Compliment

In junior high school I had a friend and I’d like to consider him my best friend. Well actually he’s still my friend even though we went to different senior high school, his name is Darian Amarta. He is a very kind, and very patient friend (not when he’s hungry though). He is quite proficient in English and knows a lot of vocabulary.  One of the unique things about him is his interest in history. It’s like he knows about some war thousands of years ago in a place that I can’t even pronounce. He introduced me to some of my favorite Youtube channel, extra credits and the Great War which in turn leads me to the enchanting and captivating history of the world (less in the ancient part I think). And I thank him for this.

Another thing that I remembered is that once he said that I am comparable to the main character of The Blacklist series, Raymond Reddington.  Not particularly that I look like him but more in a sense that I act like him. To this day I don’t agree with that but maybe (if you read this Dar I emphasize the word maybe) he has a point and that he saw something that I didn’t bother to see in myself.

In the end I want to express my gratitude to him and I look forward for more pleasant memories.

DEWA ATHENA

Dewa Athena is an annual tradition in SMA Negeri 3 Bandung. It is an event where each class has to compete in different types of sports such as basketball, dodgeball, badminton, futsal, tug of war, and gobak sodor. In some of these branches the competition is divided into two, one for the boys and the other one for the girls. This year, Dewa Athena was held on Thursday, March 23^rd until Friday, March 24^th for the 11^th grades. For the 10^th grades it was held on Saturday, March 25^th and Saturday, April 1^st.

The first day of Dewa Athena was a hot and sunny day. It took some significant effort to even watch the matches in the field, but my class prevailed against the hot weather and competed in the competitions. That day, my class (X science 2) participated in several matches, such as basketball, futsal, badminton, dodgeball, and some others. From these matches, we won some of it but of course we also lost plenty. The matches that we won were basketball, badminton, and dodgeball. But the event was still on. We only compete until the semifinals that day.

The next week, the event continued, thankfully the weather was much more in our favor than the first day. It was cloudy but rain didn’t come until a bit late in the afternoon. By then most of the matches were done, so it didn’t interfere that much in the whole events. On this day, my class proceeds in the matches that we won. Those include basketball, dodgeball, and badminton. The competitions were fierce, but in the end we won again in those matches. This means that we are going to the finals.

The final of Dewa Athena was held on the next week, April 8^th. Before the final begin, all of the students and teacher participate on another event. This event is called Paman Gober. Paman Gober is also an annual tradition where we cycle around Bandung and plant trees. The journey first begins at Bali field. From there we rode our bicycle to Pussenif where we plant the trees. Next the journey continues through all sorts of road that I honestly don’t remember the name. After spending hours on our bike we finally arrived back at Bali field. The competitions then started to begin. In the final the winner of each year will compete with the other winner. This means that there is only one winner for every branch of sport. 

Crossword

Down:

1. High quality and lasting value for particular old thing.

2. A person or animal that eats.

4. Someone/something to possess or do.

6. Position when taking a selfie.

10. The enemy of the allies in WW2.

12. Become fully aware and understand clearly.

14. The state of being whole, entire, or united.

15. A spectrum of light. Red, yellow, blue.

18. Something that we eat.

Across:

3. The same as picture.

5. The same as slope.

7. The wife of a king.

8. Food that we bake. Usually has filling.

9. Something people write to express their  feeling and secrets.

11. Something that move in an orbit.

13. The act of sensing with the eye.

16. Something we do to make things right, usually position.

17. A statement which is funny.

19. A measurement of time.

20. To complain in a self pitying way.

Learning from Nature

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” –Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein is considered the most influential physicist of the 20^th century. In the quote above, he implies that nature is the key in understanding everything in our life. You might think, why? After all human is the most intelligent species on earth. Why do we have to learn from nature, that some would consider as lesser than human? In here we will try to answer that question.

First of all, what is nature? According to Oxford dictionary, nature is the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creation. From that definition we can conclude that, in essence nature is everything beside humans and human creation. This means that there are more things that can be classified as nature than there are humans. If we look at it this way it seems to make sense to learn from nature.

