Here and There

People amazingly have complete different reactions/opinions toward a same single situation/thing.

Here, the southern hemisphere particularly in a little place I call my hometown, is where I was born, I grew up and live at the moment. There, is another hemisphere. A place that I once lived and still have its influence in my life. Especially for the fact that I am in touch with some friends. So, this is how it goes, from my friends here and my friends there. Spot the difference.

• Situation (S) : I phonecall my friend, "I am drunk,"

My friend here (H) : "Oh my God. You little alcoholic snot! Repent. Don't let anybody rape you!"
My friend there (T) : "Ha-ha. Have fun! Cool party huh? Have a great time! Enjoy!"

• S : I wrote an email saying that I'm having a holiday in Spain.

H : "You're so lucky. Traveling all the time huh? No wonder you're still single. Don't you think about savings for your future? Or you have a super rich Dad? Well, just take care of yourself. Don't forget to bring souvenirs,"
T : "Oh good. Have you tried paella? Don't try gazpacho. It's just a cold tomato soup with a Spanish name. Do you plan to visit Alhambra? Send me postcards from there!"

• S : My ex boyfriend visits me after we split up. We intend to go to a certain place in order to sort out our past and be good friends. Knowing this, my Dad asks my brother to accompany me. I agree but later on send my brother back home because I want to talk with my ex in private. My Dad gets very upset upon this and asks me to go home immediately.

H : "Your Dad only wants to take care of you. He wants to protect you, it's his responsibility. He loves you. Don't just see from your point of view. Think what he feels if something happens to you,"
T : "Gosh. That's insane. You're 28! Tell him you have a right to decide for yourself,"

• S : A friend arranged a date for me with someone she knew. He turned out to be completely boring and unattractive. I flied from the place at once, saying that I have an urgent 'woman issue'.

H : "(angrily) If you don't want to be his date, at least be a good host. Give him clear signal that you're not interested, he will understand. But accompany him until you finish eating. It's impolite to suddenly left him.You're arrogant. He doesn't ask you to marry yet, does he? You're not a hundred percent sure that he's also attracted to you, are you? Why don't you just hang on for a while and look civilised?"
T : "That's my girl. Don't let him think he'll get a good night kiss or even a chance to drive you home. Get a taxi to a local bar and hang out with cool dudes only,"

• S : A friend of mine got pregnant with her ex boyfriend, who is with another girl now.

H : "Oh No. Tell him he has to marry her. He has to take his responsibility and leave his girlfriend now,"
T : "Don't tell him anything. She doesn't want him to get his custody, does she?"

• I complained that my Dad doesn't support me to travel.

H : " You're ungrateful. You're lucky enough that he let you travel once. I think now it's time for you to think about your future: climb on your career ladder, have a settled life, have a good job and take care of your family rather than just thinking about your own needs all the time,"
T : "Well, if you know what you want, go get it. With or without support. Your Dad will understand eventually,"

• About being a friend

H : "Why don't you reply messages? Why don't you tell your friend you're here? Why you don't come to visit sometimes?"
T : "It's good to have friends but you need a space for yourself,"

• I'll add this list when I remember more. As a note, I don't go for either opinions. But as someone who stay in between and try to respect everyone, sometimes, this can be quite tricky. In the end I have to pick a side. Most of the time, I go to the third choice : never ask opinion. I can be a good friend without telling them my problems.

another missing note

This is one mising note from my journey to Japan.

It was a damp winter evening in Hakata when I staggered along the alleys of the suburbs. My shoes were muggy, my hair was scruffy and I had three big rucksacks hanging on my body like apes in Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. It is Indonesian culture to bring people souvenirs from travel, to indicate that we keep them in mind.  “People” basically mean everybody who knows me. I held my crumpled map tight under drizzly rain, desperately navigated myself amid the Fukuoka prefecture’s winding narrow roads.

“Kanzakimachi wa doko ni arimasuka?”

I thought I spoke the language but strangely nobody understood me. They attempted to help but unfortunately I even went further to the dense part of the town. The air was as humid as after monsoonal rain in rice fields and I was starving like beggar.

