Pare

These were most of my writings during my two week stay in Pare, where I put myself learning to write in English. Writing some essays in an academic writing class to be exact. So they were kinda formal stuffs. I didn't care whether they were acceptable to be called as "essay" or not, but honestly, I simply enjoyed those moments where I could write spontaneously in a room without any nuisance or distraction, and even editing. Just simply writing because you were supposed to. That was the thing for me. I couldn't write when I didn't feel the urge to. But when there was an external force, it just flowed.

***

Some people believe that watching movie is important. Do you agree or disagree?

Movie is one of many important entertainments in our life. It includes two main mediums such as visual and audio. When we watch movies, we see things through screen that depicts our daily life, if the genre of the movie is drama. We are moved by the story, the characters, the dialogues, and everything in it, if the movie delivers them perfectly. The main point is, it’s easy to say that movie can change our point of view about many things.

Numbers of movies have been produced all this time. People watch movies since they were too young to even understand it. It becomes something that fills the most of our times in a day of everyday. We become lazy at reading books when we can easily watch movies without too much thinking. This, of course, affects the way we think, for in movies we don’t need to process everything as critical as needed in books.

In spite of it, movies still exist until now and they play an important role in our life. All the negativity goes the same line with all the positivity. It’s how people use movies for themselves as wisely as possible that matters. Since no overrated thing that we’ve done will do any good for our mental and physical health.

Choosing what movies to watch is also a good thing. We have to do some filtering so we don’t have to watch bad or stupid movies. We can do it by reading the review first (without any spoiler!) or just checking the ranks in some websites. Many websites have good reviews of movies that can help anyone to look through the synopsis. So there is nothing that can prevent us from watching good or even great movies but ourselves, as long as we stay wise at choosing them, since we know how movies affect our life directly or indirectly.

***

An Essay about Indonesia

Indonesia is a country of archipelago, which has rich diversity on its islands. Some of the largest Indonesian islands are Sumatera, Kalimantan, and Java. Indonesia is also one of the largest countries in the world with high population density. High population density and many islands make Indonesia rich ethnically, culturally, and historically.

First, ethnically, Indonesia is highly diverse with more than hundreds of local languages. People on every island speak their traditional language, with each other as the way to communicate. Although not all of the languages are written, it is undeniable that they still speak their own traditional languages until now. So, those languages still exist and are maintained orally.

Second, culturally, Indonesia is influenced by many aspects brought by foreign people. Such aspects are customs or traditions, how we trade, even our laws. Some of them come from India, China, Arab, Netherland, etc. They come to Indonesia not only for the purpose of enriching our cultures, of course, but also to exchange things that they don’t have in their countries with what we have in our country. For example, our natural resources.

Third, historically, Indonesia had many kingdoms in the past. Those kingdoms consisted of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic kingdoms. After the colonization era by some countries, slowly those kingdoms were starting to disappear. In spite of it, they left many historical, buildings, and items that eventually became important heritages in Indonesia, such as ancient temples.

To conclude, Indonesia is one of the largest countries, with many islands, populations, languages, cultures, and histories. To those reasons, that is why we call this country a country of diversity.

***

More and more businesses as well as individuals are choosing to communicate either professionally using technology rather than face-to-face. Compare between communication using technology and face-to-face!

Communication is one significant aspect in our lives that includes two or more individuals. To communicate is to connect with each other. It is not only limited by meeting directly, but also can be done indirectly. Direct communication is conventional way like what we used to do until now, face-to-face, and indirect communication can be called as a modern way to communicate because the people related do not have to meet directly, instead by using technology.

These two ways of communicating are helping people in many fields, such as in schools, relationships, advertisements, and business. In case of the last one, it is inevitable that direct (face-to-face) communication and indirect (using technology) communication play an important role to support people or groups doing their business. So, here are the advantages and disadvantages of using these different ways of communication.

First, face-to-face in business is believed to minimum the risk of misunderstandings because it involves all the people related together in one room. When there are problems, they can say their opinions right away, and be replied. After all, it is nice to know and talk to your business partners directly. But to use technology in business, such as video calls in WhatsApp or LINE, it is quite hard to explain all of our objectives to our opponents or business partners. Not to mention the possibility of out of reach internet connection.

Second, in spite of the reason above, face-to-face takes much time to gather all the people involved in business activities. Sometimes, not everyone can come to the meeting for many reasons. For this, using technology can solve the problem, because people do not need to come to a specific place, instead they just can reach on their phones or laptops to communicate with each other. So, that’s all I can say about the advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face and by-technology communication. They contain effective and efficient impacts differently.

***

Two of My Craziest Experiences

Experience is one important aspect that can shape our personality. Every human being experiences many and different things in their lifetime, including myself. What I’ve experienced and what I’m going to experience opened and will widen my perspective on everything, even though those experiences are considered as crazy experiences. Relating to this, I want to share two of my so-called craziest experiences that ever happened to me.

First,

Two years ago when I was still an undergraduate student in my university and I was still an active member in my organization, a nature lover’s organization at faculty level, I had experienced one of the craziest moments that ever happened in my life. I called it crazy because once I thought about it, it made me felt horror and happy at the same time. So, what was it, you might ask. That was when I had to ride on my motorcycle on night alone to go to a basecamp near Djobolarangan highlands in Karanganyar from Yogyakarta, because my friends were all already in there that I had to catch up with them. Earlier that day, I had my exam, and that made me the only one to catch up alone because I had a responsibility in that activity. The horror moment was when my motorcycle machine suddenly went off out of nowhere in the middle of the night. Before that happened I actually creeped out, not afterwards, and that made me wonder until now. Was it related to mystical thing or just an accident. And last, what made me happy after got trapped in that situation was that I got helped by the people in the neighborhood. They saved me and for that I really thanked them, even though I was suspicious at first. I was happy there were such good people out there helping stranger like me.

Second,

Another experience that I considered as my craziest moment was when my mom asked for my help. It was really crazy that I had to laugh when I thought about it. So, my mom was pooping that time, and accidentally she dropped her jewelry in the toilet hole. She cried out for help and I was the only one at home. So I came to her room, I know this sounds disgusting, and I had to help her by taking her jewelry out off the hole, because she felt disgusted herself. I felt like I was a victim in that situation at the time, but right now, if I think about it, it was actually funny. It really made my day!

***

Pare, Kediri

August - September, 2017