• parami(ta) — means ‘perfect’ or ‘perfection’ in Pali or Sanskrit.
  • topia — from the Greek topos meaning ‘place’.

My name is Paramita. Yes, it’s my full name, without any surname. It is actually quite common in Indonesia, in the old times, but not for the next generation after mine *well, even in my generation it’s already considered outdated*. My family and some friends call me Tata, but I’m also known as Mita or Parmith or Cat. Looking back to all of the troubles I’ve got regarding my name–especially outside Indonesia–I’m seriously considering to change my name in legal documents, adding my father’s first name, Mirza, as my surname.

I spent my twelve years of education *primary to high school* in my hometown, Bogor, Indonesia. After graduating from high school, I went to Bandung Institute of Technology, majoring in Informatics. And four years later, I could finally wore the robe, the weird hat, and got my ‘license (to work)’. I worked for almost 2 years at a multinational electronic company, which produce.. well, electronic stuff of course. My responsibility was to make sure that the firmware we launched is free of bugs. I left the company because I had this dream to travel around Europe while pursuing my study.

Thanks to the Erasmus Mundus scholarship, I was able to continue my master study: European Master in Language and Communication Technologies. I spent my first year of study in a beautiful city called Nancy, in the region of Lorraine, France, enrolled at the University of Nancy 2. Then the second year in Bolzano, Italy, una citta bellissima e tranquilla, as a student of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (FUB). After graduating, I got the chance to pursue my doctoral study at the University of Trento, fully funded by Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy. I have defended my PhD thesis in early Spring 2016 *yay!*, and now I can be officially called Dr. Paramita (Mirza). Since then, I became a PostDoc researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany.

Finishing my PhD study is only one item in the long list of dreams of mine. There are still a lot of them waiting to be come true. Among them are also the things that I want to try at least once in my lifetime *preferably before my twenties ends ;)*.

  • see the world
  • feel the snow I finally know what the snow feels like ^^ (December 2011)
  • skiing checked! I’ve had my first skiing experience, so much fun!! But a lot of pain afterwards (February 2012)
  • bungee jumping
  • jet skiing
  • wall climbing tried! (June 2012)
  • diving checked! During our workation in Gran Canaria (November 2014)
  • gliding I flew! With a help from a pilot I know 😉 (January 2013)

I love my mom’s cooking, and hope someday I can cook as greatly as she does. I like to play with my cats, they can relief my stress. I used to be a bookworm, but dedicate so little time for reading lately. Painting, crocheting, handcraft projects, and web design, are my other hobbies. Music, movies, (online) shopping: those stuff really make my day. But don’t get me wrong, I’m also an adrenaline junkie, and *ehm* a rule breaker. Traveling becomes my passion in the recent years.