National Resurgence Day

Hari Kebangkitan Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Resurgence Day) is fell on May 20th every year. May 20th 1908 was the day which Boedi Oetomo organization was formed. It is an organization with an idea of the awareness of unity for Indonesian people as a nation towards its independence.

This year’s Indonesian National Resurgence Day was celebrated together with the first operation of digital broadcasting systems for Indonesian television channel. A consortium of Indonesian digital broadcasting held an event inviting Indonesian president, minister, and other important guest. In this opportunity, the president had a 5 minute teleconference each with 4 remote area in Indonesia and 2 Indonesian student association outside Indonesia. The student associations was Indonesian Student Associations in Tokyo (PPI Tokyo) and Indonesian Student Associations in Den Hag, Netherlands.

For the teleconference in Tokyo, Indonesian embassy in Tokyo invited students from Tokyo area to attend the teleconference. Since TIT campus is near the embassy, I and 6 other  students from TIT attended this event. The head of Indonesian Student Association in Kanto area (including Tokyo) is also from TIT. His name is Muhammad Surya Negara.

There was nothing special about the teleconference systems. SCTV (the host of this teleconference) used Skype as their teleconference media. They used normal internet connection line provided in the embassy so that why the image quality sometime was not good.

Even though the image quality was not so good, the voice was satisfactory for the nice conversation. Surya talked with the president about increasing the content quality of Indonesian Library and Universities. Surya Also told the president about the life of Indonesian students and worker here. He said Indonesian Student and Worker were a good working people and was recognized as a good person by the Japanese. The most important thing he said was we, Indonesian, had the same or better quality of brain with other people in the world so we had to be proud of it. The problem is only whether we are eager to be better or not. The things is that the result will be as good  as our effort just like in many developed countries. (Saya, sebagaimana orang-orang Indonesia yang berada di Jepang sini juga berpikir demikian, tidak ada yang spesial, usaha dan fasilitas lah yang menentukan)

After the teleconference ended, I had some chat with the staffs from the embassy. I also chatted with Mr. Ketut, a specialist in political science for Indonesian Department of Foreign Affair. He explain me about political knowledge. It was really interesting. I have to spend more time in the embassy. I want to… because in this place, I have a chance to meet many great people. It is a very rare chance in Indonesia, even in ITB.

Ganbarimasu!!

Hashimoto Cup 2009

In the last golden week holiday, May 5th, Indonesian Student Association in Kanto Area, Japan, held the 5th annual futsal competition for Indonesian students and professionals in Kanto Area. Each year, the competition is held in Syokugyodai, Hashimoto, so that’s why this competition is called Hashimoto Cup. Main reason why it is held in Hashimoto is because it has a good indoor futsal field and easy to borrow it for the competition.

This year competition had 10 teams participated. The teams were from Indonesian students from many institutions such as Tokyo University, Tokyo institute of Technology, Waseda University, Sekolah Republik Indonesia Tokyo, etc. The other one is from professionals & trainee who work in Kanto.

The competition was divided into two stages, the first stage is group qualifying. Each group had 5 teams competing for the first and second place that had the right to enter the second stage, semi final and final. Each match had two periods. The duration of each period is 5 minute for qualification stages, and 7 minutes for semifinal and final stage.

This year, TIT was in the second group competing with Sekolah Republik Indonesia Tokyo (SRIT), Hashimoto Dai (Syokugyodai), Denshi Dai, and Komaba Student association.  In this group TIT achieve the second position by loosing from SRIT, winning from Komaba and Densi Dai, and was even with Hashimoto Dai (2008 winner).

The rising star in this competition is the SRIT. The players were high school student. The youngest player team compared to other team which is in university grade. SRIT got a perfect score by winning from 4 other team in the second group and winning the other two teams in finals included defeating Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT).

In the semi finals, TIT won from Tsubasa (2007 winner) while SRIT won from Waseda Dai. And in the final where TIT come to face with SRIT again, TIT had to face the defeat from SRIT by score 1 – 0. The goal was made at the last minute of the game.

Though TIT lost in the final and won the second winner, it was better from last year where TIT was the third winner. I don’t know what the prize was for the first and third winner but TIT, as the second winner, received 10 piece of thermos bottle. Even though I didn’t play in this competition, only supporting the team, I also received the prize since it was 10 people from TIT who attended the competition. Lucky me ^^