[Griff88 1,756]

16 minutes ago, George_D said:

What I had also noticed in some of last presidential elections is that president/vice president duo candidates were consisted of persons belonging (one of two) to suharto era, and the other to pro-sukarno camp (concerning their political background). It's difficult to be determined in Indonesia what kind of ideology serves any candidacy or government 

 

Yeah Widodo was viewed as the reformer, the one to make politics leaving Sukarno-Suharto rivalry stuff, but in the end his overlord pulled the leash and drive him back to follow the old ways.

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7 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

I mean, believe what you want, who cares how many others believe the same.

 

Well, that's how it should be...

 

Spoiler

Unfortunately some won't stop shoving it to your face until you follow them

 

[Griff88 1,756]

Joko Widodo officially began his second term as President of Indonesia by appointing ministers to his cabinet this week. For Minister of Defense we have.... the other presidential candidate who has been trying to topple him for years. Almost all of the opposition party get sucked in to the governing coalition except one party.

 

The hardcore fanboys of both sides now confused. How come these sworn enemies unite in one government?

 

[Griff88 1,756]

15 minutes ago, MHSN said:

 

Well. most people believe what they don't even know. I know lots of people who are just interested to listen to Quran (mostly elderly people) and I'm 100% sure they don't understand a word but still like it. they just like the sound of it.

 

There are even competitions (even international competitions) about Quran Recital, some guys try their whole life to recite Quran in the best way and some of them are really good. people just enjoy listening to them. some of them think even if they listen to Quran their sins will be forgiven.

 

there are some other "weird" things.or for example when someone dies, someone should speak in Arabic in the funeral. nobody understands him but they think that will help his soul ! or when people go to cemetery for their dearests they read two of Quran's Surahs. again without knowing the meaning.

 

it's just accepted by religious people here that Arabic is a sacred language .

 

 

Exactly what happens here. People usually play recordings of someone reciting some surah from Quran without really understanding the full meaning but they feel the calmness and peace fulness from the recordings.

[Griff88 1,756]

1 hour ago, thepharoah said:

For Arabic I think being the language of Quran holly book for Muslims' made much non Arab speakers know basics of Arabic language,  so people from Iran,  Pakistan, many  African countries especially chad has good base in Arabic language,  also Turkish people,  maybe Indonesians and Malaysians especially those who study here in AL Azhar university, Israel so I think Arabic is somehow spread language , ofc like every other language it varies from country to another,  Egyptians don't speak like Maghreb countries or people in Sham areas ( Palestine, Syria and Lebanon) and gulf countries, etc each ethnic groups has different way of expressing language but at the end of the day we understand each other 

 

We have quite a lot Arabic vocabularies which was spread from Muslim merchants about 700 years ago. Even some country names in Indonesian used Arabic derived ones because those merchants are the ones which made people at that time aware of those countries like Mesir, Aljazair, Yunani, etc.

 

With the exception of Morocco, somehow we used the Western derived "Maroko". In Malaysia they still use Maghribi (and the number of Arabic vocabularies in Malay is even more prevalent than in Indonesian).

[Griff88 1,756]

17 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

But don’t people get insulted when we say Persian? What should I say?

 

I’ll have to do some research on Kurdish.

 

Just don't say "Do you speak Iranian?".

 

I remembered a video where a man meets an Iranian immigrant and he hesitated to ask that. Fortunately the Iranian put him out of misery and just cut the question and replied "Yes of course I still speak Persian"

[Griff88 1,756]

45 minutes ago, bestmen said:

Putin visits KSA , the Russian anthem at 0:22" .............. what a massacre , look at the face of Putin at 0:33 

 

I think no one beats when Xi visited Venezuela a few years back...

 

 

[Griff88 1,756]

2 hours ago, hckosice said:

Thank you guys for all answers !

 

It´s always great to learn about things from different cultures and habits, I would never have had the chance to learn otherwise

 

And now I wonder whether there are words in Slovak that is normal but became a profanity/negative words in Czech?

 

 

Indonesian and Malay have a lot of these words, and sometimes it caused some trouble for travelers from both countries. For example:

 

Dadah

Indonesian: This word is used when you ask little kids to wave goodbye to someone else ("C'mon, dadah to grandma before we leave")

Malay: narcotics

 

Butuh

Indonesian: need

Malay: d*ck

 

Pusing

Indonesian: dizzy

Malay: turn (left or right)

 

Banci:

Indonesian: drag queens

Malay: census

 

Seronok:

Indonesian: Lewd

Malay: Fun

 

Also there is the word awak which means "you" in Malay but in West Sumatra it means "I" (other regions use different words). Imagine if someone from Malaysia comes to West Sumatra....

