How does it feel to be in the US? Part 2

Dear reader,

I received a nice comment from my friend about the part 1, and that makes me wanna make part 2 soon.. Haha..

Well, I have talked about what is good (in my personal perspective) in the US culture in part 1. I'll talk about what is not nice for an Asian especially Indonesian (like me!) to be here.

1. Personal personal personal and personal..

    In this country, every people has their own right to express themselves. Free to express their mind and  idea to public with no limitation (CMIIW - based on my own views) so you'll see that people here sometimes express something which hurts other or maybe offensive. That may leads to debate because people have their own beliefs and opinion. Compared to beloved country, every right is limited with others' right so we should think before talk to keep the harmony in the society. I miss that a lot. Phew..

2. Liberty vs Harmony

I have talked a lil bit about harmony earlier. In the US personal is more important than harmonious society. Here, each people most likely will pursue their own satisfaction than a betterment in a group. Well, it might sounds nice, yet it is not working all the time. I miss every thing about "musyawarah mufakat" for a betterment in society.

3. Friendship?

Well, this one is tough one. I have been here about two months, but my friends can be counted with numbers of fingers in my hand!
Surprised?
Maybe I am the one still figuring out how friendship works here, or maybe this is how friendship is working here. I miss a lot of nice people in Indonesia. For me, it is so much easier to make real friends in my beloved country than here.

All right, 3 vs 3. Fair enough right?


See y'all (Texas style, Ha!) in my next writing.


Timmy


Disclaimer : These two writings (part 1 and part 2) does not mean I am not proud of Indonesia, or I am whining about living here. I just share my thought. That's it.


Picture source:
privateinvestigator.cc
cartoonstock.com
orkutscrapguru.com

How does it feel to be in the US? Part 1

Dear readers,

It has been almost a month since my last writing, sorry about that. I’ll try to update this blog more frequently next time. Well, after being in the US for two months, I’d like to describe how it feels to be here.

Alright, let’s talk the good stuffs first,

1

  

       1.On time and respect:

To be honest, one of the best cultures here is the punctuality. If the class started at 9am, students will start coming to the class (or at least waiting in front of the class or lecture hall) at least 10 minutes before the class is started. The instructor often comes five minutes before class. Well, compared to my beloved country where what we called “important people” or maybe I better call those “who-fell-important people” will come at least 15 minutes after the event stated. Well we should learn to be punctual if we wanna be a better nation. When the class is not started yet, students will talk to each other, but when the instructor start the lecture, all students will suddenly silent and pay attention, nice eh?

2.     2.P.R.I.V.A.C.Y

 I love this one, that’s why I wrote it capitalized. Well, here people will always respect your privacy and personal space. No need to be “sungkan” if we wanna express something and people will not talk about your private business. Compared to my beloved country, people sometimes just care too much so they interrupt our privacy without they realize. Caring is nice but too much is not.

3.     3. Giving credit to deserved people

What I mean here is people in the US do care and take seriously about plagiarism, copy right, and original idea. This culture should be improved in Indonesian community, especially students and government. You will be kicked-out of school if you found guilty in terms of plagiarism. You will be fined bunch of money if you found guilty in terms of piracy in software. Yeah, we should start caring about giving credits to those people who work hard to find it.

Well, let’s talk about the “not-good” stuff later on.

Always happy and healthy, guys.

Cheers!

Timmy

Picture source

http://inkpaperpen.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/copyright-or-just-wrong/

http://theperfectdesign.com/blog/be-a-respecter-of-time-graphic-design-tip-64/

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/privacy.html