So today,

Source One of many new things I’ve learned during my stay in Joensuu, Finland in terms of my expertise is bioeconomy. It comes as a new concept to address the problems that the climate change has brought to our civilization; resource scarcity, GHGs accumulation in the atmosphere, global warming, ozone depletion, to name a few. I didn’t experience the heatwave while in Finland. Maybe a bit, I guess. There were several days when the temperature went up to 32 degrees in the afternoon in Joensuu, while Central Europe was struck by an alarmingly hot temperature; Paris reached 42.6 degree at that time, an alarmingly record-breaking temperature. Articles on the heatwave have used words like “unprecedented rise in temperature in scale and intensity” or “record-breaking” or “extreme events” when addressing this matter, and to know why, there are many factors to explore. A famous theory provided by most articles is human-driven climate change. Researchers have conducted studies using cl...

Check my VSCO journal for my stay in Finland: https://vs.co/kHpmq96zYZ When I told my supervisor that I would go to Finland for studying, his response was “That place only has 2 seasons; cold and too cold”. Other people expressed their excitement by saying “you won’t have the night in summer!” or “that place is great for education” which are partially true. But Finland is beyond that. When I walked out of Helsinki Airport once I landed my feet on Europe, I knew for sure that this place is exceptional. First thing first, you don’t get to choose which department/faculty you want to apply in Erasmus programs. Erasmus has designed their program to be specific and with special rules. So, when you’re applying to EMJMD, you’re applying for a program which can be made up of many universities in one consortium. Some program requires you to stay in the coordinator university (the university that proposes the program to the European Commission) in the first year, then continue to ...

It was a busy daytime in Indonesia, and I was just starting with my work when an email popped up. It was neither a newsletter from some website which I stupidly put my email address on only to access their free Wi-Fi, nor an email from my supervisor asking for my last week’s works. I’d been exchanging emails with the coordinator from an Erasmus program I was applying to whom I always asked or confirmed my careless mistakes during the application process, and at that morning, the email that I described in the beginning of this post was from her. There were a bunch of documents in the email and the first thing I searched on the email was the letter of acceptance with the statement “You’ve been granted with Erasmus scholarship” and I was dying in tremor trying to find it in all those documents. Guess what. I did find it, and I couldn’t believe it. My journey in finding scholarship started early in my college years. I didn’t know what I would like to have for my job at that tim...

The Letter that Ends the Story and Starts the Encounter There are books that I bought but never read. The Postmistress was one of them. The book was neatly stacked on my shelves since many weeks ago and was one of the novel that I avoided just because it’s romance. I’m always weak to romance novel because the sad ending got my eyes damp and my nose runny – most of the times. Even though the novel is categorized as romance, the story turns out to be interesting enough. Sarah Blake presents the love story between Emma and Will Fitch during the years before World War II as resolutely, beautifully, ironically and deeply. Iris James is a postmaster who serves her duty in a small town of Cape Cod, Franklin, Massachusetts. Working as a postmaster gives her the control over a million of letters that come through her office, originating from other places and delivering various kinds of news. A string of sentences that makes out the whole story in a letter may change the life or en...

Surat yang Mengakhiri Cerita dan Mengawali Pertemuan Ada banyak buku yang aku beli tapi tidak pernah aku baca. Buku ini adalah salah satunya. The Postmistress sudah tersimpan di rak bukuku sejak beberapa minggu yang lalu dan merupakan buku yang selalu aku hindari hanya karena ceritanya roman. Aku selalu lemah dengan novel roman karena akhir ceritanya yang menyedihkan selalu membuat aku hampir menangis. Meskipun tergolong ke dalam genre roman, Sarah Blake menyajikan cerita percintaan antara Emma dan Will Fitch pada masa sebelum Perang Dunia II secara tegas, indah, ironis dan mendalam. Iris James merupakan seorang kepala kantor pos yang ditugaskan di Cape Cod, Franklin, Massachusetts. Sebagai seorang kepala kantor pos, Iris memiliki kontrol penuh terhadap surat-surat yang masuk ke kantornya yang pada saat itu merupakan sarana komunikasi yang penting dan sakral. Melalui Iris James, Sarah Blake menceritakan betapa surat merupakan sarana bagi orang-orang untuk menyampaikan be...

Photo credit: Dia.Lo.Gue Art Space Kemang Born in Blora in 1925, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was a pure Javanese who dedicated his life and mind to Indonesia. His writings which are full of cold criticisms toward the governments and the Javanese feudalism – which based on his thought was the thing that hold back the Javanese from modern development – made his writings were banned for public consumption and also resulted him to spend half of his life isolated in some rural islands. He was no person of a luck, he had gone through a couple of isolations and desperations before he could publish his phenomenal novels and writings which eventually made the eyes of the world turned to him and made him be acknowledged as the most thoughtful author that Indonesia has ever had. The life of Pramoedya Ananta Toer was coming in the form of notes, archives and letters which were frankly displayed on the Namaku Pram: the Notes and Archives exhibition held at Dia.Lo.Gue Art Space Kemang, South Ja...

Photo credit: Dia.Lo.Gue Art Space Kemang Memulai hidup di Blora pada tahun 1925, Pramoedya Ananta Toer yang merupakan seorang Jawa tulen yang mendedikasikan hidup dan pikirannya kepada Indonesia. Tulisannya yang terkenal penuh dengan kritik dingin terhadap pemerintah dan feodalisme Jawa membuat beberapa karyanya dilarang untuk dibaca publik dan membuat Pramoedya menghabiskan hampir separuh hidupnya dalam pengasingan. Meskipun perjalanan hidupnya hingga menghasilkan karya-karya fenomenal tidaklah mulus, pada akhirnya Pramoedya adalah sastrawan terbaik yang pernah dimiliki oleh Indonesia. Kehidupan Pramoedya Ananta Toer yang tertuang dalam catatan dan surat dipaparkan secara gamblang dalam pameran Namaku Pram: Catatan dan Arsip yang diselenggarakan di Dia.Lo.Gue Art Space Kemang, Jakarta Selatan sejak tanggal 17 April hingga 20 Mei 2018 lalu. Didukung oleh Bakti Budaya Djarum Foundation, pameran ini menampilkan sosok Pram sebagai penulis dan sebagai seorang dokumentator I...