Reality Bites

I know, I know.

I’ve been so busy, I’ve abandoned my blog since God-knows-when and despite it all, you’re still here, reading my rants oh-so-faithfully.

Work’s been hectic enough – there have been plenty of things happening lately, and I don’t even know where to begin.

First of all – work is great. The students, as always, are the highlights of my job, but after about five months reality starts to set in. Already I’ve been in an argument with another teacher because of differences in principles, but we’re okay now. I’ve also started to learn which colleagues I feel safe being around and which ones to avoid. Come on, as if you’re friends with everyone at work?

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I Am Bitching Already.

While I chose to abstain from the legislatory election, I decided to vote for the presidential election because I agreed with Parvita – if I voted, I could bitch about it.

I didn’t vote for SBY (if you really want to know, which I’m sure you do) but it didn’t matter anyway. He was made sure to win even before the election had started. A lot of people seemed to like him for some reasons, although I personally thought he hadn’t done enough to this country even during his previous five-year reign.

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I Chose to Fight.

It is a common knowledge that Indonesian police officers often use their authority to bully and frighten us into thinking that we’ve broken some rules, when in fact they’re just on their usual duty prowling the streets looking for extra money (bribe money, that is).

This afternoon, I became one of their victims when I was just exiting the freeway gate at Bekasi Barat on my way home.

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Bule Aja Doyan!

If you’ve seen the latest coffee ad from Torabika, you’d know the tagline being said by Luna Maya at the end.

The ad starts off with Luna Maya sipping a cup of Torabika coffee, and then all of a sudden a Caucasian man comes up in the background, sips the coffee as well and shows genuine delight that he likes the coffee. The ad ends with Luna Maya saying the tagline which is the very title of this post, which means something like, “See, even foreigners like it!”

The term bule itself refers to Caucasian foreigners or westerners, and it can be derrogative or right down offensive to some of them. For most of Indonesian people, the term bule simply refers to the look of these people. But sometimes, it can mean so much more than just the looks.

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I am awesome, truly, I Am.

Thanks to Ecky and Yoyen who have tagged me in their I Am Awesome posts, because my blog seriously needs updating. Due to the hectic work life, I haven’t been able to update anything but that’s about to change now! So here it goes…

I am awesome because….

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The Dogs at Work

Being a female teacher is difficult.

No, no. Let me rephrase that. Being a female teacher is challenging. It is. Especially when you teach adult students in which about 99.99% percent of them are males in their early (and sometimes late) twenties.

Most of the time, the students are surprised to find out that I’m in my late twenties as well. I am indeed currently the youngest teacher at work, and that fact alone can make seem somewhat unconvincing – as a teacher and as a person they’re supposed to look up to.

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Social House – Not so social after all.

The fourth Land Coffee aka Kopi Darat was held yesterday at Grand Indonesia’s Social House, which was located in Harvey Nichols’ grocery shop in the West Mall. The ones who made it were Boy, Devi, Parvita and Toni.

Now, first things first – Grand Indonesia kind of irks me. The size of the place, for a start, is simply too big. It’s humoungous. No one needs a mall that big. But I could be wrong – apparently Indonesians do. But seeing as there was a full on hype about Social House, (to be exact I can’t remember who suggested this venue in the first place but never you mind), we decided to give it a go.

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What Would Jesus Do?

It is ironic for me to say, that most Christians these days act exactly like the way the Pharisees did to Jesus Christ when He was still alive. They mocked and judged him, plotted against him and in the end punished him to death. They were the self-righteous bunch who thought their religion was above everything else, and anyone who dared not following should be abandoned and left forsaken. Cast away, like outcasts.

Do you think this is untrue?

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