I love sale but I was lost to Haneda…

Today, I rushed to catch the earliest train from Fujigaoka to Eda, at 5.10. Only for UNIQLO sale!

Man, i really can’t stand to SALE. I always almost buy things on sale. That Uniqlo thing, is already cheap, Japanese people said. When I know that, I promise I’d never touch Uniqlo because my apparels were enough for me to survive for 1 year in Japan. I don’t want to spend another yen just for clothing, because I’ve already put my best effort to sent my 28 kg luggage from Narita to dormitory, and the other 10 kg I had to drag it all along Narita to dormitory. That 28 kg-luggage case, was only for my clothings. So?

When yesterday night, Mas Andy told me about there was going to be sale on UNiqlo, on 6 AM in the morning, only for 60 first persons or 200 first persons depend on the item on sale, I’ve suddenly think that, “Oh my! I don’t have any winter jacket! I don’t have enough long jane… and I think i have to buy sweater too because I never had sweater!”

Yeah, I decided that I have to buy something at Uniqlo. Simply break my promise.

Sleep for just 3 hours, take a bath night before so in the morning i don’t have to bath again, and also preparing tuna mayo sandwich for breakfast on the queing line. I did all of that, just for the crazy sale!

BUt when we came there, the line was already snaked… When the shop opens at5.30, we’re even not the first 60 nor 200.

I didn’t get that crazy sale.

But I still buy a lot of things on sale, altough they didn’t cut the price as high as the previous but already closed sale items.

At 7, we (with Fafa, Dita, and Risi) has finished shopping. Ah, not yet. We planned to go to flea market in tachiagawa – 1 hour from mizonokuchi — since yesterday. So when Dita and Risi came back to the dorm, I went to my lab because I don’t want to spend another 1 hour just to go to the dorm again, vice versa. I waited for them until 9.40 and then rushed to Mizonokuchi to meet Dita and Risi again.

Yah, after 1 hour in the train, we finally arrived at Tachiagawa. Suddenly a man said “Assalamualaikum” to me and Dita and offered us coffee from vending machine. He’s a moslem and i think he’s just to happy to see another muslim in Japan. I shook my head, but Dita said yes. My… I don’t like coffee… He puts 100 yen for each of us so we can get any 100 yen drink which were only coffee. I murmured “I don’t like coffee” and pointed my finger to milk tea, which costs 130 yen — unconsciously.

I was really embarrased to did something like that. He has to put another coins so he could say, “Fine. Take whatever you want.”

Me and Dita and Risi, at the end, got the milk tea for each of us.

Anyway, we hunt for boots in the flea market and finally got something boot shaped but I’m not sure whether it’s have a girly or masculine look for 900 yen. Risi got the best boots really suits for her, I think, at the same price. Pity for Dita, she didn’t find any boots suits for her quite big foot for Japanese people.

So she just bought a cheap boots fits on her siz but bad on design. Which I’m sure she’d not used it too often, that’s why she bought that very cheap one.

And I spend another quite lot yen there again, to be converted maybe about 1 million rupiah in total for UNiqlo sale and the flea market. Ah I really can’t stand to cheap price

Dita and Risi went to Shibuya. I want to get to the dorm as quickly as possible because I haven’t pray, I’m really tired, and I have a lot of homework.

The train that I used, is not the usual train I use for everyday dorm-campus commuting. It’s even a different company. So when I want to change for the express train on the other line, like what I used to do when I want to change for express in Saginuma St., I didn’t know that it’s heading for Haneda airport, express one.

I heard that the announcement said it’s going to Haneda. BUt i have no idea where Haneda was! And I thought I will pass Kawasaki with the train heading for Haneda. And that was express!

The train door opened. I was still confused whether that was the right train or not. But something hissing in my brain, “Just try, you won’t know i f you don’t try!”

So i stepped inside and in a matter of seconds the train door closed.

Then I realized that everyone in the train has luggage with them.

