Radio: Chase Away Your Loneliness

You may be living abroad now for a relatively long time for studies, official duties, or doing a business, and you feel a little homesick. You may be longing for ‘something Indonesian’ to chase away your loneliness. It might be someone from Indonesia to whom you can chat together, or watching a television on Indonesia news and journals. But if you cannot find them, you may have another choice of listening to voice of Indonesian reporters who are on air broadcasting news, playing music or presenting live talk show with listeners over the radios. You just turn on your laptop and click on one online radio streamer. You will feel as if you were in Indonesia, not far away from your home country. Online radio streamers can help you to chase away your loneliness.

In the mid of the vast attacks of the television innovation and or other audio devices like MP3/MP4, do the radios still have their fans like when they were on their golden age several decades ago? Almost in every city in this country, we still find more than just one radio station. Some people start or end the day by turning on the radio. While they are preparing themselves for their activities of the day, they listen to the radio. Or, when they are trapped in a traffic jam and have to seat in their car creeping the road, the trust the radio to entertain them. Some have a habit of listening to radio at hours before they sleep at night. Others say that they look like to have personal attachment to the radio. If this can be an indication, radios are still in the heart of their listeners.

There are some advantages why radios are still have their own fanatic listeners and are not apart from their heart. Not like televisions that require the viewers to stick glued on the screen, radios allow listeners to multitask. Listeners can do other works while they are listening to the radio. Radios may be also friendlier as listeners can call and share their feeling and emotion in a certain program designed to accommodate such sigh. This prominence is likely beyond the television.

Almost in any radio station, music seems to be the favorite program. Some have designed routine program that offers certain kind of music like pop, jazz, rock, dangdut (a kind of music from Malay), or nostalgic one. Others are presenting music on request, in which listeners can call the operator to ask a song to be played on air. If you are one who likes to have the first updates of the day, then you can tune ones that present news. Local contents such as traditional music and art shows are sometimes presented to entertain listeners of the surroundings.

Not only conventional radio stations that have been existing many years ago, with the rampant use of internet, online radio streamers are now available on your finger’s click. Not like the conventional ones, these online streamers need less infrastructure but with wider coverage of their listeners. Only with your personal computer or laptop and Internet connection your are now in the other continent may listen to any online radio of your town. Thus, you can enjoy your hometown nuance while you are living abroad.

Here are some of online streamers that you may pick up to chase away your loneliness while your are faraway from your hometown.

Jogyakarta:

http://jogjastreamers.com

Bali

http://bramwijaya.blogspot.com
http://gitabali.com
http://cassanovabalifm.com
http://cdbsfm.com


Jakarta:

http://Djwirya.com

http://hardrockfm.com

Lombok

http://globalfmlombok.blogspot.com


Other radio streamers:

http://enterindonesia.com/radio/index.html

The site keeper

More details...

Our Independence Day

It has been a tradition to every one in our kampoong to do something special to welcome the Independence Day. Pak RT, the kampoong chief, hold a meeting with the residents to discuss what agenda to be taken. It is almost to be certain that we start it by setting up a committee, called as ‘Panitia Tujuh Belasan’ or ‘Panitia Pitulasan’. Tujuh Belas in Indonesian or Pitulasan in Javanese means the seventeenth of August, when we commemorate the Independence Day. This committee organizes all the events such as the mass social works to clean and dress up the environment, festive competitions and gathering for praying at the Independence Eve. There are many ways to celebrate our Independence Day, of course.

The committee usually organizes festive competition of some sports like volleyball, table tennis, and chess game for fathers and mothers. Some funny games or competitions are for children of the surroundings. We clean and dress up the environment with red-and-white flags and colorful banners to make splendid atmosphere. We do all the things to celebrate our independence to recall the great moment in history about 64 years ago when we get freedom from the colonists.

Hundreds of years our nation had been suffering from the wildest life of the colonialism era, and these miseries invited local and sporadic attacks against the colonist. Uncounted lost of possessions and souls were sacrificed with no result, until the nation came to the national awakening for which we recall it as Hari Kebangkitan Nasional on every May 20. Since the day all efforts to get rid of the colonialism were not on district basis, but on national basis. It was the change of the paradigm in the efforts and struggles to get freedom.

It was on the August 17, 1945 when Mr. Soekarno and Mr. Moh.Hatta, for and on behalf of the nation, proclaimed the Indonesia’s Independence to the world. Since then, we have been an independent nation after so long-sufferings from colonialism. History has recorded that this independence was not granted, but it was fought over with terrible pains, efforts and struggles. It was engraved with tears and paints, bodies and souls.

In commemoration to the Independence Day, we arrange festive events to express our thanks and joy for the freedom. In other side, it is to pray for the heroes passed away in the battles for the independence. Festivals are usually held a few days before or after the August 17. On the Independence Eve, we all gather in a wide-open space with foods offerings. After a written speech from the local regent or major usually read by the village chief, and one from the kampoong chief, an ulama prays for the predecessor heroes. In the same time, he appeals His blessing for the strength and tough to continue the on going development of the country.

