Ahoj, 2016!

Thank you for the great time, 2015… let’s hope 2016 will be as wonderful 🙂 Now, a little bit of what happened at the end of 2015… To explain the title, which means “Hello, 2016!” in Czech, it’s because for the new year’s eve we decided to join a friend’s plan to stay at a holiday house a.k.a ferienhaus somewhere up in the mountains of Czech Republic: with 5x bedrooms and 2x bathrooms/toilets for 10 – max. 22 persons, READ MORE

Cat Café in Singapore

My sister just arrived in Singapore when we decided to visit the Chinatown area. Right after we got out from the MRT station, we stumbled upon a cat café! It is called The Company of Cats, located in the Mosque St. Now, a little bit of history about cat café… The world’s first cat café, “Cat Flower Garden”, opened its doors in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998. Then, the concept blossomed in Japan and became very popular, with seventy nine READ MORE

Singapore Night Festival

The festival happened around two weeks after Singapore celebrates its golden jubilee, August 21-22 and 28-29. Actually, I found out about this festival accidentally, I’m so glad I didn’t miss it :). After the ‘cat & bear’s trip to Tioman Island, Malaysia’ (will write about this soon), we arrived back in Singapore on Monday, August 24 evening. On our way to the nearest 7 Eleven to have our dinner, ehem… ’cause I was craving steamy ramen cup :D, we READ MORE

Singapore for Summer

I’m in Singapore! And I’m going to be here for the whole summer, 3 months to be exact, for some kind of an internship at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Working on what? Of course… deep learning, baby! 😀 Well, at least… working on an attempt to solve my research problems using deep learning, because it has become the buzzword of today’s NLP research. Yeah, that’s it. I actually arrived 2 weeks ago, but only recently I READ MORE

Trip to Bali and Ijen

The first part of my Bali trip with my family can be read here.  Om swastiastu… cat and bear were in Bali! Finally the cat could show (a small part of) Indonesia to the bear. We spent 6 days travelling around in Bali. However, one night was actually spent in Banyuwangi, at the east coast of Java, since we wanted to hike to Ijen crater. In front of Ijen crater *WARNING* this post is going to be looong :D. READ MORE

Bali, the Island of Gods

After more than 20 years living in Java, its neighboring island, I finally get a chance to visit Bali! This famous island that people often mention whenever I tell them I’m from Indonesia, “I know Bali!” they will say :). “Yeah, but I’ve never been there,” is what I usually respond with. Well, even though the Bali strait can be easily crossed with ferry from the eastern point of Java, my hometown is in the west part READ MORE

The Bear and Bahasa Indonesia

So… finally! The bear had a chance to visit Indonesia 🙂 Selamat datang di Indonesia, Beruang! [Welcome to Indonesia, Bear!] picture is taken from here Before coming, the only phrase he knows is selamat malam [good evening/night]. After spending a week in Indonesia, Bali and Banyuwangi to be exact, he almost becomes a native speaker of Indonesian language! …kidding :p. But at least he knows some more words now, hehe. Selamat pagi, siang, sore, malam After READ MORE

Di Tanah Air

Akhirnya, kembali berada di tanah air. Dan akhirnya… sampai juga di Bali! :D. Berasa banget kalo lagi di tanah air, karena cuma di tanah air… mesti hati-hati dikibulin supir taksi di airport. “Mau ke mana, Mbak?” | “The Stones hotel, Legian” | “150 ribu aja, Mbak” | “Meh…” *melenggang berlalu*. Akhirnya saya bayar 100 ribu sih, lumayan hemat 50 ribu. pada gak bisa ngeliat cewek jalan kaki sendirian. Setiap beberapa meter ada aja yang nyapa, READ MORE

Of A Very Shiny Crystal Ball Called Google (Part 2)

Zürichsee, from Arboretum, a small park at the very top of the lake Exactly one day after I published this blog post here, a recruiter from Google contacted me, saying that there is an open position fitting my profile: Analytical Linguist, NLU in Machine Intelligence (Thai and Indonesian) Understanding natural language is at the core of Google’s technologies. The Natural Language Understanding (NLU) team in Google Research guides, builds, and innovates methodologies around semantic analysis and representation, syntactic parsing READ MORE

Workation in Gran Canaria

this picture was taken from here A workation is a trip or vacation where you must perform some task for your regular work. Although you may be in a new or exotic locale, you may have to attend meetings, telecommute, or complete projects for your job. — www.wisegeek.com I think companies should really consider to do this once in a while *grin*, this is what it looks like… Luckily, as a PhD student I have READ MORE