I checked at the map inside the train, the express train surely went to Haneda, directly, and not to Kawasaki, which appear to be the other line of the map.

….

Panic.

Called Risi and said I was heading to Haneda. But the signal suddenly gone because the train passed a tunnel.

Can I stop at the next local station?

Of course not, that was a silly question.

What I’m afraid were, I haven’t prayed and it’s nearly out of time, I didn’t know how long does it take to Haneda. What I know is Haneda is really far.

Btw I jsut have 150 yen money left in my wallet, and my pasmo balance was 500 only. If I managed to get to Haneda and supposed to take a train back, but I have to pass the ticket gate first, my pasmo balance surely all be gone. And I won’t have enough money to take a train back to that silly station.

Can I just ask the station information officer to kindly let me not pass the gate?

Perhaps 10 minutes later I arrived at Haneda station, underground. To go back to Kawasaki, I thought that there’s no need to pas the ticket gate because there are other line heading to the opposite line.

BUt i have to make sure right?

“Sumimasen, can you speak english?”

“No.. no…”

Epp… I jsut leave him and try to find the time tables. Yeah one of them is the line for Kawasaki, but which one?

Then I emitted all of my knowledge what I learned from my course on Japanese language, which just runs for 5 meetings.

“Sumimasen, kono densha wa.. doko e… eh! Kawasaki ikimashita ka?”

It’s another guy, and he point at the line which I came with. Huh? So the line is just one for 2 ways?

Confused. I asked again to the train officer which suddenly popped in front of me.

“Kawasaki ikimasu ka?”

He nodded and pointed at that line. The same line.

Okay for now maybe I just have to believe them. If I get lost again, then it will be my fault for not knowing where I want to go to.

Thanks God I returned to Kawasaki. My praying time was gonna be finished in 10 minutes though. So I look for a toilet, get wudlu…. But I didn’t know, I suddenly took a different path from JR Nambu line which I got to continue for my train trip, and found an empty alley where I could pray peacefully!

Thanks God!!!!!

And I arrived safely at home, 1 hour later

But somehow, a pride comes in my heart :

I’VE BEEN LOST TO HANEDA AIRPORT!

And the result was…

referring to this post …

Last Tuesday (okay, 火曜日 です), I had the seminar where the assignment (which made me really crazy) was discussed.

I don’t know that there’s a page limit to the assignment, of 1 B4 page, while mine is 4 A4 pages or 8 B4 pages. My tutor told me about that 1 day after I have sent my assignment. Then he said that mine will be edited by the person who collect the assignment.

I was relieved.

But when I see the copies of assignment that were given to us all, mine wasn’t edited. Worse thing is, it even got longer because the person who “edit” those assignment seemed to add a page break between my 2 diagrams.

I can’t understand Japanese. So I didn’t have to hear whether they were questioning on my work, or laughing at it.. I didn’t know. But somehow I feel  that they’re talking about my assignment.

What I fear most, is my professor himself.

I think I haven’t left a good impression on him, because what all that I did seems insufficient enough to make him look at me. I mean, as a good student, not as an exchange student who just run and play.

Mine was placed at the latest pages of the assignment compilation. One by one, it was discussed.

Then it reached 2.50 after the assignment before mine was discussed. Suddenly everybody start to prepare their things and left… could it be that mine was not going to be discussed??

In slow motion, I saw my Sensei’s mouth opened, and speaking in Japanese of something like, “Do you have any comment for Laras’s assignment?”

The student who collect and compiled the assignment seemed to say “No”.

Owata…

“Otsukaresamadesu!”

All of them were getting out of the class.

I just stared blankly.

My “hard work” on my assignment, didn’t even on my lab friend’s minds.

….

Back to the lab.

I found that again, my umbrella was gone for the second time in the lab.

too much in my head

I wake up this morning to find out that it’s more than 1 hour and half past to pray subuh. Rushed, and forgive me God for being so late.

I wake up again the second time to find out that Fafa has already want to leave. That was 10 AM.

