Kata-kata klise berkali-kali sepanjang kala

Kata-kata

Setiap tahun di setiap hari raya, jagat internet mengungkapkan kata-kata warga negeri ini yang senantiasa sama, yang klise, setidaknya di abad ini. Dua hari raya baru saja diperingati di bulan Agustus tahun ini: Lebaran dan Proklamasi Kemerdekaan RI. Tanpa perlu terlalu jeli membaca atau mendengar, kamu pun bisa menemukan ungkapan-ungkapan yang kamu tahu pernah dilontarkan pada tahun-tahun sebelumnya. Latah yang beruntun dan terjadi berulang-ulang ini lucu karena komentar-komentar tersebut selalu memicu bentuk-bentuk emosi yang serupa (kaget, marah, panik, hingga bergelora seolah-olah baru saja menemukan "kebenaran"). Saya berusaha merekamnya di sini.

DD-MM-YYYY, it's perfectly OK

Just because you're writing in English doesn't mean you ought to adopt the date format practised in the US as such. This habit is pretty common among Indonesian learners of English who assume that the 'date-month-year' format (e.g. 11 August 2013, 11-8-2013) is used in Indonesia, whereas the 'month-date-year' format (e.g. August 11, 2013, 8-11-2013) belongs to the US, hence English. Can I say something here please? The US isn't the only country speaking English as a native language--ever heard of the UK, Australia, and New Zealand? So why must the (American) English usage override the others?

And for your information, DD-MM-YYYY is widely adopted in the world, much more prevalent than MM-DD-YYYY in fact. According to Wikipedia (as of 11 August 2013), the only countries adopting the latter format are the US (exclusively), Canada, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia. So, you aren't alone, fellow Indonesians; you're in the same club with European, Latin American, and North African countries, among others.

And personally, I think DD-MM-YYYY is nicer because we sort the calendar date from the smallest unit (day) to the biggest (year). Using the same logic, YYYY-MM-DD is also useful particularly when we want to sort a number of computer files whose names are replaced by dates. But MM-DD-YYYY doesn't demonstrate that sequential property, unless we belittle the importance of the year.

Below are posters of two concerts in Jakarta using MM-DD-YYYY. But note that DD-MM-YYYY is also common among them.

Standing ovation, a (not so) Indonesian way

Standing ovation

No matter how engaged we are in watching a theatrical play, no matter how brilliant we find a singer on stage reaching high notes at the end of a song, and no matter how amazing it is to see an orchestra present a symphony, the majority of us, Indonesian audience, don't feel giving a standing ovation is a must.

Conversely, we often feel awkward to stand up from our comfy seats just to clap hands. Well, it doesn't mean we don't appreciate the performers. We do; and that's why we give applause--right on our seats. Clapping while standing, on the other hand, feels 'so Western'.

I know several people might prove me wrong. They may give a standing ovation at the end of a splendid performance. What usually follows is other people showing the same gesture. But it's always the case that there must be some 'agents provocateurs' prompting others to execute the action. It just doesn't dwell naturally in the individual habit of each person.

So, to any foreign artist having a gig in town, don't feel bad if your audience clap their hands merely on their seats. To stand up in (and thus stand out from) the crowd is a source of embarrassment for many of us.

PS. And Indonesians with limited English call the action standing applause, instead of standing ovation.

Laptop, oxymoron

No laptop on your lap.

The common noun laptop has appeared to be an oxymoron /ˌɒksɪˈmɔːrɒn/. It's not advised that you put a laptop on your lap. Otherwise, your thighs might develop what doctors call toasted skin syndrome. 

Whose time? Whose watch?

"Everybody, follow my watch."

Have you been in a situation where a group of people have to gather and do a particular activity in a designated time and place? Usually one person, the leader, then tells the group what time his/her watch is showing, thereby asking them to adjust their watches accordingly.

It's apparent, though, that nobody can guarantee the accuracy of the leader's watch. It might show five minutes earlier or later than the actual time. You know, some people are fond of advancing their watches' time by 5-10 minutes for the sake of punctuality--a move that's not always effective.

