Musing over nothing in particular 3 - A fiction: #I #Hate #Hastags #and #Irony

Disclaimer: The title has little to do with the content :/

 

I finally signed up for an Instagram account, after years of resolution not to expand my plethora of social media accounts beyond Facebook and Twitter.

 

Well, around the time when Friendster was still a thing, I also swore to myself not to use Yahoo! Messenger. Of course, you bet on it, I did come to use the chat software. I said to myself, again, ‘At least, I’ll stick to Friendster and not even touch Facebook.’

 

Before I knew it, I had been proficient in Facebook and also managed a Twitter account, although I don’t even remember the last time I tweeted something. Easy come, easy go.

 

Anyway, I downloaded the Instagram app and followed only a number of photography accounts.

Photography has recently fascinated me to the point of me seriously considering grabbing some cash and buying myself a decent camera and starting on a trip somewhere strange just to take pictures of random things.

 

Again, here I contradicted my past self. The past, pretentious me always thought that photography was one of the least artistic form of arts. First, photographers don’t create things the ways, say, a painter or a sculptor brought works of arts from something blank and something virtually shapeless. 

 

The objects of photography, even if natural, existed prior to the click of the shutter. Perhaps, I thought, that’s why photographers ‘capture’ moments or ‘take’ pictures.

 

Moreover, utilizing a device as mechanically sophisticated as a camera seems to render photography more of a technical ability rather than an art. Technical ability is the last thing you would want to describe an art as. If an art were about to do things according to the rule and to precisely follow instructions, everyone would be a chef simply by following recipes.

 

While I’m at it, I have always believed that cooking, though extremely commonplace, is actually the highest form of art. It encompasses the very basic of human needs, which is nourishment by eating and drinking, and transforms it into a meticulous process with endlessly creative end results. If you’re lucky enough, you may happen to pick a episode of MasterChef and watch only that episode your entire life and even then, still find something you’d never think of putting into your mouth, like cockroaches. (Either that, or you somehow get to the right - or wrong - alley in a random Asian city.)

 

Back to the Instagram thing, Facebook, the owner of Instagram, must somehow have sent notifications to my Facebook friends who are also registered Instagram users that I was new to it. I gained a number of followers, most of whom I am friends with on Facebook.

 

Not that I mind being followed (I’d probably be a bit proud of myself too), but I just don’t want to follow them either, since doing so will spoil my initial intention of signing up to this social network (which is by its name ironic, since I don’t wish for any social interactions on a social network). On the other hand, not to follow them back may seem a bit rude here where I live. Well, I just hope my friends either don’t notice that I don’t reciprocally follow their accounts or read this that they can understand my reason.

 

I did follow back a small number of real-life friends whom I consider important in one way or another. I follow present buddies or colleagues (because some friends turned strangers at some points and remain as such). I also follow a few people in my life I’ve had an affinity with.

 

The latter category excludes the one person I have a crush on, rather counter-intuitively. To see her, though only on picture, on a daily basis no longer feels as pleasant. After spending some time together and knowing more about each other, I discovered that we may not be as compatible as I would like it, and so an inherent desire of detachment naturally arises.

 

Worse yet, it recently dawned on me that with most people, I can only establish one kind of relationship or go with the flow of its evolution. I can never be casual with my boss, and I don’t normally let my colleagues take a stance of superiority over me. If someone does a thing or two I deem despicable, no matter how amiable I have been towards him or her in the past, chances are I will look down on him or her. With my fellow tenants and old friends from school, I try to keep the conversation topics of work away, because the relationships we have developed, at least in my view, are ones free from the professional and financial responsibilities the world of work is full with.

 

Concerning my feeling towards this particular woman I have a crush on, since I got broken-hearted, naturally I tried to do away with any romantic feelings I have had for her. And when they started to peel off, there’s no turning back to the happiness I would always be immersed in when seeing her.

 

But I believe that one day these things will be far enough in the past that they no longer hurt. Although, then, they will also refrain from being a source of bliss.

Musing over nothing in particular 2: Going to the zoo - A fiction

I took care of my sister’s 11-year-old son today. A friend from church’s grandfather passed on just the day before, and her husband was out of town for work.

I liked going to her place. Because of Cleo. The pet dog they kept.


