It’s funny, how I have to look to my past self to realize this. I probably have realized this a long, long time ago.

The world is not ideal. Never was, never will. In fact, it’s probably only going to get even worse. But sulking and hating ain’t gonna solve a thing. The world may lack one, but I will hold my ideals firmly. Not because it is the truth. But because it is the truth I seek, and I sought to create.

And I want to believe one more time in humanity, as Amuro Ray said once.

Call me pretentious, but I will continue on.

If you ask me, my life is slowly going to the wrong direction. Just about everything went haywire. I’m sure my academic performance is going to plummet even further. Now I see other people’s bad sides. Now I know how lazy and ignorant some of them can be, and now I know how some of them can and will backstab you in the back just for their own sake, never caring about you in the first place.

But regardless, I’m still smiling.

I am happy. I am thankful.  I don’t know how I could still smile after all this. Perhaps it’s just self pity. I don’t know, and probably never will, like everything else in the world.

My life, our life, is a mess, can’t agree with you better.  But I’m smiling. I’m trying to. And I can feel it: I am changing, for the better. Is it because I grow up?  Is it because I vowed to myself to? Again, I don’t know. But I’m happy.

I am happy, or at least trying to be, while looking for more happiness.

Sometimes, you ‘d stop and think ‘Man, my life is good.’ Or ‘Whoa, this life of mine is fantastic, just fantastic.’ Or even ‘Hot damn, my life is fucking awesome.’

But sometimes, you’d think ‘Shit. My life is really pathetic.’. That’s what I think about myself right now.

My life is a mess. I am completely useless when it comes to teamwork. Lies and unbelievable truths fill my days. I don’t know how my ‘friends’ think about me, but when I look back about what I did, I always get the impression that I am nothing more than a cocky, loud, obnoxious dick. Regardless of what they think, I am pretty much living in solitude. My academic performance is no longer something to boast about. By now, all that dream, all that ambition, is pretty much just a pile of bullshit.

What should I do? How can I become a better person with a better outlook of life? I am trying to change, but you know it’s a lot harder to accomplish something rather than just saying  ‘i will do something’.

Do you even exist?

Lonely nights such as this always made me sit down and think (Add deadlines and voila, instant blog article!).  Thinking about what I have done so far. Thinking about what I have achieved. Thinking about what I have failed to achieve. Thinking about what I want to achieve. Thinking about everything.

Just yesterday I got my motorcycle driving license.  For a lack of a better word, it was all a farce. I don’t have to do a single thing, for the cops happily take care of every things just because I have a connection. Am I happy with that? No. Fuck no. All those cops, smiling innocently doing corrupt things, smiling like he’s doing the right thing.  You’re the one supposed to hold the fucking law, damnit. You’re not supposed to bend it over just because one of your superiors ask you to ‘process’ some kid’s driving license because one of THEIR superiors said so. Laws should be impartial, not giving a shit about who have power or not. I don’t give a damn if that guy’s father/uncle/whatever is the police comissioner or he bribes you with a briefcase full of gold bars, that guy must go through all the goddamn tests. I’m going to say it again and again: You’re a cop, you’re not supposed to bow to power and give licenses to everyone with the power but maybe not the driving skills. Fuck. Call me and my sense of justice naive, but I don’t like it.

But then who is the one to blame? The cops? The system? The law itself? The existence of human beings? Like hell if I know, but I sure don’t like this license of mine. Not one bit. Why do I get one, you ask? Mainly because my parents asked me to do so, and if there’s one thing I would throw my pride away for, it’s gotta be for my family.

And the lonely night continues.

I am now thinking about my two and nearly a half years of college. What I have done. Both the good things and the failures.

If you ask me, it’s looking quite good. For one, I managed to stay on my target. I don’t know if I can keep this up with the declining trend each semester, but hopefully there’s still some fight in me to try my best and keep it up. Another thing to say is apparently despite of what I am expecting one and a half year ago, I am not alienated. At least, not as much as I expected.

