Let's Share Our New Experiences

Okay. Here I am, in Illinois. Precisely, Urbana Champaign. 

I know that may be nobody will visit this blog again. But arriving in a small town like Urbana Champaign from NYC suddenly reminds me to all activities in St Johns Fulbright program. Somehow, I miss it. Particularly, I miss the life of the city, how people are so crowded, how facilities are available everywhere and its Halal Food :p. However, let me begin my story in this blog. I am sure this can be a great place to share our university. 

Well..well..well. Here I am, again, in Urbana Champaign. So different with NYC, UC (Urbana-Champaign) is filled with many green spaces. The farther you watch, the wider the green spaces are. I love it. The wind also blows so smooth and little bit cold, but sometimes it is suddenly shining around 2 pm. I am pretty sure not so many people live in Urbana, especially if it’s compared to NYC. Sometimes I wonder where are the people here. The road is so empty, the cars are countable, and the people are missing. At the time, I was thinking I could bring a gun and hunt like in resident evil. Of course that can’t be, but at least I can hunt for corn here. there are some positives and negative things I want to share here compared to NYC.

See? this is a downtown, can you see any human here?

FIRST positive thing. UC is extremely CHEAP ! I am so happy after knowing this matter. When I arrived here, I was fetched by friends who have been studying here. they brought me to the grocery store named Meijer. The price there is insanely cheap. You can imagine, I bought 2 giant doses of cereal only for 6 $. 12 big chicken wings only by 2 $. And laundry here is just 2,25 $ (washing and drying). The greatest thing here is that, if you feel unsatisfied with what you bought in 30 days since you bought it, then you can bring it back to the store and your money will fully back to you. I don’t understand why this policy can work since many students harness this loophole to buy and return things. funny. This store even has a facility named self counter, where you can count your groceries by yourself and pay it, of course, by yourself. 

SECOND positive thing. University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (UIUC) has great views and spaces (as you can see my picture below). I love how the green always nearby me every time I walk on the street. There is no subway train here. But if you have an Illinois card, then you can ride on bus for free all day long. I also live in Orchard Downs, on campus apartment, that also offers a great green comfort for you and your family. 

Economics Department of UIUC

Backyard in my apartment

FIRST negative thing is related to cultural exposure. Almost 99,99% students in my program are asians. Half of them are from China and Taiwan. There is only one American, and several people are from Turkey, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala and Azerbajan (sorry Tamella for write it wrongly).  I even met 12 people from Indonesia in the same class. What a reunion -.-Students are kind of grouping each other, like they prefer to use their native language to speak, which is not really good for my English development skill. I sometimes joke to an American student that he actually the only international student in the class. 

SECOND negative thing is related to the pleasure facilities. I can tell you that NO OFFICIAL APPLE STORE HERE. I still have no idea where people here spend their vacation. They must be going out of the town. 

However, in conclusion, UC is the great place for you who loves silent, peace and safe. You can sleep on the green grass in the campus all day long without being interrupted. You can also save much money here (which is very good for me). You can also eat many sweet corns here (seriously, corns are VERY cheap here). But last but not least, UC is the great place for student to concentrate and study. 

Another beautiful chapter of memories

Oh!!!!!! The last week.....
Now, when I am in deeply love with the city....it's time to leave. The city embrace me with love and gave me much more then I expected. St. John's University made it more beautiful by giving the opportunities to explore the city in many different ways from heights and lights of times square to volunteer service at City Harvest. I am really grateful to everyone who is directly or indirectly related to this program. Can't say more........
No goodbyes......
World is so small and we will meet again....hopefully!
Sayonara........
Keep in touch...
Love you New York
Love you St. John's
Love you Fulbrighters.................................:):*

A close-knit group of intellects

At my first day here I could not wait to go my university. However, with time passing by I got to know my colleagues more thoroughly. I discovered that most of them have a unmatched personality with sparkling intelligence. With each conversation,  I mean those serious conversation not the funny ones, I got a new perspective of life I have never thought of before. It’s great feeling to be surrounded by all such intellects. I wholeheartedly wish that all of you guys move forward professionally and assume the highest ranks whereby you can make your countries and the world a better place.

Annotations.

One of the nicest things that we had to do as Fulbright scholars at St. John’s was to show our annotations. Why?

Most of the people that I talked about it weren’t sure what the assignment was, so we started asking each other what the other person was doing. Hopefully Daniel sent us an example.

I thing this happened because in some countries the idea about showing your annotation for a paper work is not common, for me it was a whole new concept. So I did it I still don’t know if I did it well. But I must say that it was pretty interesting for me.

At the beginning I thought that we had to show our papers, and all the annotations that we have done for the essay, whit the highlighting, our notes and all of that, and I thought that is pretty cute, but then I understood that we had to create a new paper.

So thank you Daniel it was quite interesting.  

Three weeks of Pre- academic program

Three weeks of pre academic program were very informative and I am sure I will benefit a lot from what I learned here. Reading & Writing classes gave a broad idea of what to expect and prepared me for my Master's in some aspects. Listening and Speaking class definitely helped us to improve our skills. Also, now we know better how to talk at the classes and in general in academic topics.

Thank you Daniel and Marica! :)


Workshops after the first classes were focused on our daily life adjustment, which definitely is important in order to avoid any problems and be more concentrated on our studies.