My sister was preparing lunch for Evan – the son – when I knocked at her door. The smell of grilled fish. Cleo, his tail wagging excitedly, barked his way to me. The golden retriever was large enough to lick my face all over.

“Jie, what did he die from?” I asked her.

“Diabetes. That’s why you should always keep an eye on your figure.”


She called on Evan to eat his lunch and retreated to her room. When Evan saw what was on the table, he screamed to her mother that he didn’t like fish. Reason number random for me not to like kids.

“If you don’t eat fish, you can’t learn how to swim,” she said from behind the door. I thought to myself, a typical Chinese mother, relying on superstitions like that.

“Uncle, is that true?”

“Why would your mother lie to you?” A win-win answer. I did not lie by affirming it, but he was also persuaded to eat his fish, though sulkily.

However, he complained that his mother ate fish yet couldn’t swim. I kept silent. I myself do not eat fish, yet I can swim. Life is indeed full of contradictions.

All the while, I was playing with the dog.


Before long, my sister came out in black clothing into which her ponytailed hair wavily flowed. “Thanks for coming. I know it’s sudden.” I said it was no problem.

She put the dog’s food into his bowl, and at the first sound of the grains pouring down, the dog ran after it. I felt betrayed. I thought I could understand how Patrick Star must have felt when he found out Gary the Snail had in fact been after the cookie, not him. I watched too much Spongebob.


Evan again refused to obey his mother when she told him to brush his teeth after meal. He reasoned with some weight: “Yesterday my teacher taught us komodo dragons developed their venoms because of all the foods left rotting in their mouths. I’m on my way to develop my own weapon!”

“If you’ve the komodo’s venom, you will also live like them, crawling on the ground and scales growing all over you. You want that?” Typical Chinese uncle.


My sister sat on the couch after finishing everything. It’s chit-chat o’clock now.

“Did you go back home recently?”

“No,” I said, “I would have let you know if I had.”

“When are you getting married?”

When I was still in high school, she asked when I would go to college. When I was in college, she asked when I would graduate. When I had graduated, she asked when I would secure a job. And now this. I wonder that when we’re grey-haired she would ask when I would die.

Dear sister, the question should be who would be willingly married to me.

“Jie, aren’t you sad about the passing? Because you don’t look it.”

“I am, a little. But, you see, even my friend said the family were somehow relieved. He’s been bed-ridden for months, giving everyone a hard time, and she said he would himself be more than happy to go.”

“That’s a morally debatable stance, isn’t it?”

She went out as soon as Evan finished with brushing his teeth. Cleo had been following her to the door.


“Uncle, my teacher said komodo dragons live on their own island. Is that true?”

“Yeah it’s true. It’s called the Komodo Island, somewhere near Bali.”

“So, we can’t see komodo dragons?” His tone sounded like the clash of curiosity crashing with disappointment.

“We can, at the zoo.” I realized the mistake of the day. I felt like relating to Squidward when he asked Patrick whether he wanted to eat in or take out in the Krusty Krab manual episode. I watched too much Spongebob.

“Shall we go to the zoo, please?”

“It’s past noon already. Maybe next time? In the morning?”

“I want to go to the zoo!” There it began, I thought to myself.

“You can go tomorrow, with your parents.”

“III WAAANT TO GOOO TO THE ZOOOOOO!!!”

Can’t argue with that, screaming. The modern-day equivalent would be all-caps words in comment sections.


The last time I went to the zoo was when I visited the Schlossbrunn Palace, in Vienna. It was located on the sprawling ground of the palace, just below the hill on which the Victory Arch stood. When I finished touring the zoo, to reach the nearest metro station, I walked what must have been one of the most exhausting walks I ever undertook, and during such exhaustion I always believed I had traveled too much.

My sister failed to understand how someone could ‘travel too much.’ She had wanted to travel a lot, but school, work, and marriage came without long intervals during which she could freely do what she wanted. I guess I was quite lucky to spend some time abroad studying, though when looked back, it was a rather lonely and intellectually demanding period which I did not quite enjoy as a whole.

Anyway, yes, you can travel too much. Have you ever seen a sincerely happy tour guide? He/she has travelled too much. Of course, it all comes back to the individual, and the place, but here are some of the indications I personally experienced.

