Poland – 21st of May – Do you hear the sea calling?

Yesh! Here goes the next day..

As usual.. My pre-typed blogpost…

woke up in the morning and our guides brought us to the beach/sea! there’s this super long beach line. or maybe it’s some peninsula? i dunno what it’s called but it’s long. the sand is very soft so we kept sinking. it was so hard to walk! sigh.. but the view is pretty.. and of course we took picture with the anchor cross. it’s anchors coz this region has many fishermen and this cross is supposedly their protector. after that we went to the center of Sopot and walked through the longest pier in the europe. only about 5 of us made it to the end of the pier, including yours truly, of course. it was super cold. and the wind is even colder. after that we went to a big mall in Gdansk. well, just like any malls, it was full of zara, mango, and the likes. and of course there was H&M! so many discounts here and there so i grabbed a top and a skirt. didn’t take a lot of photos of anything else.
[end of pre-typed post]

Okay so that basically summarized all. Now let’s go to the photos~~~!!
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Poland – 20th of may.. Oh hi, I’m from Indonesia slash Singapore

Full Facebook photo album.

Ok here we go to the next days.. Posted one month after the day itself.. Sorry.. Pardon me for being soooo busy ok?

Ok here goes my pre-typed blogpost…

20th of may

went to Kosakowo to hold some choral workshops in schools. in return the students gave us performances. kosakowo is inside the Kasubian region, so all the performances were the traditional dances/songs unique to that region. had fun meeting the cute children. some of them even ask for autographs. talk about instant celebrity!
after all of the tiring (but fun!) workshops, we went to a church to attend a mass and hold a concert. I haven’t gone to church for quite some time, so I’m happy I can attend a mass (Catholic mass), despite the mass being in Polish. after the mass 3 choirs went on stage and sang nice songs (i can only say nice coz i can’t really understand what they’re singing). and it was our turn! it was sooooo cold i kept shivering. natural vibrato! the audience gave us standing ovation which surprised me coz we were shivering like crazy and didn’t think it sounded so good. but oh well. why should we reject such an appreciation? we gave an encore.

we went back to the hostel we’re staying in aaaand they held a barbeque! lemme tell you, polish sausages are the best i’ve tasted until now (until 20th of may and the place i’ve gone farthest is poland). they grilled it with beer too! so oily and sinful but you juz want more and more. after the barbeque the girls and boys at the hostel were holding a disco. they put on some speakers and started blasting clubbing music. who said choir can’t party? we partied until late night. can’t believe one of the best clubbing session i’ve had so far was in youth hostel at poland with a bunch of polish teenagers. and yes they’re teenagers. I’ve overheard some of them were 16 or something. and they’re really enthusiastic and powerful. i can’t understand how they managed to dance for about another hour after all of us retired to rest.

Here comes the photos~~~!!
(note : I’m not posting my party photos =P you can search for it on facebook, if you’re my friend)
Read more to continue coz there are sooooooooo many photos..

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I know you love me

I know you love me
Coz when I dropped your stuff (which I do often)
You took it and put it back.
You laughed and said “It’s okay”

I know you love me
Coz when I was eating and dropped crumbs everywhere
You juz took some tissue papers and cleaned it.
You laughed and said “It’s okay”

I know you love me
Coz when you enter my ever-so-messy room
a room that’s completely out of your comfort zone of neatness and tidiness and cleanliness
You don’t care about it.
You laughed and said “It’s okay”

I know you love me
Coz when I don’t put some stuff back to where it was
You just took it and put it back on the right place.
You laughed and said “It’s okay”

I know you love me
Coz when I started to cry
You never once said “Don’t cry”
You hugged me and caressed my head
You said “It’s okay….”

I know you love me
Coz when I talked to you about all this
You laughed
and said
“It’s okay… It’s just you”

“And I love you the way you are”

I want to tell you…

I love you too

Internship, so far

Apart from forcing myself to wake up soooooo early everyday and a quite long bus journey everyday (after dressing up and putting on make up in a hurry or sometimes running across the street to chase the bus), it’s quite fun.

And quite surprising. You know in SIS we’re taught how to improve business with IT blah blah blah and the stuff. So far I’ve learned about programming, some security stuff, some process modelling stuff, and some data management stuff. And what I’m doing here.. It’s not “nothing like that”. It’s.. Connected somehow, but was never taught.

