Ni hao from Taiwan!!

Hiii....
Finally got an internet access, and guess where I'm writing this: that's right, at the dorm's lobby where they provide these two free internet access. Haha, I'm so overwhelmed with the fact that I could finally get an internet access after two days staying in Taiwan.

This is actually already the third day (I'm blogging like at...1 o'clock in the morning) of my whole study tour schedule for three weeks.

I got to meet new friends! It's a bit unexpected at first since I discovered that I was the only high-school-fresh-grad and most of my friends were on to their senior year. My cousin's one of the participants so, it's even more exciting :)

Gotta go now. Can't wait to blog more!

Movies!!

Long holiday means more time to watch movies! So yes, I got to watch quite loads of movie this holiday.

One of the movies that impressed me so much is Death Bell. I know it's type of horror/thriller movie, the one that most of people will avoid to watch. At first I was interested to watch it due to Kim Bum's starring in it. Have I mentioned that lately I got star struck with him after watching Star Date on KBS? He's such a gentleman and who doesn't love that sweet smile on his delicate face?

Anyway, I still can't decide whether Death Bell is a horror or a thriller. Since it kind of shows ghosts in the movie, but turns out the ghosts aren't actually involved in the plot. So I guess it's safe to say half horror half thriller.

The story tells about a school which has an elite class, containing all the smartest students in the school. When a sister school plans for a visit on holiday, the school holds an extra class only for these smart students. But before they know it, one of the students goes missing and turns out she's murdered sadistically, by being drowned inside a fish tank.

Her murdering process is shown through the classroom's TV. This female protagonist played by Nam Gyu-Ri and her partner played by Kim Bum, decided to solve the mystery, as the students and their teachers are trapped at school. Soon they discover that the murder goes on in order of the ranks of the students. Nam Gyu-Ri's character is ranked fifth, meaning she must stop this whole crazy killings in the school before her turn comes.

I'm not so sure if I like the ending. It didn't turn out as expected. But anyway, I like the whole plot and the acting of the actors. Pretty entertaining. There isn't much blood, so for those who can't stand the sight of blood, you can actually watch this movie.

One more movie!!!!!

I'm sure most of you have watched or at least heard about Ninja Assassin. Yes, that Hollywood movie starring the famous Korean entertainer Rain. I was interested to watch it not because of Rain in it though (not the way I was interested to watch Death Bell since there's Kim Bum in it). I heard that one of MBLAQ's members, Lee Joon, played the younger version of Rain's character. I first spotted him on Star Golden Bell variety show on KBS, and soon after hearing he played a role in Ninja Assassin, I was interested to watch the movie.

The story's a bit more complicated than Death Bell. It's not a horror movie, but the blood's tad a bit too much. In short, the movie tells about Raizo, who's raised in a Ninja clan called Ozunu. He's originally trained to be a killer and soon becomes one of the best ninjas in the group. But when one day he discovers his love interest being killed by the head of the clan, Raizo starts to doubt the existence of the clan and intends to run away.

Lee Joon is freaking awesome in the movie! Really, I'm not being biased. I love how his English is pronounced very well despite the fact that it's not his first language. His acting is no doubt, as well as Rain's.

Aw shoot

My Kick-ass DVD jammed when it was midway of the movie and it happened on 11.30 pm. Worse, it was on my (probably) favorite scene, when the character Hit Girl was introduced. Nice. I tried to fast forward it but it seemed it jammed all the way to the end of the movie. Um, that's better.

Tonight's not really my weekend. Let me tell you why.
Well, first, I woke up very late in the morning, which was on 9.30 am. Actually I had woken up earlier but I felt friggin' tired since I got home last night at 12.30 am and crashed on bed at 1.30 am. I hated it when I already woke up in the morning, still felt tired, and got asleep again for like one hour.

Then I felt kind of exhausted in the afternoon even I didn't have any energies to do the packing for my study tour to Taiwan coming up on Monday. THIS Monday. Oh, and remember when I told you I had a cold? Seemed like it got worse this afternoon. Perhaps that's why I felt very weak while I was doing the packing. Thankfully, it didn't go on not until I took some time to take a nap.

The ballet jazz dance session didn't go well either. I was late. I didn't get to be on the front row and we all got to dance for one and a half hour nonstop. I didn't know what popped in the mind of our dance instructor that she had to get us dancing that long without a less-than-a-minute break just for a sip of water. Even sillier, just five minutes before the session was over, she told us to take a break for a moment just to drink. Five freaking minutes before the session was over.

I felt like fainting at that moment.