 

 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Griff88

[Griff88 1,756]

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

Anyone here using Duolingo?

I used to... I don't have enough perseverance unfortunately, but still refuse to uninstall it from my phone

[Griff88 1,756]

3 hours ago, hckosice said:

Just was asking myself,

 

There any other different countries that speaks different languages but understand themselves without any problem. Like Czechs and Slovaks, The Czechs speaks Czech and Slovaks Slovak but both understand each other and thus can still discuss in their respective languages ?

 

I mean if there any other countries with different languages having the same thing, like for example - or speaking countries - speaking countries, or how it works in countries like where there many different languages, did peoples understands each other without problems ?

 

and is usually said to be 90% intelligible (for the formal/standard language) since it came from the same root.

But from what I observe nowadays, younger generation in Indonesia will have more difficulty in understanding Malay because there are many vocabularies that is now become rarely used by them. And with more Indonesians understanding English, they just won't bother to think about trying to understand Malay when they happen to meet Malaysians.

 

 

 

Side story: As I am Chinese descent with ancestry from Fujian Province, I speak Hokkien. And I found out that even Hokkien speakers in Indonesia has different variations, where sometimes the difference in the vocabulary can be quite big. The Medan Hokkien (the one I spoke) is mostly intelligible with Penang Hokkien in Malaysia, which means it's quite isolated compared to other variants. My father once arranged to meet a Singaporean businessman and my father thought that as they both can speak Hokkien it is alright (he barely understands English or Mandarin). When they start discussing, it turns out my father doesn't totally understand what the Singaporean was saying. Luckily I was there, and suddenly became the middleman between them lol

Edited October 17, 2019 by Griff88

[Griff88 1,756]

1 hour ago, Olympian1010 said:

The conversation started when someone used “Cali” to describe California. Californians never use the word “Cali”, we do use “SoCal/NorCal”, but not “Cali”.

 

Definitely, because Cali is in Colombia

[Griff88 1,756]

Need some Polish users to help find any information of this "cooperation agreement" between Majalengka region in West Java with Magdalenka in Poland (there are a few in Google Maps) 

 

This image has been circulating for the last 2 days but no news from the Majalengka local government

[Griff88 1,756]

A tough day in office for Indonesian president:

 

1. A riot in West Papua, due to a hoax message regarding racial slurs to native Papuans (duh!)

2. Forest and peatland fires, exporting haze to Singapore and Malaysia

3. Student demonstrations in big cities, to protest a new bill (which allegedly limit the power of Anti Corruption Commission) and the proposal of the revision of the revised criminal code bill (yeah the crazy stuff I posted a while ago)

[Griff88 1,756]

On 22/09/2019 at 05:16, MHSN said:

 

I have this one too but instead of emailing them to you I can give you a better option, check this

 

http://www.ocagames.com/orb/game_edition.php?id_game_edition=1

Talking about OCA website, I've emailing OCA (in vain) to tell them that someone inflated the Indonesian medals at Tehran 1974 to make it higher than Israel (it should be 3-4-4)

 

http://www.ocasia.org/MedalTally/GhafMedalTally?q=NtpwTOliipDwo6ShqBnESywWju0uwKr+pXg2Cq8zoHc=

[Griff88 1,756]

2 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

Can Parliament (I’m assuming that’s what Indonesia has) over ride the veto?

No.

 

It is also the last plennary session for the current 5-year term.. Which means some of the dumb people will lost their seats by next month.

[Griff88 1,756]

On 19/09/2019 at 17:25, Griff88 said:

Two big news from Indonesia:

 

1. Our Sports Minister is charged with bribery,     he has now stepped down (after congratulating sambo athletes earlier that day)

 

2. The parliament is preparing a bill to revise the criminal code (current version is inherited from the 1918 Wetboek van Strafrecht voor Nederlandsch-Indie) which includes new "interesting" articles such as:

• In addition of the ban on spreading communism and Marxism, spreading atheist and agnostic views or inciting people to stop believing religions are now punishable (4 years in prison)
• Any form of abortion is now punishable (the new article said that "asking/giving consent for abortion" is punishable thus conflicting with the legal exception for health reasons or rape victims)
• Performing black magic is now punishable for 3 years in prison, bonus 1 year if the damage is financial
• Showing, advertising, or offering contraceptives to children is now punishable by law (except for certified officials)
• Cohabitating is now punishable if someone reports you
• Minimum prison sentence for corruption is now only 2 years (instead of 4)
• Anti defamation law has been modified, which made it possible for journalists to be jailed because the subject did not like their article or felt attacked by it.

