Rangga's Blog

Hi! After quite a long time, I've decided to blog again! Sadly, I will have to abandon this blog. I think Blogger is outdated. I will write my new articles on Medium. Kindly please pay a visit. Same like before, it mostly contains my personal experiences, e.g. job hunting, interview, test taking, vacation, visa registration etc. https://medium.com/@ranggarmaste

Allow me to share my failure experience to other people out there. Some of you (most likely a lot) might fail to enter your desired university. I can tell you that being grateful is the most difficult task for everyone. Everyone has the right to covet anything he/she wants. The nature of greed is deeply rooted in every single heart. Thereby, people begin to make life dreams and goals, and so do I. Uniquely, most dreams are created with almost zero percent of failure. I once dreamed to study in Singapore. I prepared a lot of things to make sure that I would be admitted. From being a sluggish student, I transformed drastically into an assiduous student. Every night or every two nights, I always spent some time to study. I was extremely proud of myself that I was invited to sit the exam on both NUS and NTU. Even my two classmates were not invited by both universities. This just boosted my confidence that I would ace the exams. And the exams were ultimately strenuous, not like what...

Two reasons why I choose to be secular: freedom and tolerance. Firstly, I believe that I do not have to be supremely pious to enter the heaven. Pious in this case means that I need more than just doing five prayers all the time. I also have to do dress properly, speak properly, etc. according to the Koran AND "the additional Koran" which actually limits me from even being a human. I also do not like the fact that being a true woman who can enjoy her beauty and sexuality is forbidden. I decided to be irreligious after I was fooled for a lot of years. God never shows up so why do religions exist in the first place? I just see religion as another support for politics, including Islam which is used to make Indonesians act like pure (or brainless) Muslims who came from Arab. "All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician , and ludicrous to the philosopher." - Lucretius Secondly, my religion has become a source of intolerance for...

UPDATE: This article is outdated. I've started to blog on Medium instead on Blogger. Please visit here for the updated article . For those of you who wonder whether you should take TOEFL ITP, TOEFL iBT, or IELTS, please visit this page . I will not discuss about TOEFL iBT's basics; research about the test on Google. This is my experience of taking TOEFL iBT for the first time! :) 1. Registering You can just register at the official TOEFL website. No worries, just register because you will not be charged for anything yet. After you are done registering, if you just want to check the test centers availability, log in to your account first. Then, click register for a test - > TOEFL test -> I agree to the statement (no worries just do this) -> check your city's test centers. I scheduled my test to be on Sunday, 1st February at TBI Dago. I only chose my home and HKUST as the only scores report destination. You can actually send four free scores reports to any d...

A lot of English proficiency tests, and you are confused which one should you take? Well, I have summarized some of the most common tests conducted in Indonesia. 1. TOEFL ITP vs TOEFL iBT Firstly, let yourself acknowledge three types of common TOEFL Tests: ITP, PBT, and iBT. TOEFL ITP is what most of Indonesians think as the usual TOEFL. This test, however, is not official from the ETS (the TOEFL company). The test is offered by particular institutions, and most of the reliable institutions are universities like UI, ITB, etc. It is fairly cheap, ranging from Rp300,000 to Rp500,000 per test, ITB offers this test for Rp350,000. This test is comprised of three sections: Listening, Structure, and Reading. The maximum score is 677.  TOEFL PBT (Paper-Based Test) is the same as TOEFL ITP, yet it is officially conducted by ETS. However, there is an additional section which is TWE (Test of Written English), and I think this part is scored separately. Only few countries that do...

Many of you probably are curious how to register and how it feels to take the tests. I think there are only a few Indonesians who told their experiences of taking the test on the internet, either in blogs or facebook. Err, to be honest, I did not even find one. I would like to tell you my experience. 1. What are SAT Subject Tests? The SAT Tests are primarily used only for US undergraduate admissions, although Asian universities like KAIST, HKU, HKUST, and NUS acknowledge the test as well. There are two types of the tests: a. SAT Reasoning Test (also known as SAT I) It is quite tantamount to "Tes TPA" in Indonesia. The test will evaluate three skills: Critical Reading, Math, and Writing. It has ten sections. Look at the website for more information. My opinion? You want to get 2100, or even 2200+? Warning: do not take the test, especially if you rarely read reading materials that have lots of high-level vocabulary words. This warning is intended especially ...

