Today is my little sister's birthday.
The only one I have.

We may don't have the luxury of living in the same house together.
We are not as close as other sisters.
I don't know much about her, nor what is going on in her life.
And vice versa.

In other life, when life is more perfect, we are just like the other sisters.
We would know about each other's life.
We would fight a little because you take my clothes.
Or because I borrow your shoes and not telling.

In other life, you would be the first person who knows when I like a boy.
Or if I got fight with my friends.
Or when I was brokenhearted.

In other life, we would go shopping together.
Or watching movies until very late at night.

But in both lives, we're still sisters.
Doesn't matter if we don't talk everyday. Or every month.
I still love you.
Doesn't matter if we don't know about each other's life.

Happy birthday to you, Arinda.
I wish you all the best things in life.
I wish you to live a happier, better life than I could have.
Because you deserve it.
I love you.

Another year has gone by.
When I was 19, I wished I could stop growing old and be 19 forever instead.
Obviously, that one wish didn't come true.

Twenty five.

Being a pessimist person I was (and still am), I never thought I could reach 25.
But here I am.

Twenty five.

Live in a strange city quite far from home.
Get a never-boring job.
With those lovely workaholic colleagues.
And have a very nice life over all.

What I have today is more that I could ever ask.
Even though I never planned this.

God,
Thank you.

Salah satu hal yang paling banyak orang tanyain ke gue itu: Gimana caranya biar lancar bahasa Inggris?

Cara bisa dan lalu lancar bahasa Inggris itu macam-macam. Juga tergantung dari setiap orangnya. Tapi satu hal yang pasti, itu ga serta merta terjadi dalam satu malam, satu minggu, atau satu bulan saja.

Gue dikenalin bahasa Inggris lebih dulu dari saya bisa menulis atau masuk sekolah, Terima kasih Papa, you are literally my hero! Jadi di lingkungan keluarga, gue udah dikenal bisa bahasa Inggris.
Tapi jujur sejujur-jujurnya, gue baru merasa bisa bahasa Inggris itu justru setelah lulus SMA.
Sebelumnya, bener-bener grammar ke sana, arti ke sono.
Gue menganggap itu bagian dari perjalanan dan pembelajaran.

Oke, jadi gimana caranya biar bisa atau lancar bahasa Inggris?

Satu, banyak baca bacaan bahasa Inggris.
Apapun itu. Mau buku, artikel, majalah, komposisi makanan ringan.
Dulu waktu SMA, saya suka baca buku bahasa Inggris sambil diucapkan. Padahal juga ga tau yg diucapkan itu bener atau nggak, orang ga ada yg denger juga gimana mau ada yg koreksi. Tapi gapapa. Dengan membaca dan diucapkan ulang itu akan melatih lidah kamu buat mengucapkan bahasa Inggris.

Dua, dengerin lagu atau audiobook
Lebih bagus lagi kalau kamu megang lirik atau teks audiobooknya. Jadi kamu bisa tau pelafalan kata-kata yang mungkin tadinya kamu ga pernah tau, atau kamu lafalkan salah karena ke-sotoy-an kamu itu.

Tiga, tonton film dengan subjudul bahasa Inggris.
Pusing? Iya awalnya pusing. Lama-lama terbiasa kok. Bahkan nanti kamu akan sampai ke tahap di mana tetiba subjudulnya ilang tapi kamu tetep paham sama apa yang diomongin di filmnya. Keren kan?
Gimana kalau kamu nemu kata-kata atau istilah asing di tengah-tengah percakapan? Google translate dulu dong, kan filmnya bisa dipause!

Empat, menulis.
Walau itu cuma status di Facebook atau Path, caption Instagram, atau cuitan di Twitter, nggak papa! Ya kalo bisa sih agak panjangan lagi ya.
Coba deh iseng liat blogpost saya waktu awal-awal di blog ini, bahasa Inggrisnya berantakan banget!
Tapi karena makin sering baca dan nulis, lama-kelamaan jadi sedikiiiit lebih paham dan agak lebih enakan sedikit bahasanya.


Lima, jangan malas cari arti kata.
Dulu waktu di sekolah sering denger kalimat: "Kalo gatau artinya, dikira-kira aja atau ditebak artinya apa"
NO.
Itu cuma berlaku kalau kamu lagi ujian atau untuk keadaan di mana kamu ga bisa akses kamus atau google translate. Selagi kamu bisa, cari artinya! Saat itu juga kalau perlu.
Karena kalo kamu cuma nebak atau berasumsi dan SALAH, arti yang salah itu akan tetep nempel di otak kamu (padahal salah!) dan seterusnya kamu akan terus mengingat hal yang salah, Duh!

Enam, bercakap-cakap dengan bahasa Inggris.
Ini sih yang paling sulit. Apalagi kalau ga ada temennya. Hiks.
Karena ini justru yang paling penting: aplikasi.
Bahkan sebenernya, kalau kamu ga melakukan nomor satu sampai empat, asal kamu rajin bicara bahasa Inggris, kamu lama-lama akan bisa karena terbiasa. Walau nantinya grammarnya ke sana ke mari sih hahaha.