All sorts of things can be learned from nature. From everyday values to something that can change your life tremendously. These things can be learned from all manners of plants, animals, and other part of nature. From the smaller one like ants, to the bigger one such as mountains. And best of all it’s actually not that hard to notice these amazing values if you just see and observe. Now we will delve deeper into what we can learn from nature.

The first one is weather. Have you ever seen a weather forecast? A weather forecast can be useful in planning your day. If the forecast shows that it would be a sunny day, you might have planned to go to the park, picnic, or do another outdoor activity. But the forecast isn’t always right. Sometimes what promised to be a sunny day could turn out to be a thunderstorm. From this we can learn that life isn’t always what you envision to be. It is unpredictable. You could have prepared for something to the best of your ability but in the end it could come to naught. But this doesn’t mean that you should stop after something went against your liking you should still try to make the best of the way things turn out to be.

The next example is the flow of water. The flow of water first started from water springs in the mountains. The water then flow through a calm streams and rivers with faster currents. And finally the water will reach the shore and continue the journey to the vast ocean. This teaches us that there are stages in life. Water can’t just start from the springs and suddenly teleport to the ocean. It must first endure the journey and pass through all obstacles they faced. Another thing that we can learn from this is not to give up on anything. Like water that continue to tore through all their obstacle and make their way to the ocean.

There are still lots and lots of things that we can learn from nature. From only the two examples above, we can already conclude that nature is a good teacher. Learning from it could completely change our way of living. What are you waiting for then? Go and start to learn new things from nature. 

My Last Holiday

There was not much going on during my holiday, I didn’t go anywhere. I planned to do something productive like studying something or making mind map for my lessons. But I just couldn’t muster the will to do all those things. So it became some sort of routine between playing computer game, reading a book, and watching movies. Because of this I will explain about the games I played, the books I read, or the movies I watched.

One of the game I played is called Hearts of Iron 4, it’s a world war II themed strategy game where I can play as any country that exist either in the year of 1936 or 1939. But in this game, the plot doesn’t have to be the same with the historic event, everything that happened is based on my choices, for example I could make a fascist United States or a democratic Germany.

In one of my play through, I played as the German Reich. But instead of declaring war against Poland I became their ally and invited them to the Axis faction. After that I decided to attack France, so I need to take over Belgium first to go around France’s defense which is called the Maginot Line. After the fall of Brussels, I prepared my army to march to the heart of France, Paris. But something I didn’t expect happened after I declared war against France. They allied themselves with the United Kingdom, which also brought their allies Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and British Raj into the war. With this development, I tried to march faster to Paris to get enough victory point to trigger France’s capitulation. But, when France was in the verge of capitulation something happened. The French joined the United Kingdom under the same flag. Essentially merging into one bigger country. Which makes them harder to defeat because it has more national unity, so I have to get more victory points. I gave up after that, what I thought would be a swift victory just turned out to be the beginning of a world war. So I ended the game and closed it.

The book that I read is actually a part of trilogy, it’s called the Mistborn series. But I have only finished the first book, The Final Empire and now I’m currently still reading the second book, The Well of Ascension. The story was set in the Final Empire which is ruled by a self-proclaimed god-king called the Lord Ruler. It revolves around a thieving crew that tries to liberate the final empire from the clutches of the lord ruler. Some of the people in the empire have some special power. This power gave them the ability to harness powers by consuming metals. Some of these powers are strength, enhanced senses, the ability to manipulate other people’s emotion, and some other powers. This thieving crew consists of people with this kind of power. Make no mistakes though the lord ruler also has this power, and is believed to be immortal. But I think it’s safe to say that we all believe that they will succeed in the end.

So yeah, that was my holiday. It wasn’t that interesting, but for me it was quite nice. It wasn’t as productive as I hoped though. But at least I had some sort of fun. Even though I mostly stayed at home.