When I saw a small, bright, dry and pleasant-looking restaurant loaded with people chattering in one corner of the street, I felt seeing a light at the end of a tunnel. Driven by the aroma, I stepped in. No single foreigner. I didn’t look like one either, until I opened my mouth.

“I want to eat,”

All of a sudden, everybody stopped talking. Men behind the counter stared at me, then to everybody else as if seeking for explanation. I anxiously glanced the whole room. There were long tables arranged in rows, few people busy preparing food, three notice boards in Japanese character displaying menu (I guessed) and a bunch of guests observing me back.

“That one, inside the…pan,” I gesticulated.

The pan was actually identical to a cauldron; it was big, stocked with yellowish liquid, boiling and sizzling. A chef kept putting more ingredients in. If it was part of wizardry, I wouldn’t be very surprised. I noticed most of the guests were men, wearing dull-coloured shirts and towels tied on their heads. One gave me his bowl, saying something unintelligible but I comprehended that he wanted me to taste his because the soup was spicy hot (signalled by pushing his tongue like panting hound and waving his hand frantically in front of his mouth).  I hesitated. Never in my life had I eaten from a stranger’s bowl. What about hepatitis? Yet almost every heads in the house nodded in agreement. I didn’t want to let them down.

Everyone was watching when I pushed a spoonful of the fluid into my mouth. It was incredibly tasty: a thick savoury warm soup with meet broth, combined by fragrance of boiled vegetables, herbs like parsley and lemongrass, a hint of ginger, pepper, chilli and other flavour that I would never recognise.

“It is good,”

I did not exaggerate at all. Everyone was laughing and even clapping, as if it was an entertaining performance. I caught a glimpse of price on the boards, relieved by the amount of zero. I didn’t understand their number. I shouldn’t have been worried. Dinner that night was on them. I should just have known the name of the dish.

Personal notes

People say that keeping some notes about our feeling, thinking and opinions will give us more understanding about ourselves. This is a note from my final days after working for a year in Papua. I have some other notes from my journal that I would like to share. I'm now digging to my old diaries and scrapbooks in case I find anything interesting. I'm going to start with this one first.

After graduating from university, I did my mandatory government service at West Papua, Indonesia. There are two classes of job offered by the government for fresh-graduated physicians: to work in rural place or in very remote rural place. If we choose the second option then our contract will be shorter than the first option. I chose the second.



Little did I know that my decision would change my whole perception later on. Working in a place that only could be accessed by small “Twin Otter” plane and only has a radio for communication device, I started learning that there is another world outside the world I used to know.


The society I was living in is far and away different from my own, although we are all Indonesians. They practise an odd way of treating disease when they get ill. I hadn’t even been trained to work in such a condition. I was quite surprised (no, I think the right word is ‘gobsmacked’). The awareness that I was the only doctor for the whole mountain was overwhelming. In the first 2 months, I struggled to adapt with my new environment. Everyday life, such as cooking, bathing, or washing suddenly became difficult things. I didn’t know how to make fire, I don’t know how to get water from source, I couldn’t take a bath in the river. Even staple food was difficult to get. They don’t eat rice but cassava. Cassava wasn’t very good for my digestive system. It produces a lot of gas in the intestine and makes my stomach bloated uncontrollably. So at the beginning, it wasn’t me who gave them treatment. It was them who gave me. I learnt to sleep in the hut, then next day I could fix my door and put a stove inside. In a few weeks time, I could say that I survived. But then came along other problems: I relied too much to interpreter that I couldn’t do an appropriate history taking, and also there were short of medical supplies and limited diagnosis tests.


In order to get reliable history, I tried to understand some important vocabularies, e.g. headache, fever, unconscious, diarrhea, bleeding, cough, cold, and three times daily. Then I could ask them further questions like: when it starts, what colour and how many times, etc. However, I wasn’t sure if I use the grammar correctly. Sometimes patients just nodded and laughed. With a help from a nurse, I also managed to store the supplies in order at last, but some of the drugs were apparently expired. To dispose, we had to bury these stuffs otherwise children or animals might ingest them (I had never buried drugs before, I felt like criminal). It took me longer than I thought to get my clinic operate “normally”.


