T.W.O

My son will Insya Allah be 2 years old next week.

We’ve been thinking to set up a gathering with our close friends but not so sure whether we actually have time to do the house cleaning, cooking etc.

I still cant believe how time flies so fast.

It feels like a week ago I and my husband drove home from the hospital with a small baby sitting in the car seat without any sound. I was a bit worried at that time wondering why this small creature didnt cry
But it changed in the next 24 hours. In the first few weeks, Raihan could only either sleep or cry. No time for playing. In some weeks, Raihan must always be held in my arms for almost 24 hours. I think I got a little bit of postnatal (mild) depression. Everything was new. That period was an extreme learning curve for me.

In 2008, Raihan was admitted to the hospital 4 times. We also had a number of emergency visits and dozens of check ups and tests: breathing difficulties, severe allergy reactions, nose and mouth bleeding, 2x X-ray tests,MCU test,skin tests,etc  to name a few reasons why we’re there. We rarely visited GP because there was no point of going there as s/he would refer to hospital anyway.

Over the last two years, fortunately, I did still have a life as academia. I visited some conferences, I still did teaching works and still had my listed as a PhD student for sure. I couldnt do this without help from my husband, mum and dad. 

Since the end of 2008, everything has been going much better Alhamdulillah.

We only went to the emergency department once because of Raihan’s severe eczema. We now meet GP more regularly without being sent to hospital.

As a consequence, I have more time for my academics life. I havent completed my thesis yet but insya Allah I’ll get there.

Raihan now goes to childcare full-time.

He starts learning some words. He sleeps in his cot. He is a daddy’s boy who loves cars very much. He can do some shalat’s movements and imitates his mum when his mum is reading Qur’an.

Two years have passed my son.  I love you more and more each day.

Jadi anak shaleh ya Kak, doakan bunda dan ayah

Modelling our life

Within seconds, I typed the following sentences on my Fb’s wall.

Life is not always fair. We often take great things in life for granted. But at times we fail to get something we’ve been working hard on. Perhaps on average, we might get the balance: we get what we strive for.

My point is we dont always get what we want. Reality might be different from our expectation.

Those who’ve taken a statistics course must know that there is such thing called the white noise. It is white or tolerable but noisy or disturbing. Researchers always want to minimize this term with the expectation of getting value of zero. But they will never be able to do so. The best thing that we can do is searching for important factors affecting the outcomes.

We also call it the error term simply because it shows the difference between our estimation and the reality. With a good specification, we can predict things close to reality. But there are many times when variation in reality is so unpredictable even when we are armed with such great knowledge.

That’s life. Life is a model.

The goodness of life is grounded on how well we can predict what the outcomes will be.

Thankfully, my religion gives me guidance helping me to build a good model. I see it as a conceptual or theoretical baseline. Correct specification avoids bias. But theories are sometimes difficult to understand. Understanding the theory requires a long process of learning. So does understanding religious teachings. The process of learning is indeed a never ending one until we can triumph over any obstacles that the model deals with.

As an example of obstacles in modelling is sample selection bias. Observations in our model may not be random. Life is not always random. Things happen because we do the sorting; because we make a choice. For example, a model to predict incomes may be subject to limited selection of people in the labour force. They are those who want to work. Not everyone wants to work though. Normally, women’s career are constrained by the number of their children, religious beliefs, etc. Failing to consider such things may cause failure to get best prediction on the outcomes. Similar things happen when we do not consider important aspects when we make a decision. It is called omitted variable bias in statistics. For example, we (women) do not consider whether their husbands allow them to work when they make a decision to work.   

The goodness of model also grows with number of observations. The goodness of life including wisdom hopefully grows with age and experience. The final goal is still to minimize error.

We dont know our “error terms” in the future. But we can see ours in the past and use them as valuable lessons.

But one thing for sure, Allah knows the best and HE counts our error terms with perfect precision.

***RP who is working on the association between religiosity and income.

BIAS, conference and leaving Raihan for >8hours

It’s 7pm Melbourne time.

I am at the airport, while Raihan and his dad are at home.