You know you have travelled in Australia too much when you have seen two kangaroos fighting in a residential area.

You know you have travelled in Austria too much when you have been able to accept the reality that kangaroos don’t live in this country.

You know you have travelled in Belgium too much when you are familiar with the different fries sauces. Chances are you would rather not to call it ‘French’ fries because it’s from Belgium.

You know you have travelled in Italy too much when you expect less personal space when interacting with people.

You know you have travelled in France too much when you become less enamored with wide boulevards and intricately carved exterior walls of public buildings and grand church naves. Maybe with medieval castles, too. These things you can find throughout the country.

You know you have travelled in Switzerland too much when... Well, you’ll never get enough of this country. Except when you run out of cash. Which you probably will, before long, without even spending on a splurge.

Ultimately, you know you have travelled too much when you begin to think of travelling as having ice cream on a high summer noon. Either you finish your ice cream quickly or it will melt and leave mess on your hand.

The first won’t allow you to enjoy the ice cream at your own pace. It would be great if someone can invent a kind of ice cream that stays iced longer (maybe that’s called nitrogen ice cream, dunno, never tried that before). With the same logic, when I was in junior high school, I said to a classmate I would study physics that I could invent a pen that defies gravity. (I was annoyed when my pen fell from the desk God knows how many times). With that lowly determination in mind, I went on to study English. Because logic, that’s why.

The second is quite self-explanatory: You can’t enjoy the entire ice cream fully with unpleasantly creamy stuff dripping on your fingers.
It’s a lose-lose solution, something the economist would perhaps prefer to call it the ‘sub-optimal’ solution. As Aristotle advised us, everything in moderation.

The opinions expressed here is my own, and do not necessarily apply to everyone. (I copied the previous sentence from a newspaper disclaimer and altered it to suit my own needs, though I wonder who would read all the way down here anyway, if anyone did begin to read this at all.)


But visiting the zoo, watching the animals’ activities, could teach us a lot about life. Not necessarily fundamental lessons, but the practical ones would also be appreciated, right?

We entered the zoo at around 2. The sun was blazing fiercely. What the tigers was in the middle of seemed to be the best idea of what to do around this time: napping.

One of my greatest regrets after is not taking enough naps when I was little, even if I was repeatedly told to. Before I found a job, my mother would scold me for ‘sleeping all the time’ (original exaggeration) when I was napping. Came real life, and naps became restricted to weekends and holidays, but here I was, with my nephew out in the sun to see some lizards.


The zoo also kept wolves. I read somewhere once that it took only four generations of wolves to turn them to pet dogs. When I told a colleague this piece of useless information, he said perhaps it took only four generations for chimps to act like human beings.

Scientists did teach some chimpanzees to use signs to "speak". One was named Nim Chimpsky, after the linguist-turned-politician-turned-linguist-again. The longest recorded "utterance" was 16-word long, by which he was asking for a fruit.


In the primates’ area, one exhibition equipped with trees and a pool showed apes of species unknown to me. But they had fierce looks on their faces, the kind of threatening look you can expect from predators that may swallow your arm whole. I chuckled. Animals of the wild, made to gather foods in jungles, but living in confinement, their foods provided.

My apartment came to mind. And I had to work for food. Who had the last laugh?


The butterfly sanctuary was all humid inside, so humid it felt heavy just to breathe. The insects live their adulthood, that is, as real butterflies, only for less than a week, depending on the species. The days are spent mating. That's quite the definition of carpe diem.

Don't be like mosquitoes, living their adulthood sucking bloods from us.


So, so far: enough sleep and food, live contentedly, and being good to others. One fine life recipe indeed. Dogs do live like that. Cats, on the other hand, too much sleep and food and hating everyone around you. Not an easy choice, eh?


Before we went out, I bought Evan a cone of ice cream. Did he finish it quickly to prevent melting? Or did he ate it without being able to care less about the mess? Neither. He gave it to me that I could finish the ice cream. He just wanted the cone. I finished it in a hurry.


As we were driving home, Evan was sleeping soundly next to me. The sun had been slanting well into the western horizon. It turned into a slightly larger disc of orange, its mild warmth pushing through the windshield to reach me. The relaxed shade of twilight, as should a weekend’s sunset be.

