putar-putar

Gue paling lemah dalam satu hal ini: navigasi. Paling susah buat gue untuk mengingat nama daerah, dan yang lebih penting LETAK daerah itu sendiri. Abis semuanya keliatannya mirip! Ya gitu-gitu aja. Kalo jalan tol itu jalan yang nggak ada motornya (di Indonesia), jalan kecil ya yang banyak toko-toko. Kecuali di situ ada gedung besar kayak mal gue bisa inget.

Hal kecil ini sering jadi masalah karena gue suka diomelin sama bokap nyokap. Janjian jemput di mana eh gue ke mana. Gue dikasih tahu jalannya gini, gue ke jalan gitu. Apes, padahal kayaknya semua orang nggak masalah sama hal kayak begini. Pertanyaan yang paling sulit dijawab buat gue adalah: "Eh Retha, kalo mau ke xxxxx gimana sih?" Waduh! Seringnya gue tahu tempatnya tapi nggak tahu gimana sampai ke sana.

Sejujurnyaaaaa, jujur nih. Gue baru tahu Tanah Abang letaknya di mana itu tahun lalu. Terus kalo SMP gue nggak di Santa Maria yang ada di Jalan Juanda, Jakarta Pusat itu, gue nggak bakal pernah tahu Harmoni itu yang mana. Dan saat ini, gue masih meragukan bayangan yang di otak gue adalah tol Cawang yang selama ini PASTI sering gue lewatin. Pada intinya, gue harus sering ngelewatin daerah itu baru gue bisa hapal dan ngebedain. Catat ini: kalo bisa setiap hari lewat.

Navigasi jadi salah satu hal yang paling gue takutin pas tiba di Malaysia. Di negara orang, men! Gue ribuan kali diingetin nyokap, "Kalo nggak tahu, ya nanya!" Syukurlah di sini transportasi lebih mudah dan ada petunjuk kalo buat LRT (Light Rail Transit). Soal bus masih bisa tanya temen-temen. Dan bahagialah saya di sini! Pergi sendirian pun jadi tidak males dan tidak masyalah. Hm, nanti kalo pulang ke Indonesia, gue siap ngapalin jalan deh!

eyang

Eyang Putri mungkin tadi nggak denger. Tapi kata Eyang Kakung, beliau sudah jatuh cinta dengan Eyang Putri dari pertama dan hingga hari tua ini, beliau masih jatuh cinta. Maka itu Eyang Kakung nemenin Eyang Putri siang dan malam dan menghibur Eyang:) ayo Eyang cepat sembuh!

how sweet it is.

mungkin karena cucu yang satu ini manis.

Aku sayang Eyang berdua.

complicate the simplicity

The thing is just like this:

I got no reason to understand this thing. You are just remarkable but

but I don't know what to say.

Say I have to chill out but this is just wasting time, not even spending. Seems I got no chance to answer my own question and understand and ENJOY.

So why should I stay? While you walk and play around, I think.

Why why why when no words between. no tears, no laughters, no stories. I have no idea about you.

Can I just do the same thing: walk and play around.

I take a step but I just stand the same.

And I have no idea about future.

Okay, I need no answer, just

please I wanna release this thing. You don't even bind me here, and last I have no idea why I stay. Why my steps failed to bring me away.

As well as the beginning: the day I knew you, this is just sick.

'cause my ears who did.

a war of words

“If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that’s pretty good.”- The Blind Side

I made this essay for my English project due to saying above. And is specially dedicated for my best speakers ever, Rut Setio Nastiti and Tania Olga Tomana. Without them, there is no essay below.

I just stepped my feet on my senior high school for a week then my mother asked me to join English Debating Club. I thought she was joking at that time. I had no speech skill and she tried to plunge me into a war of words. My senior high school is eminently known as an assiduous one. We had a very tight schedule from Monday to Saturday. I had no choice at that time because they had club activity on every Saturday afternoon, which was my spare time. Once more, I had no choice. I hoped I will find my light at the end of the tunnel soon.

