It’s been awhile isn’t it? It’s been 3 months and a lot of things happened here. From losing her, working in a language that I haven’t mastered it completely, and all the little things that changed me bit by bit. It leads to the right path, I guess and hope, I don’t fear stranger that much right now. When I was a little kid, grandfather always there beside the window of my kindergarten in case I’m afraid, I don’t remember why I’m afraid of back then, but I remember that I cry a lot when there is no familiar faces around. Now seeing things in retrospect, I’ve gone through a long way to be the person I’ve become, I’m graceful for family, friends, and acquaintance that shaped me well.
If you curious about the country now I live in, let me tell you a story, I hope you can experience it as well in your mind.
It was on 8th Friday in December last year, I went through airport gates with tears that left because I couldn’t brush it off properly. That time, I experienced so many new things, flew in airplane, ate tuna sandwich in airport, made my first contact with Japanese, and had a crush with the stewardess. I like girls that made a curious look on me, so to have a crush on her is something that couldn’t be avoided. The scene reminds me of what was written in Norwegian Wood, so that will stay there in my memory for a long time, I hope. Making first contact with Japanese was easy, since I just only let a couple passed my seat, and it is only one word in Japanese. But after landing that’s when my heart pounding with excitement. It is not because it is Japan, it is rather that new experience I was going to embark that mattered a lot.
She is kind of short and have this weird gait when walking, probably had an accident before. She is called Rio, she was my usher for that day, guaranteed me to arrive safely to the destined apartment. Funny thing is we have the same birth day, it made conversation flowed easily until I asked her about her relationship status. My first mistake in Japan already. The ride was fun, although the weather was so cold.
It was grey and cloudy. Just like today, the memory just came to my mind suddenly, past pulled you back so hard isn’t it?
I’m going to post a lot more, while waiting for good images to supplement the story.
It’s may be a lil bit corny, but yea i don’t really give a damn about what u think.
Aku punya teman – teman dekat yang sudah bersamaku semenjak kami masih lucu – lucunya di bangku SMA. Dulu waktu baru saja lulus SMA, ucapan yang senada dengan ini sangat ngetrend:
“Walaupun beda – beda kampus kita harus tetep kumpul ya jangan jadi sombong.”
Dan, ya, begitu lah kami, padahal dulu rasa – rasanya bukan kami yang suka mengucap kata berikut di atas, tapi malah kami yang masih selalu kumpul walau sudah berbeda – beda kampus. Kami selalu melakukan aktivitas yang biasa kita sebut ‘nongkrong’, yang menurut definisi di koran Times, ‘talking, sitting, and especially doing nothing’ ya memang begitu adanya, secara kasat mata kami hanya buang – buang waktu dan juga buang – buang uang. Tapi, kami melakukannya secara konsisten. Semenjak 3 atau 4 tahun lalu, 95% malam sabtu atau malam minggu kami lalui bersama.
Awal perkumpulan ini sebenarnya diinisiasi oleh kami – kami yang berkuliah di Bandung bagian situ, oleh aku, Ucup, Obos (POLBAN) dan Raka (Maranatha), karena letak Polban dan Maranatha berdekatan maka kami masih menyempatkan untuk berkumpul, nongkrong dan ngobrol – ngobrol tentang bagaimana tempat kuliah kami masing – masing. Walaupun hanya berempat, menyenangkan bagi kami. Seiring dengan berjalannya waktu, teman – teman di Polban (Galih, Eja) juga teman – teman di ITB (Fadli, Julio) mulai sering bergabung juga. Ditambah Hadi yang waktu itu masih bersama Elva yang menyempatkan hadir jauh – jauh dari unpad. Dan May, Primadie, Agung, Dickyn, Dikim dan lain – lain mulai bergabung satu persatu, meramaikan malam akhir pekan kami. Juga Aghnia yang kadang hadir jadi perwakilan para wanita.
Kalau tidak salah waktu itu 2014 ketika pertama kali aku membawa game ultimate werewolf ke perkumpulan kami. Permainan seru itu memperat kami, yang sampai pernah mengumpulkan 20 orang untuk nongkrong, main werewolf bersama. Sampai – sampai rumah Julio sempat menjadi base camp bagi kami, hanya untuk bermain werewolf, hampir setiap jumat dan sabtu, dari sore hingga malam. Sampai akhirnya kami bosan juga, dengan kesibukan masing – masing, kawan – kawan yang nongkrong mulai berkurang juga. Tapi, para tonggak – tonggak kegiatan nongkrong kami (julukan itu pertama diucapkan oleh Ucup padaku, waktu mengantar ke terminal beberapa pekan lalu) tetap konsisten dengan kegiatan akhir pekan kami.
