I’m not really into politics. In fact, I’ve had my trust broken for oh-so-many times by the politicians I used to admire. However, if you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might’ve known that last Sunday I somehow joined a campaign program held by a candidate who is running for the mayorship in next month’s election. The program was a kind of The Amazing Race called GARARETEK (Game Amazing Race Ngangge Teknologi). We got to run around the city, solving riddles and racing against time whilst uploading pictures through Twitpic and this app.

The general idea behind the game was actually new and creative. It was a good and out-of-the-box idea for a political campaign. I like how they used technology effectively for the campaign. (FYI, campaign programs in Indonesia usually consist of dangdut music events where the candidates give a statement in one occasion. But the program itself mostly consists of singing and dancing.) However, there were also some things I need to highlight here.

First, the use of text message to deliver the clues of our next destination. Let’s be honest here: no one uses text message nowadays, when the number of chatting apps increases every day. I’m quite sure that the carriers pay less attention to the text message services compared to data connection services. For an event which had the word technology on its name, the use of text message was understandably questionable. Why used text message? There were some groups that couldn’t finish the race just because they didn’t receive their clues at all. What a shame.

Second, it was clearly seen that the committee didn’t prepare the event quite well. It looked as if they prepared it in only four or five days. The rules and guidelines for the game were confusing and unclear. Also, the participants were told that each of us would be given a voucher, but then they told us that the voucher couldn’t be given that day. We had to come back the next day to get it. I still haven’t had mine today because I’m too lazy to go back and pick it up. In my opinion, they should have had the voucher on their hand before the event.

But above all those matters, I still think that this event was a good campaign program. This is how a campaign program should be: creative and standing out of the rest.

Since I have taught all the materials for the semester but we still got plenty of times before the exams week, we had movie screening recently. The movie I chose was Mean Girls, because I think Mean Girls is funny yet full of lessons that the students can learn about bullying. After watching it, I asked my students to write down the moral values that they could get from the movie. Most of them listed down things like responsibility and “You will not be happy by ruining someone’s life.”

Their responses for the movie got me thinking about a lot of things. “You will not be happy by ruining someone’s life.” It made me think about karma. Do you believe in karma? In some ways, I do believe in it; in the other ways, I don’t. Just think about: if karma does exist, the world would be one big circle of hell.

Suppose A hurts B in one way or another. Karma takes her role in a form of someone, let’s just call that someone as Z. Z hurts A. Then karma takes her role again in a form of someone else we call X. X hurts Z. And so on and so forth until it becomes a sick cycle carousel.

There are times when it crosses my mind how easy it is to try and break someone’s heart because they’ve hurt me or talked bad about me behind my back. But is it worth it? Will it make me happy? Will it make me genuinely happy? Wouldn’t it be easier to just forgive and let go? Isn’t my life already perfect now?

I should think about it whenever I feel that the world is unfair just because someone is talking bad about me. Hating is exhausting, ya know. How much time do you waste everyday just to think about someone who is not worth thinking?

Stop it. Just stop it.

Source: google.ca via Natalie on Pinterest

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I pulled an all nighter the night before my student teaching examination. I’m one badass procrastinator who managed to pull the preparations for the exam until only a few hours before the exam actually started. I ended up getting only two hours of sleep. However, there’s a price I have to pay for that decision. My sleeping schedule is screwed up now. In the next 10 minutes, I’ll be trying to fall asleep. Though I’m going to wake up in less than 3 hours because tonight is London derby time (The Blues versus Spurs).

But srsly, I need to sleep.