I realized that I have already woken up when I remember that assignment from Lab to be handed tomorrow. That’s the reason why I wake up very late because I still did the assignment until past 2 AM.

And still, it was nowhere from finishied.

Smsed Yeo told him that I could not make it to TISA lunch gathering. Second time I can’t go because of stupid reason : assignment.

Thanks God today my Strategic Innovation class was cancelled because the British-accent-woman-lecturer was going abroad. So i just stay in my dorm, to be precisely, in front of my laptop whole day eating chocolate and try to finish the assignment.

Now it’s half to go. But my mind already buzzed by some electricity generated by brain cells which seemed don’t want to cooperate. Then i opened facebook, doing some junk, changing my BUddy Poke avatar and saw Chandra encouraging me.

Humwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….

Dita was right, when she told me that I’m too much pressurized by assignments. Maybe I should take it a bit lightly. But I can’t! I cannot ask someone here. I’m all by myself now. I have to squeeze my brain alone just to produce 2 answers of 2 silly question about someone’s theory! It’s something that I don’t really know…

Opened my mailbox and found my friend in my home university, same year, has already accepted at BCG, well known consulting company with horrors about “Workaholic” and “Too smart people” clouding me. She hasn’t graduated at all, but well yeah she got it in the middle of economic recession (congrats ).

I wonder where my future lies when I just sit here, too stupid just to answer 2 questions, and run to wordpress just to give away this story.

Stupid me.

10 Things I Can Never Stop to Eat

True! I can’t stop eat them if one of these conditions has not been satisfied:

1. Very bloated
2. Start to consider about money

 

What are they?

1. Chicken cream soup
   

   It should be CHICKEN, and CREAM SOUP. Not just an ordinary chicken soup.

   That’s why my email is always “chickencreamsoup” and I’ve never think to change to a formal one

   

2. Tuna Mayo Sandwich
   

   I still remember the first time I ate it. It’s in my Uncle’s villa in Puncak, Bogor (cold one, surrounded by tea field on mountains!). My aunt made tuna mayo sandwich for breakfast and that’s when I start to like it very much.

   My recipe: tuna chunks in oil (canned), with onion, and mayonnaise in two loaf of bread.

   

3. Meat Lover Pizza
   

   I love pizza. Especially Pizza Hut, because it’s the only one known brand for pizza in Indonesia (and “meat lover” is a name for one of Pizza Hut’s pizza topping). I don’t like thin Italian pizza; I like the thick one with only MEAT as the toppings. Hehe…

   

4. Hamburger
   

   It should not be ham! One bun is never enough!

   These picture below is the Blenger Burger (Blenger means something like “when you are very bloated, you’re dizzy”), which is famous for the BIG burger in Jakarta. For this one, one is enough J

   

5. Potato dishes
   

   Any potato dishes, from “Perkedel” (mashed and fried potato – Indonesia one), Hash Browns, French Fries, Wedges, Pom Pom, Mashed… anything! I like to make my own potato dish, which should be hash brown but turned to pom pom. But my mother’s Potato SchÖtel is never bad, it’s always very good.

   

6. Garlic bread
   

   If you like chicken cream soup, you should like garlic bread too. It is one packet and I won’t change it to other substitute bread. I like to make it myself too with Baguette which turn out to be burnt L

   

7. Ongol-ongol
   

   Don’t you think that I love western food very much? Probably… But none cannot change Ongol-ongol, which is a traditional dish from Indonesia. When you say “Ongol-ongol”, it sounds like “chewy and pillowy”. Made from rice flour and coconut milk, easy to make but somehow very rare in Indonesia L

   

8. Balado cassava chips
   

   Bet it, you can only found cassava chips in Indonesia. Especially the balado (spicy) one, if you start eating one, you won’t be able to stop. It’s just like drugs!

