Blessed Eid

Celebrating Eid this year with family was wonderful. It was an invaluable thing I could have begged for. At least for the last couple years, when family-get-together was not something that I could take for granted.

So, very thankful for this wonderful moment.
I wouldn't ask for more.
*Or if I could, I would have prayed that my husband has also been there.*

with my family! (OK, minus one!)
@ Southbank, Yarra River, Melbourne

with Sita, my best friend, and kangoroos
@ Healesville sanctuary, Victoria

Alhamdulillah...

The first MR scan!

From the first time I came to this group, I've been wondering whether I would be able to come "inside" the MR scanner*. It is a neuro imaging group in a brain institute, so I think people will definitely need volunteers to let their brain scanned. I've been talking to some people who might have a project involving human studies, and one of them was happy when I said that he could put me inside the scanner for his scanning trial.

So, it happened this morning. I was really excited, as well as a little bit anxious. I've made sure that there were no pins on my hair and my scarf, no zip on my clothes --I even wore a long skirt today (fine, I was too extreme :D), no metal what so ever, except my dental work but it was OK.

The MR scanner is huge; I've seen it in the laboratory where I'll be working for my master thesis later this year. It looked so frightening in that laboratory--as it was put just as it is, in the middle of the room. But it was different this morning. It was in a children hospital where I had the scan, so the environment was set up to be ambient. It was so colorful and child friendly. When I laid down on the scanner table, colorful stars sparkling on the ceiling. By that time I was sure; if I were a child, I would love it :D

Anyway, I am still wondering if a child will like the experience inside the scanner. Firstly, because MR scanning takes a while. Not like x-ray that completes in just few seconds, you have to stay still about couple minutes for one MR image, depending on what scanning technique used and the image quality you want to have. I was inside for about an hour, for 5 types of scanning. Secondly, the noise. Although I wore headphones and a music was played during the scan, I still could hear the noise coming from the applied magnetic field gradient**. During the diffusion tensor imaging***, the noise was even worse as the gradient was changed quickly to many directions. I could feel the vibration and the "boom-boom" noise shaking the scanner table. I was enjoying it, though, as I --thank Allah-- am healthy and went to the scan without any worries. Another thing that might happen is claustrophobia. I didn't mind being inside such a closed place, but some people might not be comfortable of it.

Now that I've experienced it, I do think that it might be important to inform people well before they go for an MR scanning, so that they know what they expect. A good knowledge on what's going to happen might hopefully make an exciting experience.

***

Thanks a bunch for Scott and Clare, to let me have this exciting experience;)

Notes:
*) Magnetic resonance imaging, an imaging technique that uses magnetic field and radio frequency to excite water proton in the tissue to make the image.
**) Magnetic field that has different strength depending on its location.
***) An MR imaging technique that images the movement of the water (diffusion) in the tissue

half way greetings

Time flies --I know this may sound cliche, but really it's already a half of my stay in Australia. Neuro Imaging Group at the Howard Florey Institute is really a wonderful place to work. Comfortable environment, nice project, and lovely people. The project is interesting and challenging; I don't get bored at all! The people too seem to put much interest to what I am doing, and they are really eager to brainstorm with me. In short, I am more than happy and enjoying it a lot. I really hope I can get good result; I'll see in a couple weeks.

I don't do much traveling anymore during weekend, only a relaxing one in the city. Trying various yummy food --there are a lot of halal restaurants in Melbourne, amazing! Here is the list in case you want to give it a try, too ;).

I think I'll miss Melbourne --agree to a survey result that Melbourne is the most livable city in the world.

Southbank

Victoria state library

Old fashioned tram (it runs slowly :D)

No worries!

