A Letter For New Friends

Dear New Friends,

In this new college, I found you all to be my friends.

At first, I never think that it will be nice.

Full of fear, shame, and also mystery.

Sometimes it looks like wasting time.

Is it terrible?

Then I tried to adapt all new situation.

I need a bravery to do it.

Because when you feel comfort with your zone,

then you know that you must change it,

It's not an easy thing.

Trying to be an open-minded.

It's the key.

You will know that it's a very nice thing to have new friends.

You will find something that you haven't known, you haven't heard, you haven't seen yet!

It's from you, my new friends.

No longer then, you will find also your good friend.
All friends are good :)

What I mean is about a friend who is able to understand each other.

You may say it as best friend.

But actually your best friend is not only yours.

Your best friend can be others' best friend.

And it's okay.

Your friend is not to be owned.

It's for completing your life.

Sometimes you will be touched by how kind is your friend.

A kindness that you will never know.

A kindness that you will never think before.

A kindness that you need to have.

That's all from you friends.

Even from your 'best' friend.

For me, we needn't judge someone to be our best friends.

Because we have so many best friends in our life, in each situation, in your heart.

The best our 'best' friends are friends who never leave you when you feel sorrow.

This is for you, my new friends at SSE :)

With Love, 




Merry

See Also..

• Debating: A Bad Moment - A Good Opportunity
  
• Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover
  
• Your Best Friend is Your Best Enemy

I am 18th Now!

Everyone has a special day :)

Mother's day, Father's day, Earth day.. hm, what else?

I just know that birthday is the best day!

It's a part of special days we have..

Birthday is a great day for you, for me, for us! Yeay!

O yeah, this is a must when we know someone's birthday! 

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday..

Happy birthday..

Happy birthday to you! 

What a simple song with a million happiness :)

Wow!

We love to know birthday :)

Whether it's your birthday, your mom's birthday, or your friend's birthday!

Cheerfulness always be there!

It's wonderful, right?

Well, March 18 is my sweet birthday ever after *.*

I celebrate Sweet 18th this year!

It means..

Hey! I am adult..

I am not a kid anymore..

Congratulate me :)

Actually today I do not think that it will be a good day..

though it's my birthday.

I just feel that my birthday is not important for others to know,

sometimes I think, others' birthday is more important than mine..

It's true!

In the morning, when I was in college,

my friends only give me a sweet greeting..

"Happy birthday, Merry.."

Ok, I am so happy, but.. then what?

I don't think that it's nice.

It's disturbing, ch ch ch..

I don't know why..

Other people think that it's nice to hear it when we celebrate birthday.

But I am not.

In the end of this day, I mean when I want to go home..

My three sweet friends give me sweet presents.

It's not about the present!

It's about how cares your friend with you..

They are the ones who pay attention with you!

It's sweet!

I got a sweet ribbon, a sweet princess glass, and a book..

A very good book ever after!

Thanks God!

How lucky I am to have them!

I believe, you have too!
So when's your birthday?

Just tell me here so I am able to greet you!

Happy Birthday to U :)

See Also..

• A Great Opinion - Indonesia and Its Culture
• A Never Ending Task
  
• Debating: A Bad Moment - A Good Opportunity

Valentine’s Day is prohibited? Who cares?

In this sweet morning, 
when I woke up from my dream,

Suddenly I got 'one' great message for sure from my friend!

“Today is Valentine’s Day.
Don’t ever celebrate the Valentine’s Day, because actually the meaning of Valentine’s Day is from the death of a pastor named Valentinus on February 14^th.”

Well, thank you very much for my beloved friend.

I really appreciated this information because I got a new knowledge from this news.

But… Wow!

Actually I also screamed in my heart, it really surprised me…

Is it important for others to know?

What does it mean?

It means there is no chocolate, there is no flower, there is no gift, or even there is no LOVE?

I believe everyone needs LOVE.

Who is the one who needn’t love?

Is it me? I will answer… NO! I perfectly need it.

Is it you? I believe you will also answer the same thing like me, YOU perfectly need it.

Is it my friend? Of course my friend also needs it. My friend is also a human.

We need LOVE everyday.

Why don’t we have a positive side for a while?

For me, the name of Valentine’s Day is only a name.

And the date of February 14^th is also a part of 365 days.

It’s one of the ways for us to spread our love to others…

Actually I still have another side about Valentine’s Day…

Why should we care about the death of the pastor named Valentinus?

May I say that Valentine’s Day is as Merry’s Day or David’s Day or… any others name that you want!