Thoughts in a Saturday Morning - A musing over nothing in particular

I found myself sitting in the balcony of my apartment after the usual routine this morning. Not much of a physical routine, though, except if pulling yourself out of the blanket which magically gained weight overnight and a few clicks on the touchpad counted as ‘physical’. Laptop lid up, Firefox on. The first site I visit will be Facebook, to see that there is no new notifications save for game invitations. Sometimes friend requests too, mostly from people I don’t know. Two or three people usually have a birthday on any given day, whom I rarely wish a happy birthday. Twitter is next. I scroll down to briefly skim some tweets. Then I go to national news website, and next to BBC. Again, I simply skim through the headlines. Except when the news is about North Korea. Or China. I would read them. I somehow feel excited to read the sensational lines they write about those countries. It feels like watching movies; it’s just that the consequence for me may be real, like war and the like. The consequence, I suppose, are what people avoid when watching movies. They want the sensations, developments of events, without really living the consequences. Oh, the villain destroys the city? The apocalypse is happening? Aliens are invading the world, I mean, the US? Woe is the citizens! how are we gonna rebuild civilization? but, hey, that’s just in the movie, no need to feel sad about it. But, imagine, Russia, China, and North Korea ally themselves and go on a campaign to conquer the world. Oh yes, there are a lot to be concerned with. The last will be my email. But today I skipped it. It’s Saturday morning. Firefox off, laptop lid still up.

On working days, it would be around 8.30 after all this routine, after which I would continue the translation from the day before. But on holidays like this, it’s usually around 7.30. Since elementary school, I realized that I have this habit of waking up earlier on holidays, which I attribute to my assumptions that I got to sleep more soundly knowing there would be no pressure to wake up early the morning after. Back when I was still training for badminton, I had for every Sunday a long jog either at a sports center a bit far from my house or an even longer jog around the housing complex. Guess what, I would wake up earlier on the Saturday before, which also became free after my fifth grade, only to be a school day again when I entered junior high.

Speaking of the fifth grade, the Saturday mornings have something in common with it. My apartment is on floor 12A. 13th floor essentially, but the developer perhaps believed in some Western number superstition, which I have always thought is strange, because they also named the 4th floor 3A. They believe the Western and Eastern superstitions. It’s like having multiple religions, which, however absurd, is not that uncommon actually, as in some students, previously non-religious, who are facing exams. But in its advertisements, the developer said only one thing: The price per unit would rise on Monday. That means I will get richer out of nowhere in 48 hours.

Anyway, located at quite some height, I can hear the traffic far less busy than on weekdays, and only rather faint noises reach me. Relatively speaking, the subdued magnitude compares to the subdued class conversations fifth graders have in the last hour before lunch break. That long, boring, drowsy hour they spend thinking of what to have for lunch and talk to their classmates about anything at all to vent off their near rebelling hunger. The normal traffic will be like the noises those students make during the break itself, revolting their ways to the cafeteria as if there is no tomorrow. 'YOLO!' Well, they don't scream it out, but you can see it from their ferociousness.

Around this time, another means of communication one step more sophisticated will have been in use at least from the year before: Writing messages on pieces of paper, rolling them into balls, and throw them to the other interlocutor. It saves you the privacy, because if you pass them from one desk to another, chances are nosy mates in between will read and find some way to make fun of the message. That can be a rumor you don’t want, like that you like the person sitting by the window and such. In high school and college, that kind of rumor can get you into real relationship with said person.

Somehow, having conversations on paper, which now may have been obsolete thanks to smartphones in everyone’s hands, lasted for me until high school years. I remember keeping one piece of paper with a close girl friend’s drawing on it. I passed it back to her, who then happened to sit just behind me, with certain translated Japanese song lyrics I claimed to be my own poetry. I received it back with a smiley face at the end of the lyrics. After the last hour bell rang, I said to her she could keep it. No, she said, I should keep it, implying such romantic and memorable future memento should be kept by someone special. I caught that impression, but this tug of war went on for a period of time longer than it should. The reason was that I wasn’t impressed by the drawing she thought was pretty, so I felt no real urge to keep it. Perhaps she also thought the lyrics were ugly though.
She was personally close to me then, maybe even closer than was she to her boyfriend. She often told me her relationships problem. Of course, like many other single high schoolers, I was a relationship expert, and she seemed to grow closer to me day after day. Once in a while I would ask her out to have some bites near her house. She would be indisposed. Her boyfriend might find out. Of course, what else could it be? But then once I said if only she hadn’t been in a relationship, to which she replied if only she had known she would meet someone like me.

