Six Words Story

Stranger. Friend. Best Friend. Lover. Stranger.

My Current Mantra

Anicca anicca anicca
अनिच्चा


*Pali for impermanence

Blablabla

If you can't explain it simple, you don't understand it well enough - Einstein

I've had my share of dealing with some form of legal writing. In Bahasa Indonesia, English or Dutch. Most of the time, the Anglo Saxon writes the most direct in their legal writing. I've been trying to translate this notarial deed from Dutch which is the worst I've seen so far.

I feel like I do more research than translating. 

Seriously, legal lingo is hard enough as it is, and the guy has managed to upped it several notch. Ouwehoeren to the max. 

Why do they do that? Why legal people need to use archaic very long sentence in their writing? Is it a form of showing off? Covering you clients behinds doesnt have to be this complicated, people!

BBC Big Read

Back in 2003 BBC had this programme called The Big Read where they asked the public what their favorite book is. The top 100 result is as follow:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie 

Apparently I didnt (finish) read(ing) that many books on the list [all in the bold]. I have catching up to do! Perhaps I should be starting with finishing/re-reading whatever I started but never finished [all those in italic].  

Not in Bahasa Indonesia

I do way a lot more tatemae in Indonesia than I ever did in lowland.
It's tiring.

Oh My... Fifty Shades

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen headlines on several major news outlet mentioning the book du jour. The Fifty Shades of Grey. At first, I didnt even read the articles, but since the name of the book keep popping up, last weekend I've decided to see what the fuss is all about.

And I read, and read, and read more.

You see, the book is part of a trilogy of a relationship between a young dashing billionaire but emotionally damaged Christian Grey and a twenty-one year old innocent fresh graduate with an annoying inner goddess Anastasia Steel. It's a mash up between Mills & Boon, Cinderella and BDSM story written by EL James, a pseudonym of one Erika Mitchell. There are plenty of sex, vanilla or otherwise, in the book, but the story it self keeps you turning the pages even though it was badly written.

What's with Anastasia's inner goddess coming out all the time? My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves (p137), [after a spanking session] my inner goddess is prostrate... well, at least she's quiet (p276).

Then there's the repetition of words/sentences. All variation of 'holy..', muttering, mumbling (apparently they cant just say what they want to say) and oh my. Then again, this book started as a Twilight fanfic titled Master of the Universe with about 80% of it stays in the book (I didnt know about it until I finished all three books. Holy crap! I cant bear to read it if it was 'Fifty Shades of Cullen'!).

The part that I enjoy is the email exchange between the two protagonists.

That being said, I couldnt keep the book down because I want to know how far he will push her and how far she grows as a woman and in (a difficult) relationship. Can she tame him? Will she stay in the relationship with all that money, power and mind blowing orgasm but sans love?

Christian is a Harvard educated, who pilots his own helicopter while he is not playing his piano and being filthy rich. What's not to like about him? He, however, starts every relationship with a non disclosure agreement and a written contract. That's the only relationship he knows. He does and doesnt want to bring Anastasia in to his lifestyle. He does and doent want to hurt her.

Anastasia's journey from virginity to BDSM, and relationship with men for that matter, is very intense. Does she want it for herself or does she do it to please the person she loves?

The book also sparks feminist debate about whether women should be sexually submissive in bed. Not bad for a book with terrible quality of writing.

The Chaos

It's a poem by Dutchman G. Nolst Trenité (1870-1946) contained around 800 'challenging' words.
This version has some mispronunciations in British English, that being said, I like the way she did it.

Rumah Saya

After all this time, I just found out Doe Maar has this song.
The funny part was, I thought they sang 'Menteng Dalam saja'... but actually this is the lyrics:

Geen berg aan de horizon
in dit land waar ik ben geboren
Geen berg aan de horizon
alleen ivoren torens
Rumah saya
dimana rumah saya?

bukan bukit di tepi-langit
di praja ini praja
bukan bukit di tepi-langit
saja benteng-benteng gading saja

en dan verlang ik naar een ander huis
in het land van mijn vader
maar ook daar zal ik een vreemde zijn
in het land van mijn vader
rumah saya,
dimana rumah saya

I need to get my ears check :)

Stress

Back in NL I was asked several times how to pronounce my name, where the stress falls? Until that very moment, I'd never thought about it. In Bahasa Indonesia, unlike in Dutch, stress is not very important.

It made me think twice when I'm teaching Bahasa Indonesia to my friends.

Basically, most of the time the stress is in the penultimate syllable. All non-Malay words have unpredictable stress, which mean a lot of words have unpredictable stress.

If you think about it, since it's not important, even if you are putting the stress wrongly, people still understand what you mean. Heck, most people wont pronounce it as you learn it anyway. That's one of the easy parts of Bahasa Indonesia.

Waiting

Between Euthanasia
and Bahasa Indonesia
Drop me a line
so I can pick up that line

Javanese Hip Hop

Learning Bahasa Indonesia

I used to think that Bahasa Indonesia is the easiest language, as it has no tense, no gender, no cases. When I taught D Bahasa Indonesia I started to realise how difficult Bahasa Indonesia really is. As I translate documents to Bahasa Indonesia I often struggle with specific words. I found Bahasa Indonesia needs more words to describe certain thing. As it is a new language, I noticed that certain words are spelled differently in the new KBBI dictionary which is rather confusing.

I've spent this evening re-learning proper Bahasa Indonesia and thinking how to explain it to others because I do get questions about Bahasa Indonesia's grammar from my clients.

Guess what? Bahasa Indonesia is not as easy as I thought.

Siput

We were reading the menu and discussing what to eat when the waitress suggested in Bahasa Indonesia "siput", snail, for minimum 400 grams. Since we were thinking of getting jelly fish, we both thought she meant snail.

Then when she said "we also have fish for a minimum 400grams" as if it was part of the "siput", we both started to get confused. We found out she meant to say "seafood" but pronounced it "siput". She commented, "yes, different P".

Weird Conversation #5

Mom was doing crossword when this happened
+what is masturbation?
-how many letters?
+five
-o-n-a-n-i

I lived too long in lowland

Piktor

I had great morning with a friend, shooting some pictures. Around noon, we went to Ambassador mall for lunch and my friend needed to get a new flash disk. We ended up at this small shop selling Dell because my friend said his friend managed to get a Snow Leopard running on Dell.

Me: Could you tell me in which Dell I can install a MacOs?
The guy at the store: Oh, It's an old one, probably two years ago.
Me: Hmm.. do you remember which type?
The guy: P
Me: P?
The guy: Yes, Piktor *he put his fingers into V*
Me: Ok, Piktor *tried to keep a straight face*