Reinhard Gouw's Journal

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Hi, I know it's a little bit late, but Happy New Year 2017!

It's been a tough and challenging year, 2016. How was it for you?

The global mainstream tradition of new year is to make resolutions for the upcoming year. It's rooted from the hope of starting anew. Opening new page and started writing better stories, with better self and better aspects of life. Many people put their hopes in new year, but there are also a lot of people loathing on this resolutions thing. New year new me bullshit, they say.

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Personally, I believe in the new year new me that you call bullshit (as I always posted about New Year). It's not exactly new year new me, but more like new year better me. I am a believer of new year. I always put some hope each year that I'll be better than the year before. It's like a starting line , or a re-starting line for me. Honestly, it's not always new year. It can be birthday, start of a university life, start of my 20s, etc. Yes, I'm the kind of person who needs to restart now and then, and I attach those restart buttons on special occassions, with the biggest ones including new year and my birthday. 

I believe it's not only me, but a lot of people has this same need of restart buttons in their lives. It's not just to function better, it magically brings and boosts new motivation, spirit and energy. If you're not used to that abstract concept of restart button, it's not our business. If you can evaluate yourself and get better daily without boosters like this, good for you. Call it new year new me bullshit, but don't force and try to get us discouraged in our belief just because it doesn't work the same way for you. In the end, all of us has a good intention anyway: to be better. It works and boosts me up, so you can't say it's bullshit if it works out differently to you.

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And yes, I've set another resolutions for 2017! In 2016, I've managed to check off some resolutions. Some of them are:

- Joining an international dance competition

Astro Asian Battleground 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!
- Getting A- on thesis defense.
Thank God, I got A and graduated with Magna Cum Laude.
- Join a gym membership

Celebrity Fitness! Need to be more discipline though.
-  Eat more fruits.
Yes, I ate a lot of fruits and rujaks last year.

Those were 4 out of 15 goals that were accomplished. Sounds sad, yes. But aside of that, I am grateful that there were also many unexpected goodness in 2016. Like my dance life unlocking a lot of new milestones (open classes, workshop out of town, etc.), I was entrusted to handle some events, became a member of EO and LO-ed Keith Martin, which raised my confidence in English, and all the other goodness I should be grateful for.

Thank you 2016. You've been tough, yes. The year of me emerging from a simulation called education to the jungle called real life. The adaptation, the quandary, the confusion. May this year be better.

So I'm putting my belief on resolutions again this year. Those resolutions are:
# DANCE
- Join more dance competitions (concept)
- Make dance videos (1 video/quarter, so minimum 3 in a year)
- Join more international dance competition

# FINANCE
- Less hedonism, plan a more realistic budget and money-saving strategy
- (secret financial goal)

# HEALTH
- Gym more, minimum of 2x a week

# FAMILY
- Prioritize Sunday for family day. If fail, replace with any day of the week

# COLLEGE
- Apply scholarship in Australia. If fail, apply for WHV.

# PERSONAL
- Read books (1 book/quarter at minimum)
- Blog at least once a month
- Less gadget, more earth. No gadget while walking, only while waiting.

11 goals. The big theme for this year is actually the year of saving money for me. Let us see.
I hope you have a great new year, peeps. Good luck for your resolutions!

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Hello everyone. As Christmas is not too far behind I would like to say Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrates!

I didn't feel any Christmas vibe at all throughout the month. I was busied by IDN CreativeFest. 

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Speaking of IDN CreativeFest, it was an event by IDN Media. Formerly it was called Hyperlink Project. Me and Lia was entrusted to handle it. We worked for the event just the two of us, and it was a little too much to handle. haha in the end it wasn't perfect at all, but we did it anyway. Thank God!

The whole experience made me learn a lot. How to deal with clients, guest speakers, vendors, and excute the event itself. The moment I enjoyed the most was execution day. Managing and coordinating people (freelance crew). I've always loved event execution. Seeing what you've prepared for some time turn into reality. It's priceless. I'm thinking about having my own event organizer one day. Not wedding or birthday, but youth events. It would be awesome!

