Internship: Life in Balikpapan

Hello peeps! After the fuss of moving here and there, finally Im in another city in Indonesia, exploring a new life. This is my first time being in Kalimantan which is so far away from my hometown. Life's been so far so good. The internship program we had will include 8 months in the hospital and 4 months in the primary health care. We've had our orientation in the hospital and first Im placed at the primary health care. Balikpapan is a big city, being as clean as Jogja. The foods are my main problem; Im not a picky person but Im quite surprised to find myself not suited with the cuisine here. I never had any problem regarding food before. Maybe it's about time till it suits my appetite. The weather is even hotter than Medan's, which I have considered as the hottest of all. I will try to explore the city more and find interesting places and foods. Ciao!

It's even hotter in real life, feels like 40°C

Movie review: 1987 When The Day Comes

I like it! First I watched it because Kim Taeri starred in this movie, but then I really liked it because it was definitely my cup of tea. 1987: When The Day Comes is a patriotic historical movie released in early 2018, telling about June Democracy Movement in South Korea (or popularly known as June Struggle) that generated mass protests from June 10 to June 29, 1987 (source: wikipedia). The demonstration forced the ruling government to hold a fair and democratic election. It started when Park Jong-cheol, a SNU student activist, died after being interrogated by official authorities because he refused to reveal the whereabouts of his fellow activists. This sparked many questions from reporters as his caused of death was said to be shock. He was a healthy 22yo man before this happened. The Seoul Office Prosecutor was forced to sign the permit to cremate the corpse as soon as possible, but he refused since it’s not 8 hours after death and his family needed to see him for the last time. The Prosecutor asked for an autopsy and the result showed that he died because of waterboarding techniques during his interrogation. Doctors were also asked to keep quiet but one of the doctors leaked it to a reporter when they accidentally met in the toilet. The issue blew up fast; people started to question about it. Authorities were told to find and arrest Kim Jeong-nam, the leader of democratic movement at that time so that the truth about Park Jong-cheol’s death would never be known. The story continued on how they would reveal the truth by the help of the prisoner guards, civilians, student activists, reporters, prosecutor, etc since this case involved higher authorities. There’s also Lee Han-yeol, another student activist from Yonsei University, who recruited people for the movement through his school student club. During the protests, he was seriously injured when a tear bomb hit the back of his head. His condition provoked another protest in the following weeks, which resulted in an agreement for direct presidential election by the Republic of Korea in June 29, 1987. Through 1987 I learnt a lot about Korea’s history as it was based on true story but still you need to confirm for the historical accuracy by browsing articles ok? If you are interested in history like me, then this movie is really recommended! All of these actors are Chungmuro movie veterans so no doubt their acting are the best. Enjoy!

Rate: 9.3/10

 

 

Official trailer:

Movie review: Little Forest (리틀 포레스트)

At first, this movie was not in my list but I decided to give it a try because of the positive reviews I read about it. Little Forest was said to be a healing movie, made you felt relax and peaceful. It's released in early 2018, starring Kim Taeri as Hyewon, a girl who failed in her university exam and decided to go back to her father's hometown. She has two bestfriends: Jin Kijoo as Eunsook, a banker and Ryu Junyeol as Jaeha, now a farmer. Hyewon was born in Seoul but then moved back to her father's hometown when he was sick and stayed till his death. She and her mother continued staying there but one day when she just came back from school, her mother disappeared without saying anything. Because of it, she hated her mother so much and learnt how to survive alone in the changing four seasons. Studied hard to pass the national exam, Hyewon was eagered to move to Seoul as soon as possible. She was back to her hometown again when her university entrance exam failed but her boyfriend passed. Tried to adjust to village life, she planted, harvested, and cooked by herself and didnt tell anything to her friends. Not to mention how her foods were awesome and portrayed aesthetically. It felt like she was having a vacation and taught us how to cook with her recipe. I was really amazed when she cooked spaghetti with some kind of flowers; in another scene she fried the flowers to make it looked like tempura. It definitely made people wanted to move to rural hometown and lived a simple life. Her friendship was another thing to admire: both her bestfriends are always by her side. They were also the one telling her not to run from her problems but she needed to settle it. Some of you may have known Kim Taeri from The Handmaiden which I hadnt watched (so dont ask me about it) but reviews were mostly positive. She's the rising new actress because of her versatility in acting. Currently Im watching her drama Mr. Sunshine and all I can say is it's really awesome! If you hadnt watched any of her works, this one is a must try. Little Forest teaches us a lot about life, probably one of my favorites because the storyline flows naturally and every scenes are just so beautiful. 