A few days, usually until a week later, some festive events are still going on in some villages. Funny games such as panjat pinang (palm tree climbing) are popular among the village residents. In this game, participants will have to climb a palm tree to take some gifts on the top of the tree. It is not an easy game to do as the tree greased with fat before and is becoming slick when the contestants climbing it. Music shows are often presented to end the subsequent events arranged during the commemoration period. This is the way of how to express our thanksgivings to God for the freedom moment.

Now, after 64 years of the Independence Day, we are not holding guns and fire the enemies. We do not have to go to the battlefields confronting the colonists. What we have to do is to develop the country to pursue justice and welfare for all people. This is not an easy task to do of course, and is not only in the hands of the government officials but on ours, all the elements of the nation. It is the task of the nation to get rid of the backwardness.

There are some barriers that we have to overcome. Those might be coming for the outside such as global economic crisis and the fluctuation of the world oil prices. The hard works are how to create a breakthrough to be sustainable to these attacks. From the inside, the low economic growth, the increase of jobless, corruption and illiteracy are waiting tasks of the nation to be overcome. In addition, the country is still prone to any security disturbance and separatism that may hamper foreign investors to come.

We have been 64 years free from the chain of colonialism, but we are facing the new manifestation of it that curbs us from being the developed country. Could we now get rid of all these disadvantages? We may have been left some decades behind those developed countries, but there is only one answer from this nation: YES!

Mojokerto, August 2009

The site keeper

More details...

How to Build a Paragraph

Writing looks like a light work. Even, people say that writing is easy. This saying may be more just like a stimulant that encourages people writing, but a good writing is not as easy as to say it. Good writing requires adequate technical knowledge, logical idea managing, and language proficiency. Communication competency will not be apart from writing. How to make a good writing?

Writing is actually communicating information or message in the forms of written language. To communicate the information, writers have to follow certain techniques so that their readers will easily understand. With their writings, the writers would make readers know and take any advantage from or, further to this-in some cases, to influence their thinking.

As writing is the art of influencing people by means of the power of words, writing is not just a matter of having a brilliant idea. How to present the idea will give much effect to the transferring process of the idea to readers. This communication of idea will be much influenced by whom the readers are supposed to be, the intent of writing, and how deep the expected effect to them.

Writers will express their idea in the form of sentences, but bad structure of them will not help readers comprehend the idea easily. Even, it may lead them to misunderstanding and misinterpreting and it means that the writer fails to transfer his mission. That is why it is important to organize such a group of sentences into a basic unit of writing that develops the main idea. This basic unit of organization is called as a paragraph.

By means of paragraph, writers will manifest their ideas. And only when they are developed in such a way, readers will ‘catch’ these ideas. To write a good paragraph the understanding of what it is about, components of its unity, and how it make a sense seems to be a compulsory.

A paragraph is a cluster of inter-linked sentences, built as a basic unit of a writing that will compose the whole writing in its unity. The numbers of sentences vary from one to another, but it will comprise the three main points of topic sentence, supporting sentences and concluding sentence. In addition to these three points, unity and coherence will support the paragraph to be powerful.

A topic sentence is stating the main idea of the paragraph. It comprises the thing that is to be described. A topic sentence should be precise and no need to tell everything about the topic in the first sentence. It serves to limit to one area that will be described in the space of the paragraph.

Supporting sentences are inter-linked sentences that develop the topic. They explain the topic by giving outlines, reasons, facts that will support the topic to be clear to understand. These sentences will make up the body of the paragraph as the result of describing the topic.

Closing sentence is the concluding sentence that sums up important points from the discussion. It may be a sentence of reinforcing the topic in another words. It is the conclusion of the discussion in the paragraph.

In addition to the three main points that form a paragraph, unity and coherence will support a good paragraph. Unity means that in the paragraph only one and the main idea is stated in the topic sentence and is developed by the supporting sentences to make it easy to comprehend. Meanwhile, coherence means how supporting sentences are describing the topic in logical and consecutive order.

The three steps of building a paragraph are pre-writing, writing and editing. Pre-writing is the step when writers think carefully and organize their ideas for the paragraph before they start writing. The writing step is when they turn the ideas into sentences and communicate them. The editing step is when they check the paragraph for mistakes and take necessary corrections.

In pre-writing step, it may be useful to think of:
Why do I choose the topic?
Why is the topic important?
How can I make the topic interesting?
How to collect data related to the topic?
Then, organize the facts ad ideas to develop the topic and the best way to present them to readers.

Writing step is when writers put on the idea and facts to the consecutive of order of supporting sentences.It is the phase when they write down the topic sentence, describing it with supporting sentence and sum up main point into the conclusing sentence, without missing unity and coherence.

Editing step is when writers check the paragraph for necessary corrections against mistakes. Not only checking against spelling and gramatilcal errors, but to the extend of this, if they have developed the paragraph excellent.

the site keeper

More details...