The future of the Earth is a big concern for most of our people. We begin to think a time in which our planet will be an improbable place to live in. Indeed, the 2014 movie Interstellar depicts interstellar travel brilliantly, but the movie has left various questions among the audience. Most viewers are intrigued about the gravitational singularity, the people who are called as “they”, the “Tesseract”, and other nebulous things. One of the most intriguing yet ambiguous thing is the Blight. Though the movie does not explain anything about the cause of the emergence of the Blight, there is one big question: are we ever going to be in danger — in the most extreme and speculative sense — of ever having just corn and okra to eat? In my opinion, the Blight depicted in the film will hardly happen because such pandemic will not occur easily, even if the Blight is caused by either a contagious disease or global warming. The Blight depicted in Interstellar is possibly a widespread dis...

The fact that many countries use standardized test as the final evaluation has enraged many students across the globe. One of them is an American student, Suli Breaks, who questioned, “why unique individuals tested by the same means?” Similar remark came from an Indonesian student, Nurmillaty Abadiah, who wrote an open letter criticizing the 2013 difficult national exam. Nevertheless, there is indeed a reason why the US’ best universities require standardized tests along with GPA results and why national exam is used in Indonesia for applying to higher educational institutions. Standardized testing is ultimately important because it holds schools accountable, guides teachers to determine their teaching procedure, and is the most objective academic assessment. To ensure all schools’ accomplishments are as what the government expects, a standardized test is needed to assess schools’ accountability across the country. In Indonesia, every high school has the same curriculum, but...

“This country’s future depends on the country’s education, particularly its curriculum,” Mohammad Nuh declared. For the government and Nuh, the implementation of the new 2013 curriculum of Indonesia was a successful revolution because it abolished the old curriculum that expected the students to just merely sit and watch lectures. Nuh proudly announced the goal of the new curriculum: to make students active in lectures. I understand that Nuh wanted to follow most developed countries’ curriculums which aim to let students be active. However, despite the advantages that Nuh asserted, I believe that the new curriculum is a fiasco because it is very ineffective and is not suitable for Indonesia’s condition and culture. The aspect that most 2013 curriculum victims worry is the effectiveness of the new curriculum since they believe that the old curriculum was more effective. Take the "giving homework" procedure change as an example. With the old curriculum, the teachers taught ...

Many scientific-fictional films are favorite movies of myriads of people. These films’ success are mostly attributed to their enthralling representation of the chosen one. In fact, some of the chosen ones share literally similar stories, as demonstrated by Harry Potter in Harry Potter movie series and Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings movie series. While both later fulfilled the prophecy, they both initially depicted as ordinary boys who did not realize their abilities and their missions. Harry Potter was an ordinary boy in real world who was unaware of a magical world’s existence. Similarly, Frodo Baggins was only a peasant who never went outside of his village. However, both later faced unexpected and bizarre coincidences. Potter unexpectedly met Voldemort who killed his parents, while Frodo was visited by a stranger who gave him a mission to carry a ring. They were unaware of what they actually should accomplish, but they later learned their prophecies. While intense moments hau...

Movie business is one of the current fastest growing market. The most successful movies are usually movies which represent a protagonist who is assisted with a task to fulfill an ancient prophecy. For example, Harry Potter  series have grossed billions of dollars. However, what if the chosen one is actually a person who will be the primary villain in the movie? This is what exactly happens in the Star Wars series, in which a talented boy named Anakin Skywalker transformed into the notorious Darth Vader. I choose Darth Vader due to the fact that his story generally relates to our world’s dictators. Originally named Anakin Skywalker, he had a miserable past. He and his mother were slaves for Watto, an owner of a junk shop in Planet Tatooine. Anakin has no father, thus making his birth miraculous like Jesus’ birth. Unlike other people, he has the ability to see things before they happen. Fortunately, a man whose name is Qui-Gon Jinn discovered his talent. Jinn then introduced him...

Hello! This is my dream job story from my friend's perspective, Kurniawan Cahyo  . He is absolutely a wonderful writer. I hope you will enjoy it! :) Garmastewira’s Dream Jobs in the Future What do you want to be in the future? It’s a kind of question that we’ve heard since we were pre-school students. Most people always have a hard time to answer that question. I myself have to admit it’s one of questions that I try to avoid. I will tell you about my friend’s dream job. His name is Garmastewira, or we usually call him Rangga. Obviously, Most of SEEI (School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics) students are interested in technology. Many of them also want to work that is related to video games, especially the boys. In the future, Rangga wants to be a gadget inventor or game developer. I was told by him that he has been into gadget since he was a child. Everytime he looked at sophisticated electronic devices, he was curious about them. He questioned how they were ma...