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[beatrixcendana]

When life getting harder, don’t give up.

I am happy that I am still alive until this day and I always feel better and better everyday.

I remember when first time I tried to get a job in this country (after I graduated on December 2018) and it was really hard. I applied to many companies, from small to the big one. Some of them got back to me but most of them didn’t. 

I just had 90 days in my status visa to get a full time or part time job. Luckily, two weeks before my 90 days ended, I got an offer to get interviewed in a small company. I passed the first interview and I was asked to get the second interview a week after. I was almost hopeless but I believed that I could get this job even though the place was too far from my place. I even didn’t know how I could drive there...

Then, the interview day came. I was hoping they could give me an answer as soon as possible because I almost ran out of time. They couldn’t promise about that. OMG, what should I do next??

Then, i asked my advisor whether I still had time to find a job. She said no and I directly looked for a volunteer work on internet. Even, I asked my mentor to hire me if she needed my help as a Teaching Assistant or everything that related to my major. Actually, I didn’t want to be TA but I had to do that.

In the end, my mentor got back to me and asked me if I was ready to help her as a TA. Oh God, I felt better, finally, I could have something to report to the government that at least I had work to do, not just waiting for a job.

I am really happy that I can handle this job really good. Right now I work as a TA and also a data analyst. I am so thankful to get so many help from my mentor and people around me.

As a lesson, don’t wait for something to come to you but try to get it even though it is tough.

Two years ago, I was hoping that I could work at the big company or hospital and get more money. But I think I need to start from small thing before I reach the big thing in my life. And here I am, I start from small thing but I am happy to do that.

Hopefully, in the next year I could find a better job and better pay.

Feeling blessed,

Beatrix.

Sat, Nov 23, 2019

12:05 AM PST

[beatrixcendana]

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Today I have done so much things!

From ironing apartment, cleaning bathroom, cooking Indonesian soup (soto ayam) for about 2 hours lol since I did all by myself and still baking the banana cake.

It is because of my neighbor. He gave to me two boxes of banana, which is I didn’t know what to do with so much banana. Hmm I decided to give some to my other neighbor and my dog’s sitter LOL.

MY WEEKEND is soooo much fun! hahahaa

Tired but fun!

[beatrixcendana]

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Good thing about making friends with Indonesian while you are abroad.

They love to share what they have and never hesitate to help other Indonesian. I am so grateful to meet Indo friends in the group of Indo dance!

Mbak Annie (one of the members) and me were practicing dance for last week’s performance and while we took a rest, she brought me lot of stuff and asked if I needed the instant spices to cook at home. I said hmm yeah, I wanted rendang spice since I don’t think I can buy the complete raw ingredients from Asian market (not all available in my nearest Asian market) and she agreed to give everything that she had. Furthermore, she never cook with spices. She just bought and kept it, that’s why most of the spices are expired. LOL.

I took few spices that I need, like sour vegetable soup (we call it ‘sayur asem’ in indonesian language), rawon and other spices. SOOO HAPPY!!! Finally, I can cook rendang and other Indo foods again that are hard to cook!

[beatrixcendana]

July 11,2019

Another side of Tacoma area

Summer time is coming but the weather is still the same like in the winter :D

[beatrixcendana]

Joined Choir again!

On Tuesday, July 16,2019

I was so happy that finally I could express my feeling again through singing. From Tina, one of my school friends, I decided to join choir club in the church (actually I knew this club exists since last year but I didn’t have time to come and I didn’t have friends to go with and this club is intended for public, not just for Christian and immigrants). It was free and fun! I loved the people there and they welcomed us. But beforehand, we needed to sign up. Tina knew a lot of people already even though it was her second time being there! 

The friendly lady in the registrations desk asked me whether I just wanted to visit or willing to join the member. I answered that I really wanted to join and she printed me a name tag from small machine (dunno what that is called lol). Then, I got invited to join the circle. I was sooo excited even though my voice is not really good haha! And we sang lots of inspirative songs and there was a guest speaker who shared her experience while writing her poem and song lyric. Finally I found what I really wanted to do!

By the way, I knew the instructor already since she came to my drama performance last year and she praised me that I did a great job in dancing! Thank you so much! I will definitely come again next week and more following weeks!

[beatrixcendana]

GRYFFINDOR: “A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect — he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.” –Robert E. Howard (The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane)

[beatrixcendana]

Thanks for always standing beside me even though in the end I need to let you go..

anonymous

[beatrixcendana]

Spring and cherry blossom

I love pink. That’s why I love cherry blossom.