When I decided to extend my contract for another 6 months, I was sure that I did the right thing. In my high ideal I thought I might bring about changes. But I was proved wrong. I wasn’t aware that many people strived before me to make condition better. But it was so difficult to change people’s mind. Before my contract ended, I was at my wit’s end. I started being impatient and frustrated. I felt helpless, disappointed and alone. I had a quarrel with my chief of health department. I had resentment to the eldest of the society who I considered as ‘conventional and stubborn’. At the end of the day, I didn’t accomplish my work triumphantly. As soon as my contract ended, I signed out.


I returned home and I wanted to do something else. I am rather happy with all experience I’ve got, but I also realised that I wasn’t very successful. Now I am still not sure what to do if I have the same situation once again. I want to study tropical infectious diseases so I might return to Papua again. But for now, I guess it might be helpful if I learn to deal with ‘challenging people’ in different circumstances. In my opinion, if I put myself to unfamiliar condition, then I will learn the most.

I lost most of my pictures during traveling, but not the notes! I'll publish them soon in this blog.

This one is from year 2006, during my first visit to London. I was mesmerised by the musical as I'd never seen live performance before. Now it sounds rather exaggerated but honestly, I still love musicals and theatre. The latest performance I really want to see is Monty Python and The Holy Grail but they'd already moved to Los Angeles =(

London’s Musical

What will I miss the most in London? It’s musical. Breathtaking, witty, amazing, fantastic and artistic are not enough words to describe these plays. I agree that not all musical are good enough for their standard, but here are some of the plays I certainly do admire (if you happen to see them, give me your own comment).
The Producer and Avenue Q are the most humorous of all. Surprisingly, they are both set in US. I assume American has better sense of humor. The Producer tells a story of a producer (of course) who want to make the worst play ever in Broadway. He and his accountant, the wanna-be producer, try their best to hire the worst scriptwriter, actor and director in order to make the most box-office flop. They wish that after the unsuccessful show they will be gone with a lot of money. The worst play unpredictably turn to be the most-wanted play, and the funniest part…you’ll see the rest by yourself.
Avenue Q is the story of our everyday life, with unemployed BA degree called Princeton and those all people live in Avenue Q. This play consists of live stage performance of sex, unfortunately, by puppets. With songs like "It’s suck to be me" and "We’re little bit of racist", I’m sure you can imagine what kind of musical it is!
Chicago is likely the sexiest. If you have seen the movie with Catherine Zetta-Jones and Renee Zellwenger (ups, I don’t know how to spell her name, forgive me), don’t even think that you will be bored to watch this play again. It’s fabulous! The music is totally alive and the joke is much funnier. Roxie Hart, the main character of this play, really dances like a puppet. She’s not only hot but also very absorbing. Like to make fun of herself as well as entertain her audience. And with the orchestra as a part of the story, who doesn’t enjoy it?

Lastly, The Phantom of The Opera  is the absolute best classical play. This remarkably well-done musical will make you gasp in fascination when you only first see the setting. With a bit theatrical song, you will be brought to old canals and cathedrals and plays in the Victorian times. Best work of Andrew Llyod Weber and reputated for the longest play in West End, the play is undeniable a classic masterpiece. Never miss it!

Ok. This one is my friend's note when we visited Japan. This bustling, vibrant and twenty-first-century country has only one flaw: they don't have night bus. So if you go out after the last train, you'll end up paying a fortune for a night cab. Luckily there are some good news: MacDs are opened 24 for hours and there are sushi vending machines about every 100 metres. Yay! (P.S. This note is very recommended for my male-traveler friends if you happen to hang around Tokyo or Osaka or Kyoto).

