to depend on each others for the few years to come.
Melbourne is beautiful. I am loving the place, the weather (though it is most of the time erratic and unpredictable), the people and my university! I love the place where I am staying now and might consider staying here again next year (I shall post some photos on my next post!).
The suburb where my university is, Clayton, is not too near to the city. I think it is good this way because we will not ever get sick of the city as we only get to go there during the weekends and ‘going to the city’ serves as a good escapism from the huge pile of reading materials and studying. I love how the university is simple and easy to navigate around and it is literally difficult to get lost here.
University life has finally got into me. I realised I had to do so much on my own as compared to before. Independent learning is extremely crucial and everyone is extremely smart! Somehow, I felt like I am lagging behind because I seemed to take things really slowly and easily from the very beginning. Did I mention that we have had our first exam last Friday? It was not at all pleasant. I felt that I had not done as well as I could have possibly done.
That was a a wake up call for me.
I have to acknowledge that I have, subconsciously, settle in well to the life here. It was not such a big change from it used to be other than the fact that I had to cook for myself. I started cooking frequently and I think my cooking skill has actually improved quite a bit. Haha. Seriously!
So, I should get back to studying now. I will come back and post photos and some other things I forgot to post. 
A Disjointed Sequel to the Previous Post
The previous post ‘The Matures and their Not-So-Mature Minds’ was just completed a few minutes ago. I just felt that I need a sole post to dedicate on that particular part about my swimming experience.
Other than swimming, I actually have been really busy with driving. Although I have been taught by my Dad’s chauffeur on how to drive a couple of months back, his lesson stopped before he managed to teach me how to park a car. He quitted his job with my Dad and till this moment, I still wonder whether that was caused by me being a lousy student or was just because of his personal reasons. I hope it’s the latter reason.
So, I asked my Dad to teach me how to park a car and guess what? He gave up on me after 15 minutes of very poorly-constructed teaching methods. He blamed me for that and told my Mom that I was a terrible student. The following day, my brother-in-law was asked by my Dad to teach me. I did learn something from those sessions, but after a while I have no idea what happened, the lessons just stopped and now I think it’s better if I go for some formal driving lessons before it’s too late.
With my departure to Melbourne barely makes a month, I have been really busy trying to pack things up, shopping and organizing the trip. I still have so many things to get before the 15th of February to make sure I do not end up scrambling for help like a big fat loser once I touched down.
I almost forgot to mention that there have been so many outings with my prospective course-mates in Monash this month and so far those have been such good time spent! Although I missed the potluck session which was a shame, paintball-ing has been a real fun, not to forget the crazy chalet.
We explored the old Changi Hospital which was rumoured to be haunted and played some funny games on top of the roofs. Did we promise to play the same games after we graduated 5 years later? That will be really awesome!
Played many card games (homojale! Is that how you spelled it?) and mind games such as polar bear. I think we should continue the laughter and fun when we spend our 5 years there together!
Wish us good luck!
The Matures and their Not-So-Mature Minds
I have to admit: the year 2010 really started off fantastically for me. It has been so long since I have been truly positive about living. I mean I have been wasting 2009 away (I think I had just repeated this for the God-knows-how-many-times on this blog) and was clueless when I can actually seize back all the lost time.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I can actually deduct one year for my age. You know, I have not been making good use of my time, why not give it back to me and I’ll try to make it up? Oh well, we know too well that it is impossible to do that.
So, what exactly have I been doing this month? For God’s sake, it’s already the 25th of January! I have made use most of my January by swimming. To be more precise, I have been learning on how to swim. That’s right, you did not see anything mistakes in the previous sentence, I am learning how to swim.
Funny how many people I’ve told actually made fun of that. Up till now, I have not exactly told many people about it. The mockery from others that entails my honesty is what I am trying to avoid. I am embarrassed to the fact that, despite having reached 20 years old, I cannot even stay calm in water.
God, it’s embarrassing enough to have to learn swimming together with a bunch of kids who are six to eight years old. My cheeks actually felt hotter when surrounded by those kids’ parents, chit-chatting away and occasionally making jokes about hopefully-not-me!
