Good Bye 2014, Welcome 2015 :)

2014 will end tonight. Time really flies! Especially this year, I really didn't feel it was that long ago we were counting down to new year 2014, but here we are, about to do another count down to 2015.

Many and many things have happened this year, especially the bad ones... I do have to squeeze my brain hard thinking what were the good things that happened this year. I really hope 2015 would be better than 2014 for everyone.

2014 was full of accidents and terrorism. Ferry accident in South Korea killing pretty much a whole year of students. 2 accidents of Malaysia Airlines just in the gap of 3 months. 1 was accidentally shot down by either Russia or Ukraine, none of them admitted yet. 298 people onboard. The other one with 239 people onboard was missing while flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing (I think) and still not found until now. The search team was searching for weeks but still nothing was found. Another plane accident happened in Taiwan mid 2014 due to weather. And just to end the year, Air Asia flying between Surabaya and Singapore lost contact an hour into the flight on 28 Dec. There were 162 people on board. Yesterday, Indonesian SAR team found some debris and dead bodies of the passengers floating on the sea 10 km from where the plane made their last contact. It was Air Asia's first accident.

2014 was full of terrorism too. ISIS was busy this year beheading people and broadcasting it to all over the world. A lot of fanatics both men and women flew to Syria to support Islam. Men to fight, women to be sex slaves. It's not just rumor, some people did depart to Syria from Australia to help. Early 2014, Sydney had text messages circulating about ISIS planning to grab and behead random people in Martin Place. And Sep/Oct 2014 police caught people who planned an attack. And just 2 weeks ago, Martin Place siege happened. A gunman taking hostages of 17 people for 17 hours. The siege ended when the hostages tried to escape when the gunman starting to doze off. The gunman and 2 hostages died.

There are other things too I.e. Thailand military taking control of the government, and Hongkong protests. There was Taliban school shooting in Pakistan too the day after Martin Place siege took place. 145 people died, mostly school kids.

Many crimes happened. I'm not going to list all of them, but the ones that made big news were the killing of Ade Sara by her ex and the new girlfriend and a mother killed her 7 children and another child.

And a lot of celebrities passed away this year, including Robin Williams and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Although on the bright side, Little Prince George is growing up cutely.

The only good thing I can think of was Jokowi was inaugurated as Indonesian president. But even that didn't happen  smoothly, a lot of drama happened just to make him the President of Indonesia. But at least he was finally inaugurated and we now have a president who actually wants to work :) the second good thing I could think of was close to Jokowi too. With him taking the post as President, Ahok, the Vice Governor of Jakarta by default becomes the Governor of Jakarta. Again that didn't happen as smooth and I was again glued to Kompas and Detik to read all the news about protests and demonstrations to not let him become the number 1 guy in the capital. But finally he was inaugurated as Governor of Jakarta by his former partner in crime, the current President :) and he got a partner that he chose himself to help him lead Jakarta. That partner seems to be a good guy and seems like he wants to do work too.

2014 was also the year of ALS Ice bucket challenge. Though seriously, a LOT of people just did it for the sake of taking the challenge and not to spread awareness or donate for the cause.

Although 2014 was not all happy memories, at least people surrounding me and I are all living well. So it is still a good enough year to us :) Let's just hope for a better year for all of us in 2015 and let's begin the countdown to tonight's midnight fireworks!!!! ^^

Cheers!!! :))

Martin Place Siege

Can't believe another week has gone past... Last week started off with a major terrifying event. Just at 9:44 am on Monday, a man walked into Lindt Cafe at Martin Place with a shotgun and took everyone in the cafe, both customers and staffs, as hostages. He had them stand at the window with hands pressed on the glass holding Islamic flag. Then the 17 hours siege begun.

My colleague forwarded the news to me about half hour after it started. From then on, I had my mind on it and kept checking the news every time I could. Martin Place was soon made exclusion zone. The buildings in close proximity were immediately evacuated. The other buildings within exclusion zone were soon locked down by police. No one can come in or leave the building. Martin Place station was closed and no service going between Central and Bondi Junction. The peaceful and usually busy Martin Place soon became an eerie and frightening place.

I have some relatives and close friends working around Martin Place. My cousin works just a block away from Lindt Cafe and few other friends work around the area too. Throughout the day we kept emailing or texting checking how it was, whether they were safe or whether they could go home.

Few hours after, Opera House and NSW art gallery were closed. There was also news that a suspicious object had been found in Opera House. It got even more scary.

When that happened, we didn't know much of the detais. We didn't know how many gunmen were there and how many people were being hostages. The news only said at least 1 gunman was there. Some news said there were 13 hostages while the others said 40-50 people were in the Cafe. And we didn't know why the gunman actually wanted too..

The siege carried on till afternoon. I was already running out of data, only had 45mb left to use in 3 days, but I couldn't stop myself to keep talking on whatsapp to get some updates.

Around 4 pm, 3 hostages got out. We didn't know if they escaped or were let go. An hour after another 2 got out. Police didn't tell us anything and no further information such as how many gunmen were there or how many hostages exactly.

It went on and on until night. Still no news eventhough my family was all glued in front of the tv until we went to bed around 11 pm. Even when I was in bed, I still checked on News.com.au.

Then I woke up the next day and straight away checked my mobile phone. The message on my whatsapp was from my sister's, "It's over. 2 hostages died..."
Part of me was relieved it was all over, but the other half was sad that 2 people innocently died. As the news described, it was bittersweet...

Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson died that day. I bet they didn't think when they went to work that morning, that they wouldn't be coming back... I also bet, never in their life they thought that their deaths would be mourned by most people in Australia and a lot of people all over the world. Martin Place even until now, has been transformed into sea of flowers. Not by government, but by the people. Their colleagues, their families, workers in Martin Place, and even people who live further away from the city spare their time to come to Martin Place to place flowers or notes for them. The sea of flowers continue to grow. On Saturday, my friend on his way back from Brooklyn (about 1.5-2 hours train ride from Sydney CBD) met an elderly couple who brought flowers with notes written "To Katrina and Tori". That's the extent of efforts people do.

If I have to find 1 positive thing this siege has brought us, I would say it shows us how people still care about other people. And that people are still compassionate. And wether you are religious or not, that Monday had almost everyone in Sydney and also anywhere else in the world to pray or at least kept hoping all day for the safety of the hostages. That is something, isn't it?

It also started #iwillridewithyou campaign. It started when a woman on the train saw a Moslem woman quietly taking off her hijab after the siege began. When they got off, the woman chased the Moslem woman and then said to her, "Put it back on. I will walk you home." The Moslem woman then hugged her and cried, and then left. The next day after the siege ended, a lot of people posted #iwillridewithyou on instagram and offering company or car ride for people who are scared to go to work alone. It's true, one evil person having certain religion, doesn't mean everyone in that religion is evil too. And it is nice to know that a lot of people are open-minded and not attacking everyone in that religion. If it happened in Indo to minority race or religion, the majority people would start attacking the minority group as shown in history.

Rest in peace, Tori and Katrina. I wish your family and friends strength and courage to move on...