Then my cousin called me, saying that she wanted me to come over to her house to help her packing (she joins the same study tour as I do) and planned that we'd watch New Moon after that. But then somehow my cousin cancelled the New Moon watching plan since she had a dinner somewhere. However, I did come over to her house for a while, but disappointed that I didn't get to spend my weekend night with them.

My mom was off to attend a gathering with her friends. Well, I thought I'd spend the rest of my weekend night going to a cafe or to a hotel's coffee shop to watch the World Cup match together, you know, with the rest of football mania and the place where I'd probably be the only girl watching this whole rough sport called football, since I thought this would be my last night in Indonesia during World Cup season. On Monday, I'll be taking off to Taiwan and I'll spend the rest of World Cup days there.

Hopefully my friends would at least be fans of football and when it's time to watch World Cup match, we'd watch it together.

But then my dad got sick. My flu turned out to be contagious and has apparently affected him. Frankly I can't blame him for not accompanying me spend the rest of the weekend night. He needs some rest.

Then I went browsing the internet, thanks to the neighbor as I had mentioned him or her earlier in my previous post. He or she is the one who has at least made my weekend night (oh wait, it's already Sunday). Afterwards I decided to watch Kick-ass. But then, yes, it's all coming back to the beginning of the post.

I thought that I'd probably change to another movie. August Rush. But turns out I wasn't in the mood to watch a drama movie, and the fact that it was already late at night to start another movie made me practically press 'Stop' and got myself plopped in front of the computer, returned to blogging as an escape for tonight.

What a weekend huh? Hope today's gonna be great. I know that my older cousin also canceled the plan of watching Wonder Girls with me, but I can understand that she did that for a good reason. But we never know, there could be a change in the plan.

Anyway, I hope the best for your weekend as well. :)

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P.S: My phone network hasn't worked up until this moment. I tried to unplug the battery and put it back in, then turn it on but still none results. So right now I couldn't receive any messages, and could only tweet from web.

The toys are back

Stunned much to see another post posted not long before the previous one?

I'm really bored in here. B-O-R-E-D. Practically stuck in my room, but I still thank the neighbor for turning on the wifi so I can at least connect to the internet. But when nothing's updated, what to look for on the internet?

My mom's out with her friends while my dad's not feeling right at the moment. Well, the current World Cup match isn't exciting either, so I decided to post a movie that I just watched yesterday with my friends.

Yup, Toy Story 3 has been the most anticipated movie for nearly everyone, especially those who love this series (I mean who doesn't love this awesome saga of Woody and Buzz?). Don't worry, won't spill the spoilers here.

Toy Story 3 has been so far the most entertaining movie I've watched this year, and probably the best Toy Story installment ever. I hope there will be a sequel to this though. The ending is a bit tearful to me. But don't worry. You know Disney won't let its movies to end sadly. So it's still a happy ending. I nearly cried at the end of it.
You see, I'm not that easy to be emotional, but I'm sure for those who are really close to their toys and dolls (like me, yes), this movie has a deep meaning.

Still, it's hilarious. So despite the tearful happy ending, I can still laugh at the end of the movie due to the additional footages shown in credits. LOL.

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P.S: Oh my, is it just me or does Big Baby really resemble one of my dolls? O_O The same blue eyes. Haha

Never mind about what I said, I'm just being random tonight. Boredom attacks!
I need a distraction

It's a night to remember!

Hey y'all! Happy Saturday! Guess what I'm doing while I'm posting this. Yes, I'm watching World Cup match right now. Netherlands vs Japan! Talking about colonizers.

Anyway, my school's prom was yesterday and it was superb! I love the whole sophisticated vibe and the formal-ish atmosphere filling the venue, with my friends donning elegant long gowns and some (including me) chose to wear mini dress instead.

The thing is, I found the dress right on the Dday, in the afternoon to be exact. I got to watch Toy Story 3 with some of my friends (who sadly didn't join the prom) and after buying the tickets, I decided to spend some time before the movie getting my own prom dress.

One thing I really regret: So sad I didn't get to design my own prom dress the way I did for my junior high's prom.

Trust me, it's really hard to find a fitting yet a dress to my liking. Whenever I found one to my liking, the size wasn't really cooperative to my body size. Too big or too small. Ugh. Think I really need a custom made one.

However I finally got one! I thank my friend for choosing that and the fact that I really love it! It was silver, and good thing no one was wearing silver at the prom.

The price was quite reasonable too, and better, it got a discount! Love love <3

With Mila, who won the best dress for the prom :)

Sorry about the low quality of the images.
I just happened to forget bringing my camera in such an important event. Despite the low quality of images, the magic of photoshop would surely make them look better. Well, not in quality. They still looked blurred and all messed up. But at least they looked brighter (the original pictures looked darker).