On the other hand, though, it’s looking not that good. The grades are going downhill fast, and if this thing go on just like this, the target will be out of sight in a moment’s notice. And I am feeling a little alienated. Guess I am getting used to it after all those years in high school.

The funny thing is, the whole grades and alienating thing is probably connected. That, or I am making shit up to justify everything I’ve done.

Let’s go back to my second year in my junior high school days. Back then, about everyone on the class hates me for not giving answers. Me and my so called naive justice’s response is something along the line of ‘Why the hell should I care about your lack of study now that the exam is running? If you want to ask, you better be asking before or after, damnit.’ Lacking enough friends to do stupid things, I do the only thing possible: study. And boy, ain’t my grades high back then. The same thing happens on my first and third year on senior high school, and my first term on college, though that’s probably just me messing around.

Two weeks ago, I took some time away from my friends. And I actually feel rather great. I could do assignments a few days before the deadline, and prepare for a group assignment about a week before the actual deadline! Holy shit! Now that’s what you can call ‘fucking rare’ in my college years. The last week, though, not so much. I was enjoying online games, both via the Internet and LAN, together with my friends, laughing together, generally just, you know, having fun. All with the expense of assignments nearly ignored, and in general super poor performance in class.

So what will it be? With three deadlines coming in three days, what will you do? Shut yourself in, doing everything by yourself with a probably good result? Or try to do it together, knowing that you’ll definitely have fun in doing so, but maybe without the best result you can do? Can you try to pick both? Hell, are you sure the two is actually corelated?

I don’t know.

But one thing’s for sure: The night continues, and I’m still alone, typing.

It all started with an empty schedule thanks to OSK taken already the term before. Trying to fill the void, I picked a course, Functional Programming, with my two buddies. And then, I applied to be a lecturer assistant in discrete math.

It all seems to be a bright term with prosperity, good knowledge, and good grades. Or so I thought.

The first mistake comes from the choices about the classes and which teacher to pick. Having to adjust my schedule to the new course, FP, the only choices I got is which CompNet class to pick. I picked the least populated class, mainly because I know the lecturer of the other class. And let’s just say I don’t have a very happy experience with his teaching.

No one would ever thought the class I picked is taught by someone best described as a mean trickster.

And then there’s the applied probability class, taught by someone best described as a perverted cucumber, doing anything he wants in the class from flirting with girl and babbling about election. Anything but teaching.

And the other two class, for whatever reason, just don’t ‘click’ with me. I might be wrong and a bit rude to say this, but the way they teach feels unprofessional, like this is the first time they ever teach some group in a class. (I’m fully aware that at least one of them is teaching for the first time, to who I deeply apologize if it offends him/them.)

In the end, though, can you justify blaming on the teachers/lecturers for the bad experience (and grades) you get? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m only looking for a scapegoat. I don’t know.

And don’t get me started on stuffs like how I eventually drop FP, thus giving all those ‘mistakes’ on class choosing no meaning and value at all, or how a term with 16 credits actually makes me lazier which results in bad grades and probably the main reason of all this.

So why am i writing all this?

I don’t know.

One thing is for certain though. I need to go back on track and study seriously again. You hear that? STOP FUCKING AROUND, AND START STUDYING MORE SERIOUSLY. Of course, by “You”, I mean my own self in the future, most likely already forgot about all this.

It might be the pressure of midterm exams.

It might be the pressure of midterm exams with other complications like the stack of assignments.

It might be the pressure of midterm exams with other complications like the stack of assignments WHERE NO ONE IN MY GROUP ACTUALLY TRY TO CONTACT ME AND WORK ON IT.

It might be the pressure of midterm exams with other complications like the stack of assignments WHERE NO ONE IN MY GROUP ACTUALLY TRY TO CONTACT ME AND WORK ON IT AND AN ASSIGNMENT WHERE THE DEADLINE IS IN 6 HOURS AND IN TRUTH THERE ARE 20 NUMBERS AND THE GODDAMN LECTURER DON’T WANT TO COMPROMISE THE FACT THAT THERE ARE TWO OTHER ASSIGNMENTS AND AN EXAM WAITING THE VERY NEXT DAY.

