An Archive

 The van moved with haste across the southwestern coast of Bali, packed with people (and baby chickens and sugar gliders in the backseat). The two people in the furthest row in the back were sandwiched in between piles of bags and luggage while the woman in the front kept throwing up every few hours. I was sat near the window, thankfully, making sure my nose received a steady stream of fresh air as I tried my best to sleep through the stench of livestock, sweat and vomit permeating the small white van with a barely working air conditioning system.  I had purposefully downed an especially potent sleeping pill to make the trip as bearable as possible. It wasn't my first time crossing over to the island of Java by car, but it was the first time I had done so for work. As the car finally settled in the ferry, I sat in the outdoor seating area, finding comfort in the cold metal seats after being cooped up the past 4 hours as I drank in the sights of West Bali. My eyelids grew heavy...

  As I’m learning more and more about the world of conservation, I’m beginning to realize that to me, conservation is still a vast, unending library filled with mysteries yet to be uncovered. When I was in elementary school, delivering a speech on the importance of going green in front of my sixth grade class, conservation meant persuading people to switch to paper bags. When I became a college student, the word took on a more complicated meaning; it meant making science and policy work together for the good of the earth. 3 internships later, and although I understand so much more, I continue to discover yet a new nuance to the word.   Through my bachelor’s thesis, I’ve come to learn that there’s a very real, human dimension to conservation, one that I’ve largely dismissed up until now. In obtaining the necessary data for my bachelor’s thesis, I interviewed approximately 50 fishermen throughout the course of 3 months. I expected a community of money-hungry, ruthless hunters ...

So, here we are nearly 3 months later! I promised myself I would write the second part a week after I published the first part. But alas, here we are wayyy past my deadline. I bet you can understand now why my blog posts are so sparsed. My apologies dear no one, but I'm here and I'm glad to finally publish the second part to my whale shark endeavor. Voila! After spending 3 days on the bagan, we headed home. We didn't want to of course, but the restless winds and waves left us no other option. With our newly tanned, nay, burnt skin and tiredly happy smiles, we returned to the village. We were back to enjoying the simple luxuries of life; a bed, a shower and the college student's equivalent of crack-indomie with a shit ton of chili peppers. Our supervisor told us we had to wait another week or so before we headed out to sea again. Fortunately, our week was occupied with identifying the whale sharks we photographed on our previous trip so it went by rather quickly. ...

They said Shakespeare wrote three of his greatest tragedies in quarantine during the great plague of 1606. So, in light of the recent coronavirus outbreak, I thought I'd celebrate his spirit, since I'm also in quarantine, by finally sitting down and write about something I've put off writing for a while: my wild whale shark endeavor of January 2020. Please don't expect a piece of Shakespearean proportions, I'm honestly just extremely bored. So without further ado, here's a little sliver of my month in Sumbawa. I wish I could say I had always thought of sharks, big and small, as gentle creatures. But alas, I have always been part of the majority, those plagued by haunting images set forth by Steven Spielberg's Jaws; A bewildering 120 minutes of sharks circling the water to the infamous Jaws tune, foreboding of its voracious hunt for human flesh. So imagine my surprise when I willingly applied to intern at Conservation International, to learn about, yo...

At this time last year, I was a freshmen, rushing back to reschedule my flight to Bali because my academic advisor would not approve my courses for next semester without a face-to-face counseling session. Today, I am sitting at my desk in a small but spacious cubicle nestled away in the bourgeois neighbourhood of Kemang, South Jakarta, eagerly anticipating for what tomorrow's public consultation will bring. I am officially 3 days away from the end of my 2 month internship with Conservation International's Elasmobranch Program. At the beginning of the semester, I made it my goal to complete an internship over the course of semester break. I sent emails to a number of NGOs but only CI responded, so I immediately sent in my application without a second thought. I couldn't care less about where I would end up interning, all I cared about was not spending my semester break couped up at home watching rom-coms all day (as amazing as that sounds). I initially wanted to intern with...

Since the first time we, my closely knit group of friends, started hanging out, we've always wanted to go tour around Bali. Unfortunately, as assignments soon began piling up and our days were endlessly filled with classes and meetings, we never really got around to it. Every time we had time to spare, something always came up and we had to cancel our plans over and over again. Finally, this christmas, the stars aligned in our favor and we went on our first camping trip to Kintamani.  DAY 1: Tegalalang and Tukad Cepung We had planned our trip about a week prior. We researched camping spots around Bali and decided on the infamous sunrise spot in Desa Pinggan, Kintamani. There were 11 of us, 4 girls and 7 boys and a heck of a lot of equipments; 2 tents, 8 sleeping bags, 7 sleeping mats and a shit ton of backpacks. We left Jimbaran at 7.30 A.M and directly headed to the rental place to pick up our camping equipments. By 8.30 A.M, we were all packed and finally began our long ...

My first week of school is officially over and I am seriously infuriated and sad and disappointed with the sloppy and unprofessional bureaucracy of Indonesian Universities. I am in dire need of a time out, therefore I shall write for writing is my high. When my mother finally decided to rent a car for a few days, I was absolutely ecstatic. Having a car means we could finally go to all the places I wanted to visit but couldn’t because a lot of places in Bali are agressively opposed to online transportation. After the first part of my orientation ended, I decided to blow off some steam by taking a little trip to the nearest Beach, Balangan Beach. We left around 5.30 PM and arrived half an hour short of sunset. We were greeted with at least 10 couples in the middle of a prewedding* photoshoot. Eclectically dressed photographers were taking pictures in uncomfortably abnormal positions, people were carrying big lights, makeup artists were busying themselves with making sure the bride-to-...