Some conversation that might only happen in Australia (no hints about other English speaking countries ---have never been to any others)

"Can you do that for me, please?"
"No worries"

"I am sorry, I think I can't make it"
"No worries"

"Thank you!"
"No worries"

***

See, don't worry be happy!
Nothing to worry about when you are in Australia ;)

It's been almost a month since I arrived here. I have now more or less settled; getting used to greet people with "how are you" instead of "good morning", having some friends to talk to, feeling more comfortable, and being more enthusiastic for the coming 2 months!
Hopefully I can be more productive; learn more (and faster!) and at least contribute something.

image from gettyimages.com

Snow time

This weekend my sister and I went to Mt Buller, 3.5 hrs from Melbourne by bus. The weather was not the best; it was raining and foggy, yet the trip was so enjoyable. We had a lot of excitement on our ski trip! :) *We could have chosen to do snowboarding or tobogganing, but skiing was our childhood dream!*

Ski boots were so heavy --it was not the most comfortable sport shoes to wear, and the ski was adjusted to the boot size, our height, and weight. Walking on the ski boots was a tough work --our guide said that I walked funny :D, and so was walking (and sliding) when we put the ski on. Anyway, our first beginner lesson gave us more confidence, at least we knew how to make a stop and not to hit people :).

We spent 2.5 hours in the morning practicing, having lunch, and then another hour to challenge our gut to hop on chair lift to (almost) the top of the mountain and slide down on our ski. It was terrifying because the fog was worse as we reached a higher latitude; yet it was so exciting!! Thank to two friends of ours for their patience on guiding us how to control our ski, waiting for us when we fell down (you can't imagine how often we fell), and even helping us to get up from fall (trust me, the fall didn't hurt, but as a first timer it was so hard to get up with so much weight on our feet!)

As a word of advice, if you want to go on a ski trip, don't do it just for one day. Do it for at least three days! The first day is warming up session! It was a pity that we had to stop skiing when we just got a hang of it! Huhuhu.

Anyway, if you ask me whether I'll go again for it..
Definitely yes!! *So, Alpen.. we are coming insya Allah. Hopefully I can persuade my husband ;)*

***

My dear sister, thanks for the invitation to the trip!
Pictures available here.

Great Ocean Road

I spent the first weekend visiting my sister in Geelong, an hour drive (I took train, though) from Melbourne. It was our luck then, that a friend of hers rented a car and invited us to come along to Great Ocean road.


We started at 9 am and drove along the coast; having some stops in Lorne, Apollo Bay, and some important stops in Port Campbell national park. The day started sunny, but it rained in the late afternoon. However, the scenery was really breathtaking and beautiful.

We arrived at Warrnambool around 5 pm, our last stop before going back to Geelong. My sister and her friends were excited about Warrnambool since they will also have their clinical rotation in a hospital there. We left Warrnambool after having dinner, and were back in Geelong at about 11pm.

Pictures available here.

Australia, the very first impression

Today was my first day working in Australia. I was a bit anxious this morning (and my parents called me before I left, thank you :*), but it turned out that I was worried for no reason. My supervisor is very helpful and the other colleagues are also very nice. The project also looks very interesting; I hope three months will not be too short to complete it.

The institute where I work for my internship is an institute associated with the university of Melbourne, the Howard Florey Institute. The main focus in the institute is on the neuroscience and related field; and therefore, I am also working on the brain, in the neuroimaging group.

***

I think Australia is very multicultural (or perhaps it is only the case for Melbourne). I always hear a lot of strange languages in the tram (and one of them is Greek; I got the clue because the people who were speaking was holding a Greek newspaper :D). Furthermore, it seems that the multicultural environment also gives people more understanding about other people and their culture.

As for a simple example (for me), there are a lot of restaurants (I really mean A LOT, and even in the city centre, it is very easy to find) which offer halal food. The group leader in my workplace was also aware about this, as she told me some places around the campus that sells halal food. She even asked me whether I would like to have a prayer room inside the building, to which I replied yes :). There are other prayer rooms inside the university, a very big one, which is also nice that a lot of people gather during prayer time.

The image that I got from the people in the Australian embassy still stay the same. I still find that people are very friendly (which might also be that they are used to multiculture? No idea). They still somehow greet you on the street. People still say thank you to tram driver. Younger people still give up the seat to older people in the train.