   

9. Takoyaki
   

   Here comes the Japanese snack! Eat it while it’s hot and feel your tongue burnt, haha…

   

   Ps: I got the picture from http://tokyo5.wordpress.com and I suggest you to read it J

10. Ayam Pop
    

    Ayam pop (translated : POP CHICKEN) came from West Sumatera which is well known for its Padang Food. All of Padang Food is reaaaaaaaaaly spicy but this one is sooo plain. I don’t know how they make it but I heard it has to be cooked with coconut oil and then fried. And one thing’s obvious is; it’s a white chicken J

    

Are you someone who thinks that you can change something?

Read this, in majority, people tend to stick with their status quo
(existing condition) if they were to given a choice whether to change to a new condition or keep the existing condition without compelling incentives.

Ok, maybe you think “That’s a common sense! Please give us more worth to read post!“

If you think like that, you have to take this “Embodied Economics and Cognition” course which was held today, from morning until afternoon, where everyone had their Culture’s Day National Holiday. This course was lectured by Prof. Yamagishi from Human Science Department and a guest lecture Prof. Maya Bar-Hillel, an Israel psychologist. Despite the Israel background of her (because I think the whole course and the theory had nothing to do with it – as you know there are still conflicts between Muslim and Jewish), this course explains about Status Quo Label Bias, a paper of her and her Doctoral Student which hasn’t been published yet. So I would say that I’m lucky to had attended this course and hear something that could be useful in making decision.

There was a research conducted by Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler 1991 which bring down a theory called “The Endowment Effect”. There are two classes, where students in class A were given a pen each, and class B students are given a mug each. In every classroom, the researcher offered the students to change for pen for the students in class A, and change for mug for students in class B. The students just have to ask the researcher to change their mug/pen. If the economy theory was true, that everyone wants to do a trade, so it is expected by the end of the class, 50% of students in each class holds a different goods than they have first, because the student is chosen at random to present their interest to mug or pen. But the result was, very few students want to trade their mug or pen.

Why? Is not hard to just raise your hand and ask for change, right? The students are experiencing psychological condition, which contradict the economic theory. Roughly to say, this theory said that once you have owned something, you start valuing it higher. So that’s why people prefer status quo rather than any change in status quo offered to them, if
the new condition has advantage and disadvantage, in other word, there’s a trade off between your status quo and the new condition. Of course, when the other choice is advantageous from any side – or in other word, compelling incentives – people would dare to leave their status quo looking for a better condition.

Why? Well there are a few reasons;

1. You have to pay for the transaction cost (I’d more like to call it switch cost, which I know that it is the correct term for a cost that you have to buy when you switch or change to other things, where transaction cost is a cost you have to spend for something that you can’t make by yourself – for example, contract fee to a new supplier).

   The simplest example is, when you want to change from mobile operator A to B, you have to pay cancellation fee to A, you would spend time, energy, and money to work for the administration even the new subscription fee for B is free, you may even have to spent another time to adjust with the new mobile operator system.

2. You don’t want to get out from your comfort zone; that is your existing condition now, because you’ve already familiar with it.
3. There is uncertainty or risk contained in the new condition. Even if that you have considered the effect for the alternative choice, the risk is still there. Maybe it comes from your miscalculation, and the environment itself cannot always posses’ certainty.

This behavioral approach of decision making is also brought by Herbert A. Simon on his book “Administrative Behavior”. The concept of Economy Man, who is always rational and see for the choice that brings the most efficiency to him, is criticized by Simon because there’s more than rationality to make a decision process. That is the behavior of the man itself. Sometimes, the man don’t have enough knowledge to analyze all the alternative choice so he would choose the choice that satisfy him enough, but that choice is not the one which bring maximum advantage. And there is lots of behavioral theory that should be considered along with the rationality theory.