I have endured a good 3 weeks of the lessons and I have to thank God, I finally know how to swim, albeit the very basic moves. At least I have stepped out of my comfort zones. Perhaps some of the people who were turned down by me when asked to go swimming with them last time finally understand why I will try to make all sorts of excuses to reject the offers.
Sometimes, Adults are just so immature and tend to look beyond the embarrassment. I have to admit to myself I have actually grown wiser after all these swimming lessons and those laughing kids and parents around me. I have learnt to overcome one of my weaknesses: to admit defeat on areas I am not familiar with without even trying really hard to learn.
Two months ago I would probably be blaming my parents for not bringing me to those swimming lessons when I was seven or eight years old, but it’s a totally different story today. I am grateful that they did not do so, so that more than 10 years later, their son actually realises something out of it and learns beyond those swimming strokes.
It’s Been… So Long
For the lack of a better title, I guess I am just going to settle with the above title. Actually, I am just really lazy to think of other title and it just happened that I have not been posting since like what, early November? It’s already 26th of December! Goodness sake, Christmas is over, and that just means that A NEW YEAR is coming!
I am actually really excited for the arrival of 2010! It is going to be a brand new start, school is going to start and that’s when I am stepping my very first step of a really different life.
Whilst awaiting for a new year, I am now working on new year’s resolution to remind myself of so many different aspects that I totally lack in. I don’t have any intention to post them up, though. It’ll probably work better as mental note than a post, at the same time a resolution is not really for people to see.
I will be posting quite a number of posts in the next few days. Those are the posts that I have actually finished writing on ‘Word’ but was just too lazy to click a few buttons away and post them up.
So, come back soon!
Strange Job Advertisement
Pizza Hut Logo
Just yesterday, I came across an advertisement banner outside the soon-to-be-opened fast food outlet on my island from the world’s pizza giant, Pizza Hut. It reads something like this after some loose translation (and a less than desired memory of mine):
Pizza Hut is coming to your town soon!
We are Hiring!
We are looking for young men and women that fulfil the following criteria:
- A Graduate of senior high school or technical school,
- Men to be at least 165cm in height and women to be at least 160cm in height.
Those criteria left me surprised as I drove past the banner hung on top of the still-renovating building. As you can see, there are only two criteria that they listed, which seems bizarre to me.
It is always common to list the most important qualities that an employer wishes to find in their employees on the advertisement. Since banner does not come cheap, there will be limited number of lines that can be put in a 2 to 3 metres long piece of fabric. Coupled with the need to ensure that the messages are visible, the words, thus, need to be bigger. Hence the advertised words and sentences will be, quintessentially, the main focus of putting up the advertisements.
What is more is that these two qualities seemed to be rather unreasonable.
By normal Indonesian standard, it is only compulsory for children to be educated for 9 years under the national education policy. Assuming that most children are decent in their academic and there were not any retention in the class, by the end of 9 years, they would graduate from junior high school or secondary school.
However, that was just THE DESIRED scenario. In actual fact, many children did not even finish junior high school education, many stopped at just finishing primary school. Of course, in some of the more backward places, 6 years of learning in primary school may be too luxurious to afford. In these places, the children have to unfortunately terminate their learning halfway and looked for earning opportunity to supplement the family income.
Thus, my point is, there are not many who finished senior high school to begin with. Those, whom actually did so, would not want to work in a fast food outlet and would want to pursue higher education in tertiary institutions. To clearly point out, they are just too scarce to begin with.
It is not wise to set such a criterion. What about changing it to age limit? Maybe 17 years old and above? Since being 17 years old is considered to be matured in Indonesia, anyway.
As for the height criterion, it is, frankly, idiotic to require minimum height to do work. The performance of an employee does not depend on their height. Not if Pizza Hut is able to establish and scientifically prove that the height of a person is proportional to the work done of that same person.
Furthermore, being Asians, the built of most Indonesians are considered petite if compared to foreign counterparts. There are not many girls who stand at 160cm, to be honest. If there are, wouldn’t they sign up and get trained to air stewardess? As for men, 165cm seems to be rather reasonable. I would flip out if they dare to put 170 or 175, not because I am applying for the job, but because it is just plain stupid to do so.
In my opinion, it is not just irrational but discriminative to put those two criteria for prospective job-seekers. I wonder what is going on their mind.
Too busy making pizza? I doubt so, seriously.
