The Week Before

I was part of the committee for this year's Jakarta MUN which took place on the 23rd to the 25th August in Jakarta Kota Tua. As such, I was commuting to go to its venue on Friday using the commuter rail line. In the middle of waiting for my train to Manggarai in the Tanah Abang station, I received an email containing my plane ticket, from Jakarta to Toronto via Amsterdam. It was only then that it really dawned on me "oh It' I'm really gonna be going to Canada". I'll have to wait until Monday however to start making preparations.

The End of An Internship

The previous Wednesday, I just completed a major project for one of Covena's client. The task that I was assigned to afterwards is a bit of a "closing" task, one that can easily be handed off to another person once I am gone. That said, this is no ordinary task, since what I was supposed to make will be used for many upcoming projects by the company. My contract should have still been up until the Friday the 30th, but my boss offered to get me off of work earlier, and I chose Wednesday the 28th of that week. Thus, on that day, I was given a send-off during the usual daily stand-up (a daily meeting where each person talks about what they've been doing and what they'll be doing). There were a lot of kind words given my boss and my colleague that I really appreciated.

A more detailed recollection of my time in Covena will be published later in this site, including its conclusion. But to recap, I love the company, I really like what they were doing, and I have full faith on the company being around for quite some time. It was never easy working for the company since it's still a start-up where you really do need to pull your own weight and then some. But I have long held that most things in life worth doing are not easy. This is one of those things. And that is why I said during my send-off that I will be coming back to the company after I came home from Canada.

Luggage

Before I received my ticket, I was planning to use one of my father's luggage. It is a pretty peculiar luggage with peculiar shapes and dimensions. The luggage was longer in width rather than in height. It is also wider at its bottom compared to its top. This is to say that the luggage has the shape of a trapezoid. I spent quite a bit of time and cost fixing up the luggage. However, the plane ticket that I just got has a very specific dimension limit: the sum of the width, height, and depth of the luggage must not exceed 158 cm. After measuring the luggage, it is unfortunately 10 centimeters or so bigger than the limit. Other than a clear dimension limit, the ticket also limited the luggage that I could check into the baggage to two items. Knowing that I could check-in two luggage, I of course decide to find not just one but two luggage, I figured it would be useful on the trip back home when I have to bring a lot of goods and souvenirs from friends and family.

My mom helped me a lot during the preparation for my departure, and this is one of the things that she had helped me with. She scoured Shopee and the TikTok of travel influencers to find one of my luggage. She ended up buying me a black 29 inch luggage from Danke. We then decide to buy the other luggage from ACE hardware. We spent quite a while looking in the store because most luggage were either quite far from the limit of 158 cm(they were 140-145 cm) or they were just barely over the limit at 159 or 160 cm (which is probably going to be tolerated by the airline, but I just didn't want to risk it). It took a while until we found a 26 inch luggage from Luggo which had a sum of its width, height, and depth over 150 cm.

In addition to the luggage that I was planning to check into the baggage, I also brought one luggage to the cabin. I already had one medium-sized luggage that I bought all the way back in November because prior to that I haven't had any luggage. The luggage is a Bagasi Stupa Medium.

The Contents of the Two Luggage

Now that the luggage is available, what do I bring? First is obviously clothing. In addition to my existing clothes, earlier in the month I went out with my mom to buy some autumn clothes. This included light jacket, two long johns, thick waterproof pants, a beanie, two gloves, several scarves, and a sweater. A few of those autumn clothes, as well as some clothing items that I could not afford to lose such as my almamater jacket and my student union jacket, were put into my cabin luggage, to safeguard against the risk of losing my checked-in luggage. The rest of my clothes were put into my Luggo luggage. In total, I brought around 40 percent of all my existing clothes + the aforementioned newly bought autumn clothes. I don't have that much clothes so don't let that seemingly high figure fools you, there weren't that many clothes, so they fit just fine into my Luggo luggage.

The Luggo luggage was entirely filled with my clothes and a pair of crocs. The Danke luggage contains the more interesting stuff:

• Pillow

• Bolster

• Bedsheet and cover for both the pillow and boster

• Indonesian snacks for the Culturise event that we have planned

• A pan

• A small saucepan

• Commonly used medication such as imboost and paramex

• Dishwashing soap

• Pre-made seasoning and ingredients

• 2-3 dozens of Indomie instant noodles (we have been told that the instant noodles sold abroad is quite different in terms of taste)

• Other cooking and eating utensils such as spatula, glasses, spoons, and forks.

Packing the Luggage

Packing so many things into the comparatively insufficient luggage capacity that I had was made possible by vacuum seals. Virtually all of the clothes that I have in my Luggo luggage were vacuum sealed. The pillow, bolster, and Indomie in my Danke luggage were also vacuum sealed. Even after vacuum sealing a substantial amount of the things in both luggage, they almost didn't fit in both luggage.

Just buy vacuum seals, they're worth it.