Oh just found these higher quality pictures on Facebook :)

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Tomorrow Wonder Girls would hold a showcase concert at Balai Kartini. The tickets weren't for sale, however if we wanted to obtain them, we needed to purchase this particular Sony Ericsson phone. Free tickets were also given away or offered to random people. My cousin was lucky enough to be offered two tickets to attend the showcase. She asked me to come along.

To be honest I love Wonder Girls but too bad I only recognized two of their many songs. And just today, she told me she couldn't possibly attend tomorrow's showcase due to a sudden plan. Ouch.
Well, no need to be sad. I only know two songs of Wonder Girls #tryingtocheermyselfup

Ouch, Netherlands-Japan: 1-0...
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ONE MORE THING!!
Blogger just had this new feature on designing blogs. I may try myself experiencing on it. Looks pretty fun :)

The Visa Application Story

From left to right:
my paper, Live-in book, and year-book! Wow, the year book looks surprisingly so exquisite :)

Yesterday I went to US Embassy to apply for student visa. Yes, I'm taking off on early August. Aww...

I've applied for visa last year though, but it was a tourist visa, and I did that with my mother. So I practically stuck up with her while watching her handling all the documents all by herself, but this year, since I was about to apply for a student visa, I had to do it all by myself. Nervous? Absolutely.

Anyway, the good thing about applying for visa yesterday was, I got to meet new friends who had the same purpose of going to the embassy, which was applying for student visa. So I no longer felt as nervous as I was before.
There were Febri, who had almost completed her studies in Beijing, Arman, and Pavita, who turned out she went to the same school as my cousin.

It's a small world after all, isn't it?

Even Arman seemed to have recognized all of my classmates and most of the students graduated from my middle school and my high school. That was VERY surprising.

Well, we happened to be in the same group of interview. So it was a good thing. We chatted in the waiting room, talking about our friends that we happened to recognize before getting summoned to the interview box. When it finally came to my turn, I began to feel all nervous and tense. I've heard many stories of those whose visa got rejected. Even in my last year's interview, the interviewer asked so many questions to my mom and I. Well, investigate was the right word for that.

Anyway for this interview, turned out that the interviewer was really nice! When he asked what my parents did, I replied that my mom worked for this particular company that had a connection with the USA. He was like. "Oh really, what's her name?" I recited my mom's name but then he simply went. "Oh I don't know her." all of the applicants lining up behind me and myself just burst into laughter.

Even the interviewer questioned Arman, whose turn was before mine, about going to Wisconsin. The interviewer commented that it was a very cold place, but Arman simply said that he could cope with it. But then there was a pause when the interviewer curiously stared at Arman, and asked again - confirming.
"Are you sure you're going to Wisconsin?" And the bunch of other applicants watching the conversation went laughing.

It was really funny! I didn't know an interview that I'd thought would be really nerve-wracking would be so relaxing and went all smoothly.

So thank goodness I got the visa and that the interview only lasted for less than 2 minutes. :)
Returning from visa applying, I took a rest for a while before going to PIM 2 to have a jam session with my fellow violinists friends :D. We were actually practicing for the upcoming concert on August.

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By the way, I'm having a sorethroat right now, and just this morning, I woke up with sniffling sound coming from my nose.

Oh no, I catch a cold TT____TT *sneezes*

GRADUATION DAY

Saturday was the most memorable day of my life, ever.
The students of Tarakanita 1 High School entered Hotel Sultan still as fresh graduates, and exited as officially alumnis of the school. I've never been so ecstatic in my life. June 12, 2010 was the most anticipated and the most un-anticipated day at the same time. We all had waited for the moment, but didn't expect it to come so soon.

I wouldn't say much here. In short the event was fantastic! Too bad the pictures taken by my camera didn't produce high quality images (anymore). I'd really like to post some pictures uploaded by my friends, but they belonged to them so...

Beware of the picture spam below :)

Tell me, you've seen students graduating by wearing those typical graduation caps or maybe those who also wear batik outfit, haven't you? But have you actually ever seen graduated students wearing simply school uniforms BUT with pink roses crowns on their heads??

Kudos to the committees for the unique concept!

Endah and Rhesa, the rising (indie) singers also made a surprise performance. I'd heard their song in the radio before but seeing them performing life was just epic :D

It was simply a night of surprises. Lots of surprises. Thank God I got the first rank in my department - Language Science. My heart stopped beating the moment my name came out in the announcement of ranks. But I sure would like to thank all of you girls whole heartedly, for being great academic partners and true friends at the same time. You girls rock!! Also for the teachers for their dedications throughout the three years.

