So Far Yet So Close

Go study abroad and you will see the world. Go study abroad and you will meet new people. Go study abroad and you will learn new things.

Those are the things people might tell you about studying abroad. They aren’t wrong, but there’s something people might not mention..

Go study abroad, and you will know more about where you’re from. Go study abroad, you will feel closer to your home.

One of the privilege of studying abroad, particularly in a big city, or to be more specific in London, one of the most important cities in the world, is the access to network and dialogues about the nation.

Me & my husband feels very lucky to get the opportunity to study here with Indonesian Government Scholarship (LPDP). Besides the financial aid they provide us, we are surrounded by great people who seem to have the same concern about how can they contribute for the nation through their field. This motivates us to keep doing what we are trying to do, for the goodness of other people, not only ourselves. Beyond that, we also met awesome people, not just our fellow scholarship awardees but also people who live here for study or work, who are humbly open to share their knowledge, something I believe I would not get if I had no courage to push my self to go this far.

Only few weeks after we arrived, Bapak Haji Jusuf Kalla, the Indonesian vice president, happened to visit London. The embassy invited all students in the UK to come to the embassy and hear a public lecture from Bapak Jusuf Kalla himself. I felt very lucky, in Indonesia, I will have zero chance of seeing him in person, the encounters are just through TV or the picture of him we put in school’s classrooms. Hearing words from himself, made me “know” him a little bit and his thinking - a very huge difference compared to when I barely knew nothing about him. Back then I only knew his biography that I read in Wikipedia and the fact that he is a very successful businessman and was into politics from long time ago.

After his lecture, I found an interesting fact about him, he embraces entrepreneurship value so much in his life and he values his entrepreneurship journey to what shaped him to be who he is now. He pointed out that entrepreneurship can be one of the tools that will help the nation to grow, mainly because it encourages creativity and provide jobs - even greater than what the public sector might able to provide. He also mentioned that there are lots of opportunity in the private sector. This is the same belief I have as a motivation to pursue my study now.

Beyond that, his lecture was about the Vision of the Nation towards 2045, or Indonesia Satu Abad. I’m keen to share the national development agenda which he mentioned. He underlined that the focus of the nation is to develop better infrastructure and human capital to create better valued goods, more advanced use or creation of technology, and more productivity. These ring true with the basic development economics theory. According to that, what you need to create productivity is labor (the population) and capital (infrastructure), and what will make you more productive than others is higher level of technology and human capital (skills). I’m glad that the government quite put those into action (although we can always hope for more), for examples, massive investment for infrastructure (shout out to friends working in this sector 😊). In terms of improving human capital, as one of government’s scholarship awardees, me and Adit get the direct impact, however in my opinion, there are still huge gaps to be closed in Indonesia’s education service including boosting for more research and innovation. Pak JK pointed out if we have better skilled workers or people, we can use technology better and make ourselves more productive - a very important point to be taken by us, the young generation, that we must train ourselves through studying or practicing our field, making ourselves as the master of what we do, no matter what you’re pursuing.

Another thing that he highlighted was how we can look to other nations achievement, for example China - how it changes from a pessimistic nation to an optimistic one, as a motivation to drive us towards a better direction. He said if they can do it, we can do it too. So yes, if your leader is optimistic about it, why shouldn’t we?

Me & Adit were expecting that he would mention betterment in the health care system, however, I believe there were probably so many nation’s agenda, there was just no enough time to say, or it might be in the very top priority.

So, related to the title of this post, the things I encounter (and what I study) here are very much relevant and related to what happen back home. Something I did not expect very much before going and not a bad thing at all.

It’s amazing how distance don’t really matter now. I don’t agree with someone who says people who leave their hometown or home country will be alienated. In fact, going outside where you’re from is like taking a helicopter view, you can better see the gap and compare one place to another. Also, from above, you can enjoy the view of how beautiful it is.

My home far away from home