thanks Maam.....

I think i already told you that i was in Florida visiting my friend there (look at previous blog below), right? Actually my trip should be with my husband, but then we wasted his flight tiket because he should start to work a day after our departure. So i decided to call my friend and talked about the possibility to stay at her place instead of being lonely at hotel and of course saving money (actually this is the main issue here hehehe). So i had really a good company and free place to stay, and for sure she gave me a ride to some places.

Her boyfriend picked me up at Hollywood International airport and took me home by a bus. It was my first experince to ride a bus in this country. It was confusing for me to insert $1 bill and coin quarter (25 cents) into the machine. The bus fare is affordable and it is comfy too. Equipped with air conditioning against the tropical hot weather there, and no time delay. Tips for you, before taking bus just prepare one dollar bill and one coin quarter, because they will not give you change for exceeding bill. So here we go, it started to move and i enjoyed the view along the trip. It was beautiful city with its palm trees eveywhere and made me remember the old tv show i always watched when i was stil in Indonesia "Miami Vice". I saw more people take a walk or ride bicycle than in Michigan. I felt more homy! it was really different feeling for me to be in Michigan with all difference weather and geograpical condition and to be here with more or less similar with Indonesia. I saw many Hispanics and some of them were really masculin handsome guys like Antonio Banderas and also sexy beautiful women! In Indonesia they will make a lot of money by becoming an artist. Also there were Haitian black people which is slight different with African America.

Anyway, there was "little" incident happened after we came back from the store. In short our car scratched another car next to us......We just looked each other and didnt know what to do first, and the other lady who own the car tried to call her husband and after that told me that she is gonna ask the police to come. The police!? Oh no....must be bad for us, how much money we have to pay for this damage.....? After about 20 minutes, the police came to us and interviewed us about the incident. She took note and checked the cars. She was nice and not intimidating, even tried to figure out how to fix it (our car door was stuck in the body of the other car). Finally she did good and only left minor scratch on the other car. Phew! Then she told us that she wont put any police record and let my friend insurance company to take care of the damage. Thanks God. Then another thing came up, the lady could not start the car.....the problem came out from the battery. So she asked us help her to buy a jumper cable so that she can start the car by connecting her battery to another car battery. The police was still there with her when we came back, and she started to open the machine and tried to look for where the battery was and i helped her by holding flash light (it was night time). It took about another 5 minutes until she finally called her partner to come over and help her. Then another police came and they worked together until it was started eventually. I was surprised by her seriousness to help us and she was just friendly.
Finally she said "Ok guys make sure you get home safely". "Yep, no more surprise for us" i replied. After we thanked her many times for all help we took off and left us curiousity and of course relief feeling. We discussed about how nice the police was to us. There was no intimidation or bad treatment from her or even didnt asked us for money. And just let us go with secure feeling. My friend wondering if this kind of police is not 'the real' one like police who does investigation for criminal case. Because she saw the police car was written "Police Service Aide". Out of curiosity i searched it and finally found out that Police Service Aide serves non-enforcement support that help police officer to have more time to perform law enforcement activities.* So basically they are available to help people to feel safe and secure by providing service to deal with the trouble like what they have done, fixed the car. Thanks Maam....! You have really great job to help people like us. I hope someday in my country the dream will come true as slogan "Kami siap melayani anda".


*taken from http://www.cityofaventura.com/pdfs/JobDescription/PSA.pdf

dedicated to Police Service Aide of Aventura city, Florida

sorry no english

I heard before that in US some people dont speak english and they adapt well for living. At first it was quite surprise for me, how come people doesnt speak english there....? I cant imagine to be one of them living abroad without knowing its language. Dont you think it is kind of insecurity? How do they deal with only english spoken people for their daily life? I still remember my Indonesian friend after just moved in there for few months told me a story how it was so hard for her to understand how to pay electric bill of her apartment. She repeated to listen to answer machine many times to understand the instructions. Her english is fine in fact but for some reason to deal with real english native spoken apparently is a bit different.
It happened to me until now (shame on me!), especially for conversation on the phone, sometimes i need to ask the other person on the phone to repeat what did they say. At first few months it was even worse and made me feel lack of confidence when i engaged conversation with my husband family and i could not get the words correctly. I missed many words during conversation and it embarassed me. There were times when i let them told me a story and i was just stuck there without being able to ask them the missing word for me because i didnt want to disturb the flow of it.Unfortunately they were too excited, it was going on and on loong story.....so even if have moment to ask the words, it would be too much. Poor them, they just wasted time and energy.
Well i learnt more about accent and slank words. It was easier to read a book in english and to discuss or to listen to the lecturer speak english in indonesia because their accent is indonesian. But here........believe me, it's different.
Now after a year i have been "tortured" to always speak their language, i am improving much better. Before it was alwyas hesitant for me to make a phone call because i didnt want to feel bad after i speak with them because of my fluency. Actually i did good on the phone, even one of them were surprised to know that i moved in here only for few months (i hope she didnt lie to me). Well i took it as compliment to motivate me to practice more often. Voila......now i have no problem with making phone call!
So again i can't imagine how to be a person without speaking english here.....Must be felt terrible sometimes.
Then i found weird situation when i was in Florida, mostly they dont speak english! In the bus, mall, store, restaurant they speak strange language i dont understand. What the hell is going on...? Is it still America? A guy with uniform approached me at Wendy's and started to speak his language while i was looking for the handle for paper towel. I just looked at him with confused expression, then he pulled down the handle for me. Ohh....apparently he was trying to explain how to do that. "Thank you sir..." i said. He didnt reply and just left me. I saw him talk with his friend and sometimes laughed together. My friend told me that it was spanish, becoming main language there.
Then i started to think......how will it be like if bahasa as main language here?
Asyik kali ya serasa di kampung halaman setiap saat?! Terus nanti ada papan di pinggir jalan tertulis "tambal ban tubeles" atau "Warung Makan Pak Dirjo".

*Happy Sumpah Pemuda!

see you next posting!

Transition

Back to almost one year ago when i had the most difficult decision to make concerning my future. Should i go or should i stay...? Most people said...think again carefully and not to go. But i believe i can do it myself, eventhough so faraway from all of them people who always love me and keep me in their mind. I kept telling myself, just move on dont give up....once you turn back you would not be able to step forward.

So here i am, in another world so faraway from home......
Looking back at my past keeping alive all beloved people in my mind to move forward stronger. Trying to retrieve all of old files about them, keeping me warm in my heart from winter. There is sadness coloring my self, all good times good memories just come out make me sad to realize that i dont have those anymore now. Every day every night those memories attack me wildly at my dreams, make me feel good and also make me sad. I wish i have that normal life already, but also i dont want my current life replace them. No, no way.... Those memories are just too sweet and always remind me how happy i was around my family and friends.

Finally in this case, i was right....i have to stand by myself. I cant rely on somebody else to make things right. There is a time when you have to be totally alone no one understand what you are going through. Nobody, except yourself.

That is the time when you have to rethink your vision of life, build new one. Make yourself feel better knowing that there is still hope everything will be good eventually.
Keep in faith that something good will come good, and i came here with good intention. So must be something will come good in time, still a mistery.

Something good is precious, only work for who work on it and belief in it.
Hopefully i am the right one to do that, strong enough to struggle holding my faith.