Maybe it’s because of the field I was an expert in that I could respond to the problems she told me. Maybe it’s because back then I was a smartass who spared little thought on what to say, but these days, I often find it difficult to properly respond when people confide to me. A lot has been going on, I guess, in college and books I read that somehow I became too careful perhaps in these things. These days, my responses to situations my friends are in mainly consist of things that sound like hands-off, like just shrug it off and just stay there and it will go away on its own. The latest case happened last night. A friend, it seemed to me, was having existential crisis, asking herself what life was actually for. After some lame, clichéd suggestions, my final advice came to be ‘maybe after a while it will go on its own, just hang in there’. It’s super effective. Fast forward to the casual chit-chats as if the heavier topic had never been brought up at all, she thanked me, saying I would find a sympathetic ear on her too when I am in situations. I thanked her and said I was fine at the moment. Smiley emoticon.  Blue double ticks. End of conversation, beginning of a new thought. I was wondering if she had told her boyfriend about it too? I was wondering if I attract only girls with boyfriends, even though in these cases I was more of being friendzoned?

Like any normal single person my age not desperate to get into a relationship, I couldn’t help but think of her throughout the night, imagining scenarios where we would ride on my car throughout the city talking about random stuff. As the night grew mellow, the conversation would as well get more intimate, and I got to be increasingly tempted to confide to her what really bothers me all this time: That I didn’t make the most of my exchange program in Bangkok few years back when we were still in college. I spent my time surfing the internet, not meeting people, locking myself in the small dorm room within the big campus at the center of the huge city, neglecting my exams, going to the red light district with the scholarship money which came from the Thai taxpayers’ money only to back off when I noticed some random women had well-built shoulders. Heck, maybe I would be too embarrassed to tell the last thing but she would, as in cheesy soap operas, notice it and persuade me to let it all out. I couldn’t. The only woman I would even cry in front of was my first girlfriend, who up until now also happens to be my only girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, to be exact.

But, if that scenario really did take place at all, I don’t think I would tell her all that anyway. I have recently been telling myself to be a stronger person. To tell anyone at all about past problems like that sounds exactly like whining. ‘Yes, but sometimes people need to let out their emotions too,’ my thought would contradict itself. ‘Maybe, maybe not, maybe fuck yourself,’ it would recite a scene in an American comedy movie, ‘Other people have their problems too, ok? So quit giving others hard time!’ The sequence of thoughts in my mind would go something like this, so I would be happy if friends I consider close to me would voluntarily ask me what’s wrong, which is also why I do not tell off people when they confide to me. Except for that one time when I was facing exam, suddenly living like a church-goer again, and a friend I made when in Bangkok (male, 100%) was complaining about how he had to cook for his sister. Later on I felt rather bad about it, but as one of my favorite columnist advised on regrets, if you make a great mistake, there’s no need for regret, you will make bigger mistakes anyway. Oh, well.

I press my Capri-Sun packaging to extract from it its last drop. It’s only recently that I rediscovered the delicious drink, although it has been some time that I became aware that foods and drinks that sweet could give me diabetes. Cool morning breeze sweeps pleasantly over my face, while the sun has climbed higher out of the city skylines to fill my room with a warmer hue of yellow. A nice weather for a Saturday morning, indeed, although my favorite will always be the cozy cloudy sky with thinly visible drizzle. I am thinking of having instant noodles as breakfast, despite the fact that once I bought a whole box of it and ate it continuously for several days that even the scent of it made me want to throw up. But the fact that there is another box next to several Capri-Sun must say something about my fondness of it. Is that how true love should be? Maybe I’ll muse over it later.

Musing something about missing someone

Have you ever missed someone but didn’t feel like seeing or even contacting her?

