-Three Semesters in Industrial and System Engineering, I have started to see everything as a system comprising of many variables and complex interactions between the variables. I also started to get the idea that sometime you don’t need to know about the variables characteristics relationship with the output. You just have to know the input that will give you the best output through several well-controlled experiments. And yesterday dinner gave me another insight.-

I had a dinner with two friends of mine, a couple, in a Japanese Restaurant (Is the information about Restaurant type important?. When we finished our food, we sat there for a few more minutes to talk. Of course, it had to be about relationship. I told them I just could not believe my two years and a half fight was actually just pretend. It went like smoke after one month because of a guy who is just 18 years but extremely handsome (of course, I never agreed that he is more handsome than me. He may be more fashionable than me, but handsome, no way). My friend, the guy, made a remark “Existence my man, distance killed us all”. Before I started to feel that I may agree with him, the girl jumped and said “No. It is not the condition, it is the person”. Then, the debate started.

It was kinda funny when you see a couple debating (healthy debate of course, not involving any broken broom stick) over an idea. It’s good to see how they discuss different ideas and finally settle the differences. I know the wonderful feeling of making up (not making out). So I always find it amusing to see how a couple compromise and make agreement. I did not remember exactly how the debate was going, but the girl started with question, (a million dollar question on which you can’t ask the audience, call a friend or using 50-50 (there’s only two answers)), “So you think your last relationship is going to work if you are closer to her?”. The guy replied with a very pragmatic answer, “I do not know but I know the result will be different”. Suddenly, I feel like an MCP (man chauvinist pig), I felt the necessity to join and help my gender mate, I added “Yeah, she may be faithful until you guys married, and fuck another guy after one month, and you ended up divorced.”. He agreed and added “ I guess everything plays part, distance, situation, timing and persons. It just has been written that it should ended this way.” . Just like the one-million-dollar question is not hard enough, the girl then proposed another difficult situation ,” Let’s take destiny out of picture. If no destiny and everything is in your own hand. What do you think?”.

It went for another twenty minutes, I think, before it was ended with the girl was busy drawing “lingkaran kecil, lingkaran kecil..lingkaran besar” on her sushi plate. I just see my male friend idea was how an Industrial Engineers analyze a problem. They draw boundary of a system and make an input/output relationship. Actually, I could not agree more with the guy, sometime the system is too complex, especially since it involves two humans and not one operator-one machine, for us to really judge what the most significant factor is. I believe everything plays part, at least for my last relationship. Distance, Timing, Stupid and Immature Parents of her, Third Party, the original intention and of course her passion for ‘cover of the book’ and my passion for ‘indomie kari ayam’ (what the f*ck, heheh).

But I believe the girl was the one who had the concluding remarks on the debate, or discussion (this is a more civilized term). She said “Yes everything play part, but as human, we are destined to have some controls over that factors. We should not blame on the conditions because we are more than capable of overcoming that limitations. We should not say it is the condition that make us this way. No! We should accept that as our limitations. I would say I could not take the distance. So LDR will not work for me. That is my weakness. So if that ever happens to me, I would say that to my boyfriend. Not then cheating and blame the situation on the distance or any other factor. It is just lame. I believe with the right person, we can do anything, we can survive anything. Yes, I agree, the situation will be easier even with the wrong person if all other factors helped but again, we want to find the right one, the strongest one who can be with us to endure the hard times.” There was my answer. It reminded me, the main objective why I want long distance was to test the girl. I just want the strongest. Not a cheap and weak girl. Thanks to you two.