I was presenting at the 5th Australasian development economics workshop at Melbourne university earlier today.

Because of the swine flu outbreak, I decided to cancel my husband and Raihan’s tickets worrying that we (especially Raihan) can be affected by the swine flue.

This is my first time leaving Raihan for more than 8 hours. The last time I met Raihan was at 5am this morning. So it’s been 12 hours.

It’s not as hard as I thought this would be because I heard from my husband Raihan was doing fine and quite happy at his childcare.

Talking about the conference, I realise how much development economists fear about the so called “BIAS”.

It is simply the difference between the ‘true’ value (who knows what value is true anyway?!) and our estimates. We always want to make good prediction meaning close to zero bias is desirable.

Lots of instruments are imposed to get rid of this ‘guy’. To predict someone’s impact of educational level on earnings, we use the person’s twin sister/brother’s education level. Some use distance to school to measure years of schooling, etc. 

While they argue that such measurements can indeed capture the impact of variable we actually want to use but stricted by some econometric assumptions, it is sometimes ‘funny’ to find how people are ‘obsessed’ to find such proxies.

I was, in my presentation, honestly admitted that I couldnt find such ‘magic’ proxies (of course with some formal tests). My model was ‘normal’.

I was so ready to hear criticism on my work. But it appears to be not too bad.

Alhamdulillah, today is a great day.

Why I like lagu sempurna

Sempurna was probably one of the most popular songs in Indonesia in 2008.

Sampai saat ini, saya masih sering mendengarkan lagu ini saat sedang belajar tengah malam.

It is a cachy song. Tapi mungkin saya sering mendengarkannya krn lagu ini utk saya membawa rasa tersendiri. Rasa yang timbul setelah menonton film LOVE (i think this is the right title) featuring Widyawati dan Sophan Sofian dan bintang ABG lain yg saya ga inget namanya.

Ketika saya menonton sama suami saya, Sophan Sofian belum lama berpulang ke rahmatullah. Melihat Widyawati dan almarhum ber acting bersama, rasanya…really hard to describe. In a way, they remind me of my parents. It’s just so obvious they loved each other. Entah apa rasanya berpisah dg seseorang yg kita cintai setelah hidup bersama DAN bahagia puluhan tahun.

Jadi lagu ini always reminds me to appreciate what we have especially our beloved ones. Suami, anak, orangtua dan sahabat lain. Betapa beruntungnya saya masih punya orangtua lengkap baik orangtua kandung maupun dari pihak suami. Betapa beruntungnya saya punya suami yang bisa menjadi ‘keranjang sampah’ saya [thanks to mbak Tutuk utk notesnya di facebook] mendengarkan keluhan, kekesalan, marah dan emosi saya yang masih sering timbul, yang mau bangun tengah malam utk membuatkan susu utk Raihan kl Raihan rewelnya kambuh tiap 1 jam [sekitar jam3pagi dengan pola rewel begini; saya sudah 'ambruk'], yang sering masak tiap kali saya ‘mimpi’ pgn makan sesuatu, yang mau menemani saya ke conference minggu depan di melbourne dan menjaga Raihan saat saya conference dan yang terpenting menerima saya apa adanya.

Saya sangat beruntung punya orangtua yg tidak hanya selalu siap mendengarkan keluhan saya tapi selalu memberikan solusi dan nasehat yang terbaik tiap kali saya membutuhkan. Ibu saya, ahh tidak tahu lagi saya mau bilang apa. Merawat saya dari detik pertama saya lahir di dunia dan hingga kini selalu menjadi orang pertama yang berperan ketika saya dalam kesulitan tentunya dengan dorongan bapak saya.

Sementara bapak saya adalah idola saya. Kesabaran, kepintaran, rasa optimis dan keuletan beliau adalah beberapa hal diantara banyak hal yang saya ingin Raihan saat besar nanti bisa miliki.

Lagu sempurna ini mengingatkan saya lagi, lagi dan lagi artinya bersyukur. Unlike what this song says, tidak ada manusia yang sempurna. Saya masih belajar menghargai setiap detik bersama orang yang kita sayangi instead of sweat the small stuffs. Again, nobody is perfect. Dan kita tidak tahu kapan kita hrs berpisah dg mereka.   