As you ask yourself this question, a name or an image of someone appears in your mind. And in your mind you know that that person is the one you are missing right now. But you don’t want to make any contact with her.It’s not that striking up a conversation is a difficult matter. For several times in the past you said ‘hi’ without having any other topics that should continue the simple exchange into a conversation. Many of these instances you can remember quite well.

You take up your cell phone and access the chat box where you and she said a few things the other night. You can still very well recall what she said, and even the emoticon she had put at the end of her message is a vivid image. But still you re-read that conversation. Your eyes slowly moved from the capital letter that introduces her message to the last one, while in your mind her voice reads the message for you. Listening to her soft, imaginary voice,you smiled. Just like you did every time you actually talked to her. You are still staring at the screen, realizing that you did not open the chat box to remind yourself of the message, but to pamper yourself in the reminiscence of the emotions you used to be in when you met her. These emotions had made up a tender affection you had for her. Your memory of this is being refreshed.

Maybe you give yourself into lying in your bedroom wide awake in the dead of the night thinking of that one person simply because you like missing her. When you are missing her, some space in your heart feels empty, the space you only now realized was where you kept her in fondness. That emptiness reminds you of the lively affection you have for her. You once again smile. You miss the warmth her presence had upon you. And as you are missing her now, it once more blushes in you.

You realize, this is the reason why you linger in your missing her.

Dream Chaser

"Somewhere beyond the night sky, Dreams do not sleep," you said. Gazing at a dim star, listening to you, I tried to force a sincere smile.

I looked at you, drenched in moonlight, And I realized my feelings for you. I want you to be happy, because, Shouldn't love hope for the best?

"So, if we just keep moving forward To the sunrise, everytime we wake up, And not staring back at our shadows, We'll be there, where dreams are true."

I saw you smiling bright with someone else. I told you I can't be at ease with you, And can't innocently be my own self, but What is love if it isn't heart-breaking?

If I said, straight-forwardly, "I love you", What would you do? Sometimes, I'm scared. I fancied our hearts felt the same thing As we're listening to the same song.

I turn my back on my lengthening shadow. The newly-born sun is blinding at first. I know I haven't changed good enough, But, I start walking to that direction,

To you, Dream Chaser.

Creative Writing: Final Article - "To Chiang Mai with Love"

Okay, so here's our last post for Creative Writing Course :( We were to write a feature article on topic of our choice, and our group, Alterium, decided to write about a lecturer of Bahasa Indonesia in the Thai Chiang Mai University. The following is our own writing, not yet edited by our lecturer, so grammatical errors and unpolished language may still show up here and there.

Credits:

Specially hearty thanks to my group mates Nurbani Trisna Wardhani and Okky Wicaksono, without whose helps, contributions, and supports this article would not have been possible.

And a final thank for our lecturer Labodalih Sembiring for teaching us creative writing this semester.

Photos by Hesti Aryani.

To Chiang Mai with Love

Alterium

Hesti Aryani’s fiancé has, quite accidentally, led her to find another love of her life, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

She first followed him to Thailand’s ‘city of culture and education’ settling things for his educational stay. But the two-week visit turned out paving the way to what she’s been doing, and loving, for two years: teaching.

Hesti is now actively teaching Bahasa Indonesia in Chiang Mai University (CMU). The first Indonesian native teacher there.

CMU Language Institute hosts her courses, which mostly about Bahasa Indonesia beginner learning at levels 1 and 2. Held either at 5-7 pm or 6-8 pm on weekdays, enthusiasm is seldom too low, with as many as thirty students could flock to each class.

They also have Bahasa Indonesia for tourism classes on some occasions.

Bahasa Indonesia is taught as an implementation of the government’s promoting Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community 2015. Every Thai university student should master, or at least learn, another ASEAN language for career possibilities in other ASEAN countries. CMU Language Institute makes available courses on other ASEAN languages. Burmese and Vietnamese languages are to name a few.

More recently, Hesti assumed a place in the teaching team in CMU’s English department. The Pekalongan-born had been a student in her alma mater Universitas Gadjah Mada’s counterpart and graduated in 2011.

---

Hesti fell in love with the northern Thai city during her first visit. And she fancied studying there too, with her fiancé.

However, while no graduate scholarship was available then, a twist of her life awaited already.

