I have ever thought that when I do my study abroad, in master and Ph.D., I will confine organization activity as I was more than enough to do such thing in the past time, but not leave it out at all since I still want to be a little bit active in Indonesian community organization. I came to a decision that I want to focus on academic stuff more to compensate for some lacking in a study when I was an undergraduate student. I thought that it was enough to have some organization experience in the past and now is time to study and deeply broaden my experience in regards to my research field.

As the time was going by, I did get the thing I wanted. I was doing my academic activity and research within an entire day, spending the whole time in the lab, going home very late and being ambitious to get the best result in a research. I prefer to spend my time in the lab (but to be honest mostly due to economical preference haha) and went home for just taking a dinner and sleeping, and then start the same thing tomorrow, continuously, again and again. On the other hand, I found myself only being able to meet other Indonesian just in the class or other academic activities, prayers time and other religion-related activities (especially Jum’ah prayer), PPI (Indonesian Student Community) gathering, and in the appointment buying foodstuff or going somewhere. Another thing is that I live in an apartment instead of dormitory whereas most new foreign student get an opportunity living there. And when you live in a dormitory, you will have more probability to meet other students while you were walking to the toilet or bathroom, waiting for the bus to go the campus, or just sitting down in the lobby etc. Exactly, as the newcomers, it is a good time to get every new thing when you can meet many people.

It’s why I just have some limited circumstance to keep in touch with them directly, not just in social media by which we ‘meet’ every time. But do you think that it was miserable?

However, fortunately, the thing makes me still alive is at least having them though in limited time. I still had a weekend to spend my social time, being active in a gathering and trying my best to be able to attend every event PPI had. Breaking work by meeting friends and doing Dhuhur, Ashar and Maghrib prayers 'Jamaah' every day is always a gratitude. Only by doing such social interaction make me aren’t feeling strange of myself. I used to feel such happiness when I was in Indonesia, doing so many organization activities together, meeting many people every day and not stacking in the monotonous day which is very tiresome.  I found myself being an enthusiast in the social occasion, and always eager to have many new friends, wherever.

After around four months, while class this semester was ended up (where my academic schedule was totally only for lab work) I thought I would have to keep myself still being around social interaction as much as I can by doing a kind of social activity. I have decided that I will fire my life up again to be active again in some organization and religion-related activity as I will do the thing I usually did in the past. I realize again that life is just for a while, and we have to do something useful for preparing the hereafter not only getting stack in this tricky world.  I know I will be busier since I still have a research which is my main aim here, but it will be more interesting as I challenged myself to get a risk and at the same time hoping to elevate myself.