Before I decided to study abroad, I always had a dream to feel what it looks like to live in the place that has spring season and bike around the town to see cherry blossom.

I fall in love with spring since I learned about that from my Taiwanese teacher. He taught me that word in Chinese (Chun). Since then, I started writing that word almost everyday even I put in my notebook to remind me that I have to reach my dream to go to abroad and feel what spring is.

MY DREAM CAME TRUE!

I left my country to finish my degree in overseas. I asked everyone what if I can see real cherry blossom, not just what I saw in the TV.

They said, wait until March or April.

Hmm, okay fine. I just wait even though I don’t know how to get there without car. Relying on bus? Not a good choice.

Relying on my friends? They are busy, fine.. I understand people have their own business during weekend.

I feel lonely.. But I got a chance when my advisor took me to see the university in the big city. Ahhh, sort of coincidence. I could walk to the park around there and then.. I saw CHERRY BLOSSOM everywhere! I felt it was a dream. Oh no, I wasn’t. 

I learned that dream can come true even my dream is sort of weird thing. But for me, it is a big deal.. 

since then I believe if you care about your dream, use every chance you have to pursue it..:D 

[beatrixcendana]

Happiness, are you still there? Sorry, I am too late to come to you because I have been so busy thinking about something that has no value anymore..

Happiness, there?- Beatrix Cendana

[beatrixcendana]

I have learned that sometimes we need to let something go not because we don't want it anymore, but because it is not worth it to be a part of our life. Life is too simple but we keep trying to make it harder. Remember, you deserve better than this. [Period]

Beatrix Cendana

[beatrixcendana]

Ich hab nur Augen für dich, alle anderen interessieren mich nicht.

C ❤️

[beatrixcendana]

When you love someone, it doesn't mean you have to give everything that he/she needs and as a result, you forget about yourself..

Beatrix Cendana

[beatrixcendana]

Ordinary-looking pajamas are transformed into "smart" ones with five strategically placed sensors that measure heartbeat, respiration, and posture.

High tech ‘smart’ pajamas that monitor heartbeat, breathing and sleep posture to give you the perfect night’s rest could soon be available, scientists have revealed. Within two years the 'smart’ nightwear could monitor and help improve sleep. 

The key to the ‘smart’ pajamas is a process called reactive vapor deposition, according to the findings presented at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2019 National Meeting and Exposition. This method allows to synthesize a polymer and simultaneously deposit it directly on the fabric in the vapor phase to form various electronic components and, ultimately, integrated sensors. Unlike most electronic wearables, the vapor-deposited electronic polymer films are wash-and-wear stable, and they withstand mechanically demanding textile manufacturing routines.

The sensors are connected by wires made from thread thinly coated in silver so they are completely undetectable for the wearer. The pajama has five discrete textile patches with sensors in them. The patches are interconnected using silver-plated nylon threads shielded in cotton. Signals collected from the five patches are sent to a tiny circuit board that looks and functions like an ordinary button. Data are wirelessly sent to a receiver using a small Bluetooth transmitter that is part of the circuitry in the button. The garment includes two types of self-powered sensors that detect “ballistic movements” or pressure changes. Four of the patches are piezoelectric. They detect constant pressures like that of a bed against a person’s body. [Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress.] The triboelectric patch detects quick changes in pressure, such as the physical pumping of the heart which provides information on heart rate, the researcher said. [The triboelectric effect is a type of contact electrification in which certain materials become electrically charged after they are separated from a different material with which they were in contact.] For the study, the team tested the garment on volunteers and validated the readings from the sensors independently.

[beatrixcendana]

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Bao can’t wait to go out and play with other dogs in sitter’s house :D

I was just making the video and watching somebody playing Pokemon Go nearby the church haha...

Wanna see more? follow his IG: @bao_thegolden

[beatrixcendana]

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I have voted! How about you?

Don’t forget to vote in next Pemilu on April 2019! 

[beatrixcendana]

The Naturally Rational Brain? How People Use, and Lose, Preexisting Biases to Make Decisions

From love and politics to health and finances, humans can sometimes make decisions that appear irrational, or dictated by an existing bias or belief. But a new study from Columbia University neuroscientists uncovers a surprisingly rational feature of the human brain: A previously held bias can be set aside so that the brain can apply logical, mathematical reasoning to the decision at hand. These findings highlight the importance that the brain places on the accumulation of evidence during decision-making, as well as how prior knowledge is assessed and updated as the brain incorporates new evidence over time.