Every time the coach conducted the club activity I was feeling under pressure. I didn’t have any guts to speak confidently nor fluently in English. English is not my mother tongue, and although both my parents were English teacher, we talked in Indonesian every day. It is very hard to me to deliver my words in English since I had no basic skill in public speaking. I was trying my best to skip every debating class, but sadness, my coach always took attendance of every club member. So I came along with all the courage I had.

The club activity was actually interesting, but I that made it seem scary. Sometimes our coach asked us to deliver our opinion in front of the class about the topic given. The topic was out of the box. We talked about something out there that firstly was very uncommon for us. We talked about our government rules, euthanasia, prostitution, environmental issues and so on. Research was important to support what we are going to talk and stand.

My time had come. I had prepared all my notes but I lost my nerves. My words were understandable but too simple and my points were just too light. I felt like I want to go home at that time and pretend as a loser. The pressure to speak fluently and convincingly in front of people in English was utterly strong for me. On the other side, I believed my mother will not allow me to quit from this club. She believed I can go through this all. The only thing I could do was facing it courageously.

After my first ‘small speech’ and observing my club mates’ abilities, I discovered that I was lack in grammar and vocabularies. Not only that but also my critical thinking about a topic. I had to overcome this pressure or else I could not develop my point to convince my listeners. I convinced myself that the whole class is learning, including me. I assumed that everybody starts from the same line, so we all were still learning and finding our style to speak in public.

I tried painstakingly from that day to gain more vocabularies and knowledge to bring up my confidence. I learnt a lot from my seniors and other members on the way they think about something and deliver their opinion logically and convincingly. Sometimes it was a pressure for me though because I found some of my mates were doing well in it, showing a better progress and impressing our coach and seniors. Somehow I showed my best but it did not satisfy my coach. It was very hard, but I would not quit without any result.

Another day, I dared myself to join debating practice against another school. We were debating about obesity that day. From 7 minutes provided, I talked in 8 minutes. It was excessive, and maybe my words were disorganized, but I did not care. Who knows my courage that day successfully boosted my confidence henceforth. Later on, I was allowed to join the real competition. We had tremendous pressure since we would debate with team whom we did not know at all with various topics to research. My team lost 4 matches out of 5, but we did our best. We realised that we were not preparing well for the competition and other teams were too sagacious for us. I keep practising hard afterwards.

One year after, I realised I was plunged into the right one. I could stand with debating and continue for the second year. I already found my best team mates and we decided to compete in an interschool competition. We prepared to the max. We did research 2 weeks before the competition begins, practised with our seniors and coach, discussed every topic we had after school consistently until the D-Day came.

Tears and laughter colored our three days of competition. Sometimes the committee issued an impromptu topic and we had to prepare all under 30 minutes. Pressure we faced, fear we conquered. I knew my team still had to learn more and more since we met many wonderful teams from other school, but my team strived for the best until we had the chance to compete in final round. At that time, we had an arduous topic about whether sex education should be given by school or family. Our opponent was an admirable one, and I who had to against them for the first time since I was the first speaker. The pressure doubled as there were sitting three qualified judges beyond speakers table. I collected my guts and tried to convince with my points and beat my opponents at once.

At 7 pm, it was announced. My team was the champion of the day and I had another bonus: I was the best speaker during the competition. We were amazed by ourselves, by what we had achieved. We were losers a year ago, but luckily we were not cowards. Courage had a big role here. I would not gain all of this if I was too coward even to try something new for me, here is debating. Before joining the club, I had no experience in speech. I figured out later that it was not an excuse. The thing is whether you brave enough to try it or not regardless the result at the end.

So if George A. Sheehan said, “Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” it is true. You do not know until you try, and if you are willing to be the best you will have the chance to be the one. At the end others show me respect of what I have done. This honor for me is an appreciation and boosting my confidence to do better. I realise there are thousands great debaters out there. I am not icing on the cake, yet. Debating seems not a big thing, but it changes my life. I think I would never dare to continue my school in Malaysia-with English as daily language, and write about this if I did not courageous enough to learn standing and speaking in public every Saturday afternoon.

gairah, semangat, kegemaran

Maksud gue sebenernya passion, cuma dalam Bahasa Indonesia yang pertama kali keluar itu gairah. Sayangnya gairah berkonotasi lain dalam bahasa ini jadi kata 'semangat, kegemaran' diharapkan memperjelas kedudukan.