The city is (very?) big. The architecture of the buildings in the city is somewhat unique, eventhough I think the suburb area (where I live) has the same atmosphere as Cianjur :D, a place between Bandung and Jakarta in Indonesia. The university is very old; the buildings are old for sure (except a few of them including my office). The university has different atmosphere that I used to have in Indonesia, Japan, or the Netherlands, and I like it. I don't know how to explain it, but I hope I will have a chance to take some pictures and share them here. I walked around the university yesterday; students were walking from one building to another carrying thick textboox and notes, some of them were having lunch with some friends on the bench. I miss university, for sure, friends, lectures, all of them!

***

My first impression to Australia is still good until now (ouch, except that the money exchanger takes very high handling fee, and you can bargain it!). Hopefully three month stay will be meaningful and enjoyable. :).

Picture: Alan Gilbert building, my office.

People Our Business

Alhamdulillah, I was sooooo much relieved when I opened my e-mailbox today, reading an email for an officer from the Australian embassy that my Australian visa has been granted today. He will be sending my passport back tomorrow from Berlin*.

I am so much impressed with the service of the Australian embassy in Berlin.

Few weeks ago when I was going to apply for the visa, I had several issues that I was so confused and I needed some advices from the embassy. I hesitantly called them, but the officer whom I talked to was so empathetic. I was then feeling so comfortable.

These few days, I have been communicating by email with another officer who took care of special cases. Because there was a delay in the post service when I sent my application to Berlin, I missed my time estimation for the visa to be granted in time before I leave the Netherlands. As advised by a lady in the embassy phone line, I sent a fax requesting an assistance in early visa issuance. Within a few hour, I had a reply to my email from another officer telling me that he had received my fax and all efforts would be done to make my visa in time.

That email was so relieving; I didn't expect to hear anything so soon from the embassy about my fax. Moreover, I didn't expect to hear anything about my visa after that email so fast; at least not within this week. I thought it would take at least a little while to have it processed. Today I sent my newly extended residence permit (yes, I have it already!! :) by email, considering that it is required to process my visa application; but you know what reply I got? He said that my visa has been granted! And it was just two days after I sent my fax!!!

The fast response was not the only thing that amazed me; but the way how he --as someone who works in the embassy, especially in the consular service, communicated with me really made me at ease. I felt like he understood my problems and was willing to help.

***

If only I had this secure feeling from the beginning, I wouldn't have been as panic as I have been. The image in my mind about "consular service" was so frightening, and the experience that I just had was just too good to be true!

I noticed from the visa application form and also from the signature part of his email, there was an eye-catching, as it was written nicely, slogan:


is this the reason why all services I experienced was so friendly, and also, making me feel respected as a customer --not as someone who was begging for a permission to enter a country?

Australia, I am coming, insya Allah... :)
And now I have a hope to meet people with "people our business" in their mind there...

***

*) Note: for 22 countries in Europe, the Australian embassy that has consular service is only the embassy in Berlin. This means that every application should be sent to Berlin.

Visa, oh, visa

Sampai kapan ya fleksibilitas kita (baca: WNI) buat "terbang" lintas negara nggak dikekang dengan yang namanya "visa". Buat warganegara tertentu (dan tentu saja Indonesia :-S), pergi ke luar negeri nggak bisa dilakukan semudah itu. Terlepas dari kondisi finansial, dan lain sebagainya, urusan birokrasi satu ini memang seringkali mengesalkan dan membuat hati harap-harap cemas. Sahabat saya di sini, seorang Yunani, ternyata juga mengalami hal yang sama, ... dan kami sama-sama "iri" terhadap pacarnya, yang kebetulan warganegara Amerika, yang mudah sekali melakukan perjalanan lintas benua.

***

Urusan visa = sediakan waktu Empat tahun berturut-turut saya selalu olahraga jantung di saat masa-masa musim panas-nya orang-orang Northern Hemisphere. 4 tahun yang lalu, aplikasi visa UK saya dari kedutaan Inggris di Jakarta tidak bisa keluar di saat yang diperkirakan. Untuk mendapatkannya, saya harus menghadiri wawancara yang dijadwalkan 3 minggu setelah jadwal keberangkatan. Perjalanan ke UK yang sebelumnya direncanakan bersamaan dengan diundangnya saya oleh tante di Belgia terpaksa dibatalkan karena saya tidak bisa mundur hanya untuk satu visa UK tersebut.

