And This is My Friend.

They say I’m a loner, but the fact is that I often get too shy to speak. Or maybe lacking the topics to talk about, there is no difference anyway. Point is, I am not that good at socializing. So I considered it to be quite a privilege when I was assigned to interview my partner about herself and her daily life. At least I could get to know her better without having to feel the anxiety and embarrassment when I have to do it myself — well, to be honest, at first the interview itself felt slightly awkward, but luckily the ice broke soon and we just laughed it out. Without much ado, let’s get this started.

Her full name is Alya Afifah Baktiar. I prefer to call her Alya, but it seems that my other classmates kind of disagree with me. For some reasons, lately they started to call her by this silly nickname that for her own sake, I am not going to tell you what it is, but it cracks me up every time someone call her by that nickname. She was born on April 11, 2000, which is very astonishing since she looks and behaves more maturely than other people her age. She resides at Panorama block C5, Arcamanik district, and her previous school is 7 Junior High School Bandung. Alya told me that both her mum and dad are both working, and she has an 11-year-old brother that rumour has it likes to commence a swearing-filled conversation with her. Funny and odd at the same time, it is.

Now here is the most amazing thing about her. Usually when someone asks us what our hobbies are, we tend to give answer with the light, fun activities we like to do regularly in our spare time. Normal people would say things like, “I like playing games, watching TVs or movies, reading books, etc.” but instead how this works for the universe that Alya lives in is that all of those are less interesting than doing maths. With the jumbling numbers, stumbling symbols, and everything. And she can, sometimes literally, do the questions in a blink. Since the day I figured this out, I’m always in the dilemma between feeling proud of having such an intelligent chair mate, and miserable because I want to be like her, but I find it difficult to love maths more than I love chocolate cookies. But do not be alarmed, aside from her unusual hobby, Alya also likes to kill her time with reading novels. I can say that her interests in literary is quite sophisticated, with classic novels as one of her favourite preferences in reading. One novel in particular that is her favourite is “The Beginning of Everything” by Robyn Schneider. Maybe one day I should look the novel up and try to read it, because I have never heard it before. Alya’s music taste is rather more girly than mine. With Taylor Swift being her favourite singer, the genre she chooses is, predictably, pop music, and also classical and instrumental music. For the latter I think we can agree on together.

Moving on from her interests, Alya wants to be a surgeon in the future. She targets for a scholarship in medical school in Dusseldorf, Germany, and hopes for an easier accommodation because her cousin lives in there as well. The reason why she chases a scholarship because she feels that the medical education and the chances of having a proper career path in Indonesia is quite difficult. For a plan B, Alya chooses to take the information science techniques in Institut Teknologi Bandung. I think her backup plan is affected by her idol figure to some extent, which is Steve Jobs. She said she likes him for his achievement for magnanimous success despite not having a proper education, which reflects such a hard worker he is.

Well, frankly there are some other cool facts about Alya, but before this turns into a profiling article like the ones they make in the TV series “Criminal Minds”, so I decide to finish this description here. Especially to Alya, forgive me if there are some unpleasant terms or erroneous facts that I inputted here, for this being my chance to add yet another person in my best friend list. I hope that you, the readers, did not doze off while reading this post and enjoy it as much as I am writing it. Thanks!

Hello World.

When I started my first blog years ago (actually it’s a Tumblr full of unicorns and rainbows) the first post ever was a reblog of the TV series Sherlock, and zero for any introduction. I did not even input my real name in the website, since I prefer to go anonymous on the land of the Interweb for the freedom of having fun. So when my English teacher asked me to start this one with a proper introduction… well, aside of a lot of self-shaming rants and random trivias, I tend to ramble once I write, so expect long posts from now on.

My name is Fauzia Nurrahmiaty. I think I have lived long enough to feel kind of sick of hearing people mispronounce my name, so please just call me Mia. I was born in December 1, 19**, in Bandung, the second and last child of my family. My brother is five years older than me and now he is on his second to last semester of his college education, in which he studies at Industrial Techniques Faculty at Telkom University. My dad is a telecommunication consultant, and the best part of his job is that it’s a freelance job so he most of the time stays at home. And my mom is no ordinary housewife, because she is active in a lot of activist organisations; sometimes she is even busier than my dad. I’m a Martian, because I live in Mars. No, I’m not one of those green tentacles-limbed, big white-eyed, slimy aliens that breathe in twenty seven types of helium isotopes to breathe. It’s just my own little perk of living on the street where my house stands, which is Jl. **** ***** II number **, M******** *****, Bandung. It is pretty far from school, about 11 kilometres away but at least there is a public transportation that is coursed straight to the housing complex.

All right, time to introduce my interests.

My penchants are pretty darn geeky and I am very passionate at them, though I am still far away from mastering or being an expert in any of them. Astronomy, cosmology, quantum physics, PC/console games, American and a bit of Japanese comic books, photography, fiction/script writing, world history, internet memes, movies, cool novels, sci-fi stuffs, and all sorts of things that makes the internet my special kind of heaven. Maybe that’s why I am not very good at physical activities, though I love to go for simple sightseeing to beautiful places. My parents like to call me an aspiring writer, but it works as sort of a sarcastic, disheartening nudge to my shoulder because I have not actually published any of my writings. Mostly they are not done yet or maybe they are just too absurd for normal people to read, but even if I do finish one of them I don’t think I will share it to you so soon. I am a terrible writer, but a very talented editor, so it takes almost forever to get even a short story done. Because of this my best friends like to call me the Worst Grammar Nazi ever, but I don’t mind anyway. But do not expect me to be such an unproductive author, though, give me some time to sharpen my skills and we will see that time when I publish a story. Or a novel. Or even a movie script. I don’t know, I just love the world of writing.

About my future. Well, this has been one of the trickiest decisions I have ever made. I have never had such firm grasp on plans for the future, both because I often lost in the present, and everything seemed interesting to do as a full-time career. I switched goals whenever I found an interesting subject. I have thought of being a psychiatrist, forensic doctor, medical doctor, movie director, stage actress, and computer programmer, until that day when I watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, the original series. I realised that my concealed passion in astronomy had turned into something more than just a topic to entertain myself. I realised that I want to be like him. People often misinterpret astronomy as a dull and unbeneficial path to take when choosing careers, but look at all the modern astronomers-slash-physicists that have made their way into great success in sharing everyone about the nature of the universe. Mr. Sagan, Richard Feynman, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc., all of them are not nerds who lock themselves up in an underground library for weeks just to find out when is the best time to observe the moon. They are great at what they’re doing, and even greater in making tedious subject into something that we can easily learn while drinking afternoon tea. So with that in mind, I have decided that I want to be an astrophysicist, and with my modest ability to write, I hope to share the wonders of the universe in the form of glorious syntaxes.

I think that’s all I can tell you for now. Forgive me for any mistake or offensive things that I wrote, and I hope you will stick around my blog often.

Cheers,
Mia.