Dan gue baru merasakan gimana rasanya belum punya kesempatan untuk mendalami banget sesuatu yang jadi passion kita, gairah kita. Gue cinta dunia menulis dari kecil. Pas SD karena kebanyakan baca novel Enid Blyton, gue dengan semangat ngetik novel detektif. Yang gue bikin ribet, tapi kalo dibaca lagi pemecahan masalahnya kurang dari kata Mudah. Sebodo, yang pasti gue suka.

Masih gue banggain sampai sekarang tulisan gue di Buku Latihan Soal Arif. Uh gue yakin hampir semua SD pasti langganan nih buku. Nggak buku juga sih, abis tipis banget. Inget nggak di balik cover, selalu ada cerita pendek? Gue pernah nulis loh di situ pas kelas 6 SD *membusungkan dada, nahan napas*

Ini nggak bisa gue lupa karena gue udah agak nggak yakin pas saat itu kalo cerita gue bakal diterima. Gue inget banget sore-sore nulis di atas selembar kertas (kertas nyobek dari buku bahkan) pakai pulpen bertinta biru. Pertama kali nulis sampai selesai, hasilnya nggak banget. Banyak tip-ex di mana-mana dan orat-oret. Gue ulang deh di kertas lain, kali ini lebih rapi ditambah setangkup doa. Gue nggak peduli dapet duit apa nggak, ya udahlah kirim aja.

Bulan berikutnya saat Arif diantar ke sekolahku yang tercinta, Seraphine Bakti Utama, gue deg-deg an. Sok-sok nggak peduli, tapi sebenernya GUE PENASARAN BANGET!! Muncul nggak ya? Tralala trilili. Yap, wali kelas gue masuk dan membawa 30an kumpulan latihan soal Arif. Dan langsung bertanya pada gue, "Retha kirim cerita ya ke Arif?"

Bregundul! PASTI DIMUAT NIH HAHAHAHA! Super seneng karena nama gue terpampang jelas di situ, dan gue yakin guru-guru pasti seneng juga karena nama sekolah gue juga muncul di situ dengan gagahnya.

Cerita gue sederhana. Ada sekumpulan anak-anak yang mau nabung duit recehan tapi nggak tahu di mana karena nggak ada celengan. Di situ ada anak yang usul nabung di kotak kardus pasta gigi dengan bikin bolongan di salah satu sisinya. Simpel kan? Ah ya bahkan gue inget bahasa gue yang super berantakan udah dibikin rapi di latihan soal itu. Gue nyebutnya "bolongin sisi pinggirnya" dan diedit jadi "membolongkan salah satu sisinya". Terima kasih, Kakak entah siapa yang mengerti maksud anak kelas 6 SD dengan baik.

Bahkan gue pikir satu halaman kertas dari buku tulis itu udah cukup buat cerita pendek gue dimuat. Ternyata kurang! Si Kakak-entah-siapa memperpanjang cerita gue dengan menambah ide cerita. Jadi ada satu anak lagi usul pake botol plastik bekas aja. "Indah kan kalau logam-logam uang itu terkena cahaya matahari dan menembus ke dalam botol yang bening." Kira-kira gitu deh kalo nggak salah. Cerita gue semakin terlihat jenius dan kreatif. Terima kasih sekali lagi wahai Kakak-entah-siapa.

