SMAN 3 Bandung's Event: Paman Gober

Paman Gober is an annual event held by SMAN 3 Bandung as the closing of its Sports Olympic event, Dewa Athena. The name itself stands for Penanaman dan dan Gowes Bersama, if translated, Planting and Cycling Together, quite much explaining the event's spirit and what people do on the events. What's great is, it is not only the students of SMAN 3 who join Paman Gober, but also the teachers and school's staffs.

This year, the event was held on Saturday morning, 9 May 2015. I was really excited with the event, as I'd just finished my olympiad preparation... which means not going to school for some time so that I missed my friends a lot. By joining the event, I was able to meet my friends, making me happy just before another preparation made me away from school again :)

The unfortunate thing is, just as the cycling event started, I got problem with my bicycle so that I got separated with my class-__- that was okay, though, as there were some of my friends from another class who got separated too that we cycled way back to school together. Yeap, the cycling route was from our school's sports field, Lapangan Bali, to Tegalega, to then go back to our start point after going to the planting site. We didn't go to Tegalega though, as the road was closed.

I didn't join the planting part of the event as my cycling group was faar from the first groups; which represented the others. Instead, my group directly cycled back to Lapangan Bali. After that, I went to school to meet my olympiad teacher; we spent like one hour chatting, so I didn't know what happened after the cycling event. I went back to the field at noon to watch my class' finals of tarik tambang and dodgeball. We won both of them!

Some days after that, we knew that our class is the second champion of Dewa Athena, by winning three branches; beside tarik tambang and dodgeball, we also won table tennis, represented by Riansyah Widisaputra. Our class, Akselerasi 1 and Akselerasi 2, also won the best supporters title. The commitee wrote that we were the class which often went to the event to give our class' team support. So proud of you, guys!

Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth's Song: See You Again

Okay, guys, so today I'd like to write about one of my favourite songs, it's titled as See You Again. Being sung by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, the song is a soundtrack of a 2015 action movie, Furious 7. The song, like the movie, is said to be a tribute for Paul Walker. He played the Furious series' main role, Brian O'Connor, until a car accident which caused his death in late 2013. Here I cite from Wikipedia about the song's writing background.

"Charlie Puth was approached by his publishing company, Artist Publishing Group, to come up with a melody that could pay tribute to the late Paul Walker in Furious 7 during his short stay in Los Angeles. Walking into the studio to see DJ Frank E for the first time—a session the president of Artist Publishing Group, Ben Maddahi, set up—Puth didn’t know what to expect."It just seemed to occur from out of nowhere. And basically 10 minutes later Justin and I wrote it, we sent it off, and I thought we'd never hear about it again." After receiving overwhelming positive reception from the filmmakers, Universal Pictures and the soundtrack label Atlantic Records, the unfinished song which was titled "See You Again" was further commissioned by Puth and Wiz Khalifa to include verses about family around Puth's vocals and piano. The song then went through an extensive note-giving and production process.

In writing the song, Puth said he was thinking of a friend who also died abruptly. Although reluctant to reveal too many details, he said that the tragedy also involved a car accident and that he felt his late friend's presence in the studio that day as he held the belief they could one day communicate again. Puth, who was skeptical about whether Atlantic Records would ask him to sing on the track, thought that they chose his voice because he wrote the song for a friend of his, so he brings a more genuine feel to its words. In the film, the song is played at the end of the film, during which Furious 7 characters, Brian O'Conner and Dominic Toretto drive their cars on a mountain road and eventually part ways when they reach a fork, giving Brian a poignant retirement send-off in which he'd be living with his wife and raising a family."

The song directly becomes a trend after its release. It tops many charts all over the world, including Billboard Hot 100 and iTunes all-genre single sales chart, with 168,000 digital copies sold the issue dated April 18, 2015 claiming the "Digital Gainer" award.

The reason of why I love this song is perhaps the theme, other than the fact that it has a really catchy melody. It describes friendship in such a lovely way. Quoting a rap part of the lyrics:

"First you both go out your way

And the vibe is feeling strong and what's

Small turn to a friendship a friendship

Turn into a bond and that bond will never

Be broke and the love will never get lost

And when brotherhood come first then the line 

Will never be crossed established it on our own

When that line had to be drawn and that line is what

We reach so remember me when I'm gone"

I include the song's music video here. The video contains some clips from the movies, making it be like a series of flashback of the friendship between Paul Walker as Brian O'Connor and his team, especially Dominic Toretto (portrayed by Vin Diesel).

Natural Phenomenon: The Beautiful Aurora

source: icestories.exploratorium.edu

According to Wikipedia, an aurora is a natural light display in the sky, predominantly seen in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions. The name Aurora derives from the Latin word aurora, meaning "sunrise". It is also Roman goddess of dawn.

Auroras are caused by charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, entering the atmosphere from above causing ionisation and excitation of atmospheric constituents, and consequent optical emissions. Incident protons can also produce emissions as hydrogen atoms after gaining an electron from the atmosphere.

source: apod.nasa.gov

Most auroras occur in a band known as the auroral zone, which is typically 3° to 6° wide in latitude and between 10° and 20° from the geomagnetic poles at all local times (or longitudes), most clearly seen at night against a dark sky. There are two types of auroras: aurora borealis and aurora australis. The division is based on their existance place. Aurora borealis can be seen at northern latitudes, so it is also called as the Northern Lights. The opposite, the Southern Lights, is the other name for aurora australis.