Be born gifted with an incredible “knack” for languages that allows you to absorb language skills virtually by osmosis
Use duolingo whenever you feel like it
Buy an EarWorms disc set to play in your car sometimes
Thousands of dollars of expensive stationery and software
A plane ticket
What it actually takes to learn a language:
A love or passion for you target language
Committed study on a daily or almost-daily basis for an extended period of time
A thorough study plan and well set goals
Dedicated language immersion through travel/youtube/music/other media
Willingness to study, revise, practice and repeat over and over, even once you reach your goal proficiency
Understanding that students who DO have a knack but don’t practice will be rapidly outpaced by those who don’t have any inherent talent but actually commit to their study
The decency not to erase the hard work of those who studied for language proficiency by passing their efforts off as “a knack”
The time, energy, passion and internet access needed to study regularly
Don’t feel disheartened when you read about successful people who ‘made it’ at an age where you felt you couldn’t even adult properly. People out there managed to do a lot very early in their lives, but they are not the only successful people out there. I really like this chart I found shared on Quora. You can still make it!
Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Thom Gunn Award, and it was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is an associate professor in English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta.
Well It’s been such a long time since I’ve written something smart or at least sophisticated, and because the time feels quite right to talk about LGBT, so why don’t I write one. The time feels right because right now in my country there is this kind of fear and superstition about this same gender love. Media also put some extensive coverage, KompasTV made a discussion about it and they brought politician, member of LGBT community, expert and journalist. But even though they have made that discussion that I believe to diminish the stigma of LGBT in our society, I don’t think that a lot of people watched that show, instead they probably busy watched “anak jalanan” or dangdut talent show which is irony because one of its judges is indicted for molested teenage boy in his house. What a shame.
The fear about this problem is really concerning, our netizen give negative and stupid comments on social media towards gay people – just our typical netizen being themselves – like “sayang dia gay”, “awas gay”, “ganteng tapi gay”, “antigay”, etc. I mean what are they trying to say with that mean comments, does listening or watching their works will change our sexual orientation? I guess not. My friend Fadli said sexual orientation is originated from nature or nurture, correct me if I’m wrong dli, and I do think so too that our feeling towards our opposite sex is affected by nature, nurture, or both. I believe that God created us heterosexual or straight, because I learned that Adam and Eve are our ancestor. And I also learned that I have parent that have different sex, male and female. That’s why I assumed nature has a role deciding our sexual orientation, in addition major animals make love to different sex too. It goes the same way with nurture, I’ve learned to have a love for a girl since elementary school and at that same timeline my friend showed what adult video is, and I felt that tingling feeling that makes me sure I’m just a regular boy. But there were times that my sexual orientation is being tested, first of all, I didn’t know that same-sex love is exist until I found gay av at internet cafe and thought it was a horrible thing that could happen to people. Next test is when I played game online at internet cafe around 6 am, before my friend arrived, there was this man that came from the right side of the room – around three computers between us – stood right next to me and started to unzip his flyer and showed his f’n johnny in front of me and I believed that motherf*cker smiled for a moment, I baffled for a second and reached my flip-flop – because I liked to play with my naked feet on the chair – while he was starting to unzip it again. That’s so terrible it felt like a dream. I also thought that I was being tested when I watched gay movies, so why I even bothered watched one, thing is I love movies, so if the movie is good I don’t think twice about it. And the last one is making a gay joke with my probably-gay friend. Do I have to avoid him? No, instead we conversed well, even though my other friend who made gay joke at the first place.
So even with that story that possibly can turn me into gay, how can I still love woman? or do I? Well that’s probably the big question, ascertain our sexual orientation is quite similar like believing in our faith, sometimes we don’t ask the question in the first place. Then what if we have asked the question? Will we become one of them? Well first I want to say that I’m not encouraging people to become gay – believe me I’m totally straight, I still love woman’s bosom – but to find the truth we have to ask ourselves, and I think that’s what people are afraid of. Instead my main intention is to overcome the fear, fear that think gay is a disease and spreading like a cancer. Which is so silly, and you know what the most ridiculous one, thinking that eating instant food and formula milk can caused babies gay. Like I said sexual orientation affected by nature, nurture, or even both, so eating some foods can’t cause someone became gay. So how can people become gay? This is what I’m thinking, first love is complex, you even have preference about things you loved, so because its complexity we sometimes have that instinct or prefer to have affection towards particular things that we can’t described. If you believed love at first sight exist then you know what I’m talking about. And I believe that gay people have this preference to be attracted to the same-sex that they probably can’t understand in the first place. So come the question can people born to be gay, well I don’t believe there is a gay gene, what I believe is that there are men that born with soft-hearted and unmanly gait or gesture, which I believed have important effect in the nurture role. Growing up and assuring that they have special feeling towards same-sex partner what probably decided they are gay or not.
Before I put an end to this writing I have this message I want to give if you’re gay, I know who am I to judge gay people even give them advice, but this what motivates me, couple days ago my gay friend made an apologizing statement to his parent for not becoming a good son on social media, and it is so sad and I can’t imagine to experience it in his shoes. So what I want to say is there are greater priorities and happiness that need to be sacrificed to please your loved ones. I know that in this Generation Y era people tend to encourage you to be who you are and you can achieve all things you want to, but in reality life is not that simple and it needs a lot of consideration to make steps forward.
To wrap it up, this writing is based on my common sense which compiled from reading online articles and books, watching movies, experiences in life, and conversation with friends. So you have a reason not to agree with me, but it would be nice if you let me know your different perspective on this. Have a nice day! xoxo