In that familiar situation, I never willingfully adjust my watch. For I believe that I've updated my watch using the Internet time so that it always shows the most accurate time. I know the accuracy is not on the millisecond level, but at least you don't go farther than a minute.

And it's always laughable when a person designates his/her watch as the benchmark for the rest of the group.

Et si l’école ne rendait plus les élèves créatifs ?

La philosophie comme une solution

Nous célébrons la semaine de la Francophonie avec le thème « Créativité et Jeunesse ». Je suis donc heureux de vous présenter un exposé sur ce thème.

Avant de commencer, il nous faut construire un pont entre les deux concepts pour que nous puissions déterminer leurs définitions et faire une relation entre eux—dans cet exposé le pont s’appelle « Education ». L’éducation ici veut dire celle qui prend lieu au sein de l’école—il s’agit surtout de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage. C’est pourquoi on définit la créativité comme la capacité d’imagination ou d’invention. La jeunesse, dit le dictionnaire Larousse, signifie la période de la vie humaine comprise entre l'enfance et l'âge mûr. Alors, dans le contexte de l’éducation, les jeunes sont les élèves de l’école maternelle au lycée.

Le (seul) paysage ?

Après avoir les définitions, je voudrais vous poser une question : « L’école rend-elle les élèves plus créatifs ? » Quand vous, mes amis indonésiens, étiez jeunes et le professeur vous a demandés de dessiner un paysage, avez-vous dessiné deux montagnes avec le soleil entre elles et une rue traversant un village dans lequel se trouvaient une maison et une rizière—comme ceci ? Pourquoi avons-nous la même image dans la tête quand il s’agit de paysage, comme s’il n’y avait pas d’autres perspectives ? Est-ce que nous n’avons pas envie de l’imagination chez le narrateur du « Petit Prince », qui dessinait dans son enfance un serpent boa qui digérait un éléphant, tandis que les
adultes le confondaient avec un chapeau ?

Un serpent boa digérant
un éléphant.

Alors, est-ce que nous ne sommes pas du tout faits pour être créatifs ?

En fait, il est impossible que les êtres humains perdent toute la créativité, parce qu’elle est une faculté innée. Cependant, elle exige en même temps une certaine éducation de peur qu’elle ne s’arrête de se développer. Malheureusement, le système éducatif national nous empêche très souvent de penser de manière créative. Je vous adresse trois problèmes qui existent dans beaucoup d’écoles.

Are you a badminton player?

Group visit to Singapore. I am on the left. November 2012.

When in Singapore wearing the black C2 attire, an Indonesian man approached me at The Tintin Shop as I was at the cashier to pay for the Tintin special issue of Le Monde magazine. He went, 'Are you a badminton player?'

Today, wearing the Indonesian contingent's sport jacket, I was about to pay for the lunch I had had at a local bistro in Jakarta (warteg) when the owner went, 'You look like a badminton player.'

Indonesian, Chinese, sporty outfit. I must be a badminton player.

Originally posted on Facebook on 13 February 2013.

Being mistaken for a native speaker

This is the second time when I was teaching the first lesson of English, a student asked, 'Where do you come from?' He thought that I came from Singapore.

In another past occasion another student asked--again, in the first meeting of the term--if I was a native speaker. Also, after I ended my presentation in a speech contest in Bandung, juries said I must have been to the UK--I haven't.

These are all pretty funny. My pronunciation may be a contributing factor, but my vocabulary still doesn't cope with British slang at all.

And I do speak with different pronunciations inside and outside classroom--the latter is more relaxed, of course. I'm not to appear posh. But, just like a pianist who hones their skill over time, I need to meet the standard. After all, I love phonetics over grammar, human voice is my playground. What can a phonetician do better than working on accents?

And that's why I won't stop learning French until I'm mistaken for a Parisian. It's not about losing one's identity. It's about playing with identities.

Originally posted on Facebook on 8 June 2013.

Indonesian women and nudity

Some Indonesians are not careful enough when they say nudity is not part of Indonesian culture. Those saying that women, in the name of 'Indonesian culture', are meant to cover parts of their bodies (e.g. hair, shoulders, arms, breasts, etc.) and thus must be legislated in statutory law are perhaps ignorant of local histories and cultures. And worse is when they take the term 'Indonesian culture' as a massive, monolithic entity shared uniformly from Aceh to Papua.

