Blogger Indonesia of the Week (68): Melissa Susanto

green roseIn my early days of blogging, I wrote a light post on Indonesian tendency to use a single name except for certain ethnic like Bataknese that uses both their first and family name. It’s actually very typically Indonesian, which is unknown anywhere else.

To us, it’s no problem. To others outside Indonesia that’s a bit an issue.I found many non-Indonesian were confused about this tetek bengek thing. And it seems that’s what Melissa might experience as well during her interaction with other cultures in Australia where she’s doing her bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering. So much so that she even needs to specifically explain it in her blog profile:

Melissa is one and my only name. I don’t have any middle or family name. Confusing, it is. Well, my family name is actually Susanto, but sadly it is not registered in my birth certificate and or anywhere else …

Of course, name is not the only one that make thing confusing. It’s only one side of many ‘confusing’ things when it comes to inter-cultural interaction. And if we pass through that kind of various differences we experience in a foreign land smoothly, we’d be a much wiser personality. And it’s like a common convention that the more we live in heterogeneous environment, the wiser we’d become and the more tolerant we would be in looking at any differences.

I see that kind of wisdom seems to be clear from the way she, a bachelor student, looks at Australian culture compared to her own when she writes:

…As you may already know, westerners love to drink a lot. I mean a lot! They always have wine with their meals, going to pubs / bar to get beer or cocktails. I’m not saying its bad, but it just different…

In my culture (Asian), we eat to celebrate. Yes, we eat. Every celebration, such as birthday, graduation party, welcoming party, etc, instead of going to a bar to have a drink / listen to bands or go dancing, we sit on a big table and have dinner. The host party will treat their guests by paying their meals. It could last for at least 2 hours because, not only we eat, we chat and keep up with the latest news from everyone: current issues for the gentleman and gossips for the ladies..

Indeed, one advantage among other positive things when you study abroad is to live and interact with people from various background, cultures, faiths and traditions; learning to accept the differences as they are. This in turn will create the sense of understanding, of wisdom and ultimately getting rid of holier-than-thou attitude commonly happen to any people who live only within one own homogeneous community.

Living once-in-a-lifetime in a heterogeneous society does not guarantee you to be wise, just like living in homogeneous community is not necessarily a certain path toward short-mindedness. That’s why we should not take wisdom she possess in seeing different things away from her. It’s an achievement of some sort and only by acknowledging and admiring any achievement and any plus point of others– person or community–can we achieve what they already had.
Melissa Susanto

Melissa Susanto (probably) in the middle. Somebody should tell us which one of them. :)