Thank you Casandra , Shea and Dasie for taking us to the excursions. It was amazing!


Special thank to Sue and Aaron for being with us from very beginning :) 


I appreciate all your valuable contribution.

Why did the Immense Talents End Tragically?

Amid many of us are talking about New York, in this last week preAc program in NY, allow me to write something not related to NY. This is actually only my personal thought. Yesterday I was quite shocked when knew that Robin Williams died at 63. I was shocked by his died, but got more shocked with the way his death : apparent suicide. Why?

I am not a huge fan of Robin Williams, but at least I watched some of his movies like Jumanji, Mrs. Doubtfire and Night at Museum, and I know that he is a great talent. This reminds me to two influential singers that gives immense inspiration to my life. I believe that there is a lot of talented singers in the US, but I believe there are only few of them who really talented, no lip-sync, no background dancers, no naked, no erotic dance, and their live performance even better than recorded versions. No offense. And yes, they both died as a drug abuser, tragically, in the room, another one in the bathroom. 

Michael Jackson is the history in the US music industry. His ability in creating rich, beautiful, unique, combined with his feminine but rocky voice and incomparable moonwalk dance bring him to the A-list artist. He was the most awarded artist of all time with 23 Guinness World Records, 40 Billboard Awards, 13 Grammys and 26 Music Awards. But did he happy with his life? during his life he has a lot of money, but no freedom. He pushed himself to much to jump to the top by himself until he started abusing prescription to make him sleep and relieve. He took pills every time he got stress. In his last of his life, he even must struggle to gather some dollars to pay his utilities. How can be the once-most-famous singer with the highest paid rate finally dead in his room by overdose. Alone.  

Two years later, another great singer, Whitney Houston, the only singer with 7 consecutive billboard hits who famous by her thick high 5 octave tone voice, found dead in her bathroom because of overdose heart attack. Houston is the most awarded female artist with more than 600 awards in her life. She can sing Gospel, Soul, Pop and R&B that always followed by her platinum selling rate. Did she happy with her life? during her life she has a lot of money, but no freedom. She pushed herself too much until she even couldn't hit her tone. Her addiction to drugs and cigarettes drag her to death in a very early age. She stressed by her follower who always took her picture as if he was a game. Every time she got stress, she was back to pills. How can be the once-most famous singer with the highest paid rate finally dead in a hotel’s bathroom by overdose. Alone.

So why the immense talents end tragically?

Perhaps the theory of money is able to explain it. Immense talent is an extremely valuable resource for one person that can generate welfare (say it: money) so much. With money they can buy anything they are willing to buy. But another important thing is, human’s willingness to buy has a limit. That is why the use of money is an asymptotic parabolic function, it starts increasing at the beginning but when it reaches its top point, it will decrease slowly, because human will realise that at the peak point of this money function, they are still not able to get satisfaction. That is why the multibillionaires such as BillGates finally ‘trash’ their money and treasures in charity, in helping others, because he doesn't even know what he wants next. Human finally realise that what they’re looking for is not only about buying something, it is not only about money. Human always ask more and more money without knowing what they're going to do next with their money. When this happens, without good money management, money will flow to illogical usage, in case above, to drugs. In that case, they might think they are strong enough since their money will be able to cover them through medication or insurance. This is the condition when money manipulates rationality to be irrational. Well, maybe money is not only the root cause of this problem. But at least, it contributes one portion to the tragedy. 

Then, if money actually doesn't make human happy, what things actually Michael and Whitney want to get in their life?

There is an interesting statement to close this perspective from Oprah Winfrey when she gave her commencement in Stanford graduate in 2008.

“ I love money. Money is good for buying things. But having a lot of money doesn't automatiacally make you a successful person. What we really want in this life is not only about money. What we really want is MONEY and MEANING. We want our work and our life to be meaningful”

Do you have good sense of humor? Are you sure about that?

Have you ever thought how much humor mean to you? Personally I believe that humor is very important in our life. With humor you can make friends or enemies, get attention of female/mail or even move faster on your career path. However it is impossible to measure the value of a humor like we used to do in science, because humor is unique and individual.

Humor varies from black to white and from rude to polite. Sometimes it could be hard to adjust to humor in your new society because jokes could be completely different. For example friends of mine used to joke like that: “Oh, Sviat you are so stupid! Even infant can understand that!” or “My grandmother without shoes plays soccer better than you!”. Thus I’ve felt great contrast when bankers joke like that: “I’m the best banker in the world” or “We are the greatest bank in the USA. Chase? Who are they?”. But it was very funny.

In addition to this your job makes a huge impact on your jokes. In chemistry we used to joke like that: “ –Why you have such a long fingers? –I used to clean test-tube often” or “Whenever you feel sad just remember that there are billions of cells in your body and all they care about is you”. Someone find this joke weird, but chemists from my department like them very much.

Also groups of people who spend a lot of time together have they own joke topics. It could be quotes from popular films, youtube’s videos or famous phrase. In my country we used to say: “Huston! Huston! We’ve got a problem” – when we have some topics to discuses, usually these topics are not so important as in Jim Lovell situation.

Thus the only proper end of this blog should be:

 “The old man says:
Behold, once the time was, when I went to the store with five dollars and came back with a bag of potatoes, 2 loaf of bread, 3 packs of milk, cheeses, packs of tea and 6 eggs. Now what? ... In every place video cameras installed.”

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