Lately, i meet a lot of mainlanders and taiwanese, and then i realize that my chinese language is very lousy and sucks. what i proud of suddenly become useless. So many incorrect sentences, vocabularies, pronunciations compare to them. Sure, Mandarin (bu tong hua/ hua yu) is their mother-tongue language. but mandarin also my mother-tongue language, the language that i use when first time i able to talk.

That’s why lately i try to improve my language autodidact. using google translator (translate.google.com). dictionaries and asking friends, and then i try to translate chinese songs as a training.

Once, a mainlander friend ask me, why people in Jakarta could’t speak chinese, while whole world is try to master chinese language? Do I never plan to back to China for living? And i answer them, that i was born in Indonesia, my body metabolic, my knowledge, my body system was build to live in Indonesia. I also worry to live in Chine for the diffences of cultures, etc. After that they said, will someday, chinese people in Indonesia no longer able to speak chinese and become totally “outsider” for China?

I was unable to answer that question back then. Today i have the answer…

The answer comes when i drop on my high-school-friends’ facebook. He puts his new-born-son’s pictures and i was stunned for a while to knowing he’s marrying different race, religion, cultures wife. After a while in silence, i try to recall about him. He was a boy with strong will when we still in high school, somehow i admire his visibility, the way he thinks, and what make me feel that he’s more mature than i do is when he’s showing his leadership on Jakarta 1998 riot.

He leads friends of our to a safer place, OMG he’s only 17 like i do. And now, i believed he already become more “man” then the men i saw in 1998. And i was stunned by his acts, his calmness, and etc.

Back to the decision he has made, i realized that we are living once, and we deserve to choose what right accroding to ourself, not driven by the common cultures. Now i see everthing clearer, brighter….

to be continued…