Rate: 8.5/10

 

Official trailer: 

Movie review: The Swindlers (꾼)

Here another movie review again after I went on hiatus watching movies since earlier this year. It’s a korean movie released in the end of 2017, starring Hyun Bin, Yoo Ji-tae, Bae Seong-woo, Park Sung Woong, and Nana called as The Swindlers. I watched this in flight on my way to Japan. It started with Hwang Jisung (Hyun Bin), a conman, who was searching for his father’s killer. His father was a conman too who worked with gang members to falsify their passport information. One day his father was found dead; he felt suspicious as his father was working on something secretly the day before and told him he would retire after finishing it. Because of his job (he falsified passport, used other people's face as masks, etc), Hwang went on jail and met Prosecutor Park Hee Soo who asked for his help to find another conman, Jang Du-chil (Heo Sung Tae). Jang has committed huge fraud and was rumored dead, but someone said he saw him alive. Hwang was also tailing the same man because he felt Jang has a connection with his father’s death cause. Prosecutor Park’s team consisted of Go Seok-dong, Choonja, and Ahn Se-ha together with Hwang tried to track down Jang Du-chil whereabouts through Kwak Seung-gun (Park Sung Woong), who was his righthand man. Hwang was told to befriend with Kwak and made a business agreement so that they could tail on him meeting Jang. Prosecutor Park has his own motive: he wanted to kill Hwang after all his tasks had finished. Hwang also has an ulterior motive: finding his father’s killer. This movie really gave a big twist in the end; I was stunned for a while thinking about how it can end like this. You might find there's no connection between Prosecutor Park and Hwang but it was wrong at all. Pay attention to the details in the movie because at first I found the storyline was quite confusing. The movie's vibe was similar to The Thieves (2012) so if you like the latter, you might like this one too. I liked the way they concluded everything in the end as sometimes korean movies didnt have a great ending. Just give it a try!
Note: I've done other movie and drama reviews before but because I changed my blog url a while ago, the links werent connected. in the left side of this blog you can see 'LABELS' section and just click movie, drama, or review. Thanks!

Rate: 8/10

Official trailer:

Japan trip: Transportation

In Japan, there are many types of transportation you named it: shinkansen, subway/metro, bus, taxi, etc. The most popular one for tourists is JR Pass; you can use it to travel through all cities in Japan. They have 7 or 14 days pass and should be used in consecutive days. This pass can be booked online through JR Pass website or official travel agents in your country. BUT you should pay attention that they also have regional passes! I often browse the website but didnt realise it until a week prior to my departure. We went to Japan for two weeks and decided to only buy a 7-day JR Pass. You can reserve seat too with this pass by coming to JR Office in the stations and search for the schedule you want.  Before riding the shinkansen, it's best to take a look which car is for non reserved and reserved seats they put in on board because if you ride the wrong car, you should pay the fine.

  

 

If you decide to go to some cities which are close to each other, JR Pass maybe isnt your best choice. For example, I went to Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Osaka in the first five days then after reading here and there, JR Kansai Hiroshima Area Pass would be my best choice because I needed JR Ferry to go to Miyajima and with this pass, I can ride either Nozomi or Mizuho shinkansen. These shinkansens are the fastest as they stop in mostly main stations compare to Hikari or Kodama. They arent covered by the ordinary JR Pass; by using JR Kansai Hiroshima Area Pass I can save quite some time. Hikari runs in the similar track with Nozomi but stops more. To see which type of pass suits your trip the best, you can click here.

Besides JR Pass, there are also other railways run by private companies such as Kintetsu, Hankyu, etc. In my Nara day trip, we used 1-day Kintetsu Rail Pass as Kintetsu station was closer to Nara city centre and you can use it in Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto. Japan really give tourists lots of benefits; there are many local passes for one day, two day, three day, or five day provides with discounts to tourist spots if you show them your pass before your payment. You can read more about it when I explain it through the day trips. 

JR Pass doesnt always cover the city area so using IC cards will be the best choice. This card can be used in subways or buses and I really recommend it since it's also rechargeable. Sometimes it takes time if you always pay cash yet at the same time, you only have big amount of money. Just tap it at the station entrance and tap again at the exit. It's also accepted in paying for coin lockers in station, vending machines, shops, and restaurants. Most popular one will be ICOCA, Suica, and Pasmo. ICOCA can be bought in Kansai area, whereas Suica and Pasmo can be purchased in Tokyo. Now these cards can be used in whole Japan so it's really convenient. One thing I learnt during my trip was it's the best to get the city map when you arrived in the main station so that you could choose the most efficient and budget friendly transportation.

Note: Everything I share here is based on my own experience. Maybe it's suitable for me but not for you so please read and search for more information. Let's enjoy the trip!

