It's finally the time to apply to UNIVERSITIES!

I have been busy for these past months (AS ALL IB STUDENTS KNOW) with my Internal Assessments, EXTENDED ESSAY, TOK projects and IB stuff alike that I can't HARDLY wait to get over with in less than a month time. Aside from my already heavy workload, I still have college applications to fill out and SAT test coming up in less than a month! Imagine how crazy it is to be me right now!

Speaking of college applications, IB World Student Conference had helped me a lot in preparing me for college applications since my experience while attending the conference gives me inspiration to construct a fairly good college essays! Plus, I am also applying for scholarships at UBC and NYU Abu Dhabi (and I am cordially ASKING anyone who reads this entry to wish me luck to be accepted for the scholarship! AMEN!) that I think would be an amazingly great opportunity for me if I ever get accepted! But additional scholarship offers wouldn't hurt, would it? Soooo if you're reading this entry and seeing how interested and inspired I am to get a scholarship, please if you have any information on excellent scholarship, let me know at safiranabila.gjis@gmail.com! Your help is greatly appreciated and I really hope the best for all my friends out there writing their college applications, essays or even applying for scholarships too just like me!

xx Safira

CAS Project: Energy Champion

Last month, as a closing activity for the Energy Champion competition that my school has been in for the last couple of months, the Energy Warriors committee at my school decided to do a video showing us 'protesting' the school to be more energy efficient and sustainable, in which the video will be featured at the closing ceremony of the competition. Firstly, for those of you who has no idea what Energy Champion is, it is a nation-wide energy-saving competition that my school was invited to compete since February 2012 and I was appointed to be the leader/head of the committee at my school. The competition sees how each school has been making efforts in being more sustainable in addition to encouraging students to be creative in doing so, by creating energy-saving competitions in which my school has won 4 of the monthly competitions.

Over the past few months, the Energy Warriors group that I led has brought the school into a more sustainable environment by achieving our 'green' goals that we are hoping to continue even if the competition has ended. Through the competition, we had accomplished several goals such as installation of automatic door-closing tools in each room to avoid any AC air coming out of the room, implementation of 23-degree AC policy, establishment of energy watcher regulators in which students take turns in patrolling around the school to check classes if they follow the energy-efficient regulations, various campaigns about the cause, recycling bins and several others more. 

To end the program, the video is made as a form of campaign that we hope will reach more audience outside of the school (as we will post it in social medias) and encourage them to be more energy-efficient. In the video, I acted as a reporter interviewing staffs and students of my school about the 'protest' aimed for the school to be more sustainable and energy-efficient. The reason we chose it to be like an infomercial is so that people would get interested in the cause and actually understand the message and hopefully join us to spread the word in addition to implementing sustainability in their daily lives.

As one of my CAS projects, I am really glad that the competition ends with unexpected number of goals achieved in less than a year. This activity I believe benefits not just myself from providing a service for the school and the community by using my creativity and various social skills, but also benefit the community in general as it gets more sustainable and more knowledgeable about energy-saving hence undoubtedly it will not long before the community starts their own move.

Below are the pictures from the shooting of the infomercial. Enjoy!

P.S. The competition ended October 6th, 2012 and Global Jaya International School won Overall Best School Performance and Best Home Energy-Saving categories!

I MISS EVERYBODY. PERIOD.

GAT Group N!

Here's the video our group made for the Global Action Village presentation and see for yourself why we were the only ones who got standing ovation!

Cast/Crew:
Fabian Liebermann (Germany)
Nafis Jalil (Bangladesh)
Nika Moeini (Canada)
Neelesh Nair (India)
Safira Nabila (Indonesia)
Jenny Mackay (Canada)
Shival Vyas (India)

Camera: Lee Lip Jiang (Singapore)
Editing: Arlie Coles (United States)

"We can't save our planet.
It's not realistic to think that
We can make a change.
Our behaviour is hurting the planet.
It's not always true that
Small actions can help.
Destroying
Is easier than
Creating
'We won't innovate,' but
Some think
We can provide a solution.
They are wrong.
'We can't save our planet.'"

