Achmad Makmur

This Week Travels

Konichiwa,

This week I travel to many places. It was a tiring week since I had a monthly seminar on December 20th. The monthly seminar is a presentation where I should present my research progress to all laboratory member include my professor. It was really tiring because I had to analys the data that just come 2 days before the seminar. The program to analys my the data was error so analysing the data became very difficult. But, well, nevermind,.. it is already passed.

Now lets talk about traveling. last December 20th, before I presented at 6 pm, there was a cooking festival held by Sato International Scholarship Festival (the foundation that providing me scholarship). We cook many foods from Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and (I forgot, maybe Laos or Myanmar). Indonesian group made Gado-gado and Soto. I was very happy I could eat that. It was more than 3 months I had not eat Soto.

After the cooking finished, we had a lunch together with all scholarship foundation member. I ate a lot since I didn’t had my breakfast ;p Short after the luch ended, there was a Mochitsuki (Making Mochi – Japanese traditional sweet made from rice). It was really unique, the cooked rice was pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). Two people alternated the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine.

This week, 23rd December, Me and other Indonesia friend went for Tokyo Tour. The first place we visited was Imperial Place. There was emperor birthday ceremony so the palace was opened. The emperor building is only opens two times a year, the one is on 4nd february and the other is on Emperor birth day. There was no any big cellebration. Just thousands of peoples gathered in front of emperor building and heard the emperor speech for 5 minnutes. After that we travel around the palace and took many pictures ;p The palace was really big and has beautiful architecture. You can see through the picture below.

After we visited Imperial Palace, we went to Tokyo world’s most famous landmark, Tokyo Tower. It was my first visit since I came to Japan 3 month ago. I came at about 5 pm. The sky was not so dark but the tower lamps were about to be turned on. We can see the gradient of light in the picture below.

The tower has 333 m of height. It made by steel truss. Beneath the tower was a 4 story building that consist of Museum (About Japan, Wac Museum, World Record Museum, Souvenier store, and elevator to the top of tower). I didn’t go to the top of tower since we have to pay for about 900 Yen for the first observatory (150 m) and 2000 yen for the topest observatory (330). But, just seeing the tower is wonderfull enough. I still didn’t belive that I was there, the scene that I can only seen through Japanese Dorama before I came here

After TokyoTower, I went to Shio Dome, We went to Caretta (maybe some shopping super block). There were many christmast illuminations. It is a constelation of small lamps usually avilliable durring christmass cellebration. Although most Japanese are not christian, the still celebrating the christmass (maybe the consider it as a culture).The illuminations were very beautiful, you can see the pictures bellow.

Graduate Study at TokyoTech

Bwt temen2 yang berminat ambil graduate course di Tokyo Institute of Technology (TokyoTech – TIT), ini ada penjelasan singkat yang saya tahu.

1. Program yang tersedia adalah INTEGRATED DOCTORAL COURSE

Dalam program ini kita mendapatkan gelar Master dan Doktor dalam 4 tahun (1.5 tahun untuk Master dan 2.5 tahun untuk Doktor)

2. Bergabung Ke Laboratory

Konsep laboratory di TIT bukan hanya sekedar ruangan untuk melakukan eksperimen saja, tapi sebagai sebuah organisasi yang diketuai seorang professor (atau associate professor) berkompeten di bidang tertentu. Masing-masing lab memiliki fasilitas-fasilitas dan juga kebijakan-kebijakan tersendiri.

Di TIT, tiap graduate student harus tergabung menjadi anggota sebuah laboratory. Disitu dia akan melakukan risetnya sesuai arahan dan karakteristik laboratory yang. Contohnya, saya adalah anggota NIWA Laboratory yang diketuai oleh Prof. Junichiro NIWA. Laboratory ini memiliki spesialisasi di bidang karakteristik fisik beton (terutama perilaku geser). Oleh karena itu, riset yang saya lakukan sekarang juga terkait perilaku geser beton.

Untuk bergabung ke sebuah laboratory, kita harus terlebih dahulu mengajukan lamaran ke laboratory yang kita tuju. Lamaran ini biasanya diawali dengan mengirim surat ke kepala laboratory mengenai keinginan kita untuk bergabung ke dalam laboratory itu. Jika lamaran awal kita diterima, pihak laboratory akan menghubungi kita untuk mengadakan wawancara langsung baik melalui telefon atau melalui internet.

Jika kita lolos proses ini, maka kita akan diterima oleh laboratory tersebut. Kemudian kita harus mendaftar ke TIT dan juga ke Monbugakusho (beasiswa). Namun, berhubung kita sudah diterima oleh lab di TIT, kemungkinan besar kita akan diterima di TIT dan juga Monbugakusho.

Di bawah ini merupakan contoh link Laboratory yang menyediakan informasi kontak bagi pelajar luar negeri yang ingin bergabung dengan lab tersebut. Silahkan baca informasi penerimaan anggota di bagian introduction. Selamat mencoba.

http://www.cv.titech.ac.jp/~niwa-lab/framepage10.htm

IHI Corporation – Factory Study Tour

IHI Corporation Factory

Last December 9^th I went to IHI Coorporation, Yokohama Factory. The factory is located at 1 Shin-Nakahara-Cho, Ishogu-ku, Yokohama, 235-8501, Japan. It took almost two hours by bus from Ookayama to the factory. The website address is : http://www.ihi.co.jp/index-e.html.

IHI Corporation is a company that provide design, manufacture, assembly, installation, test operation, and after sales service for various major products such as space development, jet engines, electronic and control, and even battleship. The factory was established in the year 1964 with total site area of 870,000 m² with total number of employee as high as 2,934 employees for fiscal year 2008. The company itself was founded in the year 1853 under government ownership.

