PEDS 250 Writing

It was a particularly bad day. I just  got a job in a restaurant. It opened recently, and apparently I'm the first addition to their original  waitresses, so the others saw the chance to gang up on the newcomer. I'm dealing with them as best as I can, trying to stay professional, but it's exhausting. At least it pays well. My new heels broke today. I loathed them, though. They dug into my feet so much I need 2 plasters on each aching spot to walk without crying. What bums me is they're a part of the waitress uniform, and now I have to pay for them. There goes my new dress. Plus I have to walk home in them. It's raining when I did walk home, and I didn't bring my raincoat or an umbrella. So I have to walk, shivering. It's either that or waiting at the restaurant for it to subside. But that means dealing with the other waitresses, not to mention my flirty manager who thinks everyone is interested in him and is somehow set on me as his trophy. I was c...

He's always there. It doesn't matter where we are. The adults can't see him, he's too good at hiding from them. But us kids can. Occasionally he would smile and laugh our way before disappearing. Sometimes he would point towards us and whisper to the air. I might be hallucinating, but I swear I saw something sparkly buzzing around his ear. At night, the wind blows hard, and windows keep opening themselves. The orphanage's headmistress got so annoyed at first, and tried to nail them down. It didn't work, and eventually we got used to it. Once, I woke up at midnight, and saw him flying around the room chasing his shadow. I helped by pinning it with a dart. He looked at me and smiled, and pulled the shadow out of the room. I remember wondering whether my shadow can fly away as well and spent the next day keeping an eye on it. They all thought I was weird. I'm turning 14, and he comes less often. I'm afraid I'll stop being able to see soon. ...

Prompt: Book Review Elizabeth Gilbert’s career rose with the popularity with her non-fiction work “Eat Pray Love. A book depicting her recovery journey post a messy divorce. Where she went on a trip to be able to come to terms with herself. In this book the story of Liz and Love continues. The couple who have vowed not to get married, both traumatize by their last are forced to get married if they were to stay together. This book is filled with Liz’ rationalization on what to expect and what to be cautious of stepping into the bonds of legal matrimony. She had emerged herself in extensive researched about the institution of marriage, to try to convince herself that this time around it would be fine. The research that she had done for herself are very well presented in this book, citing social scientists and exact publication, but it is also accompanied by the personal opinion of a modern woman. It spans from the concept of marriage in an isolated village in the mountai...

It never occurred to me that I would step over the line. I know this is wrong. My parents would freak out if they ever knew. I can already hear them in my head. "You're better than this. Don't go to that side." But I'm done. Months of restless nights, one after another. All my sweat, blood and tears, sacrificed for nothing. I'm tired of having to always come last. I'm exhausted from having to settle for the bare minimum. There's always someone better. There's always someone else who won over me. And when they're there, I ceased to exist. I am nothing but the smallest obstacle to those I consider my rivals, easily pushed aside. Not anymore. I can handle the heartbreak no longer. I knocked. The door swung to reveal someone who stared, then swung it wider. I guess I do look desperate. As I sat amongst pots, skulls, bird feathers and candles, he took a jar and sprinkled flower petals over me. He then sat down in front of me and smok...

I think most of you guys already knew that I ‘fasted’ from Instagram a few weeks ago. I am warning you this writing is ironic and not going to inspire you to uninstall the app the time you finish to read this.  I planned to quit Instagram for seven days but I pathetically lost and only managed to do it only for five days. Originally, I did it because I felt like my life was a complete mess. I had this seriously huge pile of tasks waiting to be done but I just couldn’t finish them and all I did was scrolling through my phone. It was actually very frustrating and I just spontaneously deleted the application. The five days I’ve been through without Instagram is absolutely not life changing, that I can tell you. Lol. If there’s one thing to learn is it is about myself and how much I’m already consumed with that social media. For instance, when I was doing the smallest activity like eating out with my friends, I unconsciously grabbed my phone and wanted to update it to the social me...

The proliferation of shooting cases in US, and worse, the shooting cases in schools where the perpetrators are mostly underage civilians has reached its peaked concern that something is in dire need to change regarding the gun ownership in the country. The debate, though, is not showing any sign a change is going to be made soon. Despite the fact that the country has lived to see how many victims- innocent young victims- to die in the cases, and the rest of them experiencing a horrifying trauma, it is pretty questionable why such reformation needs this long of a debate. However, there is an interesting idea that US should follow the step of Australia gun law reform. The Australia has managed to dramatically decrease its gun violence since a mass shooting is Tasmania 30 years ago. Their reformed gun law has become one of the most comprehensive firearm ownership standard in the world. One of the requirements includes 28 days waiting period in order for people to get a gun due to a ...