She met with the director of CMU Language Institute, who, apparently, had long longed to open an Indonesian class. Her fiancé, Wahyu Kuncoro, was offered a teaching post for that class in plan, but his full scholarship contract restricted him from working.

“Then the director asked me,” she said. “I really was interested, but I had yet to graduate.”

Another rendezvous and an educationally-attractive CV later, “He [the director] then decided to give me a deadline until November 2011,” a six-month period to finish her bachelor thesis.

Quite sadly, she came home with this excitement to her not-so-excited parents telling her to finish her undergraduate study first.

And she rushed her bachelor thesis all the way from May until August. But the ‘really hard time’ ended up sweet. Her parents blessed her with their full support, because of which and a fiancé’s waiting for her there, she took off to the Buddhist Kingdom.

---

The special status as the first native Indonesian teacher in CMU not only had its perks, but also minuses. Preparing the teaching materials was one.

“I couldn’t just teach Bahasa Indonesia, so teaching material preparation was the first snag in my teaching career.

“The challenge was that I only applied what I got from TEFL, Teaching English as a Foreign Language. So I put into use several language teaching methods in my classes,” she explained.

And the language gap she’s trying to bridge was a barrier for her too.

“I hadn’t been able to speak Thai,” Hesti recalled and recounted her first classes, “so it’s pretty challenging for me.”

She was trying to use English as the ‘introductory language’ to communicate with the students. But it still proved problematic. They understood few of the English words. Not too many more.

Substantially, Indonesian words are longer chunks than the more digestible Thai bite-sized words. And memorizing Indonesian words isn’t the thing they’re best at.

On a smaller scale, the sounds ‘R’ and ‘L’, abundant in Bahasa Indonesia, are also hard for them to pronounce.

Plus, as Hesti sees, it’s in the nature of CMU students to try learning languages as new things. Not too much more. She told us how out of her thirty level 1 students, only ten continued to level 2. Let alone to level 3, which was “why we haven’t had level 3, because of the insufficient number of participants.”

But, not everything was in the blue.

Bahasa Indonesia employs alphabets in its writing system, while also sharing similar sentence structure with Thai. These two ease Bahasa Indonesia learning for Hesti’s Thai students.

She also appreciates the politeness of the students, fashioning her classes conducive.

“Perhaps culture in Thailand is more valued, so they respect teachers or lecturers very much, or people older than they are.”

---

Those all are surely precious pieces of experience, something Hesti sought from the very start. Then a fresh graduate, she was also after a prestigious, university-bound occupation.

The teaching post answered her with what she had wished for.

CMU is the first provincial university in Thailand. It has also consistently ranked among the Quacquarelli Symonds’ top 100 ASIAN universities in the last few years and is reputed among the country’s elite.

The four campuses have bred notable alumnae, from an award winning writer, a mayor of Chiang Mai, a governor of Bangkok, deputy prime ministers, until the current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

And she turned down the idea of what she’s doing now is a display of love for her country as a cliché. At first. She admitted that scheme did develop on the way.

      

 “After I in Chiang Mai was proposed offers or works requiring me to promote Indonesia, I felt this was my chance, and I gave time and space to express what Indonesia is.

“So, after seeing various problems that Indonesia had not yet been too popular among CMU students, then from there came an undercover mission, another mission that I personally aspired to glorify the nation.

“It may sound like a cliché, but I think whoever when abroad or in the country meeting foreigners will be an ambassador for Indonesia.

“Whether you like it or not, we have to show our love toward our homeland, that we are knowledgeable about Indonesia,” she told us.

And these words of a teacher of two languages are not meaningless. She has been the spearhead of the openings of both Indonesia Study Centre and Indonesia Day. Again, she was the only Indonesian in charge.

However, as much as she was alone, she was never on her own.

The Indonesian Embassy, though had been rather unresponsive at first, granted Hesti a fund of 150 million rupiahs to spend for her projects. They also supplied reading materials for the Indonesia Study Centre. Meanwhile, Indonesian church missionaries helped her with cooking free food for visitors in the Indonesia Day, among others.

CMU itself has been very supportive toward the Indonesian courses.

“They designed [advertisements] all around the campus, even in the downtown, with giant screen LCD in Indonesian,” she said.