What to do if You get stuck in Tokyo or Kyoto from the hours between 12-5 am 

1. Start the night right off. Go to the vending machines and buy a BLACK BOSS or go to Family Mart and get an energy drink {Y200 (up for 2 hrs)-Y1500(up for 2 days)}.
2. Decide where you want to go. There are bars, clubs -stripclubs- you can hang out by a river or just drink from a vending machine.
3. I suggest going to all you can eat/drink place for Y3000. Get drunk and hit a club. Kyoto (club metro, World, Ruba dub). Tokyo (BiasPanic or NUTZ). If you want to take a break, go to an arcade or the Shibuya Mc Donalds.
4. Who you will find at Shibuya Mc Donalds. The second floor will be filled with smoke and Shibuya girls putting on make up and fixing their blonde hair. Some will be adjusting their high heels and long black socks. These girls are hot!!!!!! Everyone is eating Mega Teriyaki burger.
5. If you are a Gai jin like myself then you have to pay 2500 yen to go to a club. Most likely it will be a Reggae club. Here you will have to face the DJ and dance. If you turn your back to them to dance with a girl it might be considered disrespectful. Just drink a lot and it will be a lot of fun. It will be tough to talk to girls so just give them your camera, ask them to take a picture of you and your friends. This will start a conversation. Just pray they know more english than you know Japanese. WAtch out for dudes from Ghana wanting you to go to stripclubs. Go if you want. Get on train at 4.30 am. Go home!!!!

My weekends

Be prepared. For the next few paragraphs I'm going to talk about something rather pointless. It's called "How I spend my weekends."

I don't know how to spend my weekends. I know I should make them enjoyable, momentous, uplifting, relaxing and so on that I will be in a good spirit on Monday morning. Alas, all I did on Saturdays and Sundays are staying in my room, waking up very late, watching pirated DVDs, flipping a last year magazine, picking my nose and eating a take away chinese food (in that order, not at the same time). Of course, it was very nice. But I guess it can be more productive and fruitful.

One of my friend suggested that I should join a local church activity. In her opinion, it will make me move closer to heaven. Moreover, there might be some nice, religious, decent boys that could motivated me to go to church even more often. Yet since I think too much which church I should join in the first place (this church has too many old people, that church the aircon is broken, another church has no good parking lot, and other has too many giggling teenagers) I don't think I can commit to one church and get involved to any activity. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and I will join an activity. One day. I just need a better reason (not excuse) to do that.

On the other day I decided taking train to Jakarta to a friend's wedding. It was fun. I like being in a journey on train, it gives me such a nice feeling, more than any other ways of traveling. Sitting next to the window, reading a book while watching views outside the carriage move fast like a blurred movie always makes everything surreal. I enjoyed the sense of detachment from my busy world until the train stopped at Gambir train station. I can't say I like Jakarta at the very least. I wouldn't mind if I have to go back to my town with the same train moving to other direction. Unfortunately, it never happens. I stepped out of the train and hectic, dusty, dirty, blistering hot and polluted Jakarta greeted me with a lot of taxi drivers, hawkers, touts shouting my way to a public bus. I was back to the real life.

There is nothing better than excursion, surely, but it also requires most of my monthly salary. I couldn't go outside my town every weekend because it'll leave me penniless before the end of the month. I therefore choose to hang out with friends, having dinner or just talking over a cup of tea. This is a bit tricky apparently, because most of my friends are either working, studying or with their family during weekends. When I visit them and they're about to have an exam or a deadline or a child emergency, I'll be left cold on my own. Anyway, I still have some good times when I was out with friends to a seafood restaurant with live music. Just remember before you visit any seafood restaurant, make sure that they really do seafood, not some too dry shellfish that hardly edible. And have a quick glance to other guests. That night my friend and I barely could stand listening a fervent middle-aged woman singing an unmelodious song after another.

Last night I had a reasonably good outing. A friend of mine saying that she had a bad mood and needed an escape to a local cafe with a WiFi. She asked if I could come along (so she could get online while I read my book). I agreed and soon we sat in a sofa in front of a band playing Krispatih songs. She was indeed in a bad mood. She was glued to her computer most of that time and she didn't really talk to me. I reached out my book and shortly got absorbed in it. But she was too long. We had been there for two hours and I was getting bored. Suddenly the lead singer asked me if I want a song. I had no idea of popular songs. I mentioned an old song by Chrisye, that they didn't even have it. I guess nobody asked such old song. I asked another, but I think my request is never so popular that the band will easily perform it. "I'll search for that song," promised the lead singer, "Do you want to sing?" asked he.