Anyway what is more surprising for me is that, the trophy that I got is actually the first individual trophy for me ever. I've got actually like two trophies but I got them from winning group contests. So, it's cool to finally have my own trophy, eventually.

Other surprises came from both teachers and students.

Teachers made a surprising fashion show, making an entrance to the catwalk in pairs, dressing in traditional outfits. Another surprise came from my friends who managed to show a movie which criticized the school's system and everything that the school needs to fix.
Even there were these dancing sessions for teachers and students. So the dancer tutor called out teachers and students to come to the dance floor following his choreography. LOL

It was a really magnificent event! It wasn't as formal as I expected it to be. Turned out it became a party after the dinner break! The lights were turned on, balloons were released, tears and cries were all mixed, blended into one emotional atmosphere at the end of the party.

Congratulations girls!
We did it! It's been a fabulous night! What a night to end these sweet three years. Looking forward to see you in another time in the future :)

CITY TOUR part 2

Part 2! Wow so fast. LOL.
Day 2 of city tour began a bit late in the morning. Five of my friends hadn't arrived even after the other buses left. So basically my friend, the homeroom teacher, and I had to call them twice to make sure they'd come to school sooner.

Anyway after they had arrived, we quickly took off. At first, we were all surprised to know about the cancellation of our tour appointment in SCTV. So we gotta think of a place of interest to replace it.

Our homeroom teacher came up with the idea to go to this certain museum he happened to have looked up from the internet. It was called Museum Bank Indonesia. So if you read my previous post about my visit there with my friends, yes, I'd been there before, exactly on this second day of city tour.
Our homeroom teacher practically commented that it was a great museum. We hoped the museum would be kind of promising, at least unlike other boring ones. LOL

The museum was located at Kota Tua.
Boy, when we entered it, a blast of cool air struck from the inside!! (feeling dejavu reading this sentence?).
We didn't have to pay for the admission and we had to skip the theatre room, then we quickly entered the maze. Pretty much the same as my description in the previous post.

Too bad we didn't take pictures there.

The next destination was Ancol! It was about 11 o'clock the moment we exited the museum. We got the news that other classes were still en route to another destination before Ancol. We planned to meet up at Dufan Theme Park.
But since Kota Tua was pretty near from Ancol, we decided that we'd go there first, maybe had lunch there while waiting for the other girls to arrive.

Arriving at Ancol, we didn't go straight to Dufan but we went to Pantai Carnival first, where we stopped by A&W to munch some snacks while our homeroom teacher wandered off alone. LOL.

You wouldn't imagine that seven girls that you saw having lunch in a quiet A&W resto would be a class group on outing. After we had our appetizer time, we moved on to a Padang restaurant to have lunch for real, I mean involving rice and everything as main courses.
Not long after that, we soon received the news from text message that other classes had entered the complex of Ancol. We soon finished our lunch and prepared to meet them at Dufan entrance.

You should've seen us when we met each other! Other students seemed to have changed their uniforms to more casual outfits (hello, we're going to a theme park). We practically hugged each other as if we hadn't met for years. LOL.
Well, I shouldn't have said that, because when I got to meet my friends, I hugged them too. How silly of me saying that.

We went straight to the ticket booth, purchased the tickets, and entered the fun zone right away. But as for me and my six friends, we gotta change our uniforms first.

...LET the fun BEGAN!!!!

We rode sooo many rides, but some extreme rides were only ridden by one friend of mine who had the guts of an iron (forgive my lame metaphor). The first ride was an indoor ride similar to Disneyland's It's a Small World.
Well, I gotta say some rides were highly inspired by existing rides in Universal Studios or Disneyland.

After that, basically we got to ride other rides, stuff like Niagara gara (a log flume ride). Again of four of my friends, only one dared to ride on this. So basically we waited in front of the ride, waiting for her boat to fall and descended so that we could capture her on video.

Then we rode on Pontang Panting, where we sat on a seat resembling a playground's swing, then we would be spun around. Not recommended for those who are spinning-sensitives. Some other rides involved Rumah Miring (tilted house) where we basically went into narrow hallways where when it got deeper, the floor got tilted sideways. Then we got to visit Rumah Jahil, a maze of mirrors that got us all trapped. We happened to take pictures in it LOL.

Other rides involved Perang Bintang, which struck me as the best ride in Dufan, because I was into dark rides where we rode on a moving platform and shot some aliens. Too bad my so-called gun that we had to use to shoot the aliens didn't work.