This factory study tour gave us chance to visit some parts of the factory which are Corporate Research and Development Building, Nuclear & Chemical Component Works building, and Machinery Works building. The weather was a little bit raining but the IHI provided us umbrella, helmet, and safety vest. We were divided into two groups. The first group went to a display building by walking. And the second group went to R&D fluid technology research building.

I was in the first group where we went to a display building first. In this building we saw display/example of some tools produced by IHI. The first thing we saw was equipment called Advance Cruise-Assist Highway System. This equipment is real time 3 dimensional object detection camera used on roadside to indentify and recognize moving object on the crosswalk or crossing the intersection. We got an explanation and demonstration of how it worked from a person from IHI Corp.

After that, we went to Machinery works building. In this building we saw three smart robot prototypes to be used in industrial plant. The first one was a robot that had an ability to recognize and identify a size, shape, and position of an object based on image shot by camera. The second one was a half humanoid shape robot that can move on any surface. The third robot was an extension arm for human to weigh heavy object. These robots will be very useful in future production process in a plant.

After that, we went to R&D building, fluid research department. Unfortunately because there was a high confidential research was conducted, we couldn’t explore the whole building. We only got an explanation about the department and saw some example of their research product. From the explanation, I knew that this department was strongly related to my field study, civil engineering. This department provide civil engineer important data analysis of a building characteristic due to fluid behavior to the building such as wind and sea wave.

The last building we visited was the nuclear & chemical woks building. This building produce GTL Reactor to be used in nuclear reactor power plant. We saw the production process how to make the tower from steel sheet shape until become that cylindrical shape tower. There were many types of heavy equipment in the building. That was my first time ever seeing very high capacity compression machine. I used to saw a small capacity of compression machine in my lab to test concrete compressive strength.

After finished visiting those building, we went to the conference room and had “question and answer” session. The factory study tour was ended by taking photos of all participants in front of lobby in reception building. It was a really interesting FST.

(taken from my Factory Study Tour report x_x)

Experiment Experience

Today will be my second day for testing my concrete specimen.

Let me give a quick look for this experiment.

I will conduct a measurement of fracture energy in a plain concrete. I have to do three kinds of tests which are compression test, tension splitting test, and three point bending test (for this test, I do JCI and RILEM standard~you probably won’t know). For compression and tension test, I had to make 4 specimen each. and for JCI and RILEM, I had to make 5 specimen each (what a great hard work since I used many molds that were very heavy and hard to clean). Totaly I cast about 90 cubic metres of 80 Megapascal concrete.

Yesterday I conducted Compression test and Tension Spliting test for 3 specimen of 7 day strength concrete. Actually, it has to be a single day test where all concrete specimen was tested. However, since I had to use a super expensive Data Loger (our lab has only two T_T, and it cost 5000.000 yen each), and the Data Loger was used by M1 student for their test, I had to wait until they finish their test. I don’t need data loger for compression and tension test. But I surely need data loger for Three point Bending test so that why I have to wait for the data loger.

Thats for today… Next I will post overview of Three Point Bending test..

Thx.

Just write it

Youps..

Jam nunjukin jam 12.31, tepat tanggal 26 November 2008. Saat yang tepat bwt browsing2.. bwt refreshing dari tugas Gempa yang melelahkan.

Up till now., I don’t know what I want to write… T_T… I just try to get used to write a blog. Although sometimes I ran out of ideas of what want to write…

But, let start from todays activities….

Hmm.. let see,… today, My usual activities was turning on my laptop and stream Indonesia news from http://www.liputan6.com. Although it didn’t broadcasted lively, this site is the only Indonesian news site that I could watch. lIt seems like my dormitory admin does not allow the students to use live stream site.While listening to the news, I used to cook breakfast for me and my room mate, Risky. Today was Risky’s turn to cook breakfast. He cooked Indonesian soup full of carrot and cabbage (his speciality ;p)

At about 8 am, I went to campus. As usual, I used train (the only possible transportation system for me). It took about 45 minnutes from my dorm to Ookayama Campus. The temperature was so cold compared to my country. It reached 9 degree of celcious. I used sweater under my thick jacket. And it was still feel cold.

When I arrived at the station near my campus, I suddenly wanted to go to the conveniet store (japanese calls it “Kombini”) to buy something. I didn’t know what to buy. I just wanted to go there and bought something. On the way to get there, I found an under construction small Japanese house. The main structural parts were all made by wood. The ground part was made by concrete. This is the first time I ever see small Japanese house main structural parts. Although it just a small house, almost all side of the house were densely strengthen by wood column. Furthermore, the wood looked very strong. I just wondered where they imported suchkind of wood (is it from Indonesia?? :P). One of the reason why they are using wood is, of course, the high occurance of earthquake. Wood is considered ductile enough to restrain earthquake force. So it is suitable to use for small capacity structure in a high earthquake occurance area.

Well, after I saw that house I arrived at Kombini. I finnaly found out what I wanted to buy, an ice cream ;p. It has been a loong time since I eat ice cream. For information, not all Ice cream in Japan is eatable for Muslim people. Some of the ice cream contains substances that came from meat especially pork. It is not “Halal”. So, before I bought the Ice cream, I read the ingredient information (although it was in Kanji, I recoognized some Kanji for non-halal items). After make sure it doesn’t contains non-halal substance. I bought the ice cream, and went to the lab using the same way as when I saw the house.

The ice cream was nice.

Cu next post.