Indonesian People from a Foreigner Perspective
I'm an Indonesian and I'm proud to be an Indonesian even though my country is still a developing country with a chaotic system. Corruption, collusion, and nepotism is something are things <em>(plural)</em> that you would will regularly hear about in the news so don't get shocked. Anyway, in this little note, I'm not going to blabber a lot about the condition of my country politically, economically nor socially. I want to give a suggestion on a You Tube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/sasaseno) by a Canadian girl named Sacha Stevenson.
For Indonesians, we probably have seen her in on TV being interviewed but not all people outside knows her. She's actually married to an Indonesian man and has been living in Indonesia for a couple of years. What surprises me was that in one of the videos she posted about her life, she was able to speak the Indonesian language <em>(or just "speak Indonesia")</em> in just a couple of months! Now, she's very fluent. In her videos, she demonstrates a lot of examples of how some typical Indonesians act in daily life situations. BUT, remember that NOT all Indonesians act this way. For example, in this video (http://youtu.be/pGKCGj03ljM) she acted out 10 things that Indonesian do during Ramadhan. Ramadhan is a Muslim celebration where people would fast for a month (this year started on July 29th) to purify themselves. It is one of the most important celebrations in Indonesia because the majority of people are Muslim.
Some people have criticized her videos because they take them too seriously but these examples are true! As an Indonesian, I've experienced such situations myself and I'm sure a lot of people do have too. I appreciate her thoughts as a foreigner who dares to speak state out her mind because us Indonesians would probably just criticized a bit, accept and deal with it.
So, if you want to visit Indonesia, I suggest you try watching her videos so you don't get surprised!
Once again, I love my country but this is the hard truth.
<3
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Excellent note, Micha. I'll go watch her videos. As an Australian, I've always thought I should know more about Indonesia because we are such close neighbours - so I've decided to start learning the language. ;-)