I always love seeing the aurora. No, I don't see it by myself as I don't live near the poles, but what I can see from the photos is enough to introduce me its beauty. I hope someday I'll be able to see it by my own eyes, though, aamiin.

source: id.wikipedia.org

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A Different Start (6-end): Really, Goodbye?

The holiday has over. Oh, no, it's still holiday, but tomorrow I'll be going to school not for training again, but for studying regularly.

The holiday's good, really. I got sooo many new experiences. Oh, I haven't told you this: I spend my last week of holiday by attending olympiad training, having a meeting and doing homework. Seems boring, doesn't it? Trust me, it was not boring at all. I'm so glad that I was given those opportunities as I could explore myself even more from it.

From the preparation, other than the lesson, I got many new friends. They are really fun! The same thing goes for the meeting. Homeworks? Well, the teamwork ones are the one I love the most. Even though they're hard and sometimes complicated to do, I learnt a lot from it. I was also able to meet my friends often because of it... oh, really, I miss my friends so much.

Goodbye, holiday. For me, as an acceleration student, it'll be counting days for another final exam. I hope I and my friends will all be ready to it, so that we can do well there and satisfy ourselves. Bismillaah!

Thank you, anyway, for reading my blog posts. See you in my next ones!

P. S.: The picture above was the view of the sky on my house after a quite heavy rain. At first, I couldn't believe what I saw. There were two rainbows! But like Kartini wrote to her friend, after the dark, light is born, right?

P. P. S.: I'll insert photos to other posts soon!

end of the series

A Different Start (5): Come On, Sing!

My father, other than being an ITB lecturer, works as a businessman. A company he currently runs is Commtech. He told me that the company holds a lot of trainings. I came to one of them, its opening. I was asked by my father to be a cameraman (mmm, is there a word like "camerawoman"?).

The company held a gathering on 5th until 6th of January, but as my sisters and mom have to go back to their school and hospital already, we only joined the gathering in the night of the 5th.

The company rented a villa in Lembang, Bandung. It is near Kampung Gajah, the other company members (and families) did go there in the morning. The villa was nice... especially because the view was very beautiful and the sky was really clear that I could see a full moon brightened the night.

We had a dinner. The food was really good; most of them grilled. In the middle of it, we had a karaoke competition. My family had to try first... my father then asked my sister Farah and my mom (and me, actually, but I was just too shy :)) to pick a song and sing. But then my mom's microphone wasn't able to be turned on, so Farah sang alone. It was great, the others were impressed. The karaoke program gave her the score 85.

The others then got their chance to sing. My father then asked Farah to sing again, but in the middle, Farah got confused as she remembered the song so little. It was then when people started to convinced my father, "Come on, Mr. Ian, sing!". At first he didn't want to sing, saying "I can't!" to my mother. But not long after it... a voice came out from the speaker. He sang! We laughed a lot, and we had fun. Surprisingly, his score is 84. He laughed so much, as he, with his voice's quality, was only beaten by one by his child. "Wah, the program must be broken!"

At last, Farah won the third place. The others then went to sleep. We slept after trying to play billiard (my father taught us, but I just couldn't do it, hehe).

On the 6th in the morning, we went back to our home. It was still dawn, about 5 or 5.30, but my family had to prepare to go to school/work. I myself had to go too, there was a Biology olympiad preparation in my school.

end of part five

A Different Start (3): Another Books (and stores)!

I am getting addicted with Brady's Chemistry, but at Pasar Senen I only bought the first volume out of two... so I and my father had another hunt, this time in Palasari, Bandung. This time, my sisters accompanied us.

Before we went to Palasari, we went to ITB (I think I've written that my father is an ITB lecturer in my biography). We'd just got ready to go when it started to rain, so we waited by visiting ITB's very own library.

The library is reaaaallyyyy big and full of books. I love it so much! It has four floors, if I'm not mistaken, but we didn't go to the 4th floor because the rain had over. We really enjoy being there, my father took me to see the TPB books. I don't know what TPB stands for, but at the first semester, every ITB student has to join it. The materials are similar to the ones studied in high school, but they are slightly deepened. The books used are so many; each of lesson has three of four reference books. For example, in Physics, ITB uses Giancoli, Halliday... and another one, but unfortunately I forgot who's the writer :) most of the books are the translated ones, but some are the originals, the English version. I like the original ones so much; the language used is easier to be understood, each book isn't divided into some parts and the pages are made from the same kind of paper used in magazines. When I read it, I felt like I was reading something fun.

The books in the library vary in ages. I and my youngest sister Kiki competed to hunt for the oldest book in the library. My father got worried because of it, hahaha. One time, we were inspecting an old book when a really big sneeze was heard. I and Kiki was really shocked that my other sister, Farah, laughed so much. She said, "So both of you thought that was book ghost's sneeze?" and the three of us laughed a lot, without caring that we were in library (the laugh wasn't too noisy, of course).

It was fun, really. We then went to Palasari after praying first in LAPI ITB, about two minutes from the campus.

Palasari is waaay more organized than Pasar Senen, I and my sisters felt really comfortable in there. We bought some comics. After visiting ITB's library, I realized that I wanted the Brady's English version more so we didn't search for the second volume, instead, we searched for the English one. The book is expensive, though, so we didn't buy it.

My holiday is really full of books, isn't it? :))