Terakhir, sabar.
Ga ada hasil belajar yang instan, apalagi belajar bahasa.
Baru rajin buka kamus sebulan, udah kesel karena merasa ga nambah-nambah vocabulary-nya.
Baru nonton 10 film pake subjudul bahasa Inggris, udah sedih karena masih banyak yang artinya ga tau.
Baru ngomong bahasa Inggris sejam sehari selama beberapa bulan doang, ngerasa frustasi kenapa logatnya masih Indonesia banget.
Duh, sabar yaaa...
Perjalanan kamu masih panjang.
Yang penting konsisten, jangan bolong-bolong belajar bahasanya.
Dan yang pasti, yakin kalau kamu bisa!
Setiap orang itu bisa kok belajar bahasa :)

Surround yourself with people who are smarter, happier, crazier, and basically better than you. That's an important thing to remember. They will make you humble. You will learn something new every day. Which I think is what life is all about: to learn everyday.

I love reading and have written lots about it.
This is just another one of those.

People who love reading and want to spend their money on books are lucky. Or at least I really think so.

Books are expensive. Or really expensive.
Compared to clothes that you can wear many times to several occasions, or to television shows that you watch by (almost) free.
You can watching TV while you're doing other activities, but with reading, you need to sit down and go on full-concentration mode while doing it.
Besides, it doesn't have pictures so it's boring.
Expensive, non-practical, and boring. Why reading, right?
Knowledge can be gained from other medias, as well as talking for hours with other people which means you can have two-way communications (asking and answering questions kind of thing) while you only get the information from a book and can't ask anything back. Meh.
There's no interesting reason about why you should read a book.
Interesting fictional books at some point also will be made into movies.

Makes sense?
That's why I said whoever loves reading and spending their money on books are lucky.
Because they already gone past that phase and can see what other people can't see.
Why buy books when you can read for free?
Why buy encyclopedia while you can watch National Geographic-ish on TV for (almost) free?
Why reading when you can watch the video?
I can't answer it either.
I just love reading.
I just love buying  books.
I just love having high stacks of books.

My Dad took me to buy books. And my Mom gave me money to borrow books in commercial library. So I never think spending money on books is wrong.
Some people likes buying clothes, shoes, or spending their money on something else and those are not entirely wrong either, so why buying books is?

Just to make it worse, I'm writing this crazy stuffs about me PART II \o/
You can read the first post here. But if you don't want to, that works for me too.

11. Secretly loves racing cars
I love racing cars, fast cars, TV shows about cars... even though I never quite understand about automotive. But if I could choose, I wouldn't want to own them. Good looking racing cars are not for me to own, they're just too beautiful. Besides, I can't ride them fast enough to make a difference :P
Mini Cooper is my most fave car. I also love Audi and Ferrari. But I don't like Lamborghini. I love modern-classic cars, SUV, and jeep. I LOVE big cars!

12. Doesn't like mirror
I never met someone who is quite like me in this, I don't like mirror. Or seeing myself in a mirror. I don't have certain reason nor can explain why. I look at the mirror only when really necessary. I'm not that girl who checks herself every time she passes a mirror. I admit it that this is weird, but I just doesn't like mirror.

13. Loves stuffed animals
When I say it out loud, I do feel like a teenager haha. But I really do love stuffed animals. I constantly check out the toys stores for cute ones. Sometimes I also buy non-animals ones. I have Paddington Bear. I also have a few action figures. If action figures are not THAT expensive, I think I would've bought lots of them as well!

14. Loves languages
I was taught English before I went to kindergarten (thank you, Daddy!) so maybe that took big part about this perk I have. The second language I learnt was Japanese. I bought a book, got a dictionary from my aunt, and tried to remember as many words as I could. I still can count until 10 in Japanese now. Then I studied French at school. About one year ago, I signed up for a Dutch class in Erasmus. I haven't continued to next level though. Currently I'm interested on learning Gaelic.
But don't get me wrong, I also love Indonesian traditional languages, especially Javanese and Sundanese <3

15. Loves Germans
I don't even know where to start, but I do love Germans people and I can't explain why XD

16. Obsessed with time-traveling (stories)
Maybe because at first I wanted to do it my self, specifically to stop my father from dead. That was back when I was younger, of course. As I grew up, I enjoy it a lot as stories. Then I knew Doctor Who (which all about time-traveling) and obsessed even more. Especially in the episode where Rose Tyler traveled back in time to try rescue her father from a car accident which killed him (related much?). Also because time-traveling has any story impossible. And now, even though I really like the idea of time-traveling, I hope it won't come true. Because, oh, the mess it could cause ><

17. Never regrets
At first, it was only words to live by: regret nothing. But then I realized that it's true. Don't regret anything that has happened. Just don't. It will stop you to step up, step forward, and move on. Besides, it's already happened and unless you have a time machine, you can't do much about that.
Not everything I've done was perfect. Heck, they were even FAR from perfect. But I don't regret anything, not even my mistakes. Because when I made mistakes, the only thing I could do about that is to learn from it. Nothing else. And I'm a big believer that everything happened for reasons!

18. Has good sense of smell
It's just so weird and can get really wild sometimes and makes me feel like a dog.
The good side is I always try to make my room (and myself too!) smells good :)

19. Loves documentary movies
Especially the good ones. Thank God we have European who ace in the making documentary movies. I really love them. Good documentary movies show that good and interesting stories don't always happen in human's imagination, but they also happen somewhere. The last documentary movies I watched was African Cats (2011) which made me cry, laugh, and scared. And I was watching big cats!

20. Loves vanilla smell
I'm wearing vanilla extract as perfume. And The Body Shop's Madagascan Vanilla perfume. Some people said it made me smell like a cake. What should I say? I do want to smell like a cake!