Seminar and Something to Think of

Today was nice with a little silly bad news in the end. But I won’t let myself down because of it. No way. Thus I won’t tell you about the silly bad news, ahaha...

This morning I attended a four session seminar on linguistics. The first speaker was the current Netherlands Ambassador for Indonesia, Dr. Nikolaos van Dam. He spoke about Arab-loan words in Indonesian language. His lecture was in English. I can catch every words but I can hardly remember them. Most of the audiences were lecturers. So I felt like having a class in graduate degree, ha-ha.

The second speaker was Dr. Anton Moeliono—rival of my professor Dr. Harimurti Kridalaksana. During my first years in the university, I thought both of them had already died. Then suddenly I had Dr. Harimurti in my course. And today was the first day I saw Dr. Anton alive. He spoke about multilingualism, polyglots, and their impact on Indonesian language.

The third one was Dr. Uri Tadmor from an anthropology institute. He was attractive. Listening to him speaking Indonesian was no boring. Strangely he gave me different impression when speaking English debating. He told us about the implication of loan-words in Indonesia on the archipelago’s history recognition. He exposed some remarkable facts and stories about how and what other languages have influenced Indonesian.

The last one was Dr. Jérôme Samuel from Paris. His paper was about the word “sepuh” (temper)—how it developed into various meanings. It was very analytical that I got sleepy during his speech. I knew I shouldn’t since I’m going to study in graduate degree but I couldn’t make it.

It was raining after the seminar. My friends asked for my help in a Portugal poetry reading and music. Actually I would have had a class this afternoon but it had been canceled. So I helped my friends and got a tip and two nice books in revenge. Meanwhile all I’ve done was welcoming guests and eating snacks.

I also got another reference letter from my lecturer Mr. F. And I met my lecturer Dr. M who works in the university main office. She told me that I might be able to ask for school fee payment suspension. So there’s a possibility for me to start my graduate study this year on September in University of Indonesia. But there are so many consequences I have to think about. What about Hawai’i, Australia, and Leiden? And that I’m still yearning to study at Cardiff? Studying in Indonesia self-funded will be crazy. I’ve experienced studying and working in the same time and how I wish it wouldn’t happen to me again!

Well, I’ll be thinking of it tomorrow. Now I have 12 pages to work on. Yaaawn, English again. No time to stop studying :)