#fk ugm

MedJob; From idea to reality

Kayanya udah lama sekali ya dari 2013, dari benda yang belom tau namanya apa “pokoknya kayak gitu deh konsepnya” jadi benda yang namanya MedJob di 2015. Ujicoba mulai 2016 dan akhir 2017 selesai diujikan dan resmi jadi penghuni perpustakaan FK UGM 😀

View this post on Instagram

Tomorrow is the day! Bukan, bukan. Ma belom bakal lulus besok. Baru mau maju…

Design Diary: 2012 Yearbook

http://issuu.com/karinakazia/docs/2012?e=14606170/33868912 Here’s a full online PDF version of my batch’s Kinfolk-inspired yearbook that my friend and I have been working on! We did everything from scratch, the two of us. From recruiting photographers, creating concepts, styling, scheduling and supervising all the photoshoots and photo-editing process, to designing the book itself. We even took…

IFF 2013 was held yesterday (Sunday, September 22, 2013). I had the pleasure of facilitating a new group of freshmen ("juniors", as they're called here) throughout the day of games, short speeches, and performances. I didn't go for my own batch's IFF. Perhaps I was scared it was another trap like PPSMB. But later, people told me that I missed out. So, I signed up for IFF 2012... not because I wanted to be a facilitator but because I wanted to experience IFF for myself.

This IFF was a bit different than the ones before: the new students were given over a week to work on their performances and costumes. (New students are broken into groups of around 10 with two facilitators leading them). Last year, students had to come up with a performance during the day, usually with no more than an hour to practice it. So, obviously, this year's IFF featured well-practiced routines and really well-done costumes.

I made my own costume, separate from my group's. In retrospect, this was a bad idea because my group members obviously felt left out and maybe even saw me as condescending (because my costume was arguably better than my group's hastily made one). Being respectful Indonesians, they never confronted me but it was obvious. I need to consider people's feelings a bit more in the future. Another fault of mine was not being able to memorize my group members' names. I'm not good with names and usually forget them within a couple of seconds after getting introduced.

Other than that, things went pretty smoothly. I showed up at 7am and found my entire group waiting there. We guzzled down breakfast in the auditorium and then IFF officially began with a speech from Alex Perkasa (head of the student organization that sponsors and organizes IFF). Alex was murdered at the end of his speech. (Not for real!) This was to give some backstory to the "Bring King Alex Back to Life" game where we had to arrange human bones in order. There was several other games. My group, themed "the Romans" won 4 out of the 5 games throughout the day (yaay!) Finally, there was a large final game in the basketball court parking lot. All the groups were to play it all at once. It involved all the students wearing string around their necks with some paper hearts on it. I think the idea was to rip away the opposing teams' hearts while also trying to steal their team banner/flag. I immediately saw this as potentially dangerous: it would be all too easy for somebody to grab the string around the neck rather than just the paper heart. One yank and it would be a nasty choke for the poor victim. Indeed, within seconds of the game kicking off, one of the new students was laying on the ground in pain. Realizing the dangers, the organizers (thankfully) stopped the game and that was that.

Then, after lunch time, the performances began in the auditorium. Some were good, some were not so good, and others were weird. I guess our performance falls into the last category. We danced to this music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fua3pv645OU

At the end, most of my group members left immediately. I guess they must have been very tired. I was hoping to thank them and welcome them (and maybe also apologize to them because I tend to sometimes offend people with my weird sense of humor).

There are very few (if any) mobile phone companies in the world that aren't out to rob you for everything you've got. The situation in Indonesia is no different.

There are a few companies here, but I use XL. It has the best (least worst) coverage in the places I'm usually at (home and campus), and since nearly all students use XL, I thought calling/texting within the same network would save me money. So, I'll be talking primarily about XL in this blog entry.

Here is what I've learned:

It's very cheap and easy to get a SIM card. Identification is required when purchasing from proper shops but often small roadside kiosks will simply hand over the SIM card and you can be on your way. (Remember to activate it. Shop-keepers will often activate it for you.)

Coverage often sucks. Connection speeds are bad.

Call quality is bad: voice isn't clear.

SMS are sometimes delivered very late.

"Credit" or "balance" is called "pulsa" here. Nobody understands the (otherwise universal) terms "credit", "top-up", or "balance".

"s/d" means expiry, and your pulsa will expire 90 days after you top it up, so don't add too much pulsa. See the picture above: my pulsa expires on 7 September 2013. (Today is 9 June 2013 and I topped it up about 10 minutes ago.)

Nearly everybody uses pre-paid rather than post-paid.

You need to purchase a plan ("paket") for data and another one for voice/SMS. You don't have to, but then you'll be charged per KB of data used (Rp.1 per KB, currently) and per minute of call and per SMS - and these rates can get much higher than the "paket"s.

Data plans are tricky and numerous. As you can see in the picture above, XL is advertising a plan called "Ngebut & Murah" (see picture below for the same plan on their site) which gives 11 GB a month at "7.2 Mbps" speeds for just Rp.49,000. That sounds pretty good compared to my 3 GB  a month plan that I also pay Rp.49,000 for. First of all, my 3 GB plan's 1.5 GB is only usable from midnight to 6 AM, so I am only left with half the data that I can actually use. The same trickery is used in the "11 GB" plan, but taken to a new level: I'll copy-paste this directly from their Terms and Conditions: "Quota of IDR49,000, 11 GB from 12 AM to 12PM and 1 GB from 12PM to 12AM." That means, you get 11 GB of data in the time period that you will most likely never use it, and you get a measly 1 GB during the afternoon and evening when you're most likely to use the data. The other thing that they lie about is the "7.2 Mbps" speeds. I've been here in Yogyakarta for 2 years and I've yet to get even a fraction of those speeds. (Coverage and speeds were better when I visited Jakarta though).

The calling plans are also tricky and you need to remember to actually sign up to one if you know you'll be SMSing and calling often. I go to school by taxi and often have to call 5 to 6 taxi companies a day just to get a cab. Without ever signing up to a calling plan, I found out (after nearly two years of being here) that I've been spending almost Rp.75k a month on calls and SMS. I'm not sure I will be able to find a decent calling plan that lets me save money with my current usage of calling cabs, ordering food via phone, and usually preferring to talk to friends via phone (rather than SMS).

Taxi companies often have numbers in each of the mobile networks. So, call up your favorite taxi company and ask them what their number is on your mobile network.

WhatsApp, BBM, Line, and Facebook messaging are exceedingly popular here in Indonesia. Data rates are getting cheaper and SMS can sometimes be unreliable, so that explains why

Lastly, I should mention that all new (international medicine) students are given XL SIM cards upon starting school here at UGM.