This is interesting. The only place I often hang out with friends apart from food stalls is karaoke room. Yet I am not so self-assured that my voice is worth listening although you literally could just shriek in karaoke room. Let's say that I respect others by not getting them hearing-impaired sooner than later. I used to only sing softly in the shower room. But at that moment I had nothing else to do. I stood up and received a microphone. He asked my name and announced, "OK, now it's time for a song by Ria," There I was. I don't know so many songs so it was lucky they chose something familiar for me to sing. He sang the backing vocal beautifully when I struggled not to shriek (as always happen in karaoke room). He invited us to visit again next week.

I came home and having nothing else (again) to do, I wrote my blog. Perhaps one weekend I'll go to the sea and have a great time, but since my budget is tight and I always have to be back by Monday morning, I assume it's not so bad to have a few drinks and sing. Or possibly I'll soon join a church activity no matter if they have no parking lot, no aircon and full of old people and teenagers. I still don't find knitting very interesting for weekend activity, but maybe joining a band will do. Let's see.

How to save endangered animals in Indonesia

I had heard a lot about saving animal. From a whale in river Thames, elephants in Chiang Mai, Panda in China, Polar bears in the Poles, some frogs species in Costa Rica, until a rare Tazmanian butterfly in wherever Tazmanian butterfly lives, because it's very rare. Saving animal never came across my mind for I grew up in a world of human chauvinist. If I gave a bit my lunch to a lost, thin, starving, dirty cat meowing under a rubbish bin, my parents would yell at me, "No meat for you tonight. You'd better share your food with your siblings next time!" For the sake of 'adequate nutritional intake' in my childhood, I had to feed lost animals very, very secretly since then.

But now since being an environmentalist becomes an emerging trend, I decided to take part in saving my world (from annual flood, daily air pollution, all times rubbish. Not so far until global warming and walrus. They're too far away. And not included earthquakes. They're part of fate). Saving animals is included. Regarding my unsuccessful experiences in my younger days, I started developing new methods in saving animals. I made an attempt to explain that animals are part of the nature, balance of the food chains, have important role in ecosystem and heritage for our children and so on and so forth and bla bla but to no avail. Sadly the word "greenpeace" only means a bunch of people, claiming themselves conservationists but the mere thing they do is standing in a shopping mall, explaining about their project in a language that hardly understood by normal people-but you have to pretend to follow them unless you want to look ignorant- and eventually: asking for our credit card number. Not to mention that they will send a membership card saying you have participated in Greenpeace movement. Yeah, that's so cool. I'll call them if my greenpeace membership card gets drifted in the flood.

This new technique I want to show you, works better. To save an endangered animals in Indonesia, you'd rather:

1. Claim the animal as a magical being, not a real animal, but actually another shape of human with supranatural power who seeks for something mystical. By calling it binatang jadi-jadian or ngepet, the poor animal will obtain another chance to live, because nobody dare to harm it. The drawback is, if there's someone claim himself/herself having paranormal power and decide to kill it for the sake of paranormal hierarchy, then the animal is now more endangered than before. It's a bit tricky to deal with occultism, in fact. Still, it's more promising than greenpeace in the shopping malls.
2. Spread the issue that the animal brings a good luck. Like arwana or lohan fish. Suddenly everybody loves them and in every corner of fish stall, everybody sells the fish with a high price. No wonder a lot of people try to breed the fish. Conclusion: the fish saved from extinction.
3. Say that an animal has a curative effect, when alive. It's common to say that some animals bring health or enhance well-being, but when eaten. This, of course, doesn't work. Say that they bring more health and enhance more well-being (we can add improve sexual ability here) when they live happily, healthily and in a good shape (means not dead or cooked in a ginger sauce).
4. Claim that the animal is good for feng-shui, business or anything to do with prosperity. Same reason as number two.
5. Make saving animal a trend. If we can make a good-rating television program about how a cool dude rescuing an orang utan baby (without becoming Tarzan. Tarzan is so out of date) and then give it a free life in its habitat, perhaps some people will give their credit card number to support greenpeace saving orang utan in Kalimantan forest.