But I guess that’s the point of SMU boasting about “Learning-to-Learn skill”. More like “Research it yourself or your project’s gonna suck skill” actually.

Neeways. So, what am I doing in this internship?

I’m designing website.
More like webpages actually.

So if the company has something new, I’m the one to design the webpage to announce the happy news and put it onto the main enterprise intranet website. I’m also told to redesign the company’s internal department website.

So, anything about what I’ve learnt? Nah..
But I learn a lot of new things. I’ve never really learnt CSS even though I have rough understanding of it, but in this internship I learnt a lot of playing with it. I learnt more about image editing using Photoshop and GIMP (coz my laptop doesn’t have Photoshop and they never bought more licenses) coz I was told to design some banners and stuff to make the webpage looks more interesting. I learnt about usability and stuff. Smashing Magazine is one powerful resource, I tell you.
So this is still considered an IS internship right? Right? I don’t want to search painstakingly for another internship next summer. *slaps forehead*

Oh ya, btw, if you don’t know about how I got my internship.. I’m gonna tell you.

So one fine day I got 2 missed calls from a friend E, who was my groupmate in some project a year ago. Or was it 2 years ago. Never mind. I sms-ed him, asking why he called me. He answered that there was an internship opportunity, but by that time it had already been taken. Ok, I thought. I didn’t really want to do internship anyway. I wanted to go back to Jakarta and relax after my Europe trip.

The next day, when I was still sleeping…
“Beep! Rrrr.. Rrrr.. Rrrrrr..” (my phone was set to beep+vibrate mode)
“Hallo?” (with hoarse voice)
“Oey, Sylvia arh?” it was E.
“Ya, why?”
“Eh, do you still want the internship? The position is free again.”
“Huh?”
“Ya, you want it or not?”
“Can I think about it first?”
“Okay la, but must be fast hor. I think it’s quite urgent on C’s side” (apparently he’s offering me the opportunity after his friend C – also my friend- wanted to let go the position for some reasons)
“Ya ya”

And so after consulting friends and everything, E sms-ed me again, asking. I asked one final question “Should I?” to my boyfriend and I sent the sms “Okay, I want it ”.

Sent the resume, arranged for interview, came for interview, and ta-da! I got the internship.

If it sounded so easy, it was.

My primary reason for finally deciding to take the internship and sacrificing my good sleep was that.. It’s not really easy to get IS internship in SMU. You see, SMU is made up of primarily business students so naturally companies are more inclined to get business interns (marketing, finance, operations, etc.). I doubt some companies know that SMU has SIS. But anyway, usually when an IS internship is posted up, it’s either snatched up by some other guy (who might have more awesome programming skillZ than yooZ) or no one applies since it’s so sucky (usually heavy programming with small pay). Erm, hello, we’re not taught to be programmers okay. Haha. So to “cut the queue”, I decided to take this internship offer. And it was actually posted on OnTrac (the lame job portal of SMU. If you have a company you can go there and sign up to recruit interns). So I don’t need many bureaucracy that I had to do if I source my internship by myself (get approval from company+school, register the company with school, blah blah blah). Just submit some form and I was ready to go.

And soooo there was the story. =D
I’m signing off to go for a dinner with my boyfriend. It’s my 7th monthversary today! =D

What is fighting for?

Sometimes I don’t see the point of fighting.

That someone did something wrong. It annoyed you. It made you a loss of something. Loss of happiness. Loss of serenity. Loss of… You know what I mean.

Ok, so you’re annoyed. You blast at that someone. At some unfortunate moments, that someone will blast back. You will say he/she is wrong. He/she will state otherwise. And it will go on and on…

And then what?

Will that something that was lost come back?
Will the fighting do any good for a relationship?

So far as I know, I always stopped at the middle of a fight. I just simply stopped. Coz those thoughts always dawn on me… What is this for?

If I’m staying silent when someone is angry with me, am I wrong?

So far as I can remember, answering to someone angry just results in worse things. I experienced it. And to say it simply it horrifies me until now and maybe.. just maybe.. for the rest of my life.

I’m scared as hell when somebody is angry with me. Even when I’m not wrong. Some people will stand up to say that they’re not wrong but I can’t. I tried. I tried to throw tantrums back. But in the end it yielded nothing.