When I was 5, I wanted to be everything. Like, everything . I wanted to be a pianist, ballerina, archaeologist, teacher, doctor, singer, actor, carpenter, gold medalist; you name it. When I was 10, I focused on my most apparent ability: speaking English. So I decided I wanted to be a translator when I grew up.  Failing that, I want to be an author. When I was 15, I realized there's too many people who are also able to speak English for a translator to be a lucrative job, and that I always got bored before finishing a story. So I got confused. At the very least there's one criteria: I want something that has to do with arts. Out of all the careers I thought of, being an architect sounds not only artistically challenging, but also cool because it's all about "clever engineering". So that's why I signed up for an Architecture major. Now I'm nearing my twentieth birthday, and honestly, all I want for my life is peace, quiet and freedom. It's amaz...

It has been talked a lot how the internet is not safe anymore that our personal data is apparently a valuable commodity to be sold in the market. Honestly, I was sceptical before. It never occurred to me that a regular teenage girl living in Bandung would have her personal data stolen, I thought that only people who work for the secret intelligence service or people who searched for suspicious keywords on the internet would be the interest of this kind of data mining. Funnily enough, I discovered the truth while I was searching for the information to write in this prompt, so cheers to that. Our personal data turns out to be selling like hotcakes for any industry that needs customers, which is probably every industry. Our behavioural pattern on the web, what kind of things that we search on Google, or what kind of website we visited the most and of course our identity such as our gender, location and et cetera are being recorded and then sold to companies. So according to the miner...

People are angry over the recent leak that Cambridge Analytica has datas of Facebook users, and started the #DeleteFacebook campaign, basically telling people to move elsewhere to socialize. It got so huge even Elon Musk joined in. Question: has this stopped the data mining? The answer is no. Even if you delete Facebook, you get tons of other apps that Facebook still owns, and therefore controls. An example of this is Instagram. In case you haven't realized, Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars back in 2012. So technically, they would still be able to mine all your data from there. Move to something Facebook doesn't own? Twitter gained 70 million dollars from it back in 2014. Google keeps literally every search word you've ever entered, even the ones you erased off your history. Good luck living without Google. These social media companies gain money, and it's how they sustain their platforms. The corporations that get the data need it for business devel...

On November 5, 2013, the rectorate issued a letter of appeal for an appeal not to smokin on campus. Unpar’s Rector publishes this policy with health reasons and also makes Unpar better, other campus policies that have banned cigarettes within the campus are also the reasons that motivate the rectorate to publish the policy. This policy is spawned positively from various circles, although there are some refusals than some students who claim to be smokers.                 The rector is very seriously eager to implement this policy, where the circular letter published on November 5, 2013 informs us that this policy will take place 1 week after this letter is circulated, more precisely on November 11, 2013. The rectorate seriously wants to keep the policy which is still quite new in this Unpar scope. One of the seriousness of the rectorate is the direct coordination with security in the implementation of sanct...

The Indonesian government has prepared a lot of things to welcome Asian Games 2018. Not only renovating the stadiums and infrastructures, many people also urge the Indonesian government to reduce air pollution in Indonesia. In 2017, the air quality monitoring conducted by the Environment and Forestry Ministry showed that the level of air pollutant in Jakarta had reached 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Even if it did not exceed the national standard which is 65 micrograms pcm, it exceeds the standard set by World Health Organization which is 25 micrograms pcm. The air pollutant in Indonesia mainly caused by motor vehicle, forest and land fires, power plants and smelters, construction waste, and household activities. The government should focus to reduce air pollution since it might create problems at Asian Games. Many international athletes that come to Indonesia to compete might get health problems that will lead to poor performances or sickness. This premise also supported by the...

                  In April 2019, the whole people in country will finally vote again to determine the future of this nation. Rumor has it, Jokowi, our incumbent president, plans to go to the poll once again. But what’s more surprising is, Prabowo, who already lost to Jokowi in the previous 2014 election, is also planned to nominate himself as president candidate once again. Seeing this fact, many people start to consider what if we combine this two, Jokowi become the president candidate and Prabowo as the vice candidate?                   According to a survey conducted by Saiful Mujani Research Center, 67% Indonesians agreed if Prabowo accompanied Jokowi as his vice president candidate in the upcoming election. Now the question is, will this wish come into realization? Unfortunately, (or fortunately) according to so...

                It just a dream and always be a dream for a great country named Indonesia to be an unforgettable host of international event like Asian Games. To be a host of international event actually has been predicted and prepared since governance of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono by built “Wisma Atlet”, which should be the biggest sport facilities in South East Asia that projected to facilitate the international sport event. But as we know as well that dream fail because of corruption that succeed to floor the building. Another dream to have great sport facility came when Jokowi elected as Jakarta governor and promise to build BMW Stadium and then Jokowi elected as president and this plan took over by the phenomenal Ahok. But once again this governor show on how plane and promise without execution has be a tradition that rooted as the culture of governance in Indonesia. BMW stadium that has been well planed ...