I'm glad that now Indonesia has conserved komodo dragon in komodo island although some said they had prey on human beings. Apart from the human slaughtered part, for sure. Yet they're thousands of birds, fishes, reptiles, mamals and big mamals get endangered in Indonesia. Deforestation, pollutions, and irresponsible huntings have threatened the land that is very rich of biodiversity. For how long should we rely on the greenpeace agency selling projects in the shopping malls?

An unpublished piece of writing

I want to share this writing in my blog because otherwise it will be hidden somewhere in the corner of my messy desk. I attempted submitting it for travel writing competition but I am still far from the short list. At the very least, I would like to hear something from my blogger mates.

I did my first work as a fresh graduate physician in Papua. It was an incredible experience and I always love writing about it. One day I wish to write a full version on Papua, its people and other issues. Wish me luck on this, guys!

Oh, I haven't got any title for this. I'm opened for suggestions.

I couldn’t help myself from feeling heroic. I’m in a twin-otter aircraft gliding amidst mountains in Baliem Valley, Papua, Indonesia. As a medical trainee, I am to provide health service to the native Yali tribe in a village called Ninia.

I poke my head out the window to look. The undulating landscape below is idyllic: lush green pyramids with a few bald patches like heads shaved with broken electric razors. Decorating cliff walls are minuscule terraced waterfalls, hazy with fleecy clouds. The aeroplane rounds sharply and its machines roar beneath my strapped seat, the propellers whirling tenaciously. We are about to land.

My modest expectation is to be greeted warmly by the people, although some folk-dancing by half-naked women in jute skirt and nude men with noses pierced by pig’s bones and penises wrapped in gourds wouldn’t do any harm. Instead, everybody is busy taking squealing pigs out of the plane’s hold. I‘m Indonesian, yet foreign. Other passengers are being hugged and kissed; I’m left alone. It’s significantly disappointing to see everyone wearing clothes with pictures of grinning politicians.

The mantri, someone responsible for the small clinic I am working at, takes me to my so-called house. It isn’t old, just badly made. The handle disconnects when turned; the door has to be lifted to open it. Cracks are gaping here and there, and mice are running through them as a biting wind repeatedly enters the house. Lying on creaky bedframe is a filthy mattress with a centimetre-thick layer of dust. It will be hard to spend the night here.

I’m saved by a heaven-sent honai (hut), which also serves as a kitchen. Made and covered mostly by hay, this incredible two-floored traditional house is warm enough to sleep in. It has four pillars in the middle surrounding a fireplace with a rack above for drying the firewood.
Olince is asked to guide and assist me. She is one of a few schoolgirls who understands Indonesian. She brings her little brother along. The day’s spent on endless patients who aren’t actually ill, just coming merely out of curiosity. At noon, Olince shows me how to get water. We walk over stiles and walls made of stones. Pigs are wandering around. She teaches me how to make fire and pick edible roots. After sunset, we lay down to rest. It’s raining. The small sweet potato field outside is wet and muddy. Nobody wants to go out although the smoke from fire hangs thickly under the thatch like cobwebs.

Midnight. I desperately need to empty my bladder. Stepping out, I squat and urinate. It’s remarkably peaceful, only the sound of a distant river flowing in the background. The pale silver moon has made every shadow look purplish. Back in the hut, I glance at Olince’s face lit up by the dancing light of the fire’s embers, so at her brother’s. In repose, they look almost serene.

I am not the hero I thought I was. They have been taking care of me.

How do you learn English?