I know, I am wrong for actually doing the very same thing that my groupmate do: ignore each other’s existence, even though the fact is i’m doing their part of the job all by myself and helps from other groups.

I know, I am wrong for questioning the lecturer’s decision, and it’s actually quite possible to work on the assignment, giving that the first two assignments has been given a week ago and shouldn’t be worked rashly like what i do.

But what can knowing things do? Knowing is only half of the battle, and the very fact that I don’t do anything shows that I’ve lost the battle.

Calm down. Reflect upon anything that has happened, and think about what will happen. No, think about what will you do to make things happen.

Remember that  you are a mere flesh with free will and feelings. You may be able to feel discomfort, fear, pain, and hate, but that very feelings allow you to see comfort, joy, and love.  It’s easy to color your life and others with smiles, but even easier to stain your life and others with tears.

Remember that you are an imperfect being. You will not, in any case, do anything perfectly. Yet, imperfection brings the joy of ‘improvement’ and the grief that is deterioration. You may not do anything perfectly, but you can do everything better then what you did yesterday. You can, however, do it worst than before.

In any case, just calm down. You may not control what will happen to you, but you can make the difference by deciding how will you react.

- A note from myself to myself, to help my stressful self calm down.

Of course, with a post comes a question: so what are we posting about? Honestly, I don’t know. As usual. I just impulsively open my blog and said to myself, “A HA! I’M GOING TO POST SOMETHING ON THIS BLOG!” open the ‘Add New Post” menu, and then spacing around for a minute thinking “So, uh… what are we going to talk about again?”. So there you go, you got your reasons.

Oh wait, I just found something to talk about.

Let’s talk about pressure. Or stress.

Pressure is an effect which occurs when a force is applied on a surface. The symbol of pressure is p (lower case). The upper case P is normally reserved for power.
Mathematically:

where:
p is the pressure,
F is the normal force,
A is the area.
Pressure is a scalar quantity, and has SI units of pascals; 1 Pa = 1 N/m2, and has EES units of psi; 1 psi = 1 lb/in2.
Pressure is transmitted to solid boundaries or across arbitrary sections of fluid normal to these boundaries…

Just kidding. There’s no way I’m going to spend my free time explaining about how are you supposed to divide a letter  ’F’ with ‘A’ and ends up with a ‘p’ for free.

I’m talking about psychological stress.  How do you define stress? Here, let me copypaste from wikipedia yet again.

Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal body to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.[1] It is “the autonomic response to environmental stimulus.”[citation needed]

It includes a state of alarm and adrenaline production, short-term resistance as a coping mechanism, and exhaustion. It refers to the inability of a human or animal body to respond. Common stress symptoms include irritability, muscular tension, inability to concentrate and a variety of physical reactions, such as headaches and accelerated heart rate.[2]

…

…

…Now I’m not sure if I’m actually in a condition of stress or not. I mean, I’m not really sure if what i’m feeling right now can be considered “the autonomic response to environmental stimulus.” whatever that thing supposed to mean.

But either way, I just realized that all this blog posts I wrote is posted when a deadline is around, or there’re something else that puts me in a condition of stress. Which is interesting. Who knows, when I grow up and ends up having a son I could link this to my son, saying “Take a good look, son. This is what I wrote when I was a lunatic back then! And I don’t change a bit until now!” or something like that. Who knows.

But yeah. I guess, between college (especially that one database II exam coming in 36 hours from now), stuff at home, and now working online under the alias That one Ultimate Knight Windom loving Anonymous on the super serious business of anime fansubbing world, my life is getting a little bit stressful.

On a related note, if you can speak Japanese quite fluently and willing to translate episodes of a children television show about an asskicking grasshopper cyborgs on a weekly basis, please click the link above. I know my chance is veeeery very slim for someone to read this, but hey, never hurts to try.

Happy? But of course. Kinda wished it would last a bit longer though.