 

Looks like I have to make a long-term plan to live somewhere else

 

The revision bill is vetoed by the president

[Griff88 1,756]

9 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Writing, speaking, being a historian, reporting, climbing, cycling, running, debating....I'm curious if you dare name things you're not good at  

I know, pencak silat

[Griff88 1,756]

27 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

I swear I remember somethin about football and ghosts and them being allowed

I dunno about rules but I've read about accusations that Essam el Hadary used black magic a few years back

[Griff88 1,756]

29 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Honestly black magic should carry at least a 5 year sentence. Also, people who believe black magic is possible should be sentenced to 15 years 

That's basically asking more than half of the population to go to jail...

 

But yeah my country folks are really fond of these stuff. We have the popular saying "rejected love means it's time for the shaman".

 

There are cases our migrant workers in Saudi are sentenced to death with charge of sorcery ranging from wearing certain things (accused amulet) to adding their own urine to their employer's tea to make him complain less

 

 

[Griff88 1,756]

57 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

What do you guys do when studying for an exam, out of these two options?

 

1) The night before the exam, go to bed early enough to have an extra decent amount of sleep.

2) Sacrifice sleep in the night before the exam, and spend the extra time studying, with the drawback that you'll be tired come exam time.

 

Option 3 ("Make sure you've got all the studying done in time so this dilemma is not necessary anymore") is not an option  

Number 1 but with normal bedtime, in my case it is 22.00

[Griff88 1,756]

Just now, heywoodu said:

 

Especially this one is just truly shocking.

Maybe Indonesia want to surpass Chinese population l

 

We only have 5 days before the plenary session starts, hoping the president veto it or the constitutional court repeal it if it managed to pass.

[Griff88 1,756]

Two big news from Indonesia:

 

1. Our Sports Minister is charged with bribery,     he has now stepped down (after congratulating sambo athletes earlier that day)

 

2. The parliament is preparing a bill to revise the criminal code (current version is inherited from the 1918 Wetboek van Strafrecht voor Nederlandsch-Indie) which includes new "interesting" articles such as:

• In addition of the ban on spreading communism and Marxism, spreading atheist and agnostic views or inciting people to stop believing religions are now punishable (4 years in prison)
• Any form of abortion is now punishable (the new article said that "asking/giving consent for abortion" is punishable thus conflicting with the legal exception for health reasons or rape victims)
• Performing black magic is now punishable for 3 years in prison, bonus 1 year if the damage is financial
• Showing, advertising, or offering contraceptives to children is now punishable by law (except for certified officials)
• Cohabitating is now punishable if someone reports you
• Minimum prison sentence for corruption is now only 2 years (instead of 4)
• Anti defamation law has been modified, which made it possible for journalists to be jailed because the subject did not like their article or felt attacked by it.

 

Looks like I have to make a long-term plan to live somewhere else

[Griff88 1,756]

1 hour ago, konig said:

The anti-vaccine movement is the most stupid and dangerous western fanatism of all

It's global though.. And I think the "non-Western" anti-vaxxers are crazier with lack of rules to shut them up

 

We had a rubella and diphtheria outbreak a few years back and it is also when the anti-vaxxers in Indonesia rise.

The mighty "Indonesian Clerics Council" declared 'some vaccine (in this case is the MR vaccine) is haram, but still can be used because it is emergency'.

 

But most people read that as "all vaccines are haram".

 

And there we have it, a rise of measles/rubella/diphtheria cases in provinces with high conservative and fundamentalist concentration. Don't ask me why

[Griff88 1,756]

Just now, heywoodu said:

I've got a feeling that's a bit much underestimating the agression some idiots feel towards gay people, or people who they 'suspect' of being gay.

I live in a country which that kind of thing happens quite a few times..... I can't say for other country but being a foreigner here is already a protective shield to make them think twice (being a caucasian will even increase that shield's effectiveness)

 

Yes those idiots are there and can be very scary, but at least try getting yourself below the radar (get caught by idiots mean you are even dumber.. )

[Griff88 1,756]

1 hour ago, thiago_simoes said:

With all due respect, I'm never ever going to visit a muslim nation. Not a chance. I know many muslims are nice people, but all it takes is one conservative muslim to make my life a nightmare once they discover I'm gay, and I fear for my life, so nope. Nope, nope, nope. I have my fair share of shitty protestants to deal with in Brazil. (PS: not all protestants are bad towards gay people, but in Brazil 90% of them are, and dealing with them is unbearable.)

 

I believe you are not a guy who carries megaphone everywhere and scream "I'm gay, please don't hurt me".... So I think you should be pretty much alright anywhere, why so afraid?