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Post-Conference Blues?

It's exactly a week from the last goodbyes with my fellow IB mates at the conference and I am feeling really sad right now that it is REALLY over and God knows when we all can meet again! The conference has brought me deeper into the multicultural world; meeting friends from all over the world and getting to know their cultures from their own perspectives, to name few of the perks being at the conference. After the conference, I too, start to think and live in a more sustainable way than I was before. In Indonesia, the habit of recycling and reusing old and used things has not been established so it is quite hard to maintain and implement such habit into the household. But after all the seminars and discussions I attended while at the UBC, I became much more aware of the environment and started to teach my family members how to correctly live sustainably not only to help us but also the world as a whole.

Moreover, I have been active in the Energy Warrior committee at school, leading all my juniors to conserve energy and be more active to preserve the environment. Inspired from the conference, I passed on the precious knowledge I obtained at UBC to my peers in hope that they will in turn spread the words to a larger community and start the sustainability move! In a matter of week, I will also be standing in front of the whole school to present the whole experience I had at the IB WSC UBC Conference including all the sustainable knowledge, Canada experiences and of course multicultural friends I became friends with while at the conference!

All in all, I am now having a mixture of happiness and sadness running all over my body knowing how it's been a week since it all ended and now I am back to the IB reality of IAs and EE but also quite excited and happy seeing how I can now start the sustainable movement throughout my school and the surrounding community in hope we can become the leading sustainable community in Indonesia!

P.S. REALLY hoping all of us can reunite again at a post-IB conference or something :(

IBWSC 2012: Day 5

July 27th, 2012

They say time flies when you are having fun. Well indeed it was. Suddenly, it is the last day of the conference and I woke up with this sadness knowing that we will part ways in a matter of hours and for some of us we may never see each other again. This conference has brought a lot to me; knowledge, friends, life lessons and other valuable things that you cannot find anywhere else. Everyday, different IB speakers with different topics have taught me a lot, especially about sustainability that I will be able to spread their words to my peers once I get back to my school. This conference will truly be one of the most unforgettable memories where I gained precious knowledge and I am sincerely honored to be a part of. 

We started off the day by hearing Paul Nicklen, a photographer from the National Geographic, shared his journalist/photographer career and experiences in the Antartica and the Arctic. He was a quite laid-back and hilarious guy, telling his experiences through the pictures and stories that never failed to amuse us. He showed us the "supposedly-cannot-be-seen-by-the-public" stills and footage of his recent-not-yet-to-be-published expedition to the Antartica. We saw lots of amazing sea creatures photographed showing their antics to the camera like we have never seen before. I have never expected to see such creatures be able to show their peculiar and odd sides to foreign devices. Seeing these pictures made me feel really sad how the polar caps are melting away and these animals are now highly in risk of extinction as their habitat is slowly crumbling away. 

He went on to explain and show us further what he saw while in the Antartica and the sight of the next few pictures were just too disturbing for me to believe those incidents happened. Pictures of people shooting around narwhals to get their tusks were so heart-breaking in addition to hearing how so many narwhals died for only one tusk taken. His words inspired us to be more loving to the environment and it all came back to being sustainable entirely to benefit not only human race, but also the animals' and plants' population in the world as a whole.

Ultimately as a PETA activist and animal enthusiast, I got even more inspired by his seminar not only to try my hardest to spread the word, but also do the action myself just like Quinn Runkle did in UBC. The speakers here in UBC had not only taught me what's all there to know about sustainability, but also the most important elements to make the change; ourselves and our values. Without having the value and drive to make the change, it is impossible for the change to take place.

