Mike’s Blog

Panglima Besar Jenderal Sudirman, one of the greatest generals that Indonesia ever had. I wrote this on my blog as a tribute to him. There’s a statue of him standing on Jenderal Sudirman street in Jakarta, before I was going to Germany, I never realized that the statue exist at all. But now when I saw it, I really respect that statue and knew that the “General Sudirman street” is not only a street name.

You can take a look at the statue:

And this is his life’s story in pictures:

Compare him to them, member of People’s Representative Council nowadays (Anggota Dewan jaman sekarang)

I found this entry about working in Germany from a scholarship mailing list blog. It is about motivating (Indonesian) people to work in Germany as skilled labour in high tech area. Some of the comments were interested and some remained sceptical. Funny is that those who were sceptical are people who graduated from german universities or at least, still studying in Germany. From my sight, I do see that Germany has a shortage of high qualified skilled labour. I have been working at some typical german’s main corporates, and I saw how long it needed before a vacancy could be occupied. But it doesn’t mean that anyone, even one who doesn’t speak German at all and never been in Germany could easily find a job in high tech sector.
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Kalau ada sumur di ladang, boleh kita menumpang mandi
Kalau ada umurku panjang, boleh kita berjumpa lagi

Reff.
Rasa sayange… rasa sayang sayange…
Eeee lihat dari jauh rasa sayang sayange

Rasa Sayange - it’s a typical Indonesian traditional song which I often heard since my childhood in Jakarta. Actually, it was nothing special to me, just like another many traditional Indonesian songs from Indonesia (and Indonesia has hundred, if not thousands, of tradional music, songs and culture). It wasn’t my favourite either. Rasa Sayange is talking about the possibility of reunion and mostly singed at farewell parties in Indonesia or just if one has boredom. But Rasa Sayange becomes special for millions of Indonesian and me since it was stolen from us by Malaysia, just like Nasi Goreng or Batik. Right now, it seems bad since they’ve done their travel advertising with this song as the companion. Malaysia is really Malingsia (”Maling” means thief in Bahasa Indonesia). As Malaysia stole many of our culture for their travel advertising purpose, we change their travel symbol with “Malingsia - Truly Maling Asia“.

Really, we never realize how valuable something is until we lose it…