Satu tahun setelahnya, ketika saya bersama-sama grup muhibah kesenian akan berangkat ke Eropa, urusan visa ini lagi-lagi membuat hati berdebar-debar. Keharusan membuat 4 visa (karena negara yang dikunjungi tidak semuanya dalam kawasan Schengen), membuat visa kami baru selesai di saat-saat terakhir. Belum lagi setelahnya pulang dari Eropa, saya hanya punya waktu satu minggu untuk membuat visa Jepang, padahal tiket keberangkatan ke Jepang sudah ada di tangan. Untungnya, tidak seperti lamanya waktu yang dibutuhkan untuk mengurus visa ke negara-negara Eropa, mengurus visa Jepang di Indonesia hanya membutuhkan waktu tiga hari jika semua dokumen sudah siap.

Tahun lalu, saat-saat yang mendebarkan ketika saya harus menunggu visa student dari Belanda (dan ini memakan waktu 5 minggu!) dikombinasikan dengan keberangkatan ke Jepang. Terlambatnya satu visa akan membuat semua rencana perjalanan harus diatur ulang.

Syukurnya, pengalaman 3 tahun berturut-turut tersebut adalah pengalaman di Indonesia, di mana travel agent lebih ramah dan lebih fleksible dalam masalah mengatur tanggal keberangkatan. Tahun ini, saya harus mengatur keberangkatan lagi dengan kombinasi yang lebih banyak: pembuatan paspor baru (paspor saya hampir habis), perpanjangan residence permit di Belanda, visa Jepang, visa trainee Australia, dan tiket pesawat yang harus dibayar dan setelah itu tidak bisa diubah tanggal (bisa diubah, tapi harus bayar 100 euro + perbedaan harga saat itu). Visa Jepang, seperti biasa tidak ada masalah. Di kedutaan Jepang di Denhaag, visa Jepang bisa selesai dalam satu hari. Tapi yang lain, cukup rumit dan tunggu menunggu. Sebelum aplikasi visa Australia bisa dikirimkan, saya harus menunggu approval nominasi dari pemerintah Australia di Australia. Setelah itu, proses pembuatan visa trainee Australia akan memakan waktu 4 minggu. Proses perpanjangan residence permit sudah memakan waktu 2 bulan (well, IND -pihak yang mengurus ini, bilang minimal 3 bulan baru akan selesai). Kedutaan Australia meminta perpanjangan residence permit saya harus sudah ada sebelum mereka bisa mengeluarkan visa. Hari ini saya telpon IND, alhamdulillah, mereka bilang dalam 2 minggu kartu residence permit saya harusnya sudah siap.

Keberangkatan tinggal 5 minggu lagi. Paling lambat minggu depan saya harus memasukkan aplikasi visa Australia. Artinya, paling lambat saya harus menerima approval dari pemerintah Australia minggu depan. Minggu depan, saya juga harus membayar tiket. Semoga penantian yang mendebarkan ini berakhir dengan baik.

Dari pengalaman-pengalaman ini, saya rasanya ingat saya pernah berkata pada diri saya sendiri, bahwa saya tidak mau terlibat lagi dalam debar-debar jenis ini. Tahun ini saya sudah mulai urus segala rupanya sejak 4 bulan sebelum keberangkatan. Ternyata, butuh 4 tahun untuk benar-benar sadar bahwa : visa = birokrasi. Birokrasi = makan waktu!! :((

***

Urusan visa = (tidak selalu berhadapan dengan) orang-orang yang "sulit"