Japan trip: Preparation

Two weeks ago I went to Japan and this was the first time my family went abroad by ourselves not through the travel agent (excluding Malaysia, Singapore, Hongkong, and China which were familiar cities for us). These posts series will be about how I and my sister prepare for our trip and the results of it. Let's start!

First, we bought the flight tickets a few months before our departure. We planned to go for two weeks as we wanted to enjoy and have fun throughout the vacation. Next we decided which cities we wanted to go. Your relatives or friends' itinerary would be really helpful in this step if you were like me as a first timer to Japan. After the date and cities had been decided, I (the unofficial tour leader), with the help from my sister searched for our stay. It's the most difficult part because we needed to view many properties to choose the best one. We searched through Airbnb, booking.com, agoda.com, etc. We were a 5-member family so it's quite a dilemma to choose a hotel because we needed two rooms and in Japan, hotels were expensive. Usually people prefer for Airbnb or apartments and these were our choices for this trip. We took quite a long time to decide our stay, viewed here and there, spent around two weeks because we read everything to details. Finished deciding our stay, we started to search for transportation. The most popular one was of course JR Pass but I will make another post for Japan's method of transportation because this also confused me before I went there and experienced it myself. Date checked, accomodation checked, transportation checked, what's next? We decided which places in each city we wanted to go; you only have limited time yet there's A LOT of it in Japan. For food and snacks, it wasnt a problem for us since we didnt have any restriction in food and planned to try everything! We only brought four luggages and it's not that big since I heard from my relatives that we needed to walk everywhere in Japan and mostly they used stairs. Later I found out they always had elevator in each station because the facilities for disabled people were super complete. Spare time to do lots of research before you go, either through blog posts, websites, or youtube to make sure you are at least a bit familiar of the places you want to go.

Wanna One World Tour in Jakarta

Hi finally Im back (again)! I dont know how many times I have gone on hiatus, but the urge to write again suddenly comes back. This time I will share my story about my experience in watching concert in Indonesia for the first time for Wanna One. My first kpop concert was JYJ Asia Tour in Hongkong in 2014, then continued by TVXQ Special Live Tour T1STORY in Bangkok. I always like going to kpop concerts for my bias because I can meet and watch them closely and the thought of being in the same place together really makes me happy. Back to the main story, I started to like Wanna One in January this year right before my final national exam. If you are unfamiliar with kpop, they are trainees coming from Produce 101 season 2. I suggest you to watch the show first to understand how hard they have worked to be able to debut. Im not the type that easily changes my bias from one to another. I've liked TVXQ as five members for 11 years now and Wanna One is the other group that I like right now. After the announcement that they would be holding a world tour, I was so excited that I kept on following the updates on twitter about when and where the world tour will be hold. Jakarta was on the list! I was hesitated for days on whether I should watch in Jakarta or in another country that's still close to Indonesia. It's mostly because I didnt have any experience in going to concerts in Indonesia and I knew how chaos it would be watching from previous kpop concerts updates. In the end I chose to watch it in Jakarta with my younger sister and we bought the standing section CAT 1 because I wanted to watch as close as possible to the stage but with reasonable price. 

 

15 July 2018: D-day

We arrived quite early around 11am and I went to search for the person who helped me to buy the ticket. It was really crowded at that time; I was surprised because early in the morning I saw people updating in twitter they were already at the venue around 6-7am. After getting my tickets, I went around to buy merchandises and search for freebies. It was so damn hot and humid that I kept on sweating. We entered the venue at 5pm where they did body check. This was where the problems started. It was not that strict; they only checked if we had foods or drinks with us. Swing Ent as Wanna One agency has been really strict with cameras and videos in concerts yet Indonesian promotor only did superficial check? Yes. We were led to a holding area where the section has been separated. I was confused at first because the room was huge and the sign wasnt clear enough and there's no one to ask. People around me confusely queued and we didnt know if we were standing at the right place. The categories were VIP right left, CAT 1 right left, CAT 2 right center left, CAT 3, and CAT 4. The first three sections were free standing and with queue number to enter the venue but in Indonesia, of course, queue number has no use. I was in CAT 1 left and all of us waited for so long to enter the venue. In the end, you know what happened? They told all of us to enter at the same time and of course everybody ran! I didnt know what was in their mind at that time. They didnt think about their own safety. I and my sister stood in the back; it was less crowded and we still could see the stage clearly. The concert started at 7pm and this was when the chaos started. After singing 2-3 songs, the show was resumed. I was confused at first, but then the promotor told us to step back a little bit because the front crowd had been really packed and kept on pushing each other. Being paused for 30 minutes, the concert was resumed again and it ended at 10pm. During the concerts, it wasnt allowed to record or take pics but once again, people started to take out their phones to record. The promotor was unable to control the crowd and it happened. Despite all the dramas, the concert itself was amazing! Wanna One didnt disappoint me at all; they were beyond my expectation. Of course Kang Daniel was really cute and sexy the whole time!!! I sang and danced along throughout the concert lol I had expect myself to lose my voice the next day because of too much screaming (this happened to me twice at JYJ and TVXQ concerts) but thankfully nothing happened. I hope I still can watch their next concert as they are going to disband this year :( Perhaps the final concert in Seoul. Should I go?

