To Try The Testriffic
| What is Your Inner Element? |
  The Element of Water You are the Water that flows throughout the earth to maintain life, and the force that shapes our planet. Very emotional, you are keen to other peoples feelings, and make a truly wonderful friend. Water has the most intuition and psychic energy than any of the other elements. So if you have ever thought that maybe it was something more than your “gut feeling”, listen to that instinct more, it will take you places! You are very receptive, but also extremely sensitive… often too emotional. You have an over active, imaginative mind; and alot of the time you find yourself in your own reality. You have a very subtle, persistant, and even sometimes intense nature about you. You are a very loyal, caring lover, and your relationships tend to last a time. You are very kind, sympathetic, romantic, impressionable, mystical, adaptable, and changeable. The drawbacks for the element Water include: you are susceptible to accidents in the home, prone towards becoming a victim of theft, are very secretive & jealous, you have a quick, hot temper, hive a higher susceptibility to drugs + alcohol, are easily drawn into unpredictable situations, and to unbalanced people. |
| How do you compare? Take this test! | Tests from Testriffic |
| What is your theme song |
  Revolution by The Beatles You try to get things to change in your life as hard as you can but you don’t use violence . |
| How do you compare? Take this test! | Tests from Testriffic |
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
all right, all right
| What type of Mommy are you? |
  Super Ma Ma You have everything down pat. You can do anything, fix any situation. You most likely have more than one child, ages ranging from 0-5. |
| How do you compare? Take this test! | Tests from Testriffic |
Broken Strings
Let me hold you for the last time
It’s the last chance to feel again
But you broke me, now I can’t feel anything
When I love you, it’s so untrue
I can’t even convince myself
When I’m speaking, it’s the voice of someone else
Oh it tears me up
I try to hold on, but it hurts too much
I try to forgive, but it’s not enough to make it all okay
You can’t play on broken strings
You can’t feel anything that your heart don’t want to feel
I can’t tell you something that ain’t real
Oh the truth hurts and lies worse
How can I give anymore
When I love you a little less than before
Oh what are we doing
We are turning into dust
Playing house in the ruins of us
Running back through the fire
When there’s nothing left to save
It’s like chasing the very last train when it’s too late
Oh it tears me up
I try to hold on, but it hurts too much
I try to forgive, but it’s not enough to make it all okay
You can’t play on broken strings
You can’t feel anything that your heart don’t want to feel
I can’t tell something that ain’t real
Well the truth hurts, and lies worse
How can I give anymore
When I love you a little less than before
But we’re running through the fire
When there’s nothing left to save
It’s like chasing the very last train
When we both know it’s too late (too late)
You can’t play on broken strings
You can’t feel anything that your heart don’t want to feel
I cant tell you something that ain’t real
Well truth hurts and lies worse
How can I give anymore
When I love you a little less than before
Let me hold you for the last time
It’s the last chance to feel again
Nie rozumiem, mowię trochę po polsku!
He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kunst and Alterthum
Well, now that I’ve started to learn Polish, I know for sure that Indonesian language, or so-called Bahasa, is very easy No kidding! Bahasa has NO genders for the nouns, NO conjugations for the verbs, NO tenses, NO plural forms, and NO declinations for the nouns and its corresponding adjectives.
Let’s compare to Polish language which has:
- 32 characters in its alphabet,
- 3 genders (masculine, feminine, neutral) plus singular or plural forms for their nouns,
- 3 tenses (past, present, future) and 6 pronouns (ja, ty, on/ona/ono, my, wy, oni/one) which should be taken into account when deciding the proper verb conjugations
- and, oczywiście, the famous 7 cases to determine which declinations (changes in word endings) to be used. Those 7 cases are: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and vocative cases which depends on the role of the word(s) in a sentence.
For most people, the cases are the most difficult part of język polski. It even impacts people’s names. For example:
a) To jest Bill Clinton (This is Bill Clinton)
b) Hillary jest żona Billa Clintona (Hillary is Bill Clinton’s wife)
c) Chciałabym spotkać się z Billem Clintonem (I would like to meet with Bill Clinton)
Corollary, it is NOT easy to learn Polish. You need to have a conducive learning place to accelerate your language learning skill. And I found it in IKO, the Polish Institute for Foreigners. See, I’m not promoting the course, but I have to admit that their learning method is very effective for the new beginners. And thus I just want to share the method they used in the new beginner class (A0 level) that I attended in this January, since I do think it is the effective way to learn new language. Certainly, I will write this according to my perception (based on my experience in the class), not because I read their manual of teaching.