***Miss my parents very much

Citizenship by birth in Australia

I often get question on whether or not Raihan is an Australian citizen. He is not. And Insya Allah he’s not going to be one. We still want to be Indonesian citizens.

Here is the rule about citizenship by birth in Australia especially for those who was born after 1986. Click here for complete information

I was born in Australia. Am I an Australian citizen?

Whether you are an Australian citizen by birth depends on the date of your birth.

People born in Australia on or after 20 August 1986 become Australian citizens by birth if at least one parent is an Australian citizen or a permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.

A child born in Australia to parents who are not permanent residents or Australian citizens acquires Australian citizenship automatically on his or her 10th birthday provided the child is ordinarily resident in Australia.

——————————————

As for Raihan, since he was born in 2007 and at his date of birth I and my husband were not Australian permanent residents yet, he is not eligible for Australian citizenship. He will be, however, eligible for the citizenship on 16 Sep 2017 given that we still live in Australia for the next 10 years.

(I think) Raihan’s new words

I said ”Kakak, let’s go”, he said (sounds like) GO

after making trouble, he said “o o”. I guess he picked up this ‘word’ from his friend at school.

While holding a $20 note, I said “twenty”, he said “didi”.

He still calls me “Ma” instead of Bunda. I’m not sure whether he actually wants to say “mommy”.

If I say “Bunda”, he will say “ayah”.

He pronounces “ayah” perfectly.

Big heart, big mouth

When I was in early days of my PhD, I was always doing my presentation with no nerves. The feedback was more like compliments rather than comments.

And now. I took every word of criticism I got sometimes painfully.

It’s not easy to take comments from someone saying “your paper is not even a paper” and giving no recommendation. My evil thought just wanted to yell at him “How dare you say that!”.

It was really painful to hear such thing from someone whom I respected.

Especially after you spent months of your time for doing “it” (I dont know what the appropriate term if I cant call it a paper).

Especially after you spent sleeping time to stuck in front of your laptop screen and let your dear spouse and baby sleep alone.

Especially if you think your work is good enough.

But I dont want to be a quitter.  I cant give up although sometimes I want to.

It took me days to “recover” from disappointment. I never thought that one person’s comments can ruin my days whereas I still got positive feedback from some other people.

A big heart is what I need to just ignore the big mouth and move on with everything I have. I still get strong support from my supervisor and, the most important, from my family.

I know that kind of criticism, possibly worse, will always be out there. As I cant, or at least most unlikely, change people’s attitude, I am the one who need to learn how to accept criticism.   

For someone out there, I hope you understand that your comments were no helpful but destructive.

For a small heart inside me, grow up will you?

Top 10 Things Professors never want to hear

Top 10 Things Professors Never Want to Hear

Do you live like this?

This post is from an email spread across mailing mist.

Here is my response (RP).

Out of 14, I only agreed with 4 points.

=========================

YOU KNOW YOU ARE L IVING IN 2009 when…

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

RP: no

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

RP: never played solitaire for ages, so not true.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 4.

RP: nope.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

RP: this is so true!!

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they
don’t have e-mail addresses.

RP: dont have facebook? - partly true

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if any
one is home to help you carry in the groceries.

RP: nope.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the
screen.

RP: true.

8. L eaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the
first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you
turn around to go and get it.

RP: I can live without a mobile phone now, but I felt a bit restless if I couldnt access my email for over 24hr.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

RP: partly true.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

RP: hmm…

12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

RP: not really

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this
message.

RP: not planning to fwd this to anyone.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

RP: this is true
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this
list
RP: no, I didnt bother about it at all.
AND NOW YOU ARE L AUGHING at yourself.

RP: Am I being too cold? I’m just perfectly fine but not laughing.

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to…

Raihan’s new word

Me: Kakak, do you want to have toast?

Raihan: naa… naa (shaking his head)

Me: Kakak, do you want to have milk?

Raihan: (nodding his head)

==> naa=NO; no word yet for “YES”