But, most importantly, she had her fiancé with her, who always got her back. He had been encouraging her to be meticulous toward her works.

“He was really helpful when we were holding events about Indonesia, showed up in my classes to be a native speaker, so my students could practice using Bahasa Indonesia.”

---

Love is always in Chiang Mai’s air for Hesti.

“I’m happy [to be in Chiang Mai], happy because I feel welcome.

“Indonesians in the educational and Bahasa Indonesia worlds, especially in Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand, are still very few.

“My presence can be very appreciated by them [locals] with how many mass media come to CMU to cover the Indonesia Day event, or other Indonesian events, or just to interview me about my opinion on how to teach Bahasa Indonesia to students in CMU.”

She couldn’t remember even once being despised either verbally or attitudinally.

And in this city, Hesti came to realize that she loves her present job than what she’s been dreaming of doing. She had hoped to be a diplomat, and she was once offered to work in the Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok too. But seeing how things were done there didn’t charm her very much.

“So I decided early to focus on what I’ve been doing, and that is teaching.

“Not yet,” was her answer to her homeland-bound leave. “My fiancé Mas Wahyu has obtained an offer for a doctoral scholarship somewhere, which is not Indonesia, nor Thailand.

“After finishing my graduate study, we’ll be back to Indonesia, one or two months to get married and then I’ll follow him.

“I don’t know where.”

So, will love lead Hesti’s way once and again?

“We’ll see.”

Creative Writing: "Bag It!" Movie Review

Is Your Life too Plastic?

I’m typing this with a plastic-cased laptop. Maybe when you woke up this morning, you turned off the lamp with the plastic switch. And maybe you were changing the channel with the plastic remote. The TV was plastic, too, I suppose. Oh, don’t forget our all time favorite, the plastic bag!

What does Jeb Berrier, a middle-aged soon-to-be father, an average middle-class American, have to say about it? Bag It!

You’ve guessed it! The so-named movie is about Jeb’s attempt to reduce, or even to stop using, plastic (any kinds). But, worry not! This guy, who isn’t a tree-hugger, is none of our usual angry environmentalists seeking the deconstruction of civilization.

He first takes us back to the history of plastic bag in particular, which was yet so worldwide just five decades ago. The pluses and minuses covered, he departs on a trip around the world for a way to cut plastic bag use. An epitome would be Dublin, Ireland, which puts fee on plastic bags, resulting a decrease of 90% of plastic bag consumption.

Well, this isn’t the only sound statistic put forward here. The director, Susan Beraza, presents jaw-dropping numbers such as that 300,000,000 plastic coffee cups used (and thrown away) everyday in the U.S. only. Funky and cheerful music back-sounds such facts, still narrated by our Jeb, and this tones down the inconvenient, stressing truth, while also sings out the irony of the society’s ignorance, or perhaps even approval, of it.

Bag It! tries to tell us that we’re not powerless in this war. The crew follows Jeb to groups of people living outside the plastic bag, one of which is in Germany. But, the authority does not give in. The movie unveils the fact that American Chemistry Council (ACC) rolls out millions of dollars in order for plastic bag to stay in circulation. When nagged by Jeb through emails and phone calls for months, they just keep avoiding him, and we know what that means.

The cartoon-like graphics interspersing the movie takes us to a rather personal part of Jeb’s life. His wife, Anna, is conceiving a child. Later we will see the birth, but in between, Jeb demonstrates that using home products, dubbed ‘safe’, such as soap and even rubber duck, deteriorates his health in just two days. The cause, you-name-it chemicals in virtually everything does harm to human body.

This documentary then dives further to the oceans, especially Pacific. Plastics pollute our water bodies, and the central Pacific has been a giant ‘landfill’, to which gather tons plastic waste. Animals might eat them, if they don’t decompose. Well, they don’t! Let alone decomposing, recycling is according to Bag It! a ‘myth’. Only some plastic bottles are recyclable, in a low rate. Some others of a certain type are not even recycled at all.

So, bag it! Reduce our use of plastic, the movie invites us. Just like how the movie brings this serious subject in a light tone, so can we begin with little things around us. And just like our everyman host Jeb Berrier, we too are not powerless in contributing to the health of our aging planet.