As I enjoyed intensive city hopping for almost a month, I also tried to steal the time for relax during my stay in different cities, but it did not happen in every city. Another short visit to a city in southern part of Sumatera last month made me feel like going home. It is a combination of a sentimental illusion of mine imagining myself visiting the city years ago as a child and the fact that I could understand the local language by guessing based on my mother tongue (finally! I could not understand the local languages in other cities I visited). It made me want to absorb every second of my visit in the city, which also made me understand why Mom offered her company during the week. She might want to show me things from my childhood, or probably visit another town where I was born. Unluckily, that was not a holiday, so I convinced my Mom to cancel her visit.

Anyhow, my personal history related to this city did not automatically bring a fortune for me, but I managed to spare my time enjoying sunset from the riverside of Batanghari. Ancol, the place where I spent my afternoon, is one of interesting places in the city. I took pictures and had small talk with my friend, which made me feel very welcome in the city. Later in the evening, I met other friends to sip a glass of local coffee in a food stall around the city center. I know I am more into tea than coffee –at least I was more into coffee than tea- but I can not deny I adore the local coffee. It's typically Sumateran coffee: black, strong flavor, and most important, the smell that make me awake. It was a perfect evening.

I flew the next day for another destination, but I had to transit in Jakarta for my connecting flight. Arrived in the terminal 3 of Soekarno Hatta, I still amazed with its modern design (in contrast to boring terminal 1 and 2), the color they use and also the new branding image. I took pictures of the terminal one day before its launching on my way to Sumatera, so this time, I directly waited for shuttle to another terminal. All I want to do right after checked in was only to have my lunch in one of the restaurants and then spending my three hours doing whatever I want in the airport. I purposely arranged early flight to Jakarta to anticipate delay from the flight.

Alas, three hours later, I found out a flight delay for another three hours and the airline sent me to their lounge. The food only kept my boring away for the first 30 minutes and I decided to continue reading the novel I bought a week before: Negeri van Oranje. It was written by my Stuneder fellows (remember him?) and I read it for the sake of my curiosity and also my personal sentimental. As a person who had experienced a quite the same experience (OK, mine was not as much as theirs), reading this book was like reminiscing my time in NL. Friendship, that's one word to describe the book. How could I know that I will find the sincere friendship during my stay in NL? It was not my first time living by myself, but living in completely different country taught me about sharing with friends.

And for those who have not and will visit NL, it is also a guide book to live as student and to explore the country and its surrounding countries. Believe me, this information is very useful, some information are new to me, which prove that the writers have explore the country better than me. Somehow, it reminds me to my own experience in gathering information about NL through mailing list from Indonesian students in NL. Later, we also experience the same with the newer Stuned awardees. A friend came up with an effort to compose our information from the mailing list into a compilation called living in Holland, he also put his own writing about how to survive in NL. He gave a copy of this compilation to NESO Office in Jakarta and to all of his friends. It did help me answering questions from the new Stuned awardees. That's why I think some part of the book tries to provide this guidance to their readers, very helpful, right?

Regardless the confusing timeline within the book, I fully recommend the book for all book lovers. It did make me laugh during my reading (also ignoring the stares from people around me because of the laughing) and successfully kill my long and boring transit time. I finished the book on my flight home to Jakarta, which made this as the second book I finished within less than a week (I finished the first tetralogy book of Pramoedya in only three days without transiting in any airport ;)). All and all, I thanked the writer to make this book as a memento from NL.

Felicitation mes amis. Bien faire et laisser dire.

So sorry for my long absence in this blog. I spent almost all of my time out of town for work, I am on the road guys. This is the risk I got for working in a program involving different cities, it requires me to travel a lot when higher intensity of activities happened. In earlier times I always envy to see her frequent travel to Gorontalo, but now I could understand her woes. A combination of flight delay and travel to different time area become my regular menu as well as moving from one hotel to others within one week. Jakarta seemed only functions for transit since I still travel to Bandung during long weekends. Even though I travel to touristic cities, but I do not have much time for the sightseeing in every visit. I have to smartly use my time in the office to keep everything run on track. Looking at the bright side, I could use my frequent flier card to avoid queues for check in, tasting the richness of local culinary, and getting in touch with my friends who live in the cities. I could also steal the time to spend weekends in the city, but I have not done it yet.