This research was reported in Neuron.

“As we interact with the world every day, our brains constantly form opinions and beliefs about our surroundings,” said Michael Shadlen, MD, PhD, the study’s senior author and a principal investigator at Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. “Sometimes knowledge is gained through education, or through feedback we receive. But in many cases we learn, not from a teacher, but from the accumulation of our own experiences. This study showed us how our brains help us to do that.”

“When we look hard under the hood, so to speak, we see that our brains are built pretty rationally. Even though that is at odds with all the ways that we know ourselves to be irrational.”

As an example, consider an oncologist who must determine the best course of treatment for a patient diagnosed with cancer. Based on the doctor’s prior knowledge and her previous experiences with cancer patients, she may already have an opinion about what treatment combination (i.e. surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy) to recommend — even before she examines this new patient’s complete medical history.

But each new patient brings new information, or evidence, that must be weighed against the doctor’s prior knowledge and experiences. The central question, the researchers of today’s study asked, was whether, or to what extent, that prior knowledge would be modified if someone is presented with new or conflicting evidence.

To find out, the team asked human participants to watch a group of dots as they moved across a computer screen, like grains of sand blowing in the wind. Over a series of trials, participants judged whether each new group of dots tended to move to the left or right — a tough decision as the movement patterns were not always immediately clear.

As new groups of dots were shown again and again across several trials, the participants were also given a second task: to judge whether the computer program generating the dots appeared to have an underlying bias.

Without telling the participants, the researchers had indeed programmed a bias into the computer; the movement of the dots was not evenly distributed between rightward and leftward motion, but instead was skewed toward one direction over another.

“The bias varied randomly from one short block of trials to the next,” said Ariel Zylberberg, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Shadlen lab at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and the paper’s first author. “By altering the strength and direction of the bias across different blocks of trials, we could study how people gradually learned the direction of the bias and then incorporated that knowledge into the decision-making process.”

The study, which was co-led by Zuckerman Institute Principal Investigator Daniel Wolpert, PhD, took two approaches to evaluating the learning of the bias. First, implicitly, by monitoring the influence of bias in the participant’s decisions and their confidence in those decisions. Second, explicitly, by asking people to report the most likely direction of movement in the block of trials. Both approaches demonstrated that the participants used sensory evidence to update their beliefs about directional bias of the dots, and they did so without being told whether their decisions were correct.

“Originally, we thought that people were going to show a confirmation bias, and interpret ambiguous evidence as favoring their preexisting beliefs” said Dr. Zylberberg. “But instead we found the opposite: People were able to update their beliefs about the bias in a statistically optimal manner.”

The researchers argue that this occurred because the participants’ brains were considering two situations simultaneously: one in which the bias exists, and a second in which it does not.

“Even though their brains were gradually learning the existence of a legitimate bias, that bias would be set aside so as not to influence the person’s assessment of what was in front of their eyes when updating their belief about the bias,” said Dr. Wolpert, who is also professor of neuroscience at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). “In other words, the brain performed counterfactual reasoning by asking ‘What would my choice and confidence have been if there were no bias in the motion direction?’ Only after doing this did the brain update its estimate of the bias.

The researchers were amazed at the brain’s ability to interchange these multiple, realistic representations with an almost Bayesian-like, mathematical quality.

“When we look hard under the hood, so to speak, we see that our brains are built pretty rationally,” said Dr. Shadlen, who is also professor of neuroscience at CUIMC and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Even though that is at odds with all the ways that we know ourselves to be irrational.”

Although not addressed in this study, irrationality, Dr. Shadlen hypothesizes, may arise when the stories we tell ourselves influence the decision-making process.

“We tend to navigate through particularly complex scenarios by telling stories, and perhaps this storytelling — when layered on top of the brain’s underlying rationality — plays a role in some of our more irrational decisions; whether that be what to eat for dinner, where to invest (or not invest) your money or which candidate to choose.”

[beatrixcendana]

Introduce Zhen (pronounced: cen) which is the German Shepherd and she is 12 weeks.

And introduce Bao (pronounced: Pao) which is the Golden retriever and he is 5 months 1 week.

They both are brother and sister. They have different character but I love both!

Wanna know more about them? Follow Zhen’s Instagram @zhen_thegsd and Bao’s @bao_thegolden :D

or join their Facebook page @baoandzhen