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So, back to Christmas. I was blank about what I wanted to do on Christmas. I thought about going to the church just like most people do. But my family was out of town and I was at home alone. My childhood church, Mawar Sharon, was distributing tickets before Christmas and I didn't request them. I was really unprepared at all for Christmas. So I decided to just duck at home and wait for the mood to go to church alone.

I started going through my things and decided to clean up before new year. When I was clearing my wardrobe, I thought hey, why not donate these? Charity. It's one of the kindest thing to do on Christmas. Going to church hasn't been my style lately anyway. So yeah, I started to take some of my clothes and put them in boxes. Then I thought, why not make this bigger? So I created this.

We might not have the same belief, but we have the same kindness inside. What's the reason not to share?

Hi. I promised I would post this, so here you go.

After the qualifier in Tangerang, we went to Malaysia on October 6th-9th to compete in Astro Asian Battleground 2016 with other crews in Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Japan, and India. How cool is that?

When we arrived, we went straight to our hotel, Dorsett Hotel. It's the first time in my dance journey to be accomodated with 4-star hotel. That's just so generous for a dance event organizer. Well it's TV show, what did you expect? We met a lot of dancers. We created a short video for our intro, sharing about why we dance. Along this trip, I was forced to speak English a lot. Which is REALLY GOOD for me since I need some improvement in spoken English.

The first and second days were full of general rehearsals. We repeated our concept for a lot of times, rehearsed about how we enter and exit the stage, where we should face when doing this, when doing that, where we should stand during announcement, et cetera, et cetera. Wow, extreme details, I thought. It sure isn't an easy task to be TV program producer.

Along the rehearsals, we watched other countries bringing out the best of them. Every country has different style of dance, has different strength and uniqueness. And it just ignited sparks in us whenever we watched each other dancing our own concepts. We start to get this pressure, anxiety, and at the same time fire to perform our very very best and exceed our limit. We used to compete with people in Indonesia, and then this was just a whole different story.

A lot of unexpected misfortune happened in the 4 days journey. Some from external circumstances, and some from our own negligance. I, being me, over-organized everything. I kind of wanted everything to just go perfectly without any flaw. But you can't expect that from a journey you know nothing about. Even when we prepared this and that, there's still a lot o things that are outside our expectations.

On the other hand, we didn't only get to know dancers from other countries, but also know each other deeper. Every night, we evaluated and prayed. How we could improve the dance. How we could improve our attitude in this competition, our positioning. What we should do to be a better representation for Indonesia in front of other countries. We learned a lot of lessons not just in skills, but also mentally and morally.

The 2 days felt really long (imagine waiting for 13 other crews to rehearse, then start over again and again till midnight!), but the awaited day finally came. A lot of supports started to pour in; on Instagram, LINE, and other platforms. Showed how much people around us supported us. It gave us strength, confidence.

As much as we wanted to win this, to at least bring Top 4 to the name of our country, I sticked with my same mindset. The ultimate focus is not winning. It's always been to give very best of you. If we focus on winning, we would focus on outrunning other crews. But when we focus on ourself, to just enjoy the music, give the very best, and pour our heart out, it will all come out naturally. In the end, performing our best is the goal, and winning is always just a bonus.

Overall, it was a really valuable experience.

Thank God for this overwhelming opportunity. Believe it or not, it was one of my 2016 goal to join an international dance competition. (I wrote it here!). Now it's checked off the list. And I have another beautiful thing to share from my whole dance journey later. God always has His own beautiful way to make things happen, doesn't He?

Thank you to my team: Kak Black, MP, Bobby, Edope for the sacrifices and hard work to exceed the limits, our temporary manager Wisnu, our leader Ko Edo, and everyone who gave their support.

More to come! :)