Anyhow, during my activities in the cities, I just discover an interesting thing about workshop, meeting, training, and the likes. These events could be organized efficiently by involving small team or large team. I used to think that the larger the event, the larger the team should be involved. To my surprise, mid-size event and small event could be organized by a small team, what an efficient way! I love this way of organizing event and want to apply it into mine. Unfortunately, not everybody loves it, since it requires them to work without assistant. Too bad.

I have experienced a training of trainer that only involved two persons as trainer and organizer. It was held for three days in a hotel, with only 12 participants. The trainers took their turn in each session, when one of them played his role as trainer, the other assisted him by preparing papers and markers for participants during group work, vice versa. The other time, I visited my neighboring country for a training, it was attended by about 25 participants from South East Asia countries. On the third day, I realized that the training was only organized by no more than 3 persons. Another example, my colleague flew to India for 5 days training just to discover the event was organized by only 2 persons. I do not know whether it matters, but none of the above events is organized by Indonesian.

I did not purposely notice about their efficiency, but when I had to plan a series of events out of town, this idea came to my mind. I have reason to apply it, since the more the persons involve, the longer coordination chain applies, which influence coordination within the team. The first trial was for a one day meeting and everything run smooth, which made me continue to several meetings. The other time, we tried to find more secluded place for a 2 days workshop, and as usual I was not assisted by anybody, it was all at my cost. It might not the perfect one, but I did not receive any complain from my superior neither our partners. I concluded it was doable … until last week.

Since I have to take much role in the meeting and did not have much time to prepare (I also have to be in another meeting in another city at one day before), I decided to hire local assistant for a three days workshop that involved not more than 15 participants. My local partner suggested me to hire 2 assistants and I agreed. These assistants have been coordinated with my local partners and have been informed about their tasks. To make it short, I received surprises on the first day and directly discover that one of my partners preferred another way of organizing the meeting. He needed assistants to set up meeting equipment (usually I or other meeting participants did it), to write him cards he need during the discussion, to write him minutes, to print him discussion material, to assist him during the presentation, and to prepare other things (for these things, no one did it for him). Then I realized that he might felt uncomfortable with the way we previously conduct the meetings.

At the organization where I work, we usually do these things by ourselves, but maybe other organizations do this in different way. I should have realized that different persons, with different ability, with different seniority, required different assistance. *sight*.

Bon nuit tout le monde.

After a long time, I finally got a chance to meet a friend, again, after several times of cancellation. Honestly, the chances to meet some friends are very rare lately, at least that is happened to me. We did not have much time for the chit chat since he has to change buses to reach home, and the evening was not young. Unlike our usual chats –which most of the time talking about work, work, and work- we ended up talking about our personal thing. It was not the first time he and I shared about our life. As usual, the most interesting topic from him is about his relationship with his other half, while for me, we agreed that the not-yet-ending-journey-for-my-soulmate is still applicable.

Listen to his stories felt like listen to my own story a few years ago. And the lessons I learned from my experience (well, not the perfect one, but at least I learned something) are to face our own problem and to give ourselves much time to digest everything we face. It will need hard work from both sides, but this made him worries if it will not be achieved. But I do wish for a happy ending for both of them. It takes a loss to make them find what they really need, but I did not want to let them lose it, they can discover it after digesting their problems.

This time, we spend much time to talk about my story. It's not because I dominate the chat, but also because we have an interesting discussion about his suggestion for me. He said, even though I am not a model (I assumed this refers to those who have slim body and beautiful face), but I have all the capability to attract men. That was so nice of him to let me know about this. Even so, he continued by mentioning two things that probably made the newly-introduced-men take a distant from me: education-envy and salary-envy. What the heck? Well, he is not the first person who told me about this, not the first man who told me, not the first best friend who let me know, also not his first time to tell me about this. He discussed about this to me a few years ago, but the way we explored it was far different than now. There was not so big issues that stricken me at that time. But this time, those envies seemed really happened to me. Gosh, I cannot believe that I have the capability to make other people felt underrated.

To help me out solving this situation, he asked me about an idea I have been avoiding from, which I responded with a big grin on my face. He then came up explaining statistics and probabilities for his suggestion to happen. It was logical and make sense, but I wish life does not always about make it sense. His suggestion is still a big temptation to me, that has changed my life, and also made me questioning whether I was on the track I really want to be or not. If only I followed my own will, I would never let myself discover the barrier between me and mentari and continued our journey without worrying any thing. But we did not, and this was the situation where I cursed myself to do the right thing. I knew this is not the only choice I could take, but other ideas I got before were not even better.