First of all, if you are a fresh beginner in the new language, I strongly advise to take an intensive course. Drill yourself. For this, you must have enough time to study at the course and to review it once in a while at home, because it will probably become exhausting or overwhelming in the second week. But hang on, it worths the result. After that, you can go slower by taking regular courses. In my case, I took 3 weeks intensive course from 12-30 January 2009 (which explained why I rarely had time to write new posts in this blog in January). Another thing why I decided to attend the intensive class is that I kinda felt I’m just wasting my time here; 3 months living in Poland and I hadn’t learn anything about the language.
Now, about the method. Again, this is for the new beginner: the emphasis is to get you TALKING and not writing,
UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING not grammatical comprehension,
REPEATING and not to jump to new subjects before you review the previous one,
and CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE in which you are asked to do a lot of role play using your own words and not just sitting listening to the teacher.
Further description on the above emphasis:
1. TALKING, not writing
You can only write when you are given time to write. When the teacher is explaining, pay attention and just listen to it. In my perception, in class you learn to listen, understand, and speak the words or idioms; while in home you need to review how it is written.
2. UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING, not grammatical comprehension
It would be extremely hard for a foreigner to fully grasp the Polish grammar in the beginning (see my note above). So just focus in understanding the meaning first, because it matters more in a two-way communication. Do not worry too much about the grammar at this stage, even the intermediate students and the Polish natives themselves still frequently make grammatical errors.
3. REPEATING, not jumping
When it comes to learning a new language, the phrase “Practice Makes Perfect” depicts the journey. You can’t go too fast in learning difficult language like Polish, take your time to repeat and refresh the previous lessons before you start learning the new chapter. How would you do it? By doing Q&A games, pictures guessing, words matching, and certainly.. lots of laughters and praises during the sessions. No criticism, everyone is learning.
4. CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE
From the very beginning, the idea of learning Polish in this stage is to enable you to communicate and thus the content should be practical and contextual. So the course material is based on daily conversations that are likely to happened. In this stage, we learn:
- how to greet and introduce ourselves,
- numbers and how to ask prices,
- hours and how to tell time,
- common verbs (which mostly describes daily activities and hobby) and their conjugations,
- common adjectives especially those which are used to describe people’s appearances
It would be too soon to tell that I can talk Polish now. Mowię bardzo trochę po polsku! But it’s a great feeling to be able to understand and say more sentences in the language of which country you newly reside in. Add to this, is the benefit of getting some new wonderful friends..
Moi drogie kolegami w IKO
Hello, Mr. New President
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. - excerpt from Obama’s inaugural speech, 20 January 2009
The year 2008 has certainly been a memorable year in the history of international politics and especially for the people of America. For the very first time since 1776, a black American president was elected through significant electoral votes (365:173); his name is Barack Obama. The election was held in November 4, 2008 and yesterday, 20 January 2008, the new 44th president of USA, took his presidential oath.
Mr. Obama is certainly a phenomenon. His inauguration has attracted massive attention. It has been reported that over 1 million people were attending it from National Mall, Washington D.C (What a crowd!). While in cyber world, the streaming stats from CNN.com and MSNBC.com showed very impressive numbers.
On that day, MSNBC.com had delivered over 9 million live streams and CNN.com had generated more than 136 million page views by mid-afternoon. Facebook, which partnered with CNN.com to enable viewers to comment on events using their status tool, tracked an average of 4,000 updates per minute during the live Webcast. In fact, at the very minute Obama began his speech, Facebook recorded 8,500 updates.
In short, Obama’s inauguration has produced the biggest day in the history of online video. Although his inaugural speech, well, gotta say I found it a little bit cliche and rhetoric *sorry* But still, he looked awesome when he delivered it in such confidence and without text-reading.
As for Indonesian people, well, some of us feel ‘close’ to Obama because his step-father, Lolo Oetoro, is an Indonesian and he did spend a few years of elementary school in SD Menteng, Jakarta (his then-friends called him Barry). Add this to the fact that he is black and thus different from the typical American presidents before, providing us the hope for a real change. So yeah, for sure, most Indonesians prefer him over John McCain to be the new president of USA.
Talking about Obama’s dark skin and slim figure, there’s an Indonesian photographer who has striking resemblance with him. Take a look at Ilham Anas‘ picture below; ain’t he looks alike the real Obama! Along with Obama’s soaring popularity, Anas is also getting more attention as he once posed in a local magazine, wearing suit and American flag to illustrate Obama’s election victory last November.
Discover Your Character Strengths in 15 Minutes
People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding. ~Wilhelm Stekel
Nobody likes to undergo a psycho-test to know what kind of mental disorders they have. Although all psychologists, especially from the clinical specialty, were primarily taught to analyze deficits and disorders, it just never make anyone feel good to concentrate on their weaknesses. So instead of describing the negative tendencies, why not focusing on your character strengths? It’s good to know that each one of us have different positive sides.