Another thing, Prof. Bar-Hillel tells us an example of exam system is Israel and USA. In Israel, where most of the students work under military too, the exam system is scattered in the span of 5-6 weeks. And if they feel dissatisfied with the grade, or they can’t attend the first exam, another 5-6 weeks second exam is held. And if there’s still someone who just take the exam on the second period and still feel unsatisfied with the grade, he can take another remedial in the third exam period. But in USA, the exam is just held in one week according to the regular class schedule. No remedial but you can take a summer vacation sooner J

Then the Israel University student is asked, “Would you change your exam system now to the USA system?” and the USA university student is asked vice versa. The result was, both of them reject the system offered. Why? The Israel students argued that they won’t have a time to study and the remedial. The USA students argued that their summer vacation would be interrupted. If you examined closely, the Israel students would gain “a better summer vacation time” and the USA’s would have a lot of time to study and also chance to correct the grade if they accept the offer. So, why they won’t trade it? Simple, it’s because of the status quo. For Israel students, they would have to lose their chance to remedial and more time to study in order to gain better summer vacation. People tend to be risk averter
in gain, and risk seeking
in losses. It guided you to the concept of loss aversion, where the pain of losing 1000 yen, for example, is larger than the pleasure of 1000 yen. Losses loom larger than gains. Well it’s not just only the effect of loss aversion, but also some of terms like responsibility cost, judgmental bias, asymmetric regret, omission bias, and decision aversion.

From the theory described above, it could explain why when you’re trying to establish a new policy, not everyone is willing to take it. Policy, differ by concrete goods, is something abstract that you can’t actually measure rationally because of the loss aversion and friends effect. People wouldn’t want to sacrifice the things they had now (loss) in change of new policy that actually advantageous for them (gain). If it runs the contrary, well, the company could have implemented any new system easily, no one would feel loss to the condition they’re having now.

But it’s too early to draw a conclusion that “Yes it’s hard to change something due to people’s status quo, so you have to give clear and compelling incentives to attract people get out from their status quo”. There’s something you can still do in order to make them get out from their status quo.

The paper done by Prof. Bar-Hillel and her student that I mentioned above is called status quo label bias. It shows empirically that you just have to make the people feel that the new thing you’re offering is their status quo, in other words, just label the new policy as status quo, and people will choose the status quo condition, which is the new policy.

Seems tricky, isn’t it?

She gave me an example comes from the Israel – Palestine war. Suppose that there is a land (I forgot the name, but it’s actually exists) where it was originally Palestinian’s, then taken over by Israel, and now civilized by Jewish. Israel and Palestine then want to deal for a peace treaty, but for that, the land must be given back to Palestine.

But, if the land was to be given to the Palestine, the Jewish civilian in that land had to choose an option between get out from that land, or to obey Palestine’s jurisdiction and law. The Israel chief then makes a referendum to the residents, whether they want to give away their land in order to attain peace.

“Would you give up our land
in order to attain peace?”

Of course, if the chief asked the people like that, the answer would be “NOOOOO!!” with all of the yells and cries. Unconsciously, the statement gives a label status quo to the “you have a land now” and label a gain for “peace”. So, based on the loss aversion theory, it’s obvious that they won’t give the land because they would feel loss if they want to gain peace.

But, how if it is like this;

“Do you want to give up for peace
just because you don’t want to give the land?”

Seems to be a better sentence, isn’t it? Well unconsciously, you’re giving a status quo label for “peace”, and if you don’t want to give the land, then you’re an obstacle to “peace”. You’ll lose the “peace” if you don’t want to give the land. If it’s like that, she stated that, probably there’ll be more people willing to give the land to Palestine.

So, when you want to change something, you have two options. One is to give the change with more force; more compelling and clearer incentives that everybody would love to lose their status quo now in order to get an appealing new policy. The other is, just to label the new change as the status quo, and then in majority, people would want to stay with the new option because in their head, they think that it’s their status quo.

There’s more than just listing out the advantages of new policies and tell the people about it. It’s not enough to change the people’s status quo in mind.

I hope this knowledge will not be used for you to change for something bad. I have a lot of friends who’s currently the decision maker and really willing to make a change, so I hope this bit of knowledge could help them out.

So, change is not dreadful, isn’t it? :p