He still tried to convince me about his suggestion when we walk out to the bus stop. I knew all he wants is to help me regain my happiness. Thank you bro, you are one of few people I could share stories.

Life is full of choices. So, will I go on with his suggestion?

Life is always interesting for me, maybe that's why I found so many surprises since the beginning of this year. It might sound immature, but my birthday this year was celebrated in a different way. My parents visited us (means, me and my sister) for three weeks and I decided to take several days off to spend time with them. Even better, my brother also took his leaves and visited us in Bandung. This was something I have been dreaming for so long, spending my time with them in Bandung, the best birthday present.

Another piece of surprise awaited me in Bandung. I have been in contact with a classmate and we planned to meet since December. He was one of my best friends back in the university and our last meeting was about 7 years ago (even I did not believe it, 7 years sound very long to me). Anyway, we finally met after several attempts failed. He did not change much and still a nice friend to talk to. Even so, he and I are not the same as 7 years ago. We never went out together except for group works. And realizing we go out and treat each other are something new to us. As students, we did not even though of treating each other or even do the chat without worrying our papers :D

Getting in touch with old friends is memorable moment for me since it rarely happened, but getting to know new friends is even better. However, worst of all is losing them one by one. Another friend will leave this country to pursue her higher education, which means I will have another long distance friend in a few months. Honestly, I feel sad, coz distance really make a distant. Anyway, this is the rollercoaster of life, the question is: will I give up on this?

Talking about giving up, I really have to work hard to master the new language (I mentioned about this in the previous post, right?). I missed many classes since I have to travel a lot lately. To make it worse, there are so many holidays at the same days of my language course. Every time I joined the class after missing the previous, I was really puzzled with everything taught by the teacher. I do not even dare to know the progress of other parallel classes compare to mine. I made up my mind that I have to learn the language by myself, but the book does not help me much coz all instructions are neither in English nor Indonesian. Some friends use other books to ease them learning the language, while I have not decided to do the same. I'm still busy to learn all things I missed in the class and try to remember conjugations for every new verb. Gosh, I wish I have much time to learn at home.

Back to my new years' resolution, I promised to give a peek on this in the previous post. Well, this year is planned to be a year to listen, since most of the time, I just want to be heard by others. In the previous years, I only thought about everything I want and what I want from other people, but it did not make me understand other people. To understand them, I have to communicate with them, and communication involves speaking and listening between me and other people. I still need to exercise my ability to listen to other people: their advices, their wants, their complains, their grudges, and many more. I should admit that it is not easy, but doable. I have to face so many implacable people lately, who are wanted to be heard as the sole source of truth. I do not know why I chose this hard way, but there must be something I will get in return, otherwise I will not feel like to do it. A brave heart, probably?

Labels: My life

Language is something we use to communicate with other people, verbally or written. As someone who born and raised in this country, I began to know Bahasa in my pre school period. Yes, Bahasa is not the first language I acquired; instead, Minang language is my mother tongue. My parents taught me verbally in our daily talk, but we never write and almost never read in minang language. Bahasa is the first language I learn to write since I got to know the language in school. As a result, I write letters, stories, notes, sms, email, internet chat in bahasa, even though I wrote it to those who acquire Minang language. All I know, all teachers –wherever I went to school both in Bukittinggi and in Bandung- speak the same language: Bahasa. And I think this influenced the way I write and read, since I learned it the first time in Bahasa.

Anyway, I finally learned how to read sentences in Minang language when I joined a students association of Minang in my campus. I pushed myself learning it since my friends gave me weird faces when I told them I do not know how to read in Minang language, while this association always post their announcement in this language. Unfortunately, I did not work on writing, since I did not feel it was necessary.

Basa Sunda is the second language I learned in school. I forgot how did I manage to learn the language in elementary school, but I remember doing matchmaking words for my homework and writing short story for my exam. I did quite well at that time, at least I did not get red marks on this subject. But soon as I moved to Bukittinggi and relearn Minang language, I lose my skill in Sundanese. I got a chance to relearn Sundanese a few years ago, but again, I lost it again after I moved out from the city.