Pengalaman-pengalaman per-visa-an, selain masalah waktu yang mendebarkan, adalah petugas yang dalam bayangan saya: tidak helpful, galak, dan tidak menyenangkan. Kenapa bisa begini? Mungkin ini adalah trauma saya ketika bertemu petugas kedutaan UK di Jakarta 4 tahun yang lalu, petugas galak yang membuat saya bergeming di depan loketnya kehilangan kata-kata. Itu pengalaman pertama saya ke kedutaan! Kalimat ini yang saya ingat yang diucapkan dengan tidak menyenangkan, "Ya, itu urusan Anda kalau Anda tidak bisa berangkat sesuai jadwal!" Petugas lain di konsuler Belanda di Bandung yang menempatkan saya di posisi seakan-akan "pemohon visa adalah bersalah". Saya waktu itu mengisi form di depan petugas tersebut. Saya bilang, "Saya ke Belanda diundang ke universitas bla-bla-bla... sebaiknya saya isi apa bagian purpose ini?" Saya bertanya karena kondisi saya memang sedikit "spesial" waktu itu. Dan jawaban yang saya terima, "Anda yang akan berangkat, Anda yang tahu tujuan Anda, jangan tanya saya!" Ups!

Pengalaman-pengalaman ini membuat saya selalu berpikir bahwa petugas-petugas di konsuler memang diharuskan seperti itu. Ternyata saya salah (ga tau ya kalau kedutaan Amerika :D) Petugas konsuler di kedutaan Jepang yang saya datangi di DenHaag, petugas konsuler di kedutaan Australia di Berlin (iya, dari Belanda apply visa Australia harus ke Berlin), petugas di IND tadi pagi ternyata sangat helpful.

Tapi, kesimpulan saya saat ini menjadi lebih tidak menyenangkan:
1. Petugas-petugas konsuler "galak" hanya saya temui di Indonesia
2. Petugas-petugas di Indonesia tersebut adalah orang Indonesia
3. Petugas-petugas di Indonesia kurang helpful
Jadi... petugas konsuler di Indonesia, yang notabene adalah orang Indonesia, tidak helpful terhadap warganegaranya sendiri. Oh negeriku :(.

Anyway semoga ini salah.

Oh iya, satu hal yang semoga bisa memperbaiki image kedutaan Indonesia di luar negeri: beberapa saat yang lalu saya pergi ke KBRI di Denhaag, dan petugas yang saya temui di bagian paspor adalah orang-orang yang baik dan sangat membantu kok. Ini berkebalikan dengan cerita-cerita tentang KBRI yang sering saya dengar dari khalayak ramai, yang membuat saya deg-deg-an sejak sehari sebelum ke KBRI. :).

Beberapa pengalaman baik ketika di Belanda ini membuat saya lebih mempunyai kepercayaan diri dalam berbicara dengan para birokrat pervisaan. Beberapa bulan yang lalu saya deg-deg-an sebelum ke KBRI dan ke kedutaan Jepang.. beberapa hari yang lalu saya perlu menulis "konsep" dulu apa yang akan saya tanyakan ke kedutaan Berlin (termasuk mereka-reka mereka akan menjawab apa!) dan ke IND. Ternyata, saya memang harus lebih tenang dan lebih berprasangka baik. Seberapapun "ribet"-nya urusan permohonan visa... orang-orang yang ada di sana ternyata tidak selamanya orang yang menempatkan pemohon dalam posisi "itu urusan Anda, saya tidak peduli".

***

Hmph, mohon maaf dengan mumbling yang tentu saja tidak jelas ini. Dan terimakasih banyak kalau sampai ada yang membaca sampai ke bagian ini (ini curhatan yang panjang banget). Mohon maaf dengan nada negatif yang terdengar di sini. Saya lelah selama 4 bulan ini kepala saya dipenuhi urusan ini. Saya cuma perlu memiliki lebih rasa optimis menghadapi birokrasi.

Oh ya, tolong doakan minggu depan approval nominasi dari Australia sudah bisa saya terima, ya. Saya sudah tidak sabar membayangkan pertemuan dengan sang kekasih, ...
dan juga orang tua dan adik tercinta.

image dari: http://members.shaw.ca/