 

All I wanna do WANNA ONE!

From one of my favorite fansite Peach UP!

Be aware of depression, the silent killer.

This week has been a tough one for kpop fans, as one of the most popular boybands' main vocalist passed away on Monday. SHINee's Jonghyun was found unconscious in an apartment and later declared death, which believed to have committed suicide by burning coal briquettes. I was so surprised when I saw the news, as I knew SHINee was still active at the moment. SM is known to be one of the big 3 music companies and has many of the most successful groups in kpop history. You named it: TVXQ, Super Junior, SNSD, SHINee, EXO. Who would know one day one of their singers would die in such a young age by commiting suicide? SHINee was the only SM groups with complete original members till now and no legal battle dramas, except for Onew who had a scandal recently. What makes me even more surprised is that I've been watching them since they debutted in 2008 as it's at the same time when TVXQ released their most popular albums Mirotic. It's like watching the babies grew and then boom, something happened. As a kpop fan myself, I can relate how gloomy and sad the fandom is right now. Jonghyun have just had his concert in December 10. Nobody knew that all these times depression has been killing him inside. My thesis for undergraduate degree was about depression; this is why I always have a soft spot for this topic. He left a suicide note and you could see how desperate he was to end his life because he wanted to be free. Depression is a silent killer. You wont know because a depressed person tends to not telling others about what or how they feel. In this case, he has searched for a psychiatrist but it didnt help him either. He chose to end his life. Even until today, I still cant believe that he's gone.

Below is the suicide note Jonghyun left to his friend, Dear Cloud's 9, originally in Korean and has been translated to English as accurately as possible.  

Please dont read this if you are easily triggered.

Source: Koreaboo

I am broken from the inside.  
The depression that slowly gnawed away at me has finally swallowed me whole.  
And I could not defeat it.
I detested myself. 
I grabbed my disjointed memories and yelled at them to pull themselves together but was met with no response.
If I can’t help myself breathe properly it’s better to stop breathing at all.
I asked myself who was responsible for me.
Only I.
I was utterly alone.  
It’s easy to talk about the end.  
It’s hard to actually end.  
I lived until now because of that difficulty.  
I told myself I wanted to run.  
Yes, I wanted to run.  
From myself.  
From you.
I asked who was there. 
It was me. It was me again. And it was me yet again.
I asked why I kept losing my memories. It was because of my personality. I see. So It’s all my fault in the end. I wanted people to notice but no one did. They’ve never even met me so of course they don’t know I exist.
I asked why they live. They just live, just live on.  
If you ask why I die I would answer I am exhausted.  
I have suffered and pondered. I never learned how to turn this exhausting pain into bliss.
Pain is just that, pain.  
They scolded me not to do this.  
Why? Why can’t I even end things the way I want to?
They told me to find out why I hurt.  
I know too well. I hurt because of me. It’s all my fault and all because I’m lacking.  
Doctor, is this what you wanted to hear?  
No. I have done nothing wrong.
When the gentle voice blamed my personality I thought, ‘damn being a doctor is easy.’  
It’s so odd that it hurts so much. People who have it worse than me live fine, people who are weaker than me carry on fine. Maybe that’s not true. There’s no one alive that’s got it worse than me or is weaker than me.
But I should live on anyway.  
I keep asking myself why I should hundreds of times and it’s not for my own good. It’s for yours.  Please don’t say a word if you don’t understand.  
Find out why I’m hurting? I told you why. Is it so wrong to hurt so much because of that, do I need to have a more dramatic reason? A more specific reason?
I told you already. Were you not listening? Things you can overcome don’t scar you for life.  
Clashing with the world was never meant for me.  
The life of fame was never meant for me.  
That’s all the reason why it hurts. Because I’m famous. Why did I choose this. It’s so funny.  
It’s a wonder I lasted so long.
What can I say. Just tell me I’ve done well. That this is good enough. 
That I’ve worked hard. Even if you can’t smile don’t fault me on my way. 
You did well, you worked hard. Goodbye.
— SHINee’s Jonghyun

You did well, Jonghyun. Rest in peace.