Perhaps it is the idea of religion, not culture, that they actually bear in mind; specifically Islamic teachings implemented in a formalist and patriarchal way, feminists would say. This way, are we saying that religion is not compatible with culture? Well, no religion is born and develops in void. It's always living in a cultural milieu and it always forms and is formed by its adherents. Abrahamic religions, 'exported' by traders and missionaries to Nusantara archipelago centuries ago, had first of all to compromise with the already-religious communities. Some were successful in changing people's cultural behaviour and some weren't.

And here we are in the 21st century, still with vast cultural diversity and increasing assertion of group identity. I believe there's nothing wrong in interpreting human body, particularly that of woman, according to one's own religion. But it's always wrong to point your fingers to any woman and say, 'You're immoral because of your exposed body.' And it's also wrong to pass a law telling how women should or should not dress in public. The latter group should be reminded, 'Indonesian culture' is a plural noun.

Images were taken from the Internet, depicting women from different parts of Indonesia.

Bali

Java

Java

Borneo

Papua

Mentawai

Film 'La Tahzan', dari sastra motivasi ke cerita berbau religi

Poster film La Tahzan

Buku aslinya, La Tahzan for Students, berisi kisah-kisah nyata tentang perjuangan beberapa mahasiswa/i Indonesia di Jepang. Setop sampai di sini pun, saya langsung teringat pada novel-novel dengan tema yang sama, macam Laskar Pelangi, Negeri 5 Menara, dan 9 Summers 10 Autumns. Mari kita menamai mereka semua "sastra motivasi" yang intinya mengundang pembacanya untuk bermimpi tinggi-tinggi; dari nol sampai sukses, dari jualan kerbau di kampung sampai bisa sekolah di luar negeri.

Nah, salah satu cerpen di buku itu yang berjudul "Orenji" diangkat ke layar lebar, namun dengan judul La Tahzan. Masalahnya, sutradara dan penulis naskah menganggap film itu tidak bakal menarik kalau hanya berkisah tentang dinamika studi si pemeran utama Viona (Atiqah Hasiholan) di Jepang.

Maka diciptakanlah karakter fiktif blasteran Indonesia-Jepang, Yamada (Joe Taslim), yang entah mengapa jatuh cinta pada si perempuan Indonesia yang unyu-unyu itu.

Biar makin menarik, Yamada pun dibikin rela untuk menjadi mualaf demi bisa menikahi Viona. Ini resep gampangan mujarab pemikat penonton yang pernah dipakai pula oleh Ayat-Ayat Cinta (meskipun pada film yang terakhir si perempuan Kristen lantas dimatikan begitu saja). Sebab haram hukumnya jika justru Viona yang meninggalkan institusi agamanya demi Yamada--kecuali penulis naskah tak sayang nyawa, tak mungkin dia berbuat demikian.

Agar terlihat lebih rumit, dilema cinta segitiga diciptakan dengan kehadiran teman masa lalu Viona, Hasan (Ario Bayu). Dan tiba-tiba konflik film pun berkisar seputar cinta, agama, dan pernikahan.

Humankind, either... or...

Humankind can be divided into binary oppositions:

man v woman
unmarried v married
breadwinner v dependant
omnivore v vegetarian
right wing v left wing
conservative v progressive

and

durian eater v durian hater

durian /ˈdʊərɪən/ noun a spiny oval tropical fruit containing a creamy pulp. Despite its foetid smell it is highly valued for its flavour.

Ugly democracy

An ugly side of democracy is narcissistic portraits on posters, banners, and billboards, all of which ruin the city's aesthetics. Legislators-to-be had better off display their names and websites to let voters get informed of their programmes. That's all.

When English and Indonesian talk about siblings

English puts more emphasis on gender, having brother and sister but no specific word to indicate their positions with regard to the speaker's age. You ought to add the adjective elder or younger, which is sometimes impractical.

