Memory Lane

By Helena Natanael - Sunday, January 31, 2021

Let me walk you back to the memory lane and tell you a kinda long story of me in this post :)

My dad always encouraged me to get my own pocket money since I was an elementary student. Back then, I was a little girl with an idea that having a prince charming will make my life happily ever after, just like in Disney Princess stories, hahaha. I love to read and also love to write. I love to write in my diary about anything: my frienemies, my friends, and also some crush I have back then. Guess who they are? some of them are seniors in my elementary schools that I don't even know their name, all I know is they like to play basketball in the school yard every break time and they are sooo cool, hahaha. The others are celebrities, like Jerry Yan, Lee Min Ho, Kim Bum, and more lol.

Not long after the "diary era" of me, I was introduced to computer and I fell in love with technology. I liked playing The Sims after school until bed time, and I had myself registered too in Friendster, Facebook, and Blogger. I remember I can spend 50k rupiahs a day just to text with my friends, then I will not have any credit in my number to call or text anymore, and my parents wont recharge it until next month, they give me only 50k rupiahs a month! so I start chatting in social medias to keep my credit in my prepaid number safe. I remember using eBuddy, Messenger, YM, gee feeling so old right now! Then, I started to write more about chit-chat and what I feel in the blog (because a diary is so childish, huh). I also like to decorate my blog, have a blog walking too and get inspired from some fashion blogger. They have a lovely minimalist blog layout, and also have interesting stories written in every post. And... my blog started to transforming into a fashion blog.

After my dad retired from his job, right before I enter college, I start to think how can I help reduce living cost. I started to get serious with my blog, and it worked, at first I just got 1 piece of clothing to endorse, but then I get lots of things from internet endorsement (yes, this is way before instagram popular), like necklaces, watch, shoes, dresses, beauty box, shampoo, and painting.. I also started to have some online shops pay for a banner in my blog (until now), and I'm paid using dollar :D

My interest in fashion blogging is improving when my mom bought me a DSLR camera. I also learn how to take beautiful photos, I really like take pics of nature and some subjects. Usually I ask my best friends to become model, hahaha. Some of the results are somewhere in the past posts of this blog. But life is a roller coaster, sometimes you're up there and sometimes you're down below. After getting happy of my new hobbies, I run into an unfortunate event: I lost my camera after photo-hunting. Losing my DSLR feels like losing a part of me, I feel incapable of taking photos anymore. I start to seek new way to getting pocket money because I don't have the spirit to continue my blog. I found one: being a private mentor! Thanks to RuangGuru, I can have monthly income for my pocket money. I can fulfill most of my needs in the college on my own, my parents only paid for the tuition fee, but other than that I can buy or pay using my own money from mentoring.

When becoming a mentor for Mathematics and Science, I also learn how to be patient with youngsters, hahaha. And I learn to speak clear instructions and explanation so my students can easily understand. At first I do mentoring just for the money, but then I got bonus: I feel happy when I can help my mentees achieve good grades. I feel useful to others.

This is the feeling that I feel again when I am selected as a speaker in a Webinar, representing my company, Tokopedia! Woohoo! I really am excited for this! It's the second external publication that I have, after being featured in KOMPAS newspaper in 2012. I hope I can help the participant in the Webinar to know more about web programming and have a fruitful session with me.

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Who's the most important of all?
At one day, there are some body parts gathered to decide who is the most important of all body parts. Eyes said, "I am the most important! Because without me, human cannot see anything and feel hopeless". Legs said, "No, I am! without me, human will not be able to walk and will need help from other human for the rest of their lives". Brain said, "oh for sure it must be me, without me, there will be no life, I control all of inner and outer organ in a human body!". With little hesitation, Anus speak up, "I believe I am important too!". All the other body parts laugh at Anus, Brain said "no one will said that to you!". Anus feel sad and then he stopped doing his job. Within 2 days, all the other body part feel very sick and cannot operate too, because without Anus, all the toxic cannot be dumped out of the human body. Finally Brain said to Anus, "Hey mate, sorry for what we've said to you, you are important, all of us is unique and important to do our jobs, no one is the most important, without you we'll also die slowly".

- from a book that I read when I was a junior high school girl, I forget where I read it.

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Tokopedia and Skilvul "Selalu Bisa Belajar Coding"

When I was younger and naive, I always think that the only success parameter is having my name in Forbes 30 under 30, or being a doctor who saves countless lives, or being a scientists who invents something good for mankind. Now I realize, every job is a success and important, as long as you have purpose in that job. As a Software Engineer, I feel like having purpose, building something useful for lots of people in Indonesia.

I've always wondered, when will I see my name and pic representing my company, and now it's already achieved. So, it's time to dream bigger dream. Now what? :)