Foreign Policy magazine, 2013 Global Thinkers issue. I stared at it for a few seconds.
"You've read this?"
"No, but I've seen the 2012 edition."
"Well, you can give these to whoever's still around."
I said goodbye to Scott and left. Burns Hall feels different now, just a few days after Malaekahana Retreat.
It wasn't the content of Foreign Policy that struck me, but what happened around it. Flashback to August 2013 - Ramadhan had just ended, I had recently turned 28, and I was getting ready to leave Jakarta for this peculiar place called "APLP Land." No idea what that land would look like, but I feared I was going to be tested, like the Land only welcomes the intellectually deserving. So I brought the FP 2012 Global Thinkers issue with me, on the plane to Honolulu. I brought nothing else to read to make sure I read the darn thing.
"You've read this?"
"No, but I've seen the 2012 edition."
"Well, you can give these to whoever's still around."
I said goodbye to Scott and left. Burns Hall feels different now, just a few days after Malaekahana Retreat.
It wasn't the content of Foreign Policy that struck me, but what happened around it. Flashback to August 2013 - Ramadhan had just ended, I had recently turned 28, and I was getting ready to leave Jakarta for this peculiar place called "APLP Land." No idea what that land would look like, but I feared I was going to be tested, like the Land only welcomes the intellectually deserving. So I brought the FP 2012 Global Thinkers issue with me, on the plane to Honolulu. I brought nothing else to read to make sure I read the darn thing.
(really. This is a shot of me slouching on Incheon Airport with the FP issue, waiting for my flight to Honolulu. As we've often discussed later, as I was sitting here wondering what life has in store for me, MCK was sitting 10 rows away from this picture, doing something productive.)
Flash forward to December, and me leaving Burns Hall. Like I said, it feels different now. Everything feels different, now that most of G13 had left. I thought I had to deal with separation and farewells, but the 2013 FP in my hands reminded me how the difference between pre- and post-Malaekahana Retreat is not nearly as crazy as the difference between pre- and post- APLP. From August to December, I had made 31 new friends. Learned about leadership and emergent issues in Asia Pacific. Met people from the Pacific, learned about Hawaiian culture, lived in the United States, all for the first time. Lived in a dorm for a second time. Reflected intensely. Traveled to China. Visited entrepreneurs and cultural centers. Had several fights. Started a lifelong friendship and watched it crumbled in front of me by New Year's. Volunteered at two TEDx events. Inexplicably got accepted to GIST.
It started with FP, and now it ended with FP.
Zack Galafianakis used to do a web talk show before he was widely known. It's a parody of talk shows: guest stars playing themselves, Zach a mumbly, awkward talk show host, you know the rest. The show is funny, but the title was pretty brilliant; it was called "Between Two Ferns". Whatever happens will happen, planned or improvised, but all that hard work and written jokes would happen, basically, between two pot of ferns.
Let's try another one. I spent this New Year's celebration in Los Angeles with a friend. It was an impulsive trip, and for the umpteenth time during APLP, I couldn't really believe I had gotten to do impulsive trips like this. I hadn't known my friend for too long, in fact I met her when she visited Indonesia a while back, and she was one of the people who encouraged me to apply to APLP. And now here I am.
That's not even as weird as thinking about where I was last New Year's. NYE is a big thing for me, for I had this odd habit of celebrating it in the office. It was just my idea of a romantic idea, being in the office alone, as everyone outside celebrated. I had already christened my office the year before though, so to welcome 2013, I flew to Penang, Malaysia and took an overnight train all the way to Bangkok, and did the same trip going back. Alone. That turned out to be so much fun that I promised myself I'd do another train trip for 2014 New Year's. That was the person I was on January 2013 - refreshed after coming back from a solo train trip, vowing to do the same next year, knowing I might still be here but just trying to plan something to look forward to. At that time, APLP had not even crossed my path. The changes that happened between two New Year's. And now here I am.
It's nice to remember life not in terms of moments or milestones, but in terms of two placeholders that frame those moments. For the placeholders are often trivial and arbitrary, but they provide context and allowed you to think about the difference, before and after. Most important, sometimes you don't discover the value of the moment until you discover the frame.
I wonder what my frame for GIST is.
Flash forward to December, and me leaving Burns Hall. Like I said, it feels different now. Everything feels different, now that most of G13 had left. I thought I had to deal with separation and farewells, but the 2013 FP in my hands reminded me how the difference between pre- and post-Malaekahana Retreat is not nearly as crazy as the difference between pre- and post- APLP. From August to December, I had made 31 new friends. Learned about leadership and emergent issues in Asia Pacific. Met people from the Pacific, learned about Hawaiian culture, lived in the United States, all for the first time. Lived in a dorm for a second time. Reflected intensely. Traveled to China. Visited entrepreneurs and cultural centers. Had several fights. Started a lifelong friendship and watched it crumbled in front of me by New Year's. Volunteered at two TEDx events. Inexplicably got accepted to GIST.
It started with FP, and now it ended with FP.
Zack Galafianakis used to do a web talk show before he was widely known. It's a parody of talk shows: guest stars playing themselves, Zach a mumbly, awkward talk show host, you know the rest. The show is funny, but the title was pretty brilliant; it was called "Between Two Ferns". Whatever happens will happen, planned or improvised, but all that hard work and written jokes would happen, basically, between two pot of ferns.
Let's try another one. I spent this New Year's celebration in Los Angeles with a friend. It was an impulsive trip, and for the umpteenth time during APLP, I couldn't really believe I had gotten to do impulsive trips like this. I hadn't known my friend for too long, in fact I met her when she visited Indonesia a while back, and she was one of the people who encouraged me to apply to APLP. And now here I am.
That's not even as weird as thinking about where I was last New Year's. NYE is a big thing for me, for I had this odd habit of celebrating it in the office. It was just my idea of a romantic idea, being in the office alone, as everyone outside celebrated. I had already christened my office the year before though, so to welcome 2013, I flew to Penang, Malaysia and took an overnight train all the way to Bangkok, and did the same trip going back. Alone. That turned out to be so much fun that I promised myself I'd do another train trip for 2014 New Year's. That was the person I was on January 2013 - refreshed after coming back from a solo train trip, vowing to do the same next year, knowing I might still be here but just trying to plan something to look forward to. At that time, APLP had not even crossed my path. The changes that happened between two New Year's. And now here I am.
It's nice to remember life not in terms of moments or milestones, but in terms of two placeholders that frame those moments. For the placeholders are often trivial and arbitrary, but they provide context and allowed you to think about the difference, before and after. Most important, sometimes you don't discover the value of the moment until you discover the frame.
I wonder what my frame for GIST is.