Category: Thought

The Lullaby from Eurovision 2023

I barely follow Eurovision except during the final show, where I am basically able to compare all the performances of every singer objectively. I have been doing it since the 2021 edition of Eurovision. I found it quite an interesting approach to update my Spotify playlist annually with new underdog artists from (mostly) Europe. Last week was Eurovision week, and as usual, I watched the live performance from the Semi...

Another Statement of Purpose Draft for TUM

Backstory Writing a statement of purpose or motivation letter cannot be done in a single iteration. I think I mentioned several times in my other blog post that I drafted and scrapped my letter multiple times. The letter I finally sent was the third iteration of long contemplation and brainstorming. Recently, I was helping some friends in reviewing their letters. One thing that caught my attention was the idea conceived...

The Short Story of My Grandmother

This is not a happy story, but actually a story about my mother’s family during hard times for years. My mom came from a lower-income family from Sumatera, and her story is a kind of self-reflection story and taught me to become a better person. This story is real, being told by my mother and my aunts. They were the living witnesses of this story. It’s all began with my...

Just For Fun: Refusing Headhunters

Professional social media platform like LinkedIn sometimes makes headhunters offering interesting position in their companies. I even have heard that some of my friends are quite often being contacted by headhunter via LinkedIn or e-mail. It was not that many in my case, however, there are several start-up companies who offered me many interesting position. In this post, I want to “brag” a little bit of those who have contacted...

Social Networking and Social Awareness: How Virality Affects People’s Behavior on New Information

Preface This essay was submitted as an admission requirement for TU Munich in 2018. It is written around January 2018. I received admission from TUM although I did not take it since I received SECCLO scholarship. I was thinking to send this to newspaper since this topic is really important in Indonesia nowadays, but I didn’t have the confidence. However, looking at what happened today in Indonesia, I decided to...

Motivation Letter Example: Erasmus+ Security and Cloud Computing (SECCLO)

As the admission process for this year is completed, I think it is okay to publish my motivation letter so other fellow prospective students, on either this program or other program as well, can learn from it. This motivation letter is targeted for Security and Cloud Computing (SECCLO), an Erasmus+ program. I applied for 2018 intake and all praise to God that I nailed the admission. The problem statement is:...

Motivation Letter Example: TUM Informatics

I am inspired by one of my friends, Fariz Darari, to publish an example of motivation letter to inspire and help fellow prospective applicants to Master’s or Doctorate degree. Therefore, I will publish several of my motivation letters I wrote for my last application last year. This one is for Technische Universität München (TUM) or Technical University of Munich. I applied for Master’s degree in Informatics which uses English as...

Career Journey: Why I Ditched My Career as Consultant at Accenture

This draft has been sitting for more than 2 years now.  Basically a lot has happened within few years back, from my failed attempt to get a seat on a first-class university in US, to my decision on moving out from consulting business to more engineer work. But let’s just cut the story short. Recently I have a conversation with some friends regarding what makes us moving out of our employer to...

Old Notes Unpublished: Start Up Spending and Gojek Phenomenon

I read this link https://www.techinasia.com/silicon-valley-spends-money-people-asia-spends-marketing/ Yes. See how Gojek spend millions just to market their product, while their product itself are made by fifth grader. Okay this is a very long post Once I was interviewed for a new start up, Snapcart. I met the founder, which has a long hours of experiences, beginning from working in consumer product industry for 6+ years, then moving on to boutique consultants, which...

The Faith on Our Journey

I visited Baduy village at Banten last weekend. It was one of the most remote village in Java, we have to walk for more than 5 hours one way (I took 7 hours), climb and descend more than 4 hills just to reach there. There’s one thing I learned from my journey there: We have to keep strong on our way to our destination no matter how hard the obstacles...