But eniwei, liburan ini memberikan gw banyak waktu luang…well, ngga banyak-banyak amat, tapi lo tau lah gw gimana…. Sehingga gw lagi-lagi hadir di sini buat iseng ngetik ga jelas di blog kesayangan gw yang masih belum keurus designnya (suatu saat nanti…. *menatap ke arah horizon*).

Jadi, ijinkan gw (like i need permission to begin with) buat ngebahas tentang tugas-tugas yang dengan setia mengganggu, er, meramaikan liburan gw.

Tugas.

Yang namanya tugas itu menarik sekali buat dibahas. Mau nggak mau, suka nggak suka, seorang (maha)siswa pasti ngga akan bisa mengabaikan tugas begitu aja. Perilaku siswa terhadap tugas bervariasi dan menarik, terutama tugas-tugas yang sifatnya dibawa pulang (ada tugas jenis delivery ga yah :p).

Ada yang rajin mengerjakan di kesempatan pertama yang dia dapet (seterusnya kita sebut Type-1).
Ada yang ngerjain saat-saat terakhir (aka procrastinator, seterusnya disebut Type-2).
Ada pula yang ‘spesial’, karena dia sama sekali ga terbebani sama deadline waktu, en untuk itu dia akan menempuh segala, read EVERYTHING POSSIBLE, segala cara yang bisa dia pake buat nyelesain tugasnya (Seterusnya disebut Type-0).

Tentu saja, layaknya variasi-variasi MS dari jaman OYW sampe V di UC Gundam, dari tiga tipe tersebut punya banyak variasi en kombinasi jadi gw cuma akan bahas archetypenya saja, ok?

Pertama-tama, Type-0 kita buang jauh-jauh en ga usah dibahas, ga seru.

Selanjutnya, Type-1 kita buang jauh-jauh juga. Gw ga ngerti bahasnya gimana.

….

Oke, sebenernya gw cuma pengen ngebahas Type-2, mengingat gw termasuk tipe itu.

*Mode pembelaan diri on. Warning, content di dalam sangat, SANGAT bias dan subjektif sekali. En buat yang ngerasa tersinggung, moga-moga sadar kalo ini 99% bercanda en 1% serius*
Orang bilang procrastinating is not good blah blah blah, tapi mereka SALAH! Orang-orang Type-2 adalah orang-orang yang hebat, mengapa?

1. Procrastinator cenderung menghabiskan waktu lebih sedikit dibanding orang-orang Type-1. Mengapa? Karena kita tau ada teorema ‘waktu yang tersisa berbanding terbalik dengan daya kerja manusia’. Intinya adalah karena orang-orang Type-2 selalu bekerja dengan timeslot terbatas, daya kerja mereka jauh lebih tinggi dan kerja mereka lebih cepat. Dan gw ga mau bahas opini orang tentang hasil kerja procrastinator yang cepat tapi kualitas rendah karena opini itu salah. Pokoknya salah, ga perlu alesan apa-apa. Bukannya gw ga punya argumen yang tepat, pokoknya salah.
2. Procrastinator adalah time planner yang baik. Orang-orang Type-1 ngerjain dari awal waktu yang disediakan karena ga yakin sama skill planning mereka. Type-2ers? Mereka dengan yakin (ngga juga sih) menyelesaikan tugas tepat sebelum deadline! Luar biasa! Dan lagi-lagi, opini ‘yah itu mah orang-orang Type-2 bisa pas selese gara2 ngerjainnya asal en ga bagus’ gw anggap null tanpa argumen.
3. Alasan lain menyusul, ntar aja kapan-kapan kalo ada deadlinenya.

*biased rant ends here*

Okay, sekarang setelah gw panjang lebar bicara ga jelas, kembali ke kondisi gw sekarang.

Dalam jeda waktu libur satu minggu ini, ada tiga-empat tugas yang harus gw selesaikan. SDA, Kalkulus, Statistika, en Fisika. Yang terakhir bisa dianggap ga ada kalo mau. Bener-bener ngerepotin en nyita banyak waktu gw (padahal belom dikerjain sama sekali en tadi sempet ngaku2 banyak waktu). Jadi akhirnya gw mulai melakukan prosedur pengerjaan tugas ala gw.