In Indonesia, being an English teacher is considerably a good job. Somehow people in my country think that learning English is dutifully important, either if we are looking for a job or further education. Perhaps it's because we are too lazy to change all computer commands to our language, or we don't bother to translate all devices, manual books, books, songs, even signs of emergency exits in imported trains or planes we have. Very likely so. For teenagers, it sounds like they're on MTV. It makes even a dork look so cool.

Anyway, let's share how we learn English. I know there are methods: from joining an expensive private class by a native English speaker from Oxford/Cambridge to reading a second-hand English dictionary out loud. It depends on how serious, how much time you have, how desperate you are (or how desperate your parents are) and what you can afford. The last one is actually the least, I'm going to tell you why.

In my home village, there was an English teacher who opened a class for free in the evening. Why did she do that? She actually wanted the children to sing Christmas carols in church on Christmas day in English. So she taught us English. This is my first exposure to English and I wasn't very young either (I know some parents nowadays try to talk English to their toddlers and put them to English nursing class or ask the babysitter to speak English etc.). I was 14 years old and never before in my life had I got any English lesson. I have to say that I enjoyed the lesson very much. I remembered those cards with pictures saying: banana, tomato, ear, nose, ball, and so forth.

A year later, because my Mom is a bit advanced in mind regarding my education (in her opinion, if my grandpa a.k.a her Dad sings a very good English song while he is in the toilet, why not her daughter?), I was forced -well, at that time I still considered watching a full episode of Knight Rider was more important than anything- to join a local English course. I was lucky. This place, although is in a small town of Pekalongan, has a very good quality of language teaching. Most students from this course have no difficulty at all to any English exams at school. If not to say that they are very much in advance to normal school's curriculum. This course basically was a foundation of my English. It wasn't a famous language school by all means, no native speaker or anything foreign, no international standard whatsoever. It's so down to earth that it's easy for a native Indonesian (especially from the countryside) to grasp the lessons.

It's very common for Indonesians to know English but have little confidence to speak it. I suggest that working abroad and traveling will sort this problem out. If you're on your own in a foreign place, you have to talk to survive. If we work, we'll earn something and we don't have to pay a class. These are examples where I learnt English:

• from British advertisement. Once, when asked, "How was the food?" I would just nod or say "good," Since I heard some commercial breaks on TV, now I can say, "Oh, it's very tasty and nourishing, definitely scrumptious!"
• from a second-hand book stores. They usually have some collections of Adrian Mole series by Sue Towsend. In this book I found the words "barmy", "mongrel", "stick insect", "plonker", "berk", "prat", "daft" and "dork". They're quite useful sometimes.
• from the signposts. I learnt the meaning of: "cycle dismount" "humps in 30 meters" "cul-de-sac" "pedestrian crossing" "public pathway" "car boot sale" and so on.
• from the cookery books I used for cooking at work. I learnt some words like saute, roast, grill, simmer, sizzle, stew, toast, steam, thaw, etc and also the difference between fold and mix, oven and microwave (this is serious!), frying pan and saucepan, kettle and casserole. Oh, not to forget many names of the cooking gizmos: colander, apple corer, baster, egg timer, potato peeler, sieve, spatula, whisk, wok, mortar and pestle, etc.
  
• from the garden. I've learnt the names of some vegetables: aubergine, swiss chards, squash, white pumpkin, white radish, horseradish, beetroot, etc. And also some herbs: coriander, dill, fenugreek, rosemary, fennel, nutmeg, oregano, star anise, turmeric, and so on.
• from the road/supermarket: "Are you alright, love?", "Cheers, love!" instead of "How are you?" and "Thank you!"
  
• from the table : "Could you pass me the salt please?" and if someone offer me anything I should response "Yes, please" or "No, thank you," instead of merely saying yes or no. It's more polite, they said.
  
• from everyday conversation: Instead of saying: help! Now I know I should say: "Do you mind?" or "Would you mind?" and if you want to help, the answer is "No" not "Yes".

So, I think now I'm speaking English. It's not quite a standard English, but understandable. At least by myself. Now I'm improving my English by doing crossword puzzle. What is the answer for untouched-smaller version of the harpsichord (8 letters)?