Because the main point here is only about how do we spread our love to others?

Sometimes we feel shy to give a sweet chocolate or

Even a bunch of flowers to someone that you love, you care…

You just don’t know at what time you would like to give it…

Waiting for their birthdays? It’s quite long time for sure.

Valentine’s Day? Cute! What a good idea!

It’s a good time for everyone to share their loves to others, I think.

I am sorry to know that the fact of Valentine’s Day is the death of the pastor.

But… I am happy to know, we have a universal day for spreading our love to others in this cute day…

Valentine’s Day! ooh, no no no..

Merry’s Day! lol

Yes! A chocolate day, a sweet day, wow… yummy!

You know? Even I just know that my friends just become a new couple today.

Valentine’s Day is also the reason for everyone to use this special moment to say ‘I Love U’

So we are able to see new couples in this world.

Well, the last message is…

Love your life in every single day!

Not only at Valentine’s Day for sure!

*Happy Valentine’s Day*


See Also

• A Great Opinion - Indonesia and Its Culture
• Debating: A Bad Moment - A Good Opportunity
• Don't judge a book by its cover

Your Best 'Friend' is Your Best 'Enemy'?

Friend Vs Enemy

Which one is better?

I believe that all of us will choose Friend as the best one!

That's true.

Everyone loves to have friends..

And no one loves to have enemies..

In our life, we usually try to have so many friends even to have the only one best friend!

We try to make a good relation with everyone, so we needn't have any conflicts with others..

It's good for sure :)
But..

Have we ever thought about the sides of having friend or enemy?

Everything in this life, it must have two sides. Positive and Negative.

We are not able to judge something that it only has a positive side or a negative side.

We also use it for knowing friends and our enemies.

So, just try to think more about this things.

Two weeks ago, someone told me anything about his feelings because he lost his best friend.

He looked bad actually.

He looked weak.

He said that he didn't know what to do.

He only knew that he was sad.

It made him has a big trauma that no one is able to make him better.

He didn't believe best friend anymore.

Even he said that now his best friend is his best enemy.

Wow!

I surprised with those words.

How can it be?

It's because your best friend is someone who knows anything about yourself.

Your best friend is someone who knows you well, about your badness and goodness..

So, it will be a damage when both of you are best friends in the conflict 

and then one of you tries to open your badness to others. 

It's really bad actually.

Not only that, we will forget our best friends' goodness quickly.

They will be our best enemies for ever after.

Your best friend is able to sell your secret to everyone..

I see that most of teenagers have it experiences.

Hm,

How about our true enemies?

Believe it or not, when we have enemies, we won't think much about them.

We just know that they are bad, we hate them and they hate us.

We just think that they are not important and we don't want to know about them.

Your enemies are only know a little about yourself and they only see a negative part of yourself.

It's also bad actually. But, remember that what they tell about us is only the thing they see from outside.

It can be true or false.

Sometimes, it can be a good mirror for us.

Because what they tell to us is something true, but we just don't accept it as a good critic.

So, what do you think about friends and enemies, now?

Is there any differences?

For me, the answer is NO, There is nothing differences between friend and enemy.

We need to have them in our life.

Is it bad? Yes

Is it good? It also Yes

We are able to lost our strength only because of our best friends or our best enemies.

It's only about how do you see your life?

Remember, everything in this life, it must have two sides. 

Positive and Negative

Just balancing your life, by knowing that sides in everything.

In your best friend, even in your best enemy.

Have a nice life ^^

See also...

• Don't judge a book by its cover 
• Majority VS Minority 
• Valentine's Day is prohibited? Who cares? 

A Great Opinion - Indonesia and Its Culture

This is written by Leroy McSwain,

My Great Friend who lives in North Carolina, America

I have made many friends in Indonesia using Facebook since November of 2009. They have surprised me by how kind they are, and because of that, I have developed an interest to learn about the country of Indonesia itself. I have read that the Indonesian people generally are very friendly to foreigners and my own experience corresponding with Indonesians over the internet supports that reading.

Before I began to correspond with Indonesian people over the internet, I knew very little about the country except seeing it on the map. I remembered about the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from high school history and I read some sad reports of the violence during the independence of East Timor. Of course, I had also heard of some of the more exotic creatures that hail from that vast realm, such as the Komodo Dragon and the Orang Utan. Other than that, I knew almost nothing and, as you will soon discover in reading this, I still know next to nothing. I myself live in the United States and have never visited Indonesia. So everything I write in this document is based on what I have read or the impressions that I have got from talking to Indonesian people. I, therefore, apologise in advance for any statements that I make which may unintentionally be inaccurate.