It all began with Putu’s tulisan monolog which attracts me to know what my character strengths are. Most of us, at the very least, have the sense of our own’s strengths, but it’s nice to have it written down after a scientific analysis. So, check out this VIA-IS Survey to know your top 5 character strengths and please be honest as your answers should be based on your real actions in the past four weeks instead of your idealism. By the way, VIA-IS stands for “Value in Action Inventory of Strengths”.
If you have more time, you can take the full test (240 questions) instead of just the brief one (24 questions only). Either way, you will have the complete result of 24 dimensions in order of strength. Certainly you can regard the most bottom dimension as your weakness. But again, let’s concentrate first on your 5 tops.
Whether you believe the result or not, hope you’ll find something useful out of it. Use it for job interview material, for instance Anyway, here are my 5 top character strengths. Do you agree with the list?
Your Top Character Strength
Open-mindedness [judgment, critical thinking]
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one’s mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly
Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness - Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.
Your Second Character Strength
Leadership
Encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same time maintain good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen
Leadership - You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.
Your Third Character Strength
Spirituality [religiousness, faith, purpose]
Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort
Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith - You have strong and coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe. You know where you fit in the larger scheme. Your beliefs shape your actions and are a source of comfort to you.
Your Fourth Character Strength
Curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]
Taking an interest in all of ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering
Curiosity and interest in the world - You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
Your Fifth Character Strength
Perspective [wisdom]
Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people
Perspective (wisdom) - Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.
Happy New Year, Everyone…
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
Contrary to the tranquil Christmas last week, Warsaw was quite merry and crowded in the New Year’s eve. There was an “Old and New” music festival in Plac Konstytucji which definitely enlivened the cold Sylwestrowa noc. There were Edith Gorniak, Kayah, Feel, and some foreign bands performing the cover version of ABBA songs. Needless to say, the success of Mamma Mia movie starred by Meryl Streep had inspired the theme choice.
I didn’t go there, as I spent the last night in 2008 together with other Indonesian people in Indonesian Residence (Wisma Duta) in Warsaw. And just like in any other Indonesian gathering, the famous Dang-doet music was surely played and made everyone cheer up and shake their hips. Project Pop was right when they claimed that “Dangdut is the music of my country”.
Approaching midnight, the fireworks were clearly heard and seen from all around the town. People were then blowing their paper trumpets and hugged each other in joy. Ah, guess you can call it the Euphoria of New Year! There’s always some sort of excitement and hope in every beginning, New Year is certainly no exception.
So, Happy New Year everyone…
Wish you a joyful and prosperous year ahead!
A Lonely Christmas
Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you’re home. ~Carol Nelson
Here’s a surprising fact: Christmas Day in Warsaw is very much alike Lebaran Day in Jakarta. And by that, I mean: empty streets, no public transport, no shops open, and many of Varsovians (Warsaw citizens) returning to home villages to celebrate Christmas with their parents or grandparents. Who said the moedik tradition only belongs to Indonesian?
In short, my first Christmas in Europe was unexpectedly and awfully tranquil. I even sensed loneliness in this blessed day. It is bad enough to spend a religious festive far from your family and friends, I had to spend it in a dead-city alike. Well, at least it only died for two days (25-26 December 2008). In 27 December 2008, most shops are re-opened and public transports have operated again.
Bottom line is, Warsaw is not the place you want to go on Christmas Day. Period.
The snowy road on my way home from church...
Drunkeness.. Again!
The title said it already. This time the drunk man, or to be exact: the drunk old man, sat in the bus next to me. He seemed quite sober for an intoxicated man but his mouth obviously smelled alcoholic. At first I didn’t notice him, but then he started a conversation with me, in a friendly way, with a funny smile. Basically, he asked from which country I were. What can I do but to answer him?
Drunk Man : (speak in Polish) Where are you from? Are you a Chinese?
Me : No, I’m from Indonesia.
Drunk Man : Ah, you are from Korean?
Me : No, Indonesia.
Drunk Man : Vietnamese?
Me : Indonesia.
Drunk Man : So, you are Japanese?
Me : (give up) Yes, I am.
The drunk man smiled and I grinned, hoping he was satisfied with our little nonreciprocal chat. But then he continued:
Drunk Man : (saying something in Polish)
Me : Przepraszam, nie rozumiem (Sorry, I don’t understand)
Drunk Man : (still speaking in Polish) Do you speak Deutsch?
Me : No.
Drunk Man : French?
Me : No.. (I thought I have claimed myself as a Japanese?!?)
Drunk Man : Ahh.. Mademoiselle !!
Along with that, he cheered up and saw my (beautiful) hands with (perfect) nails polished in glitter. To my surprise, he suddenly lifted up my hands, lean closer to look carefully to my nails, thought for awhile, and then he claimed
Drunk Man : Manicure!!… ah, Manicure.. (right to my face)
Me : (stunned) Oh, yes, yes..
