Year 2011 Keyword in Japan: Queuing!!

Especially for the new openings, be it for a pack of takoyaki (en:octopus dumpling), a new video game, signing session of idol group,even a pachinko (en:parlors), some Japanese people are ready to queue! No matter how many hours it take, whether it be a chilly rainy day in winter or a 40°C hot day of summer. Queuing is a natural part of life in Japan no matter where you live. To identify good stuffs or shops in japan is just as simple as looking for the ones with the longest queues.

Japanese Families Queuing Up In Train Station at Post-War

Queuing is a good tradition and reflects how discipline is a country. However, one of the saddest thing of 2011 is that infinite queuing becomes so much often in Japan, especially after the earthquake and tsunami disaster in March 11th.

A commonsense of Japanese people about abundance of materials ruins after that devastating disaster happened. People had to line up in hundred meters of line as early as midnight the night before to get supplies like toilet paper and gasoline as a severe shortage happened aftermath.

Aftermath Queuing Causes

In the middle of March, queues at petrol stations of up to two miles were seen in many places in East Japan, especially in Tohoku areas, the worst-hit areas. Due to the earthquake, some big oil refineries must be temporarily shut down as their standard operating procedure, and as a result, logistic network was down.

However, the case is different for daily supplies. The acute shortages are not caused by the consumption. Actually they are not out of stock. Factories in various regions operates as usual, and the stock is still sufficient in the warehouses. But a sudden high demand aftermath in the retailers (e.g. convenient stores), and there are people who want to save larger amount of supplies anticipating next earthquake, those actions result the acute shortage. Some people just queued in front of shops which even clearly  written “Closed”

massive queues for fuel in sendai

Queuing in front of Convenient Store in Sendai

You can check out some other pictures showing this kind of sad queues HERE

We especially my country, Indonesia, should learn from the Japanese. Amidst the heartbreaking devastation in Japan, social solidarity and discipline seems to be especially strong in Japan.  Long queues, but quiet and orderly. Without scrambling, without fighting, they just “automatically” form a line and queue patiently.

Queuing for an iPhone!

Beside sad queuing due to daily supplies shortage, in year 2011 there is a fun queuing in japan because of Apple’s new gadget, iPhone 4S. Japan was among the first countries to see the release of Apple’s new iPhone 4S, with fans queuing for up to 80 hours to be first in line. Recently I found a page showing some photos describing how Japanese people are crazy of the new iPhone 4S! Click HERE!!

Awesome Google Instant Plotting Feature!

Again, our awesome Google add a new feature to the search engine. That is Instant Graphing functionality to search results which allows us to  plot numerous mathematical functions, right on Google.com’s search results page. Simply head over to Google.com and type in the function of your choice in the search box. Instantly, an interactive graph will pop up, complete with zoom buttons, pan options and the ability to see the x and y values for every single dot on the function’s line. This function is similar to what Wolfram Alpha website can do, but we cannot refuse the fact that Google is more familiar for us to use. Announced on its official blog, Google hopes that students and math lovers around the world would find the new functionality “magical” and bring back the fun in making graphs.

Now we don’t need to write down on graph paper as high school teachers always ask student do that at math class.

Let’s check some examples. Enter cos(pi*x) * x^2 in the google searching bar, and you will find:

Process System Engineering

This time I would like to introduce my field of study, which called Process System Engineering. Process Systems Engineering (PSE) is a branch of Chemical Engineering which treats the way in which a complex system behaves as a whole. When we deal with a complex system, for instance chemicals manufacture, we consider not only chemical reaction efficiency in the reactor, but we have to optimize all unit operations combined and linked each other within the system. PSE provides domain knowledge and mathematical and experimental techniques to predict the behavior of that kind of complex systems, and how to control and optimize them.

Some typical topics in process system engineering

During the early era of development of chemical engineering science, PSE mostly discuss

人生設計を考えよう。

これで、あの動乱から一年経った。去年の１０月、文部科学省の新しい、厳しくされた奨学金延長制度が出た後から始まった一年間だ。その制度が出た時、大学院まで進学しようとその時まで想像した人生設計が駄目なように思い、あせってた。どうすればいいかわからなかったから、とりあえず就職活動を始めた。うまく進む就職活動ではなかったが、それでも一社から内定をもらった。だが、先輩方のアドバイスに耳を傾け、結局その内定を断り、大学院に進学することにした。今年の７月からあわてて受験勉強し、なんとか東工大と京大の大学院から内定を頂いた。なんというめちゃくちゃなやり方だ。