Apparently, the climate of Indonesia is much more fierce than that to which I am accustomed in my home of North Carolina. Although, occasionally, North Carolina gets hurricanes, in Indonesia, one must encounter tsunamis, earthquakes, frequent flooding, and even volcanoes. I heard about one guy who was eaten by a Komodo Dragon, but that story probably isn't true. Indonesia gets a large amount of rain compared to where I live. (For example, the town where I live didn't get any rain at all during September of 2010.) In Bogor, however, it is said that it rains some every day. With the rain and the proximity to the ocean, the air is moist and the relative humidity is high. (I hear many complaints about the humidity here in North Carolina, but I doubt if it is as high as Jakarta.) Being at the equator means that Indonesia is very hot and the temperature I hear hovers around 30 degrees Centigrade throughout the year with little variation. It must feel very hot there. (In contrast, North Carolina has four distinct seasons and temperatures vary from 39 degrees down to just below zero in the Winter.) All the persons with whom I have made acquaintance in Indonesia live in Jakarta. Jakarta is a big place judging from the photographs that I have seen. I can't imagine what life is like in a city of that size, because the place where I live is very small (around 23.000 persons). I have heard that Jakarta faces some of the problems associated with big cites such as: traffic congestion, smog, erratic driving, slums, fires, &c., but what I have read indicates that violent crime is low there; so that is very good. I think that the hardships of difficult weather have forged the Indonesian people into a hard-working and patient people. The Indonesians that I know seem to be optimistic people in spite of depressing conditions like smog, flooding, and traffic congestion.

Indonesia is still a young nation as it has only been independent since 1949. It is much younger even than the USA, which I usually think of as a young nation compared to the countries of Europe.. It has many challenges to overcome as it faces the future, such as poverty and transportation issues. I like the motto of Indonesia: 'Bhinneka Tunggal Ika'. I'm pleased to see that Indonesia prides itself on diversity. Indeed, Indonesia must be a most diverse nation. It's hard to imagine that over three hundred different languages are spoken there. Bahasa Indonesia, a dialect of Malay, the lingua franca which holds the nation together and allows everyone to communicate, is the only one of those languages that I have learned a few courtesy expressions in, but the individual Indonesians have other languages as their mother tongues. Some of those languages are important literary languages like Chinese and Javanese. In addition, there is Indonesian slang which, if not an actual language in itself, at least is an incomprehensible jumble of consonants to me. Also, the ethnic diversity there is vast. Jakarta looks like a modern city to me with monuments and shopping malls, the things I should expect to find in an American city. The inhabitants of Jakarta seem to have found a balance between the piety of Islam and the 'People of the Book' and democratic principles like tolerance of religion and the equality of persons. Costume in Jakarta may be more conservative than in the US. I've seen photos of persons swimming in the swimming pool with all of their clothes on. (Bathing suits are generally worn in the US for that.) I even read that you can be arrested for wearing a bathing suit there. I agree that it's good to protect Jakartan and Balinese culture from undesired foreign dominion but I hope the law shows mercy to foreigners who don't understand the culture. Contrasting with Jakarta in the northwest tip of Sumatra is Aceh where Shari'a law is in effect. I imagine that province is more conservative than Jakarta. Then, on the other hand, in the other extremity of Indonesia is Papua, populated by indigenous people, with customs that date back to antiquity. The traditional costume in Papua seems to be distinct from the other regions of Indonesia. I looked at a colour-coded map which displayed the different ethnic groups of Indonesia. That map looked like a patchwork quilt. I haven't been able to learn about all those different groups.

That strikes me as wondrous because I come from a thoroughly uniform nation. Unfortunately, the USA lost much of its cultural diversity during the ninteenth century when our indigenous peoples (the American Indians) were forcibly relocated or exterminated. That is a sad page in America's history. Our media, in the twentieth century and today, has also played a large role in homogenising my country.
Preserving cultural differences while holding together as one nation is important. That will require wise governance from officials and loyalty from the people. It sounds challenging to make policy that will apply fairly to all those different types of people. That will take long deliberation from all of the various representatives. The autonomy model used in Aceh and Papua could be a good solution.