Drunk Man : (still pointed at my nails) Bella.. bella..
Me : (speechless)
Drunk Man : (saying something in Polish and lean even closer to me)
Me : (start to panic, looking out to escape) Oh, my stop. Przepraszam… Do widzenia.
Try to be calm, I got out of the bus and found myself still 3-bus-stop away from my destination. Thanks to my prejudice and carefulness, I had to wait in 1,5° C coldness for another bus to come.
Speaking of drunk people in Poland, here is a related news from detik website. In Otwock, a mother-to-be was drinking heavily just in time of her labor and sure enough, she gave birth to a drunk baby. What in the world… !!
Cupid Just Shot My Heart!
Lust fades, so you’d better be with someone who can stand you.
~Alan Zweibel and Jessie Nelson, The Story of Us
Okay, most of us must have heard about the websites for “online dating” or that matchmaker kind-of-things via internet. Some of you might have visited them, or even become the member of it? I simply had no interest in them.
But yesterday, I opened my Friendster home and there in the left column, the Friendster team put this ad from Google Adsense:
Looking for Indonesian date?
Weleeehh… Iseng banget sih! But I assume there must be a (business) logic behind that ad, that is, the fact of significant number of
a) Indonesian women looking for future-husband from western countries (bule), and
b) foreign men searching for Indonesian girls
I do not know which one is the determinant factor, though I’m rather suspicious it is more for the benefit of the foreign man to find exotic and innocent Asian girls (sorry, my prejudice). But then again, there’s a website which literally “offer” Javanese girls from Probolinggo village with tagline “A Young, Beautiful, Caring Wife for You”. The ad even says “Would you like a wife who never complains, nags or refuses sex? One who devotes her life to making you happy?” Who make this sick website?! A couple of 72-year-old British man named Sheldon and his 23-year-old Javanese wife, Yuyun. Read their interview in Jakarta Post. Btw, their website is www.an-asian-wife.com (Sorry, I refuse to put the link. Try to visit it for yourself if you’re curious) and it has been debated as the violation of moral values, which I’m agree with.
But let’s back to this IndonesianCupid.com which seems like a more decent online dating site. Apparently, the site owner, Cupid Media Pty Ltd, has spread its wings to other regions, like AsianEuro.com | AussieCupid.com.au | BBWCupid.com | BlackCupid.com | BrazilCupid.com | ChineseLoveLinks.com | ColombianCupid.com | DominicanCupid.com | FilipinaHeart.com | HongKongCupid.com | IndonesianCupid.com | InterracialCupid.com | JapanCupid.com | KoreanCupid.com | LatinAmericanCupid.com | MexicanCupid.com | MilitaryLoveLinks.com | Muslima.com | RussianEuro.com | SingaporeLoveLinks.com | SingleParentLove.com | SouthAfricanCupid.com | ThaiLoveLinks.com | UkraineDate.com | VietnamCupid.com. Banyak banget yak! Must be a good business it has..
Anyway, following is one of the testimonial. I gotta say it looks convincing with the couple photo. She speaks not so good English, but hey.. love conquers all…
The Youngest Richest Man Did Not Finish School
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. ~Oscar Wilde
It’s 2008. And Bill Gates once again climbed up the ladder as the USA’s Richest Man, according to Forbes 400 magazine. But can you guess, among the 400 richest man in USA, who is the youngest one? Which coincidentally (or not?), like Bill Gates, did not finish his prestigious college and was busy developing his idea of information technology from his dorm room (or from his house’s garage in Gates’ case)?
Yap, it’s MARK ZUCKERBERG - the 24-year old founder and CEO of FACEBOOK.
(People who works at Friendster will not be offended by this post, right?)
This drop out guy from Harvard University is predicted having the net worth of US$ 1,5 Billion. He’s still single and if you’re interested, you may read his complete profile here. But to be honest, I’m not a fan of Facebook as I think there’s too many “junk” info of my network’s activities shown in my account. It made me wonder do people really want to know that much about what others are doing in that website? Nevertheless, it is a fact that many people are addictive to Facebook (it claims to have 100 million active users).
As for Indonesia, who is the richest man? No, not Ical (Aburizal Bakrie), he has dropped from #1 last year to #9 this year (Pretty drastic, huh? From US$ 5,4 Billion to “only” US$ 0,85 Billion). Due to the current global financial crisis, a lot of banks are extremely careful to provide loans to Bakrie Group.
The richest man in Indonesia is now Mr. SUKANTO TANOTO, the CEO of RGM International that produce pulp and paper, as well as Asian Agri crude palm oil. His net worth is US$ 2 Billion. This amount has actually dropped by 50% from last year.
Ah, rich men… Do you live a normal life?
