Many wonderful things happened this summer. One of them was that I finally met teh Mer aka lady day, whose blog I am very familiar with since I was in Indonesia, in Tempe, Arizona. We first met at a friend’s farewell party and then two days later we went to the Desert Botanical Garden, Papago Park and we had dinner together.
Kopdar? Well, you may say so.
I really admire her. One, for her intelligence for sure, second, for her achievement and third, for her talent - she’s also good at making sketches, singing, and playing musical instrument. Now, that I’ve known her in person, I can also say her personality - she is very nice, friendly, modest and so cool
Isn’t it great to finally met someone you admire so much? When I met her for the first time however, strangely, I did not feel awkward at all. I feel like she’s been friend with me for so long. We have many things in common and ,turned out, she’s a good friend of a good friend of mine.
Merlyna Lim is a scholar studying ICT (Information and Communication Studies), particularly on the political shaping of the Internet in non-Western contexts. She currently holds an Assistant Professor position with a joint appointment at the School of Justice and Social Inquiry and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. She previously held a Networked Public Research Associate position at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She got her PhD, with distinction (cum laude), from University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands, with a dissertation entitled @rchipelago Online: The Internet and Political Activism in Indonesia.
She has been invited to give keynote speeches, public lectures, and various academic presentations in more than 50 occasions all over the world. Among the most recent ones was a keynote lecture at the Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in 2006 in Brisbane, Australia.
She is also an active blogger, with blogs in English, Indonesian, and Sundanese.
Rezy and Yunan was high school friends in SMU Taruna Nusantara. In 2001 they graduated from high school. Rezy, who won a physics Olympic medal, then go to MIT till today finishing his PhD while Yunan went to Electrical Engineering, UGM as my junior. After 8 years, these high school friends were finally met again! lovely moment
I found this cool tool that can generate a graph of your friends in Facebook. So, in this graph, a node represents a friend and an edge, which connects 2 nodes, means that there’s friendship between those 2 friends.
I notice that there are 25 stages in generating this graph. Gosh, there’s gotta be a complicated computation behind it. One that crossed in my mind is how to determine a node’s position so that together they build a pattern that is useful for classification.
So here’s my graph (click to enlarge it).
In general this is my friends classification (Unlike in Friendster, I am quite strict on approving someone as a friend in Facebook, those in my friend list are either I’ve met him/her in person or we have lots of friends in common).
Friends whom I met when I was in a Pre-academic program at English Language International, University of California Santa Cruz.
Friends related to Fulbright. This can either be Fulbright students at my badge or AMINEF staffs.
Friends whom I met at Massachusetts.
Friends from high school - SMA 3 Yogyakarta.
Friends from college - Electrical Engineering, UGM
Friends from Blogger community
There are of course some special cases.
A friend can belong to 2 groups. Like friends who are my high school friends and college friends, friends who are now studying in Boston and get a Fulbright scholarship at my badge, friends who are at the same pre-academic program at ELI and went to Enrichment seminar at San Antonio (There are many places where one can have his/her pre-academic program and enrichment seminar), or a very very special case like Herman and Tika who were my high school friends and my college friend and my blogger friends … well, you’ll know what “teman sekardus” means.
A friend who is a public figure, like Ulil Abshar Abdala, goes in the middle of many groups.
And there are those who are not part of large groups, which does not necessary means I’m not closely related to him/her, like my sister.
Anyway, I found this tool from mas Roby Muhammad’s facebook page. I met him last year Lebaran at mas ulil house. Gosh, he’s sooo smart. He used to study physics, something related to Black Hole if I’m not mistaken, and I suppose he’s done a great job cause a physicist friend of mine were so eager to meet him. But at some point of his life he left it and change his major. He’s now doing PhD in Sociology at Columbia University and one of his famous work was the ‘Six degrees of separation’. I remember he said that network science is applicable in many areas, and to some extend you can use it in politics, economy, education, etc. For example we can investigate the map of political view and how it relates to this network like the one he wrote about swing voters.
If only we can have a real data, and built a real network of people in the world- not just in FB, that will be such a valuable resource. But that’s the challenge who and how would we do that?
Hey, do you know that Google is currently hiring people like mas Roby, a PhD in Sociology?
Oh God
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things that I can
The wisdom to know the difference
Ohhhh and God
Give me the courage to love with an open heart
To love with an open heart
To love with an open heart
I wanna love with an open heart
Ohhhh with an open heart
Valentine is not the celebration of love. People love everyday.
To me, it enacts as a reminder.
It took me a while and a bunch of special people to understand, or remember, that I am loved.
India Arie’s song and these short paragraph are just a few things that reminds me of love.
Universal love. Love from God. Love from friends. Love from family. Love for a nation.
Renungan dan Perjuangan - Sutan Sahrir
“Berakhirlah sekarang keragu-raguan dan rasa susah yang kualami selama dua tahun terakhir ini, dan sekarang aku tidak mau dan tidak boleh memikirkannya lagi. Seolah-olah aku diingatkan kepada bangsaku, tatkala kuterima beslit tentang pembuangan itu; diingatkan pada segala sesuatu yang mengikat aku pada nasib dan penderitaan bangsa yang berjuta-juta ini.
Bukankah kesedihan pribadi kita akhirnya hanya sebagian kecil saja dari penderitaan yang besar, yang umum itu? Bukankah justru penderitaan itu merupakan ikatan kita yang semesra-mesranya dan sekuat-kuatnya? Justru sekarang –pada saat aku barangkali harus berpisah untuk selama-lamanya dengan yang paling kucintai dan yang paling indah bagiku di dunia ini– justru sekarang inilah aku merasa lebih terikat pada bangsaku, aku semakin mencintainya lebih daripada yang sudah-sudah.”
Today, one of my colleagues at The Department of Curriculum and Educational Technology was awarded title ‘Guru Besar’, the highest academic acknowledgment in Indonesia, in curriculum development. He’s still very young to be one. He was born at November, 1962 so he’s only about 45(+) years old. Yet he deserved it.
In his speech today, which titled “The Optimization of Teacher’s Innovative Activity in Curriculum Implementation at School”, he mention eleven recommendations for teachers innovative activity:
Our university president teased him by saying that when he was born his parents already knew that he was going to be a ‘Guru Besar’ in future that they named him after it
So from now on then, he is Prof. Dr. Anik Ghufron.
