Meet my wonderful Indonesian friend who loves the German Fußball Nationalmannschaft!

Hallo meine Lieben,

this is a premiere: I have a wonderful guest post for you! I am so excited!

I have met Niken a while ago and I immediately knew that we would be great friends. She is a fantastic person, lives in Indonesia, has one of the coolest jobs ever and loves Fusball!
Please go and check out her blog Read My Mind! You'll have lots of fun!
(She also knows a lot more about html codes than I do! Thank again, Niken!)

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Hello there Land of Candy Canes residents. My name’s Niken and I blog over Read My Mind. So glad to be here today and I’d like to thanks Katrin for this opportunity. Usually I might bore you to death with my uncontrollable talks about football (you might call it soccer in US of A, but really. It’s football. I mean, they use their feet) and how I can cry and cry and bawl my eyes with tears when my favorite team lost! And yes, some of my friends think I’m crazy for crying over football game (my mom does think so too), but when Katrin told me in our email conversation she doesn’t think I’m crazy and she can cry over football too, I know that we can be soulmate (coincidence that my favorite team is Germany? And Spain of course). 

But you are lucky today because I will not bore you with my thoughts on football match. Instead, today I’ll talk about my home country (hopefully I won’t bore you with this one). I’m 100% Indonesian (strangely, some people think I’m a mix of white and Indonesia) and currently live in Indonesia even though you can say I’m a nomad because I keep moving from place to place due to my job. 

Through the 23 years of my life, I’ve lived in several cities in Indonesia in a settled way, not in a nomad way. I was born in Bali lived there for several years, then my dad got transferred for his job where we moved to a city in Borneo island, then I went to college in Yogyakarta (Jogja for short), and now I’m pretty much live in Jakarta-Yogyakarta when I’m not traveling for my job.

Each living experience in these several different cities give me a tasteful life, because even though they’re still in one country, these cities have different culture. Indonesia, an archipelago country consist of more or less 13.000 islands, is rich of culture. There are so many local tribes with unique customs, language, food, dance, costume, and way of living life which may take my life time to talk about them all. But in general, here are a few things about Indonesian :

 We eat with our hand.

 

It’s not like we eat meals with hand all the time, but it’s okay if you eat with your hand instead of spoon and fork. And there is a common belief that some foods are taste more delicious when you eat it with your hand. 

 Left hand is considered not polite.

When we shake hands with other people, when we hand/pass something to someone, we use our right hand. Using left hand is an act of disrespect to the people that we face. And when we pose too, like in the picture above (kidding). 

The use of left hand. 

 We use left hand to wash out butt after we poop. I don’t think people ever use their right hand for this business even that it’s no written rule. 

We call someone older not just with the name. 

 Even if that someone is not relatively connected with us, we call them with “mas” for boys, and “mbak” for girls and then followed by their names. “mas” and “mbak” are Javanese mean “brother” and “sister”. So if the person is considered as old as or more likely like a brother/sister to us, we call them “mas” or “mbak”. For example : your senior in high school, your older sibling’s friends, etc. The call for the older people can be different in other city, like in Jakarta they call someone older “Abang” for boys, but the meaning is the same. Brother. And if you considered the older person as your aunt, even if you’re not relatively connected, you call her “tante” which means aunt, and then followed by her name. For example : your friend’s mother. 

 Thick and close kinship.

We are so close with our family/relatives. Like in my family we’re so close with our cousins, aunts, uncles, our parents cousins, etc. And when you come to a town where your relative is there, don’t even think to not come over to their house. There’s a bold chance that they’ll make sure sleepover at their house, stuff you with food, etc. because they want to take care of you while you’re in town.
And that’s my friends, are a few things about Indonesian. I can’t wait to hear about your thoughts and don’t hesitate to question me more if you still have bugs running in your hand. Thanks again Katrin for having me visit CandyCanesLand! Have a great day. :)

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Thank you Niken for your wonderful post! It was so exciting to write a guest post for you! And such an honor that you wrote a post for my blog!
PS: You can find my guest post on her blog!