Blogger Indonesia of the Week (14): Amalia Sanusi
What’s the difference between Indonesian teenagers living abroad and those who’re living in the homeland? My assumption is the former have a much more advantages, and therefore they tend to mature (educational and behavioral wise) more quickly than the latter.
You may not agree with this proposition, but that what I’ve seen in several cases during my few travels to some countries.
The advantages could be of plenty: from the language skill (english and others), having a kind of international blend of thinking since their childhood (with global friends of various local languages, religions, races, ethnic, culture), better upbringing (most Indonesian expat kids have a relatively educated and good-earner parents), and hence, more flexibility. Take for example Amalia Sanusi, a 20-year-old wanna be woman who’s born in Cairo, Egypt; doing her 10+2 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Aussie and sitting in her first year university in Brisbane, Australia.Crawl her blog, and you’ll find many interesting stuffs and sometimes insightful opinions many Indonesian teenagers can only do after several years, that’s after they’re reaching their ‘womanhood’. Take for example her comment on one of the internet world giants Yahoo!:
I think Yahoo! is a shopaholic hehe.. They have bought all types of companies/websites; from mail, group, web space, social networking, job, and even voip! Yahoo! Mail was previously known as RocketMail, Yahoo! Groups was eGroups, Yahoo! music was launch.com, and other things that I couldn’t even think of! Well, I personally have became a yahoo user ever since the first time i touched internet. I remember the first website I typed into my browser is Yahoo! and the first email I’ve created was also yahoo…
I’m quite happy with what they have done so far.. all the services are awesome! From music, briefcase, groups, messenger, and address book. The good thing is that I only need one username to access those services. No need further registration. But sometimes it’s a bit annoying to see how they want to dominate all these services and become the best in everything, just like microsoft monopolizes the world. But it shouldn’t be a big deal for me, as long as they provide excellent and free services .. I hope they won’t repeat the same mistake as what they did with Geocities.
About her great experience seeing a symbol of two world religion living side by side in full harmony in Turkey:
There is a huge mosque-like building, i think it’s called Aya Sophia. It WAS a mosque (hundreds years ago), then changed into church, then I think they did the same thing all over again… and now it’s a museum that has Islamic symbols (eg. Allah SWT, Prophet Muhammad PBUH, etc) placed side by side with Christian images. It was so amazing to see that!!
And on the spread of HIV/AIDS:
Another cool website that makes me stunned is Killtown. They claim that AIDS is a human-made disease! It is believed that HIV was first introduced by WHO during the smallpox vaccine program in Africa. The purpose is: to eliminate black people (!!!??).But remember, don’t take it too seriously! We can’t believe 100% of what they say there. Internet is the best place to spread hoaxes and rumours – without any cost! So just b careful. I treat these websites as my second sources.. hmm i don’t exactly sure what it means :p.
And about the earthquake on last september she comments thus:
It seems like the earth is going to “blow up” soon. Everything happened very fast, and some were — without warnings. From the earthquakes, tsunami, and recently hurricanes.. Sometimes it makes me crazy too :P. Since the Aceh earthquake, I ALWAYS check the earthquake activity on the web, at least once a week. I also started to read more science news if new discoveries are found.. Out of 3 girls in the house, i’m the one who always gets worried when the hurricanes hit the States. It really frustates me, coz I don’t have CNN over here, nor BBC. And OZ news is totally crap. As a result, I refresh my browser (normally CNN.com) every minute or so in case something happens. I’m glad that CNN has a free video in it, so we can watch what’s happening over there.
And still many more stories you can enjoy from her blog. The point I want to make is good education and proper upbringing does matter. Good education (which means sending your kids to good & favorite schools) doesnt necessarily end up in good future and good behaviour, good upbringing is. But, the latter without the former also cannot guarantee you to have a good and successful kids.
That’s what happen in some cities and towns in Indonesia. Many youngsters just do not have both priveleges. There’re many rich parents who spoil their kids with many toys and expensive schools, but they often forget to educate them at home (busy parents dont have time) and finally found their kids in the drugs rehabilitation center. Likewise, many good parents who take care of their kids upbringing very carefully yet cannot afford to send their kids to a good schools and universities.
And let’s face it, the mal-upbringing usually happen to the pribumis! Chinese, Arabs and Indians origin parents usually have much more successful kids with very few exception.
Now, how about the poor parents with good upbringing capabilities towards their children: who should bear the burden of educating those good kids to fulfil their dreams? Certainly it should be our government. For the time being, while the government is still busy with their nitty-gritty corruption scandal, dealing with various demonstrations, separatism, etc, let’s those who have money with still-alive conscience contribute to the nation-building process by educating those poor-yet-potential-and-good youth reaching their dream of a better future.