Prosedur pengerjaan tugas ala gw terbagi menjadi beberapa fase:

1. Fase awal, ditandai dengan kata-kata ‘YAK! Waktunya ngerjain tugas!’, gw mulai stretching en meditasi en beres2 kamar buat persiapan fisik dan mental. Durasinya sekitar 2-3 jam.
2. Fase persiapan, ditandai dengan gw mulai dengerin musik seperti biasanya, sambil gw browsing internet buat sedikit nyari inspirasi dan banyak diselingi browsing forum2 tempat gw biasa nongkrong en/atau blogging kayak sekarang ini. *currently on this phase*
   Fase ini dapat diulang sebanyak n kali, dan durasinya juga variatif tergantung selisih antara waktu fase dimulai dan deadline tugas itu sendiri.
3. (Atau bisa juga disebut fase n+1) Fase mulai serius. Ditandai internet dialihkan 100% buat tugas (tapi donlot tetep nyala) en raut muka berubah menandakan gw manggil personality ‘serius’ gw <- sok MPD
4. (Atau fase n+2) Fase ngerjain tugas. Durasi relatif, biasanya paling cepet dibandingin fase-fase sebelomnya.

Yap, kurang-lebih begitu. Sejauh ini gw bisa dengan sukses menyelesaikan tugas dengan cara begitu, jangan protes :<

The desire to win is a human’s inherent traits. Deep inside, everyone wants to be a better person on something than other people around him.

As weird and quirky as i am, i am also a human that have said desire to win.

With that said, i go to that competition with high confidence and high spirit. Confidence on how i might grasp victory with my own hands. Not any ordinary victory, but a hard-fought one you get from giving your all. I am not the loser i am last month. I am a competitor, with equal chances to grab victory like everyone else. I might not be at the top, but i will fight to the end to a place where i can see the top proudly.

And so i go, realizing it fully that i have near-zero experience and near-zero knowledge.

But still, I go, confident as always.

As expected, everything go against the plan. My ‘rich’ knowledge gained from ‘deep’ and ‘intense’ researches fall flat on the opponent’s counterattack. Still, i continue to fight, leading my partner, believing that we still can win this, this is just the beginning!

It took not so long of a time for me to realize how wrong i am. I stumble to the very bottom, forced to see my comrades rise to the top with pointless envy seeing how obviously superior they are.

Yet i am still confident. I still believe i can lead my partner to rise higher on my next try.

I did. I manage to stand as the second winner on my next try.

Yet, it is not a desirable victory.

At all.
It was a loser’s battle, with the obvious winner rising to the top by himself and the other three pair of losers, including ourselves, fighting each other deciding who should tail the winner.

Yet i am still confident. I still believe i can lead my partner to rise higher, at least a little bit on my next try.

I realized how wrong i was. We was crushed ferociously, similar on how me and my teammate lost last month. At that moment, my confidence finally shattered. I finally realized how i will never win this. I finally have given up on everything.

It was an obvious defeat until the other side of the bench rise spectacularly to the first place, dragging us from the bottom to the second place. But of course it is not a desirable victory, let alone if you can call it a victory. It’s more like a pity rather than a victory.

By the end of the day, i have lost everything. My confidence, my hope, everything. I am nothing more than a loser, lying down at the very bottom of the mountain, thinking about my comrades somewhere in the mountain looking at the top, with me barely able to see them, let alone the top.

So i laugh, laughing at my once high, now shattered confidence. Laughin on my ‘rich’, yet destroyed in one blow, knowledge. Laughing on everything. Laughing on myself as a loser.

Yet i still believe, somewhere, someday, i will grasp the victory i desired. So i stand up one more time, hopefully not the last. I will fight again.

Winners never quit. Quitters never win. I just hope i am not the rare type that never quits and never wins.