無茶で、計画性のない人生の歩み方であることはわかっている。でもこの一年間、時間的に余裕があっても、精神的に余裕はなかった。就職活動のとき、

About My Final Project: About Phase Transfer Catalysis Reaction

All boundaries is difficult to cross: political, legal, geographic boundaries, and also phase boundaries in chemical systems. Many desirable reactions cannot be brought about because the reactants are inaccessible to each other. One typical system is a system consists of water soluble nucleophilic reagent and an organic water insoluble electrophilic reagent. To solve the problem of this system, traditionally both reagents are solved in water-like and organic-like solvent, such as ethanol which has both hydrophilic nature from its hydroxyl group and lipophilic nature from its ethyl group. But this method has a limitation that the reaction rate decreased due to the solvation of the nucleophile. The other method, such as using of expensive dipolar aprotic solvents like DMSO has been applied but proven to have disadvantages such as difficulty of the separation during post reaction recovery.

A feasible and industrially successful method to solve such system is the use of phase transfer agents, which

Light Note About Research and Industry in Japan

Japan Research Actual Condition

Lately, after I finished my internship period in Chiyoda, somehow, it changed my frame of mind. Before I join that internship program, in somewhere in my head, I wanted to be a researcher, work in a remote research center (but still in Japan). But during the internship, I know from seniors working at Chiyoda about  fact that many of research done by professors in universities, even in Japan, end up as archived research documents, without any follow up. I mean, there are only a few research topics would be applied in industry. If it’s about Indonesia, then I won’t deny for that. But We are talking about Japan, man!!!Furthermore,

7-eleven Seven Interesting Commercials

More than 40,000 convenience stores, known as konbini, can be found across Japan. Most of them are open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.Strong competition between the major operators, such as Seven Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart, constantly produces new innovative products and services and makes Japanese convenience stores truly convenient.

To me, seven eleven is the most accessible convenient store, because there is one shop on the ground floor of the building my classes always take place. Lately I found a channel which contains some old but interesting TV commercials of 7-eleven,

Internship@Chiyoda Corp, Yokohama

Chiyoda

In the middle of Ramadhan (and also middle of summer) this year, to earn one credit in my university department, for 10 days, I have joined an internship program held by one of Japanese engineering giants CHIYODA CORPORATION, Japan. It’s an engineering consultancy which offers the complete range of process plant engineering and design solutions to both domestic & international clients in sectors critical to economic growth – Petroleum refining, Petrochemicals, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Oil & Gas and LNG & LPG. Actually many of Indonesian LNG and Petroleum Plants, was built by Chiyoda.

“Dual Nature” dari Manusia

Dear pembaca, tahukah anda bahwa sisi bulan yang menghadap bumi selalu sama? Dengan kata lain, kita tidak pernah melihat sisi belakang bulan. Alasannya sih simpel. Periode revolusi (perputaran bulan mengelilingi bumi), lamanya sama persis dengan periode rotasi (perputaran sumbu bulan).

Figure 1 Coba anda ingat-ingat, kapan bulan terlihat berbeda dari ini?

Tapi kali ini bukan itu yang akan saya ceritakan. Saya hanya ingin kita sama-sama mengingat bahwa manusia pun tidak jauh berbeda dari bulan. Kita memiliki dua wajah. Wajah yang di depan yang selalu kita perlihatkan, dan satu lagi wajah yang selalu kita tutup rapat-rapat.

Bertukar Pasangan? Sah-Sah Aja Kaleee )*

Mungkin di dunia nyata, bertukar pasangan adalah satu hal yang tabu, haram atau asusila. Tapi di dunia molekul? Apa salahnya? Di sini kita akan coba bahas bahwa tak hanya manusia yang bisa berdansa berpasang-pasangan. Molekul, pun bisa. Tak hanya itu, mereka bisa saling bertukar pasangan layaknya Ariel dan Luna (ups!).

Prinsip dansa itulah yang membuat Yves Chauvin (Prancis), Robert H. Grubbs, dan Richard Schrock (keduanya dari AS) mendapatkan hadiah Nobel tahun 2005. Reaksi metatesis, yang sebenarnya sudah ditemukan sejak tahun 1950 namun mekanismenya masih tidak diketahui itu, dengan kegigihan 3 orang kimiawan tadi akhirnya terungkap jelas.

Reaksi metatesis yang terjadi pada ikatan ganda karbon (olefin) sendiri sebenarnya sederhana (Gb. 1)

Gb. 1 Reaksi Metathesis