So I don’t know… But for this time I just don’t wanna fight no more.

PS Sorry if the post is incoherent and confusing. I am in a confused state also now. Work (internship) is making me weary and I wonder why because there wasn’t so much work actually. Fights after fights turned me sour. And financial problems are always chasing me. Rent, utilities bill, course fee, transportation fund, food fund.. Now I really realize that the cost of living in Singapore has increased. In just 2 years. 2 freaking years. That much. And the bad news is Indonesia is not really growing so I have to spend more in terms of Indonesian money (rupiah) for less things I can afford in Singapore dollars. And this PS is freaking long. I’m out, ppl.

PPS If someone is willing to give me some freelance work.. I’ll be delighted to do so.

Some new earrings :)

I’m still quite lazy to post my Europe trip pictures and stories. And I need to wake up by 6.30 tomorrow to go to the office. My work starts at 8.30 everyday.

Anyway, here are some new earrings that I made during my break time (after Europe, before internship).

Azura
The name means blue sky. Just because the swarovski crystals are blue coloured. Not sky blue, but still blue. Hahaha.
I added a star too at the end of the silver chain. I might give this to my sister since she likes star shape a lot.

Tamara
Named so as a homage to this pretty lady:

Tamara Bleszynski, an actress from Indonesia (with Polish heritage).
Isn’t she gorgeous? And won’t this earrings match her?? Hahaha..
But maybe it’s too playful for her elegant image though.

Here’s an extra shot of the beads of this pair of earrings. I love the beads!

Here’s the last one..

Caritas
The name means love. Coz there’s a heart-shaped (love-shaped) bead used. Haha. As simple as that. =P

Just a hypothetical question.. If I were to sell those earrings.. Would you buy them?

Oh btw.. All the photo decorations here were done using the image editor in Photobucket. I’m so impressed. I’ve been using photobucket for my primary photo host and when I joined it was just a photo host. Nothing else. It has grown!

Poland – May 19th – Gdansk

Full photo album (Facebook)
note : this entry below was handwritten by me on approximately may 19th or may 20th.

In case you want to see the handwriting, here it is.. Hehehe..

May 19th
Went to Gdansk. It was a town that’s completely destroyed at world wars. History noted that it was “owned” by different countries before it decided to be Polish. I guess there’s no wonder why they competed for Gdansk since it’s such a strategic place. Guess Poland government really made a good decision to rebuild it, retaining the old look. Don’t be fooled by the old look though, inside are the hippest shops and bars around.
Ate some pancake with pork meat and some sauce. Dunno what it’s called, but it’s quite salty and heaty. Nice though. As my Polish is nowhere near sufficient, I juz pointed to any food that looks nice. Haha.
We also visited the St Mary’s Church, the biggest church in the world made of brick. It was majestic. How did the people make this kind of church just using bricks? Man, the wonder. The choir sang inside the church. It was Ave Maria (since it’s St Mary’s chuch, you see). We made the tour guide cry. Haha.
We also shopped for amber. Gdansk is famous for its amber. Bought a pair of earrings for 50 zloty (duh! earrings!). Pretty. not to forget this kewl soprano ice cream. Basically it’s called soprano coz it’s sooo tall. Overall, it was a fun day (even though my feet don’t seem to think so).
[end of handwritten entry]

And get ready for photo galore!

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Internship eating up

Dearest my loyal readers..
I don’t know how many times you have refreshed this page, but unfortunately Sylv is now appointed as an intern in some company and will be quite busy to ever blog..
She promises to blog whenever she can (not in office hours!), whenever she’s sober enough to type.

Thank’s for being a loyal reader. You know who you are. I know there’s quite a lot of you. Although my entries in ping.sg didn’t really get pong-ed by pingsters, i can see an overwhelming number of “reads” there. (“Reads” means that somebody who is not a ping.sg user clicked the link to read my entry. Or maybe some ping.sg members un-pong after they read. Whichever it is)

I’m sorry if I have been disappointing you with lack of entries and lack of substance in entries. I’m just.. I need some time to figure things out. And of course also to do my internship.

I seek your prayers and support as I force myself to write more entries for you to enjoy. There are still 10 days’ worth of Europe trip to come. Don’t worry.

Loves,
Sylv
XOXO