Junior high school opened a chance for me to learn English. Some of my friends learned it before they went to junior high, some of them learned it in their elementary school and some of them took English course. When I succeed to arrange one simple sentence in English, one of my friends have joined the English debate competition in our town. Even so, my marks for English showed higher number than Bahasa in my report book. I cannot claim that my English was better than Bahasa, but each language is taught in different difficulties: for example, I learned about grammar for English, but I learned more advance in Bahasa in terms of grammar, literatures, and other things. Should I mention how much depress the teacher to make me understand Bahasa?

I learned English in school for six years until I graduated from Senior High, it's a long period for acquiring foreign language, but now I could conclude I did not make any significant progress on the language. I took English course for about 3-6 months in my early junior high and continued it for 3 months in my senior high, it did help for improving my marks for English subject, but it did not make me a fluent English speaker/writer/reader. In the university, I learned to be English reader, since most of my academic books were in English. I still have English subject for one semester in the early year and I refreshed my English by taking 3 months course at 3^rd year in the university. Did it make me better in this language? No. For me, English skill is something that come and go since I never focus to intensely learn it, maybe because I never though I will need it in the future or even dream to go abroad. Now I can laugh at my stupidity, it's a pity.

The same stupidity drove me treating English as the only foreign language I have ever acquired in this life. Even when I finally studied in non English speaking country, I never thought to learn the language comprehensively. I only learned several sentences just to enable me fulfill my daily needs.

Overall, I conclude that I did not pay so much attention in language. I might be not good at language, but maybe it was due to my laziness and ignorance on this matter. I know I cannot blame the education system, but somehow it did give me a certain perspective. There was a day in my senior high where we required to take an IQ test before we chose our desired minor for the third year. My IQ result did not support what I desired, if I am not mistaken, the result had two categories: quantative skill and verbal skill. I was good at verbal skill and was advised to take social science (IPS) or linguistics (Bahasa). However, everyone knew that to be in one of those classes was not my dream. There was an assumption that only students with excellent and good marks could be in natural science class (IPA), while the rest will only join social science and linguistics classes. At least that was the impression I concluded based on my observation at that time. I think this is why there were only extra courses (les) for chemistry, physics, and mathematics but none for social sciences in my hometown.

Reading this blog have opened my eyes about language. I cannot describe how much amazed I was reading her posts. She's awesome. She changed my mind about acquiring a mother tongue as our own identity. She insisted to raise her children with their parents' languages even though they do not even live in one of those countries. My sister, Dedek, lived in Bandung until pre-school and we taught her Bahasa just to enable her to communicate with her friends without language confusion between Bahasa and Minang language. We thought she will have difficulties in communication if we taught her Minang language as mother tongue. Anyhow, she managed to acquire Minang language in senior high because the same reason I acquired my skill to read Minang.

Another turning point -and more significant one- was meeting my new employer a few months ago. He surprised me the first time I met him. He interviewed me in English but at the end of the interview I knew he is not from English speaking country. He speaks perfect English without any accent from his country, I was clueless. The next time I met him, he greeted me in Bahasa, but I replied in English assuming that he could only speak several words in Bahasa. Contradictory, he kept replying me in Bahasa, which made me confuse, I never used to speak Bahasa with foreigner. Later, when I left, I caught him talking on the phone in his mother tongue, and it was perfect accent (I guess, since I do not know his language). Soon as I started my first day in the office, I got to know that he speaks Bahasa very fluently without foreign accent in daily basis. He does not speak the same way as Cinta Laura, but he speaks fluently like other Indonesian does. It's good news and also bad news for me, good news because I do not need to worry about my English when I talk to him, but bad news because I rarely get the chance to practice my English orally in the office.

These things made me think what I have been doing for years, wasting my time without doing any good at language. I tried to improve my English but only because I should learn it in school, to understand what I learn in campus, and because I need it to do my job. Now, I decided to learn another language based on my lessons learned from the previous languages. I will learn it not only as a tool to communicate, but will also learn the culture so as to understand the way I should use the language. After several sessions in the language course, I learn that the teaching system is very contradictive Indonesian education system in teaching English. Interesting. I wish I succeed in acquiring this language. I was told it will take one year until I could read a book. Can I keep myself following the class? Considering I never experienced language course for more than 6 months.