Reading over the history of Indonesia since its independence, it appears that the country is waking up from a government which was less open than the current administration. Term limits have been set for the president and that is in keeping with democratic ideas. It will keep anyone from holding office for thirty years. I hear that the government can be criticised now which is important in a democracy. I know in the past, under the pre-Reformasi regime, that ethnic Chinese were heavily discriminated against. It was illegal to even display Hanzi characters and many Chinese people changed their names to Indonesian sounding names. Now, a lot of those laws have been repealed. My friends learned Mandarin language in their school and can watch television programmes from (the Republic of) China. We can't even do that in the USA (except with Youtube). I've heard that Mandarin news broadcasts air in Indonesia today. I'm pleased about this, in part because most of the people I know in Indonesia are ethnic Chinese.

In America also, we have a repressive past, worse than Indonesia, because slavery was legal here for many years until it was finally abolished (at the Federal level) in 1865. Since that time, we have slowly learned to treat persons of different races as equal and I feel that Indonesia will be able to become a leader in this area. Indonesia is doing better so far than we did, because it took us around a hundred years (after the abolition of slavery) before black persons and white persons could even sit together on a bus.

I have a nice photograph on my computer of the Jakarta Cathedral next to the Istiqlal Mosque. It's good that different religions can coexist in Indonesia (although I recognise that there has been some violence over the issue in the past). The state recognises six religions: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Catholicism and Protestantism (which last two are considered by the government to be different religions). I don't understand why the government must recognise religions, but my understanding of Indonesian government is not very deep. State recognition of religion leads to some interesting consequences such as that a person may not legally marry in Indonesia unless he or she confesses a particular state-recognised religion and it must be the same religion. So, in theory, an atheist or pagan can not contract a marriage within Indonesia. (In contrast, the American government is forbidden to recognise any particular religion although some say that our tax office essentially acts to establish and disestablish religions.) The first principle of the Pancasila is belief in one God and that forms the basis for the belief in the sacrosanct humanity of each person. This is similar to the language in our Declaration of Independence (from the British Empire) which attributes the 'unalienable rights' of persons to their Creator.

I think that education in Indonesia is much better than in the USA, because the people that I talk to over there seem to be very intelligent. Most of my friends were enrolled in a parochial school in central Jakarta called Strada One; so I don't know about other schools. I'm impressed with the good English that they use. It makes me lazy to learn Bahasa Indonesia since I don't need it to communicate with them. In contrast, in my school, we were sheltered from even hearing other languages. Strada is a vocational school which trains its students in acccounting and gives them practical ability to survive in the economy.

Indonesia may be on the eve of greatness. As the torch of cultural leadership of the world passes from the West to East Asia, I hope that those nations can learn from the experiences of Western nations and possibly avoid some of the mistakes that were made (and are still being made), such as meddling in the affairs of other countries in order to hold dominion over them.


See also...

• A Never Ending Task
• Being Si Pitung 2011 - Apologize Me! 
• Valentine's Day is prohibited? Who cares? 

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover!

Having new friends is a very good thing for everyone, right?

I believe so.

So, when you meet with a new friend, what'd you like to do?

If you are the active one, may be you will always try to talk with your new friend.

If you are the passive one, may be you will only silent.

Well, it's nice..

There's nothing wrong about who is the active or the passive one.

The thing that we must think is only about what's our opinion about our 'new friend'..

Sometimes when we meet with a new friend,

we tend to avoid someone who is not good looking or someone who is arrogant, or anything that it looks bad even it sounds bad.

But, do we think twice about..

How can we know that our new friend is good or not, arrogant or not?

Well, actually I've felt this thing.

When the first time in college, I met a new friend, she is Elia..

hahaa ..

May be if you are in the same college with me, you can know who is she..

At first, I didn't comfort to speak with her, because she seemed arrogant *that's only my opinion, lol

Then I tried to change my mind, by thinking about don't judge a book by it's cover

Why should I?

Well, it's because I didn't even know about herself, about her life, about her background, or anything about her.

If I were in her position, of course I didn't want if someone thought that I was arrogant, I was bad, bla, bla, bla..

And it made me remember with this quote:

"If I don't like that man, I must know him better" -Benjamin Franklin-

A hard decision actually.. But I believe that it's true..

Who doesn't know Benjamin Franklin? 

He gave a great quote for everyone..

So at that time, I always tried to talk many things with her..

And you know?

That's my great decision..

Finally, I knew that she was not looked like what I thought before.

She is really kind, good, friendly, even smart.

Day by day, I know more about her.

So it makes me learn again ..

My opinion is not always true.

Sometimes, we must think with two sides; the positive and the negative.

If you are only think using one side, may be you will feel there's something wrong, or you won't get the fact.

Because you live with your opinion.

Making a mistake is not a mistake, right?