Arrange Your Budget Carefully !!

Well..actually it’s an honour for me to be awarded scholarship for continuing my master degree in Medical Education at University of Sydney, from Ministry Communication and Information Technology of Republic Indonesia . But of course there must be unsatisfied part of it dealing with living allowance fee which we accept monthly. To be honest, it comes below of the standard of living here in Sydney which has everything in high cost. For instance, accommodation charge expenses about half of living allowance fee, beside we don’t have a right for concesion in transportation. Mmm.. what a life ! But anyway, we’re still thankful to MCIT which had delivered us here. This is not about how we ask for more funds, but about how we have to arrange our limited budget carefully. It’s not a simply one since not all of us come from wealthy family background.

Personally, for me it’s a kind of challenge how to use it appropriately and it will be better if we can save it for another budget, traveling for an example. I’m sure that traveling is one of the way out of the blue according to my experience. Don’t you ever spend your money for useless thing in term of something that we don’t really need but we are teased to have it. If you live nearby the campus, don’t try to use public transport but enjoy your feet walking through the road. You will get at least two advantages, first you can save your money and the second you will be trained to get exercise and of course the more you get exercise, the healthier you are :) Another way to save our money is by using library. It provides us a lot of benefits, for instance we can borrow books instead of buying them, because we know obviously that books price is not quite cheap here. Also we can use computer lab instead of accessing internet at home. For student like me who has limited internet bandwidth , it’s more convenient to use internet from campus and again we keep our live longer. What about meal ?? mm…it sounds good if u try to cook although you hate to do that unless you want to spend a half of the rest for food. Yeah.. this is Sydney, man..!

Living alone outside home to continue studying is not my first experience, so I get used to live with limited budget. But separated from my real family, husband and children, for a long time is the first one. Sadness, frustration, loneliness are my friends now. Yet I have to be more friendly with them by ignoring such feelings. This is what I call a lesson learned from real survival field. Keep on fighting ! The true battle is inside forever.

Much loves for my 2 cute suns..

From The Heart of Sydney, March 8, 2008