Then we moved to a 4D ride called Extreme Log (the show was changeable. I last heard that it was now changed into Journey to the Center of the Earth). Due to the long queue, we happened to take pictures in the line.

The short plotless movie actually followed the story of a log being transferred from one place to another. The seats frantically moved and shook following the what the log experienced. LOL.

Also, a friend of mine that I mentioned to have the guts of an iron got on Kicir Kicir ride and Tornado. Take a look at these. These pictures are pictures of my friend (in the picture above, she's the one in the orange shirt with a 'rock on' sign) being lifted and spun in the air.

Unfortunately time flew so fast when we enjoyed ourselves. The sky darkened and the last ride we rode was Kora Kora.

So basically that concluded our day and city tour. We got home and got stuck in the middle of a mad traffic jam. We did arrive at school at 8 PM. Wow.

<< Part 1

CITY TOUR part 1

Back again to the fourth post of the month! Wow, my blogging mood somehow rises extremely. LOL.

This is not something new. I just felt the need to jot the story down. So on October 27 and 28 last year, all twelfth graders had this outing event called City Tour. We went by this ELF van, since my class (language department) only consisted of seven students plus one homeroom teacher.
We went to quite many places, basically moving from one place to another. Taking off from school after the other buses left in the morning, we got to our very first destination, which was a small tent food stall recommended by our homeroom teacher located just near SMA 70. There, we took a sip of cold bottled teas for our energy booster ^^.

Since the stall was located right in front of an international preschool, we happened to spot some children dropping off of their cars and being greeted by their teachers at the gate in English. So cute.

Then we moved on to a small road at Panglima Polim, which Provoke Magazine should be located.

Too bad the office hadn't opened just yet, and it took like an hour to wait for it to open (we arrived there at 8 while the office hour started at 9).
Anyway you can see from the pictures below that we were discussing which place to go after that.

Um after a while, we decided to drop by at Textile Museum at Tanah Abang. The museum was typical as what other museums in Indonesia looked like, dusty and worn out. But since the admission was again...FREE, and the guard said that it was holding some sort of a fashion exhibition, we couldn't hesitate to enter it.

Look at the gowns. They weren't normal gowns I presumed. They looked just extraordinaire!

From the main building of the museum where we practically saw textiles displayed on the wall and some unusual yet beautiful looking gowns, we went to another building. It was smaller, like a traditional Betawi house. Apparently it was the spot where visitors could make their own batik. We quickly applied to make ours.

It wasn't so bad, was it? It took approximately an hour to get the artwork done, excluding waiting for the wet batik work to dry up. We were given a color selection for our batik. I chose brown for mine since it was more into batik classic color. My friends were more into exotic more bright looking ones.

Oh and we happened to stumble upon a foreigner and her daughter. My friends asked me to ask this lady with her daughter a few questions. But I ended up asking about where she came from, and she said she was from Australia :D

Anyway, we moved on. After we got our batik works done, it was mid day already, and at that moment we were thinking the best spot for us to have lunch. Other classes might have reserved a restaurant considering their amount of students. But we ended up to go to ITC Kuningan and had lunch in its food court.

I found this really exciting. I mean, where else can you find a class on its outing having lunch in a mall's food court? LOL

Even what's more unique though, we happened to eat the same cuisine, which was Manado cuisine. Not bad though.

After that, we went to Ruang Rupa at Tebet. It was a gallery which displayed contemporary and urban artworks. So you wouldn't see any abstract or paintings of snowcapped mountains or rolling hills, something like that, but things like below.

Since we already had an appointment with the owner, he kindly took us on a tour around the small yet fascinating gallery. Then he took us to a small TV room where he played a DVD for us to watch, showing the projects the gallery had been involved in or had worked on.

Last but not least, we went to the most acknowledged newspaper editorial office, KOMPAS, located in Palmerah. It didn't take long from Tebet. Once we got there, we were also greeted by this nice lady who took us to the staff's meeting room, where we shared our thoughts and she and the office's head of editorial staff, explained a bit about the newspaper.

Knowing that we were from language department, the lady and the head of editorial staff gave us all books of short stories compilations that had been published in the paper!! You wouldn't imagine how ecstatic we were at that moment :D :D

Well, after that, we were given a quick tour around the wide office. We got to meet the photojournalists that just arrived from photo hunting that day, and we also got to meet the layout designer!!

So with us exiting the building and returning to school, it concluded our first day of City Tour. Tomorrow would be more relaxing since we were going to Dufan!!!

Pictures are credit to:
(c) Testa

Additional pictures belong to these websites:
Textile Museum: ngetengaja.blogspot.com
Ruang Rupa: deathrockstar.info

Part 2 >>