In the afternoon, all of us gathered together for Global Action Village where each GAT group presented their sustainability projects to be brought back to each of the students' school. Each of the presentation inspired and gave me ideas what to do for my CAS project this upcoming year ultimately focusing on sustainability and how to make the school and surrounding environment better. But if people can be biased without being thought as unfair, I'd choose my group project to be the best as we combined creativity and teamwork while still being coherent to the message. People seemed to agree with me when they gave us standing ovation at the end of our video :p All in all, the session has been enlightening and truly inspiring seeing all of the results from previous sessions at the conference.

Later in the evening, the soccer world cup was held and Canadiens won third place! Tho we didn't get the first place, I am still proud of my teammates and how our captain, George, fairly put every people in the team in the game! Afterwards, we headed down to the beach and had a great time BBQing by the bay and played beach games, although my asian's gen could not brace the windy and chilly weather! Later on after we got back from the beach, we had the last moments of togetherness by not sleeping and talked to each other throughout the night reminiscing the memories that have been made over the past few days. Yes, it was only less than 7 days we have been together, but our friendship will certainly last forever and would not be forgotten. 

IBWSC 2012: Day 4

July 26th, 2012

Today we had Robert Winson, an alumni from UBC Sauders Business School who now works for a film company in California. His seminar topic is about how successful comes from honesty. So from the start, he straightforwardly told us that the root to success is is honesty, as we cannot achieve something or know exactly what we want without being honest to ourselves or the people around us. What caught my attention is that, in the middle of the session, he told the story about him coming out to his parents, which is an example of an honesty from ourselves. He said that if he didn't came out like that and be true to himself he would never be the successful person that he is now. I got so inspired by him since now I realized that without being honest to ourselves and open to other people about our feelings and wants, we would never get to the top since in order to do that we have to be true with positivity in mind. In the awaited Q&A session, I asked him how does he keep yourself from being unmotivated from all the mistakes he had to make before he knew what he wanted and his purpose of life. His is answer is motivating to me, as this came from the person who is so positive and so open-minded about who we really are. He said that just keep being positive and be who you are not what people want you to be, that way you'll keep yourself on track on the process of being successful.

After this fully inspiring session, I met again with my GAT group to discuss about what we are going to do in the Global Village session on the last day of the conference. Basically, we were compiling ideas from all the members about the activities and how we are going to achieve the activities aimed to promote sustainability in our environment. Our GAT group is divided into two teams; the planning team and action team. What it basically is the planning team is the team who will present the ideas to promote sustainability that us as a whole had came up with the other day and explain about how we are going to bring the project further to each of our school in hope the activities can work well and bring sustainability to the school's community mind. The action team, on the other hand, is going to make a viral video, which was one of our ideas, that promote sustainability as an example on how we can apply the ideas to promote the cause. Being in the GAT group meeting, especially today, brought an important realization to me that us, IB students, even though we are still young and inexperience in so many things, we had already made such project like this that will not only benefit the school, but also the school's surrounding community as well.

After lunch, we finally headed out to the Vancouver Aquarium, a trip that we all anticipated for the whole week. Vancouver Aquarium, again, opened my eyes to such diversity in the world that even gave me more motivation to be sustainable and promote the cause to save the mother nature from tearing apart. When I went around in the aquarium listening to the explanation from the staff, I realized that even the Vancouver Aquarium has been sustainable for a long period of time in hope to save and conserve different kinds of animal there is. From this I realized, that Vancouver is one of the cities in the world that has been sustainable and this makes me want to bring all the ideas that we have accumulated in the past few days back to my country in hope I can make a big difference in my country's way of life, improving it to be more sustainable like Vancouver.

At 5 PM, we all headed out to an area near the Vancouver Aquarium to have a picnic and it was lots of fun seeing that this is the last moments we can be together before the conference ends. Then, we went to the ship dock where all 300 and more of us got to the cruise and had a really good time! We bonded with each other through music that was played all night long in the cruise, making me kind of sad that we are ending all of these meaningful and fun activities tomorrow! Even so, we can still get in touch with each other and hopefully all of our CAS ideas will work out in each of our school.