Bahasa Indonesia, on the other hand, values more seniority as shown in kakak and adik. Both words are applicable to either a brother and a sister, depending on their age compared to yours. Kakak means elder sibling, adik younger sibling.

Only when one is to address their elder siblings (kakak) do they adopt different gender words according to their ethnicity or, more commonly, the addressees' ethnicity, e.g. (elder brother v elder sister) mas and mbak in Javanese, abang and mpok in Betawi, akang and tétéh in Sundanese, koko and cece in Chinese Hakka, etc. But in Bahasa Indonesia such differentiation doesn't exist; only kakak means elder sibling.

This difference isn't exclusive, though. Other languages have similar features.

NatGeo winning photos taken in Indonesia

I was flicking through the October 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine on a red sofa placed inside a department store of a new shopping mall in town while my mum and sister were browsing shoes. My eyes stopped on a page displaying the winning images of the annual National Geographic Photography Contest. It took me a few seconds before I realised that two of the top three best pictures had been taken in Indonesia. 

Out of curiosity I then searched for more information at home. Three categories are available for submission, namely Places, Nature, and People. In each category you can find the category winner, followed by several honourable mentions and one viewers' choice winner. And out of the three category winners, the judges will pick the grand-prize winner.

And here are the National Geographic winning photos with Indonesia as the setting since its inception in 2006.

2012 National Geographic Photography Contest

Fransisca Harlijanto. Category: Nature. Honourable Mention.
Thousands of fish move in synchrony in Komodo Island waters.

Wendell Phillips. Category: People. Honourable Mention.
A patient of mental sickness is shackled in chains at
Yayasan Galuh Rehabilitation Centre in Bekasi, West Java.

2011 National Geographic Photography Contest

Shikhei Goh. Category: Nature. Grand-Prize Winner and Nature Winner.
A dragonfly is sprayed with water in Riau Islands.

2010 National Geographic Photography Contest

Aaron Lim Boon Teck. Category: Nature. Grand-Prize Winner and Nature Winner.
Mount Rinjani volcano erupts on Lombok Island.

Stephanie Swartz. Category: Nature. Honourable Mention.
A lion at a wildlife sanctuary.

Chan Kwok Hung. Category: People. People Winner.
A Sumatran farmer and his buffalo charge through the mud
in a buffalo race in West Sumatra.

True dad

Happy are wives whose husbands can change nappies, pacify babies, and know why their babies cry.

Babysitter, my parent

Parenting is both mum's and dad's job, yet many Jakartan children grow more familiar with their babysitters.

Bocah merengek

Anak kecil yang merengek minta dibelikan suatu barang di toko biasanya diberi tahu orangtuanya, 

"Itu enggak dijual, Dek." 

"Kalo enggak dijual, kenapa ditaro di situ dong?"

Nah lo.

Indonesians spelling the Philippines

I bet 4 of 5 Indonesians would misspell the English proper noun Philippines. Mostly they'd spell it Phillipines, Philipines, Phillippines, Philipina, Philippina, among other combinations.

Winning a ticket to the Queen's Birthday Party

It was one of the most fun experiences I've ever had.

I knew that the British Embassy in Jakarta, through their Facebook page, was holding a photo contest last June commemorating UK Queen Elizabeth II's Official Birthday Party. Anybody could submit as many photos as possible that depict the Union Jack, the best three of which would be extended an invitation to the party in Jakarta. I didn't really pay any particular attention to that announcement and I had no intention to participate in it.

It was in the evening on Tuesday, 4 June 2013, when I was heading to Sofyan Hotel Betawi in Menteng, Central Jakarta, to welcome Brian, fellow ex-participant of the 39th Ship for South East Asian Youth Programme. Hailing from the Philippines, he flew to Jakarta thanks to the Indonesian government's Arts and Culture Scholarship. With three other contingent members, we made an appointment to gather in the hotel.

So, I was riding my motorcycle when I bumped into a bajaj running exactly in front of me on Jl. Cipinang Baru Utara. And I noticed that the three-wheeler had a Union Jack on its backside! Instantly, I was saying to myself, If the birthday party were meant for me, I would be able to capture this bajaj.