By Hassyah Abiyyu Putra
This is a story of a young man named Abiyyu Putra Hassyah who comes from Pekanbaru, the capital city of Riau. Riau is one of the 34 provinces that exists in one of the countries in the world that is rich in culture and nature – Indonesia.
Abiyyu is currently a third year student who is studying for a degree in Communication in IIUM with specialisation in Integrated Media Journalism.
When you think of “Abiyyu Putra Hassyah”, the first thing that pops out of your mind is his body posture, a 4-foot tall young man with a round shaped body with an adorable face and fair skin, which led people to get easily reminded of the character, Russell, from Disney and Pixar’s UP.
At the age of two, he was already taught English by a foreign teacher, thus making him one of the English language’s prodigies in his elementary school. This trait continues in his high school days, with evidence of his friends always asking him for guidance in English language.
He joined the school’s English club to enhance his skills and received second place in the Riau’s English Theatre competition during 2016. He was also the first runner-up in the news casting competition held in Padang, West Sumatra in 2017.
In contrast to his high school days, Abiyyu later did not involve much in organisations due to his priority and commitment to finish his college education as soon as possible. He is determined now to be at his best at the lessons that he takes so that he can get a good CGPA. At the same time, he is studying other country’s culture, including Malaysian, by interacting with local and several international students.
Abiyyu’s father, Zulmansyah, was formerly a journalist but now he is a businessman who owns an online news and a local cable TV subscription, while his mother, Hastuti Salta, is a civil servant in the Department of Archives. Abiyyu has no brothers or sisters. Even though he is not experiencing siblings rivalry, he feels that being the only child makes his responsibility to live up to his family’s name and expectations.
If you are familiar with Abiyyu, he is not just an English prodigy, but sometimes he can be considered as a comic book nerd. His father bought a “Superman” magazine at a bookstore back in 2005 where one of the pages contains pictures of Justice League standing side by side in the broad of sunset. This had motivated Abiyyu to draw his pictures, watch the series, as well as studying about the character, which had indirectly improved his English language.
When it comes to reading, Abiyyu always prefers fiction over non-fiction, as his favourite readings are Harry Potter franchise by J.K Rowling, as well as The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien.
“I am always fascinated by the magical world that has spells, wizards, dwarves and elves” because “I feels that this increases my imagination.” However, Abiyyu also watched several talk shows about stories on people’s background that provided him additional facts on the unknown side of the people he did not know.
Like every other living creatures on this Earth, Abiyyu has several weaknesses of his own. One of his notable weaknesses is that he is not able to decide something instantly, which he has been experiencing when it comes to choosing a career path.
Abiyyu wants to be a journalist, but he also wants to be a pilot because he can go wherever he wants and earns a big salary. But after he saw news of several plane crashes reported on television, he decided to hold his dream to be a pilot.
But after he learned to draw the pictures of Justice League from scratch, he then instantly decided to become an animator, and he kept the dream until his high school days. He realised that being an animator needs hard work, and with his low grade in mathematics, he recently started to learn about digital art independently on the internet, as well as trained his hand to start drawing again.
But because of how sluggish he is when it comes to making a big decision, it causes his parents to choose a career path for him. And since the terms and conditions to be a civil servant is harder than most jobs, Abiyyu decided to choose journalism as his career.
Another weakness that Abiyyu has is that he is always ignoring several opportunities that can help him enhance himself. It is his shy attitude that becomes an obstacle to achieve his dream since he describes it as “a way of setting things back to normal”.
It is really hard for Abiyyu to accept changes even though he currently tried hard to erase this attitude by being open and to have conversations with everyone.
What makes him interested to become a journalist is the thought of traveling to every corner of the world to find stories for the audience on the news organisation’s expenses where he does not have to worry about paying for the airline ticket and accommodation costs.
The second reason of wanting to be a journalist is that Abiyyu wants to make more contacts and build a larger connection, even for a holiday trip. He said that his father “at least knows a guy wherever he goes”. Abiyyu wants to be like his father by having good contacts with people around the world.
In order to become a great journalist, there must be several skills that needed to be developed. For Abiyyu, it was his interview skills. Even though he had done an interview with the headmaster of his school, that was seven years ago, and he thought that it is time to try again.
The other skills that Abiyyu wants to develop is his writing skills even though some of his friends told him that his English writing is good. He felt that there is always something wrong in his writing. He can never be sure whether his article is acceptable or not, hence by taking a course in journalism he thought it can help him to understand more about writing.
Abiyyu is quite talented and has the ability to achieve big things in the near future. He sees himself focusing first on completing his bachelor’s degree in Communication. Years later after graduation, he dreams of seeing himself being a successful journalist travelling to several capital cities of the world and building a larger connection in the course of his career.***
(This article is written as part of individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)