Ide soal kardus pasta gigi itu sebenernya gue dapet dari bokap. Dulu zaman SD gue ngotot pengen nabung, tapi belum punya celengan. Bokap suruh pake kardus pasta gigi itu deh. Gua sih ikut aja, lagian tabungan anak SD apalagi kalo nggak recehan? Lucunya abis cerita itu dimuat dan gue pamerin ke orang tua, semua pada nanya dapet ide dari mana. Gue jawab dong kalo itu bahkan bokap yang kasih ide beberapa minggu sebelumnya. Dan... Bokap bilang, "Hah, Bapak? Masa sih? Kapan Bapak bilang gitu?" TETOT! Tetap saja aku harus berterimakasih padamu, Ayahanda. Setidaknya cerita gue jadi terlihat natural dari seorang anak SD kelas 6.

Lah kok ini cerita gue jadi panjang banget. Bahkan bukan ini yang mau gue ceritain! Ya sudahlah ini untuk hari ini. Tentang cerita di atas, Buku Latihan Soal Arifnya sendiri (sayangnya) udah nggak tahu di mana, dan gue yakin nggak ada yang inget juga. Cuman setiap inget hal ini, gue menarik napas dalam dan tersenyum. Bangga.

cerita 4- kakak

aku ini perempuan.

Perutku panas dingin. Kata orang rasanya seperti banyak kupu-kupu di dalam perut. Kok bisa ya? Jantungku juga berdetak cepat, semakin cepat dan sangat cepat. Sial, ciri-ciri orang jatuh cinta yang kubaca di cerita majalah remaja lekat di diriku. Merana lagi, kok semua orang bilang jatuh cinta itu bahagia? Tapi ini nggak boleh. Nggak boleh..

Umurku baru 15. Boleh nggak sih jatuh cinta? Kata orang jatuh cinta nggak kenal umur, tapi ibu bilang aku nggak boleh pacaran dulu. Ibu, kalo yang ini, tanpa disuruh aku juga tahu kalo aku nggak boleh pacaran..

Lelaki yang membuatku salah tingkah datang. Sial, sial, sial. Aku makin salah tingkah!! Karena ia duduk di sebelahku sekarang, mengelus rambutku, dan bertanya dengan suara beratnya, "Gimana tugas Adek? Udah beres belum? Katanya Ibu, kemarin Adek cari Kak Dito. Maaf ya, Kakak kemarin main bola sampai malem."

Benar kan, nggak boleh?

terima kasih, karena ...

Sampai saat ini gue berusaha memahami kenapa gue di Malaysia. Padahal selama ini sih mimpinya di Singapur, tapi berhubung nggak kesampaian, cadangannya emang Malaysia.

Hm, sejauh ini terima kasih gue di Malaysia karena ....

1. Bisa deket sama kakakku yang cihuy, karena selama SMA kami suka sibuk sama urusan masing-masing. Di sini kalo ketemu bisa ngobrol banyak dan lamaaaa. I lap yu, biggy!

2. Makanan! Berhubung di sini napsu makan gue bertambah beberapa kali lipat, keberadaan makanan yang kebanyakan cocok sama lidah superrr sangattt membantu! Ayam penyet dan nasi padang pun masih bisa tercicip kalo lagi ngidam:)

3. Masih deket sama Indonesia, jadi perbedaan waktu yang cuma satu jam tetep bikin komunikasi berlangsung baik-baik sajo.

4. Kurs Ringgit yang "cuma" tiga ribu rupiah per satu ringgit sangat membantu. Berhubung gue cukup banyak membelanjakan duit untuk makanan, jadi nggak merasa bersalah banget-banget. Kalo Dolar Singapur sendiri kan dua kali lipat dari Malaysia, jadi SD 1= RM 2= Rp 6,000. Nah kalo gue di Singapur mungkin tiap ngeluarin duit mikir empat kali lipat. Kalo di Malay, cukuplah berpikir dua kali lipat hehe

5. Teman teman yang menyenangkan:)) apalagi budaya Indonesia dan Malaysia kan mirip-mirip. Rumor kalo orang Malaysia itu kejam sama orang Indonesia nggak gue temuin tuh. Kami baik-baik aja dan suka ketawa ketiwi bareng